Moved over from the cool control thread:
Please note that this thread has by and large taken a sharp left turn for multiple reasons. Overall, the focus has shifted to the
pair, in order to eventually set up a robust archetype for re-investigating this overall concept. See this spot in the thread for when that really takes off.
So I've been obsessing over the thought-provoking gem gifts ungiven since this thread got churning, and I think I've gotten a pretty cool mental space built around it. To preface, my main criteria was finding cards and angles that are solid and playable on their own. This was priority #1, as creating poison in an environment is bad news bears. Priority #2 was finding cool secondary interactions outside of the scope of what I was initially seeking. I actually think I was pretty successful, and without further ado, my thoughts made tangible:
What I came up with at the culmination of my notes, probing thread questions, and gatherer searches wasn't just a subset of cards... it was an archetype, a scheme, a strategy. It was a deck, that in my head has been
START YOUR ENGINES ()
Now, kinda corny name aside, it is entirely descriptive of what I came up with. In general terms, I found that with a few card switches you get an incredible number of advantage engines built into the temur colors. The deck/archetype I built up is largely an amalgam of these. The goal is to collect and utilize advantage engines to overwhelm your opponent. In this way the deck is largely control-based, being focused on winning through card and velocity advantage built up far beyond your opponent, but doing so through a variety of repetitive value-loops. Gifts comes in as a way to tutor out and assemble various engine pieces, alongside the rest of the draw suite the deck would have for this purpose. Its an extremely important piece of the deck, but not 100% needed (hopefully). So here's some of the components of the archetype:
The Engines:
+
+
+
+
+
+
And so on (?). I realized that a lot of these engines were just one step away from being in cubes already, and generally speaking the cards themselves are of fine power levels in a vacuum. There are certain cards less useful than others, but so is life, I think. Where I ended up coming to is the premise that these engines are fine in individual units. Even talked about thoroughly in threads other than and including this one! But together. Together they all add value to each other for a mean machine of advantage. The deck plan becomes one that harkens back to when two+ combos were first jammed in constructed decks (dark depths combo and... something else). A game plan of overlapping and synergistic value, leading to more consistency on individual plans, and more backup plans in general. Some examples would be Trade Routes adding value and redundancy to the loam/vortex plan, or daretti engine + goggles deck.
How would the deck play out? As I'll be going over, probably mostly like a RUG value-control deck would. Early defensive plays, disruption with burn, countermagic, draw, but a glue of multiple individual synergies stacked up. This is what gives the Gifts plan its power. What engine are you really tutoring up? What pieces do you already have? What recursion might you get/have that makes the point of the piles moot? Below imma get into some of the most important elements my mental machinations have come up with. Ive already got the engine pieces listed up above, but there's more than that.
The draw and advantage
Just as any card advantage deck, draw is very important for the deck plan. Here's some stand outs:
The progenitor of the whole idea, and a very important piece of the deck. Its the pod like pod is to its deck. Hell, pod might even be one of the cards you are getting with gifts! There are a ton of good piles to get with this card, some that angle towards one plan, some that just overwhelm with things you can get to do. A lot of these have eternal witness in them. we'll touch on that later.
-Daretti, scrap savant
-chromatic star
-Obelisk of alara, pyromancers goggles
-Eternal witness, nostalgic dreams
This pile aims to start the value train of obelisk, without the pesky 8 mana for one use. Nostalgic dreams is stellar here cause it can swap the obelisk into the grave for star/daretti if needed. Goggles is bonus for double engine searching.
-punishing fire
-grove of the burnwillows
-life from the loam
-Horizon canopy?
This pile is the loam pile, basically, but you've got a guaranteed punishing fire inbound. I tossed horizon canopy on cuz its awesome, I run it, and it fits the deck theme. Could be something mean like ghost quarter, etc.
