So Many Insane Plays – Offshoots and Ladders

Aside from the blunt force trauma of restriction, Vintage decks never die. Like good

soldiers, they fade away. Those decks that linger on seemingly forever adjust over time,

incorporating new cards that become available and adjusting to the ever fluid metagame. That

is the way of life in Vintage for most major decks: minor changes over time — short steps

on the ladder of history. It is for this reason, and the fact that there are no rotations in

Vintage, that a single player can play the same deck for years with success.

At times, however, powerful synergies coalesce and an offshoot emerges from the soil. In

2004, Robert Vroman developed a “Stax” list that built into the Workshop Prison

archetype the powerful synergy of Bazaar of Baghdad plus Goblin Welder plus Null Rod, and Uba

Mask with all three. Although it shared much of the same principles of traditional Stax, it

was sufficiently different that it became its own archetype: Uba Stax.

These offshoots have the power to suck all the nutrients from the soil and drive out their

progenitors. Sometimes this happens (see Pitch Long vis-à-vis Grim Long) and sometimes it

doesn’t. Today, Stax is readily identifiable by either 5c Stax with all its powerful

bombs and tutors or Uba Stax, Vroman’s brainchild.

Chapter 1: Meandeck Gifts and Dark Ritual

Meandeck Gifts has changed

little since its inception in 2005. Meandeck Gifts was built upon three principal

insights: 1) A disdain for Thirst for Knowledge as a Gifts draw engine, 2) the claim that

Merchant Scroll is the most synergistic and powerful engine for Gifts, and 3) the recognition

that Gifts Ungiven is itself an engine more akin to Fact or Fiction rather than a supporting

card. At the time, most Gifts decks ran two Gifts. Meandeck Gifts ran four.

Since 2005, most of the changes have been superficial: swapping one bounce spell for

another or trading one dual land for a basic Island. The unresolved question of whether to

play Vampiric Tutor was settled in time, in place of the third Misdirection. The biggest

changes the deck has seen in two years were moving the Burning Wish to Tendrils of Agony

(moving the Tendrils from the sideboard to the maindeck) and cutting Fact or Fiction for Dark

Ritual. These changes were real, but they did not cut into the heart of what Meandeck Gifts

was any more than the addition of Imperial Seal changed what Stax was.

Today, Meandeck Gifts stands at this crossroads — it faces the same fateful decision

that faced Stax.

To remind you, the Meandeck Gifts shell looks something like this:

25 Mana Sources (15 Lands and 10 Artifact Accelerants)

The Engine:
4 Merchant Scroll + 1 Ancestral Recall
4 Gifts Ungiven

Protection:
4 Force of Will + 2 Misdirection
4 Mana Drain
2 Bounce Spells (Chain, etc)

The Gifts Package:
1 Recoup
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

The Tutors / Search:
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Brainstorm

2 Win Conditions:
Usually Darksteel Colossus and Tendrils / Burning Wish

The odd man out, the throw in for the control mirror, Drain sink and Scroll target was:

1 Fact or Fiction.

Somewhere along the way, a number of people removed the Fact or Fiction for Dark Ritual. I

resisted this trend. In the numerous Gifts pile puzzles I presented and examined, I never once

found that Dark Ritual solved a puzzle that was otherwise unsolved. That wasn’t to say

that Dark Ritual wasn’t a good throw-in, but was a win-more card in every instance,

unnecessary to the solution. Nonetheless, I made the swap at Roanoke Day Two to Dark Ritual,

not on the grounds that I believed the hype so much as Fact or Fiction had performed rather

poorly. Since the control role was more difficult to attain and less rewarding to pursue, I

decided that Fact was no longer a useful card. Since I couldn’t settle on a substitute,

I reluctantly decided to try Dark Ritual. Unfortunately, Dark Ritual never came up at a time

when I could have gauged its value. I moved testing Dark Ritual in Gifts to the top of my

testing agenda.

