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Editor: Sharon Van Der Werk. Sunday 8th January 2006. |
 The Best in Standard By Nicolas Rolf With Worlds over Standard is now a format in limbo. The best decks have been discovered and there is very little tweaking left to be done with existing archetypes. The only two major things you can do are, meta-game your deck or, go rogue. The established archetypes are so strong at the moment that in order to go rogue you would need a very innovative deck that was strong enough to take down the top contenders while avoiding any hate cards that are floating around in the format for anything main stream. So it's simple. Don't go rogue, at least until the release of Guildpact has come and gone. This leaves you with the option of meta-gaming your deck. Essentially meta-gaming is done by adding or taking out cards in your deck to deal with common threats in the format or to avoid hate cards. For example during Affinity's reign people would try and make viable decks without artifacts so as to avoid all the hate cards floating around for Affinity. The best decks in standard at the moment are commonly known as Mono-Blue, Ghazi Glare and Critical Mass. There are a few rogues that placed and/or did well at worlds but are yet to prove themselves over the long term. Standards most known deck, however, is Gifts, generally B/G/u. This deck was more dominant in block constructed than Affinity, not as broken but it won more, and it posted the highest number of top 8's in all the recorded 2005 U.S State Championships and tied for the highest amount of first places. So why has this deck disappeared from standard? It's simple, the format adapted to its game plan. I'm not sure what justified the existence of Ghazi Glare, but Mono-Blue and Critical Mass came into existence because they could take down the giant that was Gifts. Even while the deck seems to be down and out people still run cards to assure a fair matchup should they encounter this deck. When Gifts made its way out of Kamigawa Block, the format sped up, meaning White Weenie was faster, Boros Deck Wins existed and anti control decks such as Critical Mass and Mono-Blue made their ascension from their slower forms, running clunky counters, to their speedier standard forms, running things like Remand and Mana Leak to gain early control. So, how can Gifts survive in this format without being the pet deck of Mike Flores, a.k.a Wild Gifts? At first I wasn't sure. The deck can have its mass removal easily hosed by Pithing Needle on Kagemaro, allowing aggro decks to obtain the extra turn they may need to go all the way. This makes your mass removal prone to failure while you're left hanging on the 5 th turn with a useless Kagemaro. Unfortunately the decks problems don't end in the aggro matchup. All the control decks in the format, as sad as it is, are able to out control this deck via counter spells. The deck simply can't attempt to resolve enough of its clunky threats in one turn to get past the counter wall posed by Mono Blue, U/B Bob or Critical Mass. Now because I'm not the world's most innovative deck builder, I went looking for builds of the traditional Gifts archetype that addressed these problems or provided me with cards or combo ideas to help in these matchups. My search wasn't in vain and I found a list that provided answers to these things. It's an old gifts deck that some people may remember because it was piloted to a top 2 finish by Kenji Tsumura at Pro Tour Philadelphia. So credit for this deck goes to Kenji and of course its creator, Itaru Ishida. 5 Swamp 2 Plains 3 Island 6 Forest
Now of course the original list didn't have any of the cards from Saviors of Kamigawa or the lands from Ravnica but the rest of it is the same. You're into 4 colours and you have access to the best of mass removal, kill conditions, search, discard and you even have access to the most powerful ‘no' spell ever printed. You have the usual suspects for mainboard Hana Kami recursion, plus Horobi's Whisper, a card that was specifically sideboarded in B/G/u builds of the deck to deal with ‘draw go' control decks. Should you see it necessary you can even run a Yosei lock in the deck with Footsteps of the Goryo. The decks game plan is simply to ramp mana until you can resolve 1 of 2 Myojin's. If you can that it's generally game no matter what matchup you're in. The option to set up a Hana Kami lock via Gifts Ungiven is also available to this deck, so you can either remove all enchantments and artifacts with Wear Away, strip your opponent of their win conditions with Cranial Extraction or