-lightning bolt
-geistblast
-lightning strike
-lightning axe
This deck can still benefit from the same redundant-value piles you might expect, any of which could be replaced with recursion. I feel like I could go on but won't, because the idea is clear enough. There's a link to a Eternal Gifts modern deck on MTGS, and a lot of inspiration can be taken from that.
These pieces are all valuable secondary dig/tutor CA pieces that help fish out needed parts for your engines-under-construction. Digging for Gifts is correct sometimes, I feel. Importantly these pieces still play generic CA for the controlling aspects of the deck.
A valuable card drawing enchantment on its own, it really shines as an enchantment that is digging for engines... and is itself an engine. Fits into the same loam machine as vortex. Sweet.
This little gem pulls double duty fueling the yard and digging out valuable early blockers/set up creatures. Also good in a value gifts pile, and as the discard of something like lightning axe/compulsive research.
The recursion
Anything. As much as possible. Eternal witness is the all-star of this category, but basically anything helps. Seasons past would be bonkers, greenwarden, and archaeomancer all work. Special shootout to Nostalgic dreams. It lets you flip gift picks to the way you want them, it combos with geistblast and life from the loam, and is solid on its own.
The meat
This is the UG durdle portion of the deck. Small, valuable creatures with ETB or other effects are solid. Some of the best would probably be
Again, I could go on, but I think I've laid out the idea. Another neato track to take is built-in spells matter. That would add stuff like
The control
Classic UR here. Counters, burn. There are certain cards with engine capacity, and that fit better for stuff like goggles, but fairly generic here, I think? Probably less hard counters and more like Remand, also, as you work towards your value engines rather than trying to completely controlling them out of the game.
The lowdown
What I'm trying to get across in the end is that I think I've gathered up with a cool, reclusive, interactive, non-poisonous archetype for RUG, something beyond "monsters + draw", and I think I'll be putting more effort into it.Maybe this should be a new thread? New thread . Y'all chime in, and I hope to flush out more coherently what I'm trying to cook up here. Hopefully I'll try some sample lists and all that as I continue to polish this. See the next post for some additional thoughts.
Please note that this thread has by and large taken a sharp left turn for multiple reasons. Overall, the focus has shifted to the
pair, in order to eventually set up a robust archetype for re-investigating this overall concept. See this spot in the thread for when that really takes off.So I've been obsessing over the thought-provoking gem gifts ungiven since this thread got churning, and I think I've gotten a pretty cool mental space built around it. To preface, my main criteria was finding cards and angles that are solid and playable on their own. This was priority #1, as creating poison in an environment is bad news bears. Priority #2 was finding cool secondary interactions outside of the scope of what I was initially seeking. I actually think I was pretty successful, and without further ado, my thoughts made tangible:
What I came up with at the culmination of my notes, probing thread questions, and gatherer searches wasn't just a subset of cards... it was an archetype, a scheme, a strategy. It was a deck, that in my head has been
START YOUR ENGINES (
)Now, kinda corny name aside, it is entirely descriptive of what I came up with. In general terms, I found that with a few card switches you get an incredible number of advantage engines built into the temur colors. The deck/archetype I built up is largely an amalgam of these. The goal is to collect and utilize advantage engines to overwhelm your opponent. In this way the deck is largely control-based, being focused on winning through card and velocity advantage built up far beyond your opponent, but doing so through a variety of repetitive value-loops. Gifts comes in as a way to tutor out and assemble various engine pieces, alongside the rest of the draw suite the deck would have for this purpose. Its an extremely important piece of the deck, but not 100% needed (hopefully). So here's some of the components of the archetype:
The Engines:
+ + + + + + And so on (?). I realized that a lot of these engines were just one step away from being in cubes already, and generally speaking the cards themselves are of fine power levels in a vacuum. There are certain cards less useful than others, but so is life, I think. Where I ended up coming to is the premise that these engines are fine in individual units. Even talked about thoroughly in threads other than and including this one! But together. Together they all add value to each other for a mean machine of advantage. The deck plan becomes one that harkens back to when two+ combos were first jammed in constructed decks (dark depths combo and... something else). A game plan of overlapping and synergistic value, leading to more consistency on individual plans, and more backup plans in general. Some examples would be Trade Routes adding value and redundancy to the loam/vortex plan, or daretti engine + goggles deck.
