Hi All

I'm taking a serious interest in playing a Gifts Ungiven deck, or at least a deck featuring GIfts Ungiven and/or Intution.

I believe Gifts is clearly on the verge of being a powerhouse, and i am familiar it does the do in Drain Tendrils and SUpremacy (also some builds of keeper? Similar decks) and it's appearance in a form of control notable for playing Gifts.

I haven't played Gifts in an actual match but built some homebrew control stuff and sometimes play Gifts for Time Walk and some combination of Yawg, Snap, Noxious, Kess. It's a real awful card to goldfish, fyi
I think one very basic Gifts pile-building philosophy could be "2 card combo, 2 recursion", but while powerful, i don't think the hoops you jump through is more powerful than just playing Demonic, Vampiric, Mystical, Tinker, et al. Gifts for your 2 card combo (KeyVault) in a format with Yawg Will does seem totally playable, though.
Let's go over some things i thought of though:
-- There's also the 'draw cards' kind of pile where you fetch out Cruise, Dig, Ancestral, and (Noxious, Jace, Dack, Gush). In this case you can read if your opponent has Misstep because they will give you Ancestral, and if you are given the Delve spells your discarded ones count for +2 mana (along with gifts for -3 total cost next turn).
-- A counterspell pile could be Force, Misstep, Drain, Pyro (although in response to your opponents game winner you might not resolve it or receive Force, so it could also be bait or looking for additional blue stuff).
-- A finisher pile could be the likes of Tinker and Jace, half of the Key Vault combo (if you have the other in hand/play, you don't want to search both without recursion or you end up with a useless card), Mentor if playing white, Time Walk if you have some power on the board.
-- Of course in a storm build there is Lotus, Mana Vault, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual when you need the money for Bargain or such.
-- What about removal? You could build a pile of removal spells and the flashback on Ancient Grudge basically means you are getting 3 spells.
-- It could also just be value, even if a little aimless. How about Jace, Ancestral, Force, another Gifts?
-- What if you don't want to win but just grind for 20 turns? Strip Mine, Life from the Loam, Engineered Explosives, Academy Ruins. Loam/Horizon Canopy/Tranquil Thicket/Cephalid Coliseum???
-- Fringiest unlikely scenario, maybe you're facing Leyline of the Void (2CM??) and really need a certain card you can't afford to lose to exile and you search up tutors as a workaround?
-- Speaking of Leyline, you sure don't want to face down the graveyard hate present in sideboards by playing Reanimator when Oath is better and safer, but what about a Gifts pile for reanimation and fatties? Griselbrand, Unburial Rites, Shallow Grave, Faithless Loothing??

Is there anything cute or extra special i could build with Gifts piles? I'm super open to any discussion, whether it be for storm and other combos, control builds, or just value. I always love new ideas, even if experimental. This card is just riiiiight on the edge of bonkers, and the fact that you go +1 card up and can find another Gifts is terribly fun.

TL;DR for Intuition: Generally far less powerful and interesting, but also in some ways more flexible due to finding cards of the same name and costing 1 less.
Intution is the og multitutor and certainly the grandfather of Gits's design. This card can find cards of the same name, which is isn't often useful (especially in Vintage with the massive restricted list) as searching different names, but it does add a degree of flexibility in a way. With Intuition, you don't have to jump through hoops to Regrowth the card you truly wanted if you have 3 copies. This matters more in Legacy, i think though, where you may want to cast it as Demonic Tutor (see: Show and Tell x3) or card + 2x recursion.
Life goals, it's kind of a dream of mine to search up 3x Ancient Grudge.

What the most interesting, cute, or powerful pile you could do with Intuition?
More importantly, is anything you can do with it good enough to think about playing it with GIfts, or do you just play more Gifts and never Intuition?

Thanks all
Jason

I played Control Slaver for quite some time where Gifts Ungiven really could turn the game around.
I'd recommend you going further into these control decks, as I don't think Gifts outshines PO in combo builds, but very well does put up some real value.
As you already mentioned, Gifts facilitates finding two card combos, especially if backed up with recursion (Goblin Welder, Yawgmoth's Will, etc.).
Whether or not that deck is still viable is another thing, but it used to be a solid deck in our local meta.

As for Intuition, I'd probably go for Ancestral Knowlegde.

Been toying with gifts builds myself recently. Especially with the new Guilds of zravnica card Mission Briefing.

