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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:
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:
| Meandeck Gifts 2K7 Featured by Stephen Menendian on 2007-02-18 (Extended) | ||
Artifacts 1 Black Lotus 1 Lotus Petal 1 Mana Crypt 1 Mana Vault 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring Instants 1 Ancestral Recall 4 Brainstorm 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Dark Ritual 4 Force of Will 4 Gifts Ungiven 4 Mana Drain 2 Misdirection 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Rebuild 1 Repeal 1 Vampiric Tutor |
Sorceries 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Empty the Warrens 4 Merchant Scroll 1 Recoup 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Time Walk 1 Yawgmoth's Will Basic Lands 4 Island Lands 3 Flooded Strand 2 Polluted Delta 3 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island Legendary Lands 1 Tolarian Academy | 2 Tormod's Crypt 1 Fire / Ice 2 Hurkyl's Recall 1 Lava Dart 1 Pyroblast 1 Rack and Ruin 1 Red Elemental Blast 4 Duress 2 Empty the Warrens |
 |
 | |
| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
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,
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