BUDGET: I try to keep most of my decks around either $200 for more competitive builds and $100 for janky stuff. This is kind of my pet deck atm, so I've spent more like $250 overall. I don't personally own a lot of expensive stuff, which is the reason that this deck doesn't have an optimal mana base of fetches/shocks and run a playset of Snapcaster. A playset of Snapcasters costs more than the rest of the deck combined, so if you have them go for it. I'm not because I don't own a playset of Snappy and I don't want to pay that much for him. If you have Snapcaster, I would swap out
Mission Briefing
and
Torrential Gearhulk
for a pair. I would consider them carefully against your meta, though. Torrential Gearhulk in particular is an excellent finisher and Mission Briefing is (un)surprisingly useful in a deck looking to put things in the yard. The deck does benefit quite a bit from having finishers outside of our three fatties, so it is something to keep in mind.
This is a fairly traditional Gifts deck with some fun tweaks.
First,
Curious Homunculus
. This little guy is surprisingly powerful in this deck. The ideal sequence (which isn't that hard to pull off) for him is T1 cantrip -> T2 Homunculus -> T3 Gifts Ungiven for Unburial Rites and a fatty. You'll note that this sequence flips Homunculus, letting you untap on Turn 4 with a 3/4 prowess beater that discounts your instants/sorceries by one. That second ability is just bonkers, as it lets you cast things like
Collective Brutality
and
Negate
for a single mana. It also lets you cast
Lingering Souls
with flashback for 3 mana total. This means, typically, that you will untap on turn four, handcheck them or hold up counter magic, then Unburial Rites
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
. That's two prowess triggers and Elesh Norn's pump, meaning our little 1/1 is cracking in as a 7/8, which is positively Goyf-esque. Curious Homunculus just does it all here - it accelerates our Gifts plan by a turn, is a viable finisher, and lets us finish games faster by discounting other spells. The typical reason why such a potentially good card isn't played is that getting three instants/sorceries in your graveyard early is difficult to do in a deck that would want him, and that flipping on the upkeep is weaker than flipping on the endstep. These are both true, but Gifts guarantees two instants/sorceries in the yard if we go the Unburial Rites route, which we typically will. The other "drawback" is that he dies to removal. True! He does. That's fine. Him eating removal doesn't actually stop us - it just slows us down to the speed we would have played at otherwise, and generally you'd rather have him eat removal than one of our main finishers.
Critical to the gameplan is being able to Gifts by turn 4 at the latest, but it's also important that we be able to interact with the opponent so we don't die before doing our thing.
Collective Brutality
,
Path to Exile
,
Cast Down
,
Hero's Downfall
,
Condescend
,
Negate
, and
Mana Leak
give us a fairly flexible suite of interaction.
Collective Brutality
, in particular, is very useful as a way to strip instants/sorceries while handchecking, stabilizing our life total and sniping creatures. 3-moding it is usually unnecessary, but is sweet against, say, burn, where you can gain 2 life, kill a Goblin Guide, and make them discard a bolt. The reason we run so many one-ofs with different names is so that, when our backs are against the wall, we can Gifts for at least 3 counterspells/removal spells with different names and
Mission Briefing
.
Hieroglyphic Illumination
is generally a cantrip, but it interacts well with
Curious Homunculus
in the late game.
Opt
is also here just to dig a couple cards deep and to help us set up our ideal sequence of 1-mana spell->Homunculus->Gifts.
Our reanimation targets are the unholy trifecta of
Iona, Shield of Emeria
,
Griselbrand
, and
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
. They each bring something unique to the table - Iona lets us shut off a color, which against some decks is just the hardest of game overs. Griselbrand lets us draw seven cards for seven life at instant speed, meaning we will refill our hand even if he eats a removal spell. Elesh Norn hates on creatures and turns our
Lingering Souls
tokens and Homunculi into merciless beaters. Lots has been said about these three, but I'll add that they are very good and each capable of just shutting off opposing decks. We have three sideboard cards that fill the same role against specific matchups.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa
hates on midrange pretty hard - take a second to contemplate what exactly a deck like Abzan (or even Jund, for that matter - Blood Baron is mostly bolt-proof) can do against him. Can't kill him, can't block him, can't attack through him, and him having lifelink makes him going Super Saiyan mode inevitable. He pairs particularly well with Griselbrand by gaining life to get us more cards and Iona, who can shut off boardwipes.
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
is a similar card against R/G decks. It's mostly there as a general hedge - you're better off using Iona against the most played R/G decks like Scapeshift, but it's useful to have a secondary threat that they can't interact with.
Cataclysmic Gearhulk
is the oddball here and is an experiment on my part. I believe that he can play a useful role in the sideboard as a supplementary card to our permanent hate. Against go-wide decks, he's a fourth board wipe that leaves behind a hefty body. Against decks that over-rely on artifacts or enchantments, he goes with our
Disenchant
effects and does the same thing. My theory is that he can work a flexible fourth card in our hate packages, which is quite valuable when you consider how many decks we have to take into account with our meager 15 sideboard slots. Between these six beaters, we should be prepared for pretty much everything and have an appropriate fatty to curbstomp them with.
Our other cards are supplementary to our main strategy.
Thirst for Knowledge
and
Champion of Wits
give us more ways to churn through our deck while also giving us three distinctly named discard outlets in the deck, which is important for those games where you draw multiple fatties. Champion is also a sneaky good finisher that refills our hand, kind of like Griselbrand's homeless redheaded cousin.
Mission Briefing
and
Torrential Gearhulk
are our budget Snapcasters, letting us get creative with our Gifts piles. Torrential is particularly good for flashing back Gifts, as it costs the same as it would with Snapcaster and gives us a beefy 5/6 to finish the game with.
Lingering Souls
are brutal with Elesh Norn and give us blockers when we need them, evasive attackers when we need them, and are excellent for rounding out Gifts piles.
For the sideboard, we split our hate into packages of three singleton cards (with our packages being graveyard hate, board wipes, and enchantment/artifact hate) so we can gifts for them when needed (with Lingering Souls or Mission Briefing being our fourth card generally). This does mean we will usually get the worst of three hate cards, but that's fine. Hate is still hate, after all.
Damping Sphere
, unfortunately, has no clones so we play it as a 3-of to help with Tron and Storm. Iona is often good enough to take out Storm by herself, but we're not going to turn down additional hate, and, as Saffron Olive has said, Tron deserves all the hate it gets.
I think that's everything - I'll go through the mana base later to make sure it