In my first testing session, I decided that if I wanted to see how Dark Ritual worked,

I’d probably need to try four. I could seed Dark Ritual into my opening hands, but with

four I’d be likely to see how it operated in all respects, not just when it happened to

be in the opening hand. Plus, it would be more organic — less forced. But it would only

be useful if I could retain the integrity of the maindeck. I felt I could. I cut the Tinker,

the Colossus, the Fact or Fiction, and the 15th land to test it out. The cuts I made were not

final cuts, but designed to help me see how Dark Ritual worked before I could determine

conclusively where they belonged, if at all.

As is generally the case when first testing decks, I throw them up against a Mana Drain

deck piloted by a skilled opponent. Halfway through my four-hour testing marathon and after a

dozen games, which we split, I realized that I played Mana Drain exactly once. The vast

majority of the usage I got from Mana Drain was pitching it to Force of Will and Misdirection.

There were several reasons for this. A few months ago, I played Meandeck Gifts at SCG Roanoke. As a result of my

experience, I had come to realize that the control role was more tenuous than ever. More often

than not, and particularly in the control mirror, the aggressor was rewarded while the defender

was punished. This reversal of proper role assignment raised powerful questions about optimal

design. This a fundamental change in the operation of Vintage control mirrors.

I’ll be honest — I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but it

definitely has to do with the fact that “control” decks are faster than they have

ever been. They run virtually all of the artifact acceleration that was traditionally

relegated to combo decks. Keeper never ran Mana Crypt or Mana Vault. This fact remained true

in my testing. Both my opponent and myself were trying to play the aggressor, despite using

Mana Drains. We both sensed that the control role = game loss.

The second and related reason that I wasn’t playing Mana Drain is that it was now the

play of last resort. If I had any other player: Demonic Tutor or Merchant Scroll, for

instance, that play was generally preferable to holding up Mana Drain. With Dark Ritual in the

deck as a full set, the play of Dark Ritual into Gifts Ungiven on turn two was now common.

Note that one criticism of Merchant Scroll back in 2005 was that it might interfere with Mana

Drain. Most experienced Gifts players know that this isn’t true. But one play that

does interfere with Mana Drain is Ritual Gifts. Scroll is playable on turn 1 off Mox

and a Land, or playable on turn 3 off of land / Mox without seriously interfering with the

operation of Mana Drain. Ritual Gifts, on the other hand, is a play that becomes available on

turn 2 that competes with Mana Drain. Suppose you are in your second turn. If you Gifts now

you could win on turn 3. However, if you don’t Gifts now, you may not get a better time

to Gifts. For me, the option was most frequently presented: hold mana up for Mana Drain or

play Dark Ritual into Gifts Ungiven now. Since the control role more frequently resulted in a

game loss, the correct play was almost always to play Ritual Gifts.

At this point, I decided that since Mana Drain was mostly dead weight, Duress seemed like a

more appealing disruption spell. So I swapped out the four Drains for four Duress. This would

help me combo out more quickly, better protect my game plan, and synergize with the Dark

Rituals.

Chapter 2: The Road to Ritual Gifts

In the end, the revised deck was only marginally more successful and we continued to split

most of the games. Nonetheless, it felt stronger and more synergistic. Despite the fact that

both of us were playing Blue-based strategies, both of us were regularly comboing out on turn 2

or 3.

Although I didn’t feel like I had found a substantially better decklist, I did gain

some insight into the role of Dark Ritual.

Contrary to the claims of those who were advocating Dark Ritual, its power didn’t

come from aiding Gifts piles. Instead, its power came from 1) playing Gifts and 2) post Will.

That is, Dark Ritual accelerated your ability to play Gifts and made your Yawgmoth’s Will

stronger. Although it didn’t enhance Gifts piles, it did mean that Yawgmoth’s Will

was a more deadly card, sooner than it otherwise would have been.

The problem with the play: Dark Ritual, Gifts on turn 2 is that unlike playing Gifts off of

Mana Drain or on your opponents end-step before your fourth turn (off of three lands and a

Mox), you don’t get card advantage from Gifts. You are trading two cards for two cards.

This leaves the Ritual Gifts deck much more vulnerable to Tormod’s Crypt, a problem that

Meandeck Gifts already faced.