@sovarius imo the best way to Intuition is in a lands deck. Loam/Stage/Depths is pretty solid. Loam/Chasm/X could buy you a bit of time.
Both cards also make Deep Analysis interesting.

just wanted to mention that Intuition for 3x Creeping Chill is probably the best burn spell ever printed, with the possible exception of Price of Progress

@blindtherapy

Wait, that works? Are revealed cards considered as being in the library?

@zias It works, you can do it with Narcomoeba, too, which is hilarious, but you're talking 6 damage for 3 mana, it's not exactly orders of magnitude better than existing options

I've put some work into Gifts a handful of times over the past few years. I never found a list that worked for me, but I'll throw out some of my thoughts on the card, which might be useful to you

value gifts

• a "Value Gifts" like you mentioned, is when you get multiple good cards which improve your position rather than going for a kill. It can be useful when you're too short on mana to win this turn, but is also a useful way of fighting through disruption. Traditional combo Gifts may lose to a single well placed counterspell or graveyard hate spell, and the "Value Gifts" serves as a hedge against that.

• In particular you want a set of cards to get with Gifts if you suspect your opponent has specialized disruption. That is, most players will Force of Will, the initial Gifts Ungiven, but they can't Misstep it and they can't always Flusterstorm it, so a good Value Gifts is going to be able to punch through a hand that has Missteps and Flusterstorms, as some lethal Gifts piles completely fold to them (or to, say, a Ravenous Trap)

• Cards that do something from the graveyard can really make a "Value Gifts" get out of hand - my old favorite is Deep Analysis, but cards with Flashback, Dredge, Retrace, Aftermath, and Jump-Start all work, if you can put 3 or 4 in a pile, you can generate some serious advantage.

lethal gifts

• The cheapest deterministic Gifts kill with no additional requirements is Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Argivian Find/Reconstruction which clocks in at 6 mana post-Gifts. I don't know if I'm into this because of how much worse it is to naturally draw Find/Reconstruction than the cards that other kills use.

• Traditional Gifts decks used Tinker->Colossus and Tendrils of Agony to kill with primarily ... but traditional Gifts decks used Darksteel Colossus rather than Blightsteel Colossus, and had to set up turns where they could cast Time Walk twice. A Tinker kill requires significantly less Xwork today ... a Tinker, Time Walk, Recoup, Black Lotus pile will kill for 8 mana, but the cost drops dramatically if you naturally draw any one of those cards (or a Yawmoth's Will, etc.)

• If you're casting Gifts at the end of your opponent's turn, which is fairly common, you can take advantage of your draw step and get topdeck tutors, which makes things cheaper. Vampiric Tutor+Mystical Tutor+Demonic Tutor+X is an old standby. X could be Voltaic Key in a deck that runs 2 Keys, or just a Black Lotus or Time Walk to set up a gigantic Yawgmoth's Will

• Any Snapcaster-like cards in hand bring the requirements way down. With a Yawgmoth's Will in hand you can just get 3 fast mana cards and a Demonic Tutor and go wild.

• Jace, Vryn's Prodigy was particularly interesting to me, with its mana-free recursion. With a JVP in play, you gifts for Dark Ritual+Cabal Ritual+Demonic Tutor+Dark Petition and kill for only 1 mana post-gifts, with no specific requirements about what cards you've drawn already besides having threshold for Cabal Rit, which isn't super hard to have after you've resolved Gifts and activated JVP. (it's a complicated kill, but it works)

miscellaneous

• People who didn't play Gifts years ago pretty universally look at old lists and replace the Recoup with something cheaper, like Noxious Revival. I think largely people are missing the benefit of the recursion spell itself having flashback. To find a specific card with Revival, your gifts needs to include that target card, and Revival, and a second recursion spell like Snapcaster Mage, leaving you one slot to play with. Because Recoup works from the yard, you only need to get the target card and Recoup, which frees up a second slot that could be used for anything. When you're setting up a Yawgmoth's Will turn, that extra card can be huge. Recoup costs 2 more mana than Snapcaster Mage, and 4 more than Noxious Revival, but if it lets you put a Black Lotus in the pile, you're getting 6 extra mana on your Will turn. All of that said, I still think it's reasonable for a Gifts deck built today to just run 4 Snapcasters maindeck and plan on drawing one naturally rather than putting them in a Gifts pile, and skip the Recoup entirely ... but I'm not personally a fan of Noxious Revival.

• I've played Intuition for 3 Ancient Grudge before, it's as good as you're hoping.

• I've also played Intuition for Life from the Loam+Strip Mine+Raven's Crime ... it's ... not good.

• Ultimately I've found Gifts decks to just be too weak against modern tempo blue decks. Flusterstorm, in particular, is a real problem. I haven't seriously explored the archetype since the Thorn of Amethyst restriction though, which could possibly free up some space for addressing blue decks.

