Ah, Christmas - consumerism run amok. Magic players, of course, know all about the mad rush to buy stuff (it happens, after all, every four months)… But there's something special about the holidays for Magic players, as it allows us to build silly theme decks for use in the casual room. While Mirrodin was in standard, that inevitably meant “When Trees Attack,” utilizing Spellbombs, baubles, and other ornaments to animate trees (along with Living Terrain, of course), gain life, and draw cards while the Santa-esque Auriok Salvagers helped keep the hand stocked with goodies.

This year was a little more difficult, despite a number of cards with “gift” in the title. One of those cards, Gifts Ungiven, didn't really fit the theme – a gift ungiven is very un-Santa! It would also likely inspire a lot of comments about rares, card costs, and the casual room. That left Gift of Estates and Lifegift as cards to build around. Since there's some synergy between the two, I set out to find some kind of broken combo thing.

It didn't take long to find Searing Meditation, which not only benefits from free life gain triggers but which also features a portly fellow with a white beard floating in mid-air. Plus it's a red and white card, which would give the deck Christmas colors and maximize Gift of Estates' ability to fetch the new dual lands.

The core of the deck was already set:

4 Gift of Estates
4 Lifegift
4 Searing Meditation
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple Garden
4 Tendo Ice Bridge

I figured with the already-funky color requirements on turn 3 that I needed the Bridges. Gift of Estates could solve color issues, too – and perhaps I could add another card that could pull lands to further help out. A number of cards came to mind, but I settled on Wood Elves as a guy who could accelerate (and help pay for) Searing Meditation. I chose Sensei's Divining Top for sifting, and Loxodon Hierarch to either gum the ground or attack as needed (as well as gaining life). Lightning Helix got the nod because it gains life, removes things, and generally is super. Firemane Angel is for the Meditation trigger, and to have a flying thing.

I wanted one other means of gaining life, and finally decided upon Tanglebloom over Angel's Feather. While the Feather is free, I already had a number of “gain life for free” cards and wanted something that would allow me to Shock my opponent at will. I only needed three of those, though, and three Wrath of Gods to even out the mix. Here's what it looked like:

Christmas Gifts First Draft:
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Tanglebloom
4 Gift of Estates
4 Lightning Helix
4 Lifegift
4 Searing Meditation
3 Wrath of God

4 Wood Elves
4 Loxodon Hierarch
3 Firemane Angel

4 Temple Garden
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
2 Karplusan Forest
5 Plains
3 Forest
2 Mountain

What I learned very quickly was that Gift of Estates is a cantankerous and unreliable card. If you choose to play last (or are playing against an opponent who has Elders and Reaches), you can probably cast it. However, when you use it to pull dual lands you can spend a lot of time Shocking yourself in order to stay even on the board. It's not that big a deal when you can afford the tempo loss - but how many decks can you win against when you're under a self-imposed Winter Orb for three turns in a row? Also, Gift doesn't accelerate, which I didn't realize I would miss as much as I did. I still needed a color fixer, though – and so Gift became Farseek, which sadly is not in theme but which is a lot better for the deck.

Since I was already hosing the theme element, I also dropped Lifegift down to three to make room for a full boat of Wrath of Gods. The deck was losing early and often to creatures that it had no answer for, with only three Wraths to defend it from an overwhelming rush of (usually white or black) small mean creatures.

After playing the new version for a while, though, I bumped the number of Lifegifts back up to four, removing one of the Tangleblooms instead. You really want to see both enchantments, and as early as possible. Of course, you could always run four Enlightened Tutors…. But for Standard this is as good as it gets.

After another few matches, I started to wonder about Hondens. And Privileged Position. And Enduring Ideal. The problem, of course, is that Ideal has a perfectly good set of targets in Zur's Weirding and Form of the Dragon. I also think that Lifegift is a better trigger for the deck than the Honden, as each one you get on the table represents an individual instance of life gain. You'll only ever have one Honden, and further randomizing the deck list with singletons didn't seem like the best idea.

Privileged Position, however, stuck around in my head, especially in the face of Seed Spark and other anti-Glare of Subdual tech. Tanglebloom is clearly the winner of the “dumb card” award, and so the final two copies were removed for two Positions.

It turns out these are very, very good and help out in all kinds of matchups. I sort of like the idea of one Position and one Ivory Mask, but the value of the Positions is far greater in most matchups, as they have to have two kill spells to get to your Meditation.

The mission of the deck is pretty basic: Helix or Wrath as needed, get your enchantments in place, and start burning. Occasionally an Elephant or Angel will show up and go all the way with Helix and Meditation as backup, but that's rare. The Angel is great either on the board as deterrence or in the graveyard as yet another trigger, and the games go so long that the ten-mana Zombify is an option some of the time.

If anyone wanted to break Meditation for real (anyone? Buehler?), they'd have a hard time finding anything better than Lifegift. That card is an absolute pain in the butt even without the Meditation, as it can gain as much life as a Sun Droplet over the course of a game, doesn't seem worthy of an enchantment kill spell, and generally speaking gives you a long lease on life. The deck almost needs more land fetching to help abuse it, and the additional shuffle effects would also help out the Top. But darned if I know what to drop in favor of Elders or Reaches. Helix is necessary spot removal. I suppose I could forego Tops, but the filtering is absolutely crucial. If I were to do that, I'd probably replace them with three Sakura-Tribe Scouts, not additional land fetching.

Matchup analysis with decks like this are always a joke, as no amount of virtual ink will avoid the fact that the deck is, like, tier 3.14. I can say that if some brave soul were to take this to a tournament or Constructed queue, this is the list I'd recommend:

3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Farseek
4 Lightning Helix
4 Wood Elves
4 Lifegift
4 Searing Meditation
4 Wrath of God
4 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Privileged Position
3 Firemane Angel

5 Plains
3 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Karplusan Forest
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple Garden
4 Tendo Ice Bridge

Sideboard might look something like:
4 Naturalize
4 Pyroclasm (An argument can be made for these in the main if you want a more W/R Control-style thing, but you'd have to remove the Farseeks, and possibly also the Elephants for Sunhome Enforcer and adjust the mana base)
4 Faith's Fetters (frankly, I think these might need to trade places with the Elephant – they're that good)
3 Dosan the Falling Leaf (token but futile blue resistance)

You lose to an early Hypnotic Specter if you can't kill it, but the B/G matchup is not tragic after sideboarding. They want their mana creatures to survive and you can kill them a lot of ways after the Pyroclasms come in.

You lose to Mono-Blue Control pre and post sideboarding, especially if they're a couple of iterations back and they still have Executes in the sideboard.

You lose less often to White Weenie or Boros Weenie, but those decks have an annoying habit of just randomly winning, even against all the hate in the sideboard. Generally speaking, you're better off than you'd think, although no amount of life gain is going to save you if you don't find a Wrath. If you want to ensure that you get the better of aggro creature decks then Pyroclasm or Fetters might need to be in the main deck, or maybe even both.

In the casual room, though, you're in for some good fun. Give it a spin if you've got the cards.

And don't forget Gift of Estates as the rest of the duals roll out... Could be good times.

Merry Christmas and Happy '06.