However, I also realized that Dark Ritual in the Gifts shell has enormous synergy with

other Rituals. The ability to Brainstorm into a second Dark Ritual means that you can use one

Ritual to play Gifts and another Ritual to fuel the cards you acquired from Gifts. Imagine,

for instance, your game unfolds as follows:

Your opening hand:

Polluted Delta
Island
Mox Emerald
Brainstorm
Dark Ritual
Gifts Ungiven
Force of Will

Turn 1:
Island, Brainstorm into:
Dark Ritual
Merchant Scroll
Volcanic Island

Turn 2:
Play Polluted Delta for Underground Sea, Dark Ritual, Gifts Ungiven for:

Black Lotus
Lotus Petal
Recoup
Yawgmoth’s Will

If they give you Petal and Black Lotus to make Yawgmoth’s Will cost seven to play,

you can play your Mox Emerald, Petal for Dark Ritual, Black Lotus, and Recoup Yawgmoth’s

Will on the spot.

You could then replay the Petal, the Black Lotus, and the two Rituals to generate eight

mana — five Black and three Blue. You could use one Blue and one Black to play Merchant

Scroll for Mystical Tutor. Mystical Tutor for Tendrils, Brainstorm into it, and play Tendrils

for the win.

That is merely one example of how Dark Ritual might be used post-Gifts to produce a

powerful Yawgmoth’s Will. You can imagine innumerable variants on that line of play.

Suffice to say, I found that multiple Dark Rituals seemed more powerful than just one because

of how they operated in Gifts.

As a reminder, here is what I was playing with by the end of that testing session:

MDG Test List, Dec. 2006:

4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Brainstorm
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Merchant Scroll
2 Misdirection

3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tolarian Academy
10 Artifact Accelerants

4 Dark Ritual

1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Recoup
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

Once I made those changes, I realized that I was treading down a dangerous road.

How far are we from playing Pitch Long? The reason to play this over Pitch Long, if it

came to that, was that you get the variance — i.e. consistency, of Meandeck Gifts. What

if I swapped out a bounce spell for Yawgmoth’s Bargain? What if I cut something else for

Necropotence? I thought about these possibilities but then stopped.

Although I felt like this may be a promising road of development, it would be a hard road.

There were, in my view, at least two big obstacles to overcome: 1) this deck would have to be

resilient against Tormod’s Crypt. I couldn’t see any obvious way to make that

happen. Especially since 2) adding cards like Yawgmoth’s Bargain and Necropotence would

pressure me to eat away at my bounce suite — a segment of the decklist that would become

more and more important in fighting T. Crypt.

For the reasons, I stopped my development and put the deck in stasis. A few days later, I

received a private message from Scott Limoges, a successful and independent Vintage player.

Here is what he said:

Hi Steve,

How are things? Congrats with your new member on Meandeck, Chapin.

Last May I worked on revamping two decks that appeared to have hidden potential. One deck was

Dragon, as you know. The other a Gifts variant. I chose to further pursue Dragon because of its

lack of interest and under-the-radar surprise, which Dragon can exploit. However, recently Bob

Yu simply informed me that Meandeck is working on a similar Gifts build. I want to share my

efforts. For the first time in years, I feel there is a best deck in Vintage: this deck.

Adding Tempo pre and post Yawgmoth’s Will in Gifts (removing Mana Drain)

Mana Drain prohibits the game plan that Gifts wants. Drain ties up mana during the main phase

and prevents the casting of Merchant Scroll or Brainstorm, which constrains development. Often,

holding Drain means drawing one card per turn and waiting (and you know what waiting attributes

to against most the field). Duress and Dark Ritual solve this problem. Investing in Duress

early opens mana for developing the game plan (casting BS and MS). Duress also solves mana

intensity issues when going off (B instead of UU) and contributes to storm. Dark Ritual boosts

the game state pre and post Yawgmoth’s Will. It enables an early Gifts to be cast and raises

Yawgmoth’s Will’s stock faster. Ritual also allows game ending bombs like Yawgmoth’s Bargain

and Necropotence. Lion’s Eye Diamond is a second Black Lotus (target) in Gifts. Gifting for

LED, Lotus, Recoup, and Will creates six mana and five storm at worst. Combining this with MS

and BS from early tempo equals ten storm and Tendrils quickly.