@brass-man said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

lethal gifts

• The cheapest deterministic Gifts kill with no additional requirements is Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Argivian Find/Reconstruction which clocks in at 6 mana post-Gifts. I don't know if I'm into this because of how much worse it is to naturally draw Find/Reconstruction than the cards that other kills use.

The Auriok Salvager pile of Lotus, Salvager, (some sort of Salvager combo wincon), and Unburial Rites kills for 7 mana. If you already have a wincon, it kills for 6! Just a "worth noting" one, as another known Gifts pile which works, and doesn't include too many bad cards

@neo_altoid said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

@brass-man said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

lethal gifts

• The cheapest deterministic Gifts kill with no additional requirements is Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Argivian Find/Reconstruction which clocks in at 6 mana post-Gifts. I don't know if I'm into this because of how much worse it is to naturally draw Find/Reconstruction than the cards that other kills use.

The Auriok Salvager pile of Lotus, Salvager, (some sort of Salvager combo wincon), and Unburial Rites kills for 7 mana. If you already have a wincon, it kills for 6! Just a "worth noting" one, as another known Gifts pile which works, and doesn't include too many bad cards

And having salvagers in play already, you get lotus, walking ballista any 2 cards you want and win for effectively no mana.

I can't believe I forgot to write the thing that made me post in the first place!

what about a Gifts pile for reanimation and fatties? Griselbrand, Unburial Rites, Shallow Grave, Faithless Looting??

Gifts is way better here than you thought. With Gifts Ungiven you don't have to find four cards. Because there's a condition (they have to be unique, and you could have a deck of 60 Relentless Rats) you have the option of "failing to find" on any number of of the cards you get. That means, instead of getting Fatty/Rites/Shallow Grave/Looting ... you can search for just Fatty+Unburial Rites. When you find two cards, both just go straight to the graveyard.

That means you can get whatever creature you wanted in play for a max of 4 mana post-Gifts, which in many cases with particular cards in particular matchups, should be the cheapest possible unassisted kill. (Griselbrand, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, Blazing Archon, that sort of stuff).

This trick used to be used occasionally in decks with both Gifts Ungiven and Goblin Welder, but as far as I know, no one has been successful with a Gifts/Rites Reanimator deck.

My favorite Gifts pile is one I currently use in my Acadmey Rector deck. I run 2 Gifts maindeck. This pile requires omniscience in play:

Gifts, Emrakul, Demonic, X (usually a value card of some sort.)

Omniscience makes it all free. If they don’t give you Emrakul, you can just find it again because it will go to GY and be re-shuffled.

The loop can go forever because if they give you Gifts and X, the other Gifts (the one you just cast) is re-shuffled with Emrakul, and you can just repeat the same pile again.

@grizzly said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

I'd recommend you going further into these control decks, as I don't think Gifts outshines PO in combo builds, but very well does put up some real value.
As for Intuition, I'd probably go for Ancestral Knowlegde.

Yea, i am into control and value more than build-a-bear workshop. I have been playing Paradoxical Oath with Grisels for a while.

Color me stupid, but what on earth is the interaction between Intuition and Ancestral Knowledge?

@tittliewinks22 said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

Been toying with gifts builds myself recently. Especially with the new Guilds of zravnica card Mission Briefing.

There are things to like about Briefing over Snapcaster, but for what Vintage-related purpose do you prefer to surveil? This isn't a format of Surgicals and Deathrites (and nor is Legacy on the latter anymore) so i wouldn't think the self mill is helpful? If anything, technically Mission briefing gets hit by one more sphere effect.

@blindtherapy said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

just wanted to mention that Intuition for 3x Creeping Chill is probably the best burn spell ever printed, with the possible exception of Price of Progress

Well that's hilarious. But then you have to play a card that's bad to draw. Some kind of Dredge/Loam/Intuition deck? A Lands deck that plays a burn spell??

@brass-man said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

I've put some work into Gifts a handful of times over the past few years. I never found a list that worked for me, but I'll throw out some of my thoughts on the card, which might be useful to you

Definitely! Thanks for some good thoughts here.

• The cheapest deterministic Gifts kill with no additional requirements is Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Argivian Find/Reconstruction which clocks in at 6 mana post-Gifts. I don't know if I'm into this because of how much worse it is to naturally draw Find/Reconstruction than the cards that other kills use.