How would the deck play out? As I'll be going over, probably mostly like a RUG value-control deck would. Early defensive plays, disruption with burn, countermagic, draw, but a glue of multiple individual synergies stacked up. This is what gives the Gifts plan its power. What engine are you really tutoring up? What pieces do you already have? What recursion might you get/have that makes the point of the piles moot? Below imma get into some of the most important elements my mental machinations have come up with. Ive already got the engine pieces listed up above, but there's more than that
.The draw and advantage
Just as any card advantage deck, draw is very important for the deck plan. Here's some stand outs:
The progenitor of the whole idea, and a very important piece of the deck. Its the pod like pod is to its deck. Hell, pod might even be one of the cards you are getting with gifts! There are a ton of good piles to get with this card, some that angle towards one plan, some that just overwhelm with things you can get to do. A lot of these have eternal witness in them. we'll touch on that later.
-Daretti, scrap savant
-chromatic star
-Obelisk of alara, pyromancers goggles
-Eternal witness, nostalgic dreams
This pile aims to start the value train of obelisk, without the pesky 8 mana for one use. Nostalgic dreams is stellar here cause it can swap the obelisk into the grave for star/daretti if needed. Goggles is bonus for double engine searching.
-punishing fire
-grove of the burnwillows
-life from the loam
-Horizon canopy?
This pile is the loam pile, basically, but you've got a guaranteed punishing fire inbound. I tossed horizon canopy on cuz its awesome, I run it, and it fits the deck theme. Could be something mean like ghost quarter, etc.
-lightning bolt
-geistblast
-lightning strike
-lightning axe
This deck can still benefit from the same redundant-value piles you might expect, any of which could be replaced with recursion. I feel like I could go on but won't, because the idea is clear enough. There's a link to a Eternal Gifts modern deck on MTGS, and a lot of inspiration can be taken from that.
These pieces are all valuable secondary dig/tutor CA pieces that help fish out needed parts for your engines-under-construction. Digging for Gifts is correct sometimes, I feel. Importantly these pieces still play generic CA for the controlling aspects of the deck.
A valuable card drawing enchantment on its own, it really shines as an enchantment that is digging for engines... and is itself an engine. Fits into the same loam machine as vortex. Sweet.
This little gem pulls double duty fueling the yard and digging out valuable early blockers/set up creatures. Also good in a value gifts pile, and as the discard of something like lightning axe/compulsive research.
The recursion
Anything. As much as possible. Eternal witness is the all-star of this category, but basically anything helps. Seasons past would be bonkers, greenwarden, and archaeomancer all work. Special shootout to Nostalgic dreams. It lets you flip gift picks to the way you want them, it combos with geistblast and life from the loam, and is solid on its own.
The meat
This is the UG durdle portion of the deck. Small, valuable creatures with ETB or other effects are solid. Some of the best would probably be
Again, I could go on, but I think I've laid out the idea. Another neato track to take is built-in spells matter. That would add stuff like
The control
Classic UR here. Counters, burn. There are certain cards with engine capacity, and that fit better for stuff like goggles, but fairly generic here, I think? Probably less hard counters and more like Remand, also, as you work towards your value engines rather than trying to completely controlling them out of the game.
The lowdown
What I'm trying to get across in the end is that I think I've gathered up with a cool, reclusive, interactive, non-poisonous archetype for RUG, something beyond "monsters + draw", and I think I'll be putting more effort into it.
. Y'all chime in, and I hope to flush out more coherently what I'm trying to cook up here. Hopefully I'll try some sample lists and all that as I continue to polish this. See the next post for some additional thoughts.