4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain

4 Duress
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection

1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Recoup

1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
5 Moxen
4 Dark Ritual
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Stand

I had started down the road that Scott had already found. When I saw his decklist, the

concerns that led me to hesitate in taking the next step were realized. He was playing one

less bounce spell and 61 cards. That is, instead of finding ways of resolving the T. Crypt

problem and retain the bounce suite, he just stuffed Bargain and Necro into the deck. I was

impressed with the work he’d done, but disappointed that he hadn’t found a creative

way to resolve these problems. Worse, he’d weakened the manabase in several ways. There

were now fewer lands and fewer basics. He resolved some of these problems in his published list, but I still

feel that it is problematic.

Chapter 3: Meandeck Gifts and Empty the Warrens

In the wake of the success of Empty the Warrens in Gifts by Andy Probasco, I decided that I

needed to learn whether Empty the Warrens deserved a home in a traditional Meandeck Gifts

shell. I surmised that I would be able to extrapolate my experience to guess at how it might

operate in Ritual Gifts.

I was definitely behind the curve in realizing just how good Empty the Warrens was. I

needed to know whether it could replace Darksteel Colossus as a win condition. I cut Tinker

and Colossus for Empty the Warrens and added more Empty the Warrens into the sideboard.

As originally conceived, the primary win condition for Meandeck Gifts was to be Darksteel

Colossus plus Time Walk recursion (Recoup Walk, Burning Wish Walk). Burning Wish for Tendrils

was intended to be a backup kill. Equally important, Burning Wish served as a way to replay

Time Walk to kill your opponent with Colossus.

So, you play Gifts Ungiven for this.

If you Gift up: Yawgmoth’s Will, Time Walk, Recoup, and Tinker, your opponent will probably

give you Time Walk and Recoup, or Time Walk and Tinker. If they give you the latter, they just

gave you the game with Darksteel Colossus. You Tinker, Time Walk, and Recoup Time Walk. If

they give you the former, then you can Time Walk immediately, hopefully draw a useful spell,

and Recoup for Yawgmoth’s Will with all of your available mana. You can then Tinker and Time

Walk. You will hopefully have enough juice to find Burning Wish and then Burning Wish for the

RFG’d Time Walk. This enables you to swing in one more time.

Over time, the metagame accelerated and Tendrils became a necessary maindeck card. Thus,

as nice as the additional Time Walk turn via Burning Wish may have been, it was overshadowed by

the fact that the speed of the format means that not winning now could mean never winning. In

the last year, I won as many games with Tendrils as Colossus, diminishing the centrality, but

not the importance, of Colossus. Colossus was still critical as an alternate route to victory

via Tinker if you were facing Tormod’s Crypt or a Fish deck, but there was little doubt

that the Tendrils was needed maindeck, whereas it was previously a win-more change that made

finishing the job a bit easier.

In response to the increasing pressure on both Darksteel Colossus and Yawgmoth’s Will

into Tendrils as routes to victory, I found myself often looking for ways to execute the Chain

of Vapor into Tendrils kill. In the face of Wipe Away and Tormod’s Crypt, bounce into a

lethal Tendrils is an important third path to victory. It could end the game even with a

Goblin Welder / Stormscape Apprentice and a Tormod’s Crypt on the table.

Empty the Warrens gives you the dream alternate win condition in Gifts. It is invulnerable

to Tormod’s Crypt, synergizes enormously with your bounce and general game flow, is

invulnerable to cards like Welder and Swords to Plowshares, and decreases the number of dead

draws in the deck. Darksteel Colossus was one of the decks dead draws. Imagine drawing Tinker

and Colossus. Empty the Warrens is never a dead draw. And by including Warrens, you get to

cut Tinker and Colossus, freeing the deck to add a third bounce spell or possibly another Dark

Ritual. In a sense, Empty the Warrens is the Bounce into Tendrils plan and Tinker into

Darksteel Colossus in one card, but better. Unlike the bounce into Tendrils plan, you

only need a few storm — between 4-6 — to have a really good early Warrens.

Finally, Dark Ritual has enormous synergy with Warrens — another reason to move Dark

Rituals into the deck, in some number.

After much testing, here are my two recommended Gifts list:

And for those of you enamored with decklists, here is how I would play the Ritual list:

Ritual Gifts

4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Brainstorm
4 Gifts
4 Merchant Scroll
2 Misdirection

3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tolarian Academy
10 Artifact Accelerants

3 Dark Ritual

1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Recoup
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

As I said, Meandeck Gifts — the fundamental principle that Merchant Scroll is a

powerful engine and Gifts is fundamentally broken form the backbone of both decklists. The

question is: which is better and which should the deck travel? If MDG is at a cross roads,

I’m too timid to choose a path. Instead, I leave it to you to select which list you

think is better. I definitely think that the Ritual list has the more powerful synergies, but

it may expose weaknesses that aren’t acceptable. I cannot say if Mana Drain is being

surpassed, but there are signs that something else is afoot.

Chapter 4: From Gifts to Grim Long

Yawgmoth’s Will is the dominant strategy in Vintage, and has been so for some time.

Every single deck in Vintage embodies this strategy, complements it, or assaults it. Many

decks do all three.

The distinguishing feature between decks that embody this strategy is implementation. Some

decks use Gifts Ungiven as their Yawgmoth’s Will engine, others use Grim Tutor. And

until now, the difference in implementation has also meant a difference in support cards.

Those decks that used Gifts Ungiven also played Mana Drain to support and fuel Gifts; while

those decks that used Grim Tutor played Dark Rituals to support and fuel it.

And the difference between decks that occupied niches on either side of this implementation

divide seemed to be between those decks that were more focused in their pursuit of that end and

those that were more resilient and resistant to anti-Yawgmoth’s Will strategies.

Consider a metagame chart I drew up April of 2006:

In the words of Randy Buehler, who I hope doesn’t object to my quoting him:

Control-Slaver and IT are less objectively powerful than Gifts and Grim long, but they

are much more resilient. I think it’s more than just the fact that they have better

anti-anti-Yawgwill strategies. In addition, I think it is easier to outplay an opponent with IT

or esp. Slaver. The skill in playing Grim Long is to play your own hand perfectly … your

opponent is almost irrelevant as you can’t punish them for mistakes, can’t pursue a different

strategy if they turn out to have the answer for your plan A, etc. I very much agree with the

‘Slaver isn’t good at any one thing, it’s decent at 3 different things’ analysis and I think

that’s Slaver’s biggest strength.

In other words, Control Slaver, although designed to abuse the heck out of Yawgmoth’s

Will, was actually a compilation of synergistic strategies, of which Yawgmoth’s Will was

only one. More importantly, IT and Slaver existed because, in my words, they were the best

anti-anti-Yawgmoth’s Will strategies. That is, they were best equipped to combat

Category II decks. That’s why Randy called them more resilient.

Although different decks occupy the space that exists in my chart, the idea remains the

same. I brought it up for two reasons: 1) to illustrate the Mana Drain / Ritual divide in

Yawgmoth’s Will strategies and 2) to make the point that the “niches” in

these strategies are between the more focused strategies and the more resilient strategies.

That is, there has always been a deck on either side of the divide that is designed to abuse

Yawgmoth’s Will and a deck that abuses Yawgmoth’s Will but is better equipped to

beat the anti-Yawgmoth’s Will decks. What I am now beginning to see is there really

isn’t an implementation divide between Dark Ritual and Mana Drain decks. I’ve

begun to see that they actually exist on the same continuum. I predict that as a result the

primary divide in Yawgmoth’s Will implementation will be between decks that are more

focused on abusing Yawgmoth’s Will and decks that are more resilient to

anti-Yawgmoth’s Will strategies rather than the Drain/Ritual divide.

In the last eight months, we’ve been seeing a spate of decks trying to bridge the gap

between Grim Tutor decks and Gifts.

Here is how I see it:

The Grim Tutor — Gifts Continuum: More Aggressive to More Controlling

Grim Long
Pitch Long
Cross Long
GrimTPS
[IT]
Ritual Gifts
Meandeck Gifts

For reference:

Cross Long:
Intuition

Tendrils:
Timoney /

Probasco TPS:
Pitch

Long
Ritual Gifts

Cross calls his deck a mix between IT and TPS. Pitch Long hasn’t been doing so well in the

metagame, and everyone agrees that IT is defunct. But what’s going on here?

These decks are positioning themselves to fill every possible niche expressing both power and

resilience. But how, exactly, do these decks compare?

All of these decks share: 1-2 Tendrils of Agony, 4 Brainstorm, 1 Ancestral Recall, 1

Mystical Tutor, 1 Vampiric Tutor, 1 Demonic Tutor, 1 Yawgmoth’s Will, 1-2 bounce spells,

and 1 Time Walk.

	Grim Long	Pitch Long	Cross Long	JT / B TPS	Intuition Tendrils	Ritual Gifts	MDG
Land Count	11	11-12	13	13	14	14	15
Artifact Accel	11 (LED)	10-11	10	10	10	10-11	10
Rituals	6	7-8	8	8	6	4	1
Grim Tutor	3	3	2	1	2	0	0
Merchant Scroll	0	0	0	2	1	4	4
Gifts Ungiven	0	0	0	1	0	3-4	4
Disruption	4 Duress, 1 Xantid	4 FoW, 3 Misd	4 FoW, 3 Duress	4 FoW, 3 Duress	3 FoW, 4 Duress, 2 Remand	4 FoW, 4 Duress	4 FoW, 4 Drain, 2 Misd
Infernal Contract	0	0-1	2	1	0	0	0
Intuition	0	0	1	0	3	0	0
Draw7s	5	3-4	1	1	1	0	Tinker?
Necropotence	1	1	0	0	1	1	0
Yawgmoth’s Bargain	1	1	1	1	1	1	0
Mind’s Desire	1	1	1	1	0	0	0

This chart, while large and potentially confusing, is also quite revealing.

First and foremost, take a look at the land count — the top line. I suspect that

this is the key marker that tells us where these decks fall in the continuum. In my view, the

land count tells us a lot about where the designer sees their deck.

Intuitively, it seems to me that the number of land tells us how fast the deck is. A lower

land count suggests that the designer sees fewer turns to deploy land. More lands in an

opening hand mean more dead weight if the intention is to win on turn two. Thus, Pitch Long

and Grim Long run eleven lands. They are aiming to see two lands and no more. I can elaborate

on this point, although it is a bit complex. Suffice to say, with eight lands you have one

roughly distributed every 7.5 cards. With eleven lands you are giving yourself a little buffer

so that you see a land consistently and a good shot to see another land through Brainstorm or a

Draw7. Meandeck Gifts envisions a 3-5 turn game plan and wants land drops in its first three

turns. Hence, it plays fifteen lands. Since Ritual Gifts may see itself as a turn or two

faster, it shaved a land off to make room for Dark Rituals. Intuition Tendrils was designed to

be able to beat Stax by dropping Fetchlands and then winning at its leisure. Hence, it has

fourteen lands. Crosslong and Timoney TPS see themselves somewhere in between. It seems to me

that they are probably seeing themselves as having a turn 3 or so game plan, but they can work

through several turns with only two lands. By going to thirteen lands, they cut deeply into

the Grim / Pitch Long mulligan rate. They are more consistent, but slightly slower decks.

Just to see if it told us anything, I calculated the land to total mana ratios. In my

view, this could be an important number. From the perspective of Grim Long, the land is

roughly 36.6 percent of the total mana in the deck. This tells us that Grim Long is looking to

play roughly one land for every two other mana sources it deploys, whether that be Moxen,

Rituals, or Spirit Guides. This has the potential to be the more telling statistic. A lower

land to total mana ratio may tell us how fast the deck is. A lower land to total mana ratio

tells us that the deck sees to accelerate quickly without necessarily deploying more land to do

so:

Grim Long: 11/30 = .366
Pitch Long = .366 to .4 (12/30) depending on whether the deck has Lion’s Eye Diamond
IT = .466 (14/30)
Cross Long and TPS: .419 (13/31)
Ritual Gifts: .4827 (14/29)
MDG: .5769 (15/26)

This statistic tells us something, but it may be overshadowed by the varying total mana

counts. I find it fascinating that Cross Long and TPS use so much mana. What they have done

is slow the deck down and increase the amount of mana, decreasing the threats.