make enough Horobi's Whispers to make any aggro player cry. For those of you, who don't know what the Hana Kami lock is, allow me to explain. You cast Gifts ungiven for a split of: Hana Kami, Soulless Revival, Death Denied and an arcane spell you want to cast ‘infinitely'. You sacrifice the Hana Kami to get the arcane spell you want, and then play it splicing on Soulless Revival to retrieve the Hana Kami. Rinse and Repeat. There are two cards in the deck that seem out of place, but deserve special mention, Time Stop and Heartbeat of Spring. Time Stop is by far the most powerful counterspell ever printed. It says “no!” to whatever you want it to. It'll stop an Enduring Ideal; it will end the recursion engine of an opposing Gifts deck, stop any combo madness and otherwise can be used to gain an extra turn. Heartbeat of Spring is the card that lets you go one up against ‘draw go' strategies. Instead of attempting to resolve 1 spell a turn and having it countered, while the opponent draws another one and gets ahead on land, you can resolve multiple Myojin's, Gifts Ungiven or Cranial Extractions in the same turn. It also gets really insane when you have resolved a Gifts Ungiven. You can use the Hana Kami recursion a good 2 - 4+ times a turn. Matchups Mono Blue Control
This deck is the hardest matchup for normal Gifts decks, but it shouldn't be as bad for you. Early game you want to get as much mana as you can. This means blindly throwing as many Kodama's Reaches and Sakura-Tribe Elder's into play as your hand will allow. If they get countered it's a bonus, if they don't you still get lands, and the control matchups always come down to who has the most mana. There are several ways you can play the matchup past this point. If they ever tap out, try for a Gifts Ungiven, if they won't tap out, dig for Ghost-Lit Stalker and destroy their hand with that. A resolved Heartbeat of Spring should allow you to cast more spells then they have counters for, as they are usually only holding 1 or 2 in their hand at a time. Your opponents kill conditions seem infinitely better then yours, but Keiga will most likely never steal a creature and you have more Meloku's than them theoretically because of the Hana Kami recursion. The single most important point of importance in this match, yes it's that important, is that you kill their Jushi Apprentices before they come online. If you fail to do this, you will lose. Ghazi Glare Early game should see you searching crazily for your Cranial Extraction. You don't want them to have Yosei if you can avoid it. Although a resolved Yosei can be dealt with by a Time Stop when its trigger is on the stack so it won't be that bad until post board when they bring in the whole Greater Good soft lock and Hokori, Dust Drinker. I can't see this matchup being any different then a normal aggro match, they can't Pithing Needle Kagemaro to stop you wrathing because you don't run Kagemaro. They do however have one clunky mainboard combo that could cause you some grief, Vitu-Ghazi, The City-Tree and Umezawa's Jitte. Infinite Jitte holders are nothing to laugh about in this format and you need to answer it quickly. You have nothing to fear in dropping a turn 3 Heartbeat of Spring as long as you have a Wrath of God, tempting the opponent into overextending can pay off most of the time depending on the players skill. This match shouldn't take more then 1 resolved Gifts Ungiven to put it away. Boros Deck Wins 6 wrath effects and infinite recursion of Horobi's Whisper… I don't think you need to worry too much about this matchup. However it seems BDW can just get insane draws that you just can't come back from; you see burn is quite hard for Gifts to deal with until post board. Giving you opponent Heartbeat of Spring at any point in the match won't really change anything for them as they can't utilize the extra mana given by the card. Establish board control and try to Cranial away their burn and then go all the way with Meloku. It's really that simple, but don't rely on Meloku to hold back their armies of creatures, because they will just burn him and leave you defenceless. You want your Gifts to go for a recurring Horobi's Whisper in this matchup; Hideous Laughter can be equally effective though, providing they don't run Glorious Anthem. Be watchful of Samurai of the Pale Curtain because it's an absolute wrecking ball vs. your deck. Good Form a.k.a Enduring Ideal This matchup is by far the hardest for you. Despite what anyone says about counter based control decks, Good Form is a worse matchup. A few things help to make this possible. First up you've got 7 dead cards because they run no creatures. Second they run Ivory Mask. Ivory mask is just that bad for Gifts based control decks, in fact it'll even shut off Yosei locks if you need it to. Gifts Ungiven and Cranial Extraction both have to target the opponents, so if they get the Mask down you're going to have problems, and quiet frankly I can't see the matchup as being winnable when it gets to play. Those horrors aside, you have little disruption and can't stop them from going off, unless you've got Time Stop. You want to get to a Time Stop, Gifts Ungiven or Cranial as fast as possible, preferably faster then they can get to their Ivory Mask. I don't recommend playing a Heartbeat of Spring in this matchup unless you have a Time Stop to fall back on. Something very important you need to remember is that you have to respond to Enduring Ideal when it's on the stack, once you let them resolve it you can't respond to the enchantment they fetch. Critical Mass This deck was designed by the one and only Mike Flores during Kamigawa Block Constructed as an answer to the control heavy meta-game of the format. In particular it was designed with an unlosable matchup vs. Gifts providing you knew how to play it. Luckily for us, a common trend in the magic community, known as net decking, makes people play the new highest placing finisher of this archetype, the one Antoine Ruel played at worlds. This makes the matchup so much better for you. The new version plays less kill conditions and less counters then the old one. So this matchup goes from atrocious to reasonable. The trick is to bait their early counters with land search, if they counter it's a bonus, if they don't well you get land to play more spells then they can counter. Ghost-lit Stalker is, as they say, ‘the stone cold nuts' in this matchup, he is so good I'd almost consider adding another copy to the deck. Un-counterable discard gives their deck fits. All you've got to do in this match is play around their counters, wrath once or twice and finish them with a Cranial Extraction. I honestly thought it would be a horrible matchup, but its turns out that splashing black has made the deck worse and not better against Gifts. You'll find yourself winning from recurring Cranial Extraction in this matchup; your first one should go for Meloku or Kodama of the North Tree. Keiga really isn't an issue for you, he's nothing more then a 5/5 flier because he will never steal anything from you. A trick with Time Stop is to use it once they've taken the counters off their Jitte, this means no damage and no Jitte counters. There is however 1 big problem with this deck, it won't be a problem at the moment but if Gifts becomes popular again it will be. This deck has a very bad matchup in the mirror. I believe this is the key reason it dropped out of contention during Kamigawa block, G/B/u Gifts crushes it pretty bad. I can imagine with a bit of sideboard tech you could take the opponent down in this matchup, but I don't like your chances in game 1. If you play in a Gifts heavy meta-game don't play this deck unless you can work out the mirror matchup. All in all I generally believe that this is a strong contender in the current standard format right now and if I had a tournament tomorrow I would play this deck. It can run the best of every colour, even red if it wants to, and can find a solution for every situation. The Gifts archetype as such hasn't changed much since Kamigawa Block; there have been attempts to adapt it to other decks, U/B Aggro, Wild Gifts and Greater Good, but none of these have had the power level of the original arcane builds of Kamigawa Block. I do believe that there is a better Gifts list then is currently available, I just haven't yet found it. Much will change in this format as the new set comes out, it will bring new cards to make dormant archetypes stable once again and I predict W/B aggro will be a very popular choice because of its success in the legacy format. U/R/b Tron decks will gain a lot from this set, possibly giving them the push they may need to make tier 1 but aside from that, much is left for guessing. I hope you've learnt something from this random insight into Standard, it probably won't help you in any tournaments apart from Friday Night Magic because Standard isn't a major format for anything until the Pro Tour next year. Still if you plan on playing Standard give this deck a go, you don't have to be Kenji Tsumura to play it well, but it's slightly more complex than normal decks, as for the dual lands in it, you can run the deck without them if you can't afford them. Cheers, The Co. |