Right, i don't think you do that. I think you build a different pile or only search up one of Vault Key, but on the other hand i suppose if you search one your opponent just presumes you have the other? Big risk in trying to a call a bluff there.
Also, i know you don't like Noxious (which i write about more below), but you can use Noxious in that pile if you don't need your draw step and it costs 1 less mana. Gifts is insane because you go +1 card but even with Noxious putting your target on top instead of in your hand (like Vamp bs Demonic) still just makes Gifts card neutral.

• a Tinker, Time Walk, Recoup, Black Lotus pile will kill for 8 mana, but the cost drops dramatically if you naturally draw any one of those cards (or a Yawmoth's Will, etc.)

Regarding recoup, isn't this card only flexible in Tinker/Time Walk/Will based kill piles? It doesn't seem like a good card in any other case, because it cannot get you back other card types and it's painfully slow to recoup on value based piles that don't effectively win?

• If you're casting Gifts at the end of your opponent's turn, which is fairly common, you can take advantage of your draw step and get topdeck tutors, which makes things cheaper. Vampiric Tutor+Mystical Tutor+Demonic Tutor+X is an old standby. X could be Voltaic Key in a deck that runs 2 Keys, or just a Black Lotus or Time Walk to set up a gigantic Yawgmoth's Will

The Eot Gifts is why i really like Noxious for a combo win. The fact that it's an instant allows you to cast it before your draw step, like vampiric, but unlike vampiric is free to cast. You cast Noxious targeting one of the cards you would want with Vampiric, no? Vampiric just saves you from graveyard removal like Trap and Crypt?

In your example above, what if you are given Voltaic Key and Mystical? Mystical cannot find Vault and it cannot find DT if you already put it in your grave. You could Mystical with key in hand for Yawgmoth's, and then Yawg your DT into a Key, but builds like this are also possible with Noxious.
I'm not specifically saying this is good or not but as an example what about 1 of Key/Vault, Demonic, Vampiric, Noxious

• Jace, Vryn's Prodigy was particularly interesting to me, with its mana-free recursion. With a JVP in play, you gifts for Dark Ritual+Cabal Ritual+Demonic Tutor+Dark Petition and kill for only 1 mana post-gifts, with no specific requirements about what cards you've drawn already besides having threshold for Cabal Rit, which isn't super hard to have after you've resolved Gifts and activated JVP. (it's a complicated kill, but it works)

What do you grab with the tutor? If your opponent gives you the mana spells, Jace still only allows you to cast one tutor from the yard. This pile does depend on what's in your hand if i'm not mistaken?

• People who didn't play Gifts years ago pretty universally look at old lists and replace the Recoup with something cheaper, like Noxious Revival. I think largely people are missing the benefit of the recursion spell itself having flashback. To find a specific card with Revival, your gifts needs to include that target card, and Revival, and a second recursion spell like Snapcaster Mage, leaving you one slot to play with. Because Recoup works from the yard, you only need to get the target card and Recoup, which frees up a second slot that could be used for anything. When you're setting up a Yawgmoth's Will turn, that extra card can be huge. Recoup costs 2 more mana than Snapcaster Mage, and 4 more than Noxious Revival, but if it lets you put a Black Lotus in the pile, you're getting 6 extra mana on your Will turn. All of that said, I still think it's reasonable for a Gifts deck built today to just run 4 Snapcasters maindeck and plan on drawing one naturally rather than putting them in a Gifts pile, and skip the Recoup entirely ... but I'm not personally a fan of Noxious Revival.

I think the flashback is awesome, but are we planning on the idea Recoup will be put into our hand? I feel like with powerful spells recoup goes to the yard so we can't use it twice. Keep in mind the spells in the yard won't only be Gifts resolving but also the natural course of the game, so any number of things could be in there. I do get the value of putting Recoup into the yard, because then we get 2 cards to hand plus we can recoup a 3rd, which is way different than just getting 2 spells. The flashback is everything vs another recursion spell.
Is the loss in flexibility worth it? Doesn't it more or less put you into certain types of piles which makes you build your deck a little differently?

I'm not sold that Noxious is infallible or eminently playable, but i'm also not sold Recoup would be totally playable at this point. Also, i fully admit i'm not 100% understanding everything you disagree with about Noxious, it is easy for me to get lost in longform conversation and analysis.

• Ultimately I've found Gifts decks to just be too weak against modern tempo blue decks. Flusterstorm, in particular, is a real problem. I haven't seriously explored the archetype since the Thorn of Amethyst restriction though, which could possibly free up some space for addressing blue decks.

