Brainstorm gets a lot of hype as the most skill-testing card in Magic, but
for my money, that title goes to Gifts Ungiven. When you cast a Brainstorm,
you’re only evaluating the quality of the cards in your hand, but to
properly cast Gifts Ungiven, you have to evaluate every unique card in your
deck, and every well-built Gifts deck has a lot more unique cards than
others to leverage their key card.
Since the arrival of Unburial Rites and the trick of Gifts Ungiven as
double Entomb, much of the card’s complexity has been lost, since it sets
up that combo more often than not, but this Sultai list eschews that line
for a more classic, control-style Gifts shell.
There is still a combo to set up, Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek,
but it’s a slower combo than we’re used to. Academy Ruins and Crucible of
Worlds are there to ensure that you can Gifts for the combo in a
deterministic way while also being solid value cards with your utility
lands and trinkets.
Trinket Mage and Snapcaster Mage are the next most important cards because
they give you redundancy for your Gifts Ungiven piles. The sideboard has
additional copies of “trinkets” so you can put one of them next to the Mage
in a pile and get the card you want or force your opponent to give you the
other two. That’s the kind of choice you want to generate with Gifts
Ungiven, because typically the second- and third-best cards in your deck
will get the job done.
Snapcaster Mage does the same thing, but with your removal and discard
spells, and unlike Trinket Mage, it doesn’t require you have another copy
of the card you want to cast. If they give you Snapcaster Mage, you can
simply Flashback the card that goes to your graveyard. Easy-peasy.
Of course, there are also times when you need to cast Gifts Ungiven
proactively to find a threat or to accrue value in an attrition game, and
sussing out what you’re trying to achieve with any given pile is critical.
These decks can be frustrating to play because you can almost always look
back on a decision that may have cost you the game, though it’s rarely
clear what was correct in the moment.
But the games where you find off-the-wall piles that do exactly what you
need are among the most rewarding in Magic.
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (29)