Fascinatingly, they have kept the same mana to land ratio as pitch long but increased the decks

consistency by adding a land.

There are lots of interesting observations to be made from this chart: the number of

Infernal Contracts (and what that tells us about the decks’ strategy), the ratios of

disruption spells (notice how the middle bulges at 7 — oddly enough?), and how the Ritual

count reaches its maximum threshold in the middle of the continuum — not the far left

where you would expect it to.

However, I want to talk about one trend in particular: the hybridization of Grim Tutor,

Merchant Scroll, and Gifts Ungiven in the same deck. Justin Timoney’s deck runs Merchant

Scroll, Gifts Ungiven, and Grim Tutor. This is the ultimate midpoint between Gifts

and Long decks — found in the same decklist.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

What does this all mean? I think it means this. We are witnessing the extreme

fragmentation of the Gifts / Grim Tutor archetype at the same time that it is being connected

on the same continuum. That is, every single possible configuration of these decks is being

tested and tried with success. We could further imagine ways to mix and match these decks

together. Who’s to say that we couldn’t cut Intuition in Cross Long for a Gifts or

a Scroll? By and large, our tournament results might be pretty similar, regardless of these

small changes. But I think this goes back to what I was saying at the outset of the previous

section: the niches that people are filling both abuse of Yawgmoth’s Will at the same

time that they are gaining some level of resilience to anti-Yawgmoth’s Will decks.

I think there is a critical flaw, however. Empty the Warrens produces resilience in the

most unusual manner. You don’t have to sit in the middle of this continuum now to have

both the resilience and maximize the abuse of Yawgmoth’s Will.

The power of Xantid Swarm was such that there were strong demands on the Pitch Long mana

base to sideboard in green to support it. The power of Empty the Warrens is such that

you’d be giving up quite a bit not to have red in there somewhere. In other words, there

are very good reasons to run both Green and Red in addition to Black and Blue. And since the

traditional reason to run the U/B manabase is resilience to Wasteland found in anti-Will

strategies of Stax and Fish, that reason now breaks down if you can beat those strategies using

a proactive red card: Empty the Warrens.

What I’m saying is that the mad dash to the middle may be the wrong approach. The

printing of Empty the Warrens gives the Grim Tutor and the Gifts strategies on the far sides of

this spectrum the tools to fight anti-Will decks without having to resort to this precarious

balancing and hybridization.

I would present a Grim Long list here with Empty the Warrens in the sideboard and Simian

Spirit Guides. There are lots of reasons to run Grim Long: Duress is better than ever right

now as these Control-Combo hybrids proliferate. Xantid Swarm is powerful against Split Second

solutions. Empty the Warrens is easily abused in Grim Long. However, the irony is that while,

in the abstract, Grim Long may be the most powerful way to abuse these synergies, it could be

held in check by these hybrids. Grim Long’s greatest advantage is its speed and power.

As even decks like Gifts accelerate in speed, Grim Long’s advantage diminishes.

Here’s a great example

of what I’m talking about.

In that example, Grim Long has an insane turn 1 play, but Gifts just wins first.

I’ve seen that happen more times than I can count now. Grim Long also has a weakness

against these hybrid combo decks that can win almost as fast as Grim Long, but have twice the

disruption. If a combo deck can throw Duress and Force of Will at Grim Long then it might be

able to slow the game down long enough so that it can win on turn 2 or 3, while Grim Long sits

helpless. One potential solution would be to play Pitch Long on a five-color manabase. If you

take that route, I would cut the Infernal Contract and play Regrowth or Wheel of Fortune.

However, it still has the drawback of being somewhat vulnerable to Duress and Split Second

cards.

This is just speculation at this point, but I think we are witnessing the proliferation of

Gifts-Grim hybrids — and I have a feeling that it has just begun. You can situate

yourself practically anywhere along the spectrum, gaining varying degrees of resilience,

flexibility, speed and power. In the end, the correct configuration will probably depend as

much upon your metagame as your skill and confidence in a particular list. Welcome to the long

heralded era of Grim-Gifts hybrids, complicated all the more by the explosion of Empty the

Warrens into the Vintage metagame. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Until next time,

Stephen Menendian