Yes, that's the real issue. I think in the grand scheme of things it's better to just play more cantrips and counters or PO or such.
Thorn restriction is also something that made me come back to this. I really wanted to play Gifts at Eternal Weekend last year but i ended up not doing so because of Shops. With it's restriction i thought about it again but i couldn't commit to as much playtesting as i wanted so i backed out.

What's your take on Intuition just being a value card? It does work quite a bit differently than Gifts but it just also seems like a flexible insane card in a Snapcaster build or anything that can win with Yawgmoth's.

Did you happen to play or even test Gifts with Kess in your deck you played at EW last year?

@brass-man said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

I can't believe I forgot to write the thing that made me post in the first place!
Gifts is way better here than you thought. With Gifts Ungiven you don't have to find four cards. Because there's a condition (they have to be unique, and you could have a deck of 60 Relentless Rats) you have the option of "failing to find" on any number of of the cards you get. That means, instead of getting Fatty/Rites/Shallow Grave/Looting ... you can search for just Fatty+Unburial Rites. When you find two cards, both just go straight to the graveyard.

Good catch! 100% forgot. I haven't played with Gifts in a while.

@apollogod said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

My favorite Gifts pile is one I currently use in my Acadmey Rector deck. I run 2 Gifts maindeck. This pile requires omniscience in play:

Gifts, Emrakul, Demonic, X (usually a value card of some sort.)

Omniscience makes it all free. If they don’t give you Emrakul, you can just find it again because it will go to GY and be re-shuffled.

The loop can go forever because if they give you Gifts and X, the other Gifts (the one you just cast) is re-shuffled with Emrakul, and you can just repeat the same pile again.

God damn this sounds fun. What's your Rector deck list?

Is this deterministic though? They choose to never give you DT or Emrakul and don't you just run out of cards to pull from your deck?
I guess you just eventually get some other ways to win since you can put as many cards into your hand as your opponent is willing to give you.

@sovarius Oh wow, I meant Accumulated Knowledge... I probably had Ancestral Recall in my while replying.

@Sovarius Mission Briefing along with Gifts has made much more explosive yawgmoths will packages due to the increased amount of cards in the yard. Another thing is it's a second blue recoup effect which works better than recoup or regrowth for the builds I've been toying with. JVP was fine, but you aren't able to use his effect the same turn he gets played.

I've also been toying with an Emrakul, the Promised End pile, but I don't think he's worth a slot without being able to run mystic remora as well.

@tittliewinks22 Yes, duh. I missed that. For sure, +3 Yawg cards to play with, unlike Snap which, if it stays in play, cannot be used to flash something back a second time. Thanks for reminding me, i will definitely be picking up a copy.

Have you been playing Snap at all? How many copies each?

And if you have a list, i would love to see it.

@sovarius this is the current list I'm toying with, the fact or fiction was holdover from when I tested an Emrakul build, but I enjoyed casting it every time so I'm giving it a shot again.

// Deck: Gifts (60)

// Lands
1 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

// Creatures
2 Baral, Chief of Compliance
1 Blightsteel Colossus
2 Snapcaster Mage

// Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Gush
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Mana Drain
1 Manamorphose
3 Mental Misstep
1 Mission Briefing
1 Vampiric Tutor

// Sorceries
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ponder
1 Regrowth
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will

// Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key

// Planeswalkers
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

@tittliewinks22 What does Manamorphose do in a deck like this? I don't play Modern at all but i see it in UR storm and thought it was only for storm count.

No Treasure Cruise? How are you liking Regrowth?

My build is like yours but i'm tinkering with a few things. I've got the same setup for being able to Gifts into Tinker Time Walk or into Key Vault, but i'm toying with a 5c goodstuff build that also plays Dack/Thief, Leovold, Kess, and Mentor, but it's very busy.

@Sovarius Regrowth has been pretty clutch for some piles. Being able to return lotus is handy, also taking multiple turns in succession with regrowth then snapcaster or briefing time walk.

I'm not a fan of treasure cruise in a deck without preordain. Haven't really tested with it though so I can't make a sound judgement on it.

Manamorphose helps smooth out Mana sometimes, I use to run tendrils in the deck and it was more relevant then. It's likely to be axed in my next iteration for sol ring.

@tittliewinks22 I see you are playing Dig even if not Cruise, just can't cast 2 delve spells?

Tendrils does seem sweet but i haven't even a little bit tried it. I'm not sure i know how to Gifts into a pile for Storm, but i did play Paradoxical the last few months.

Sol Ring does seem a great upgrade.

Did you ever try Noxious Revival? I dropped it and it helped me realize it wasn't that good because i started building better piles. Doesn't make me like it less though, heh, so still curious if you had a go with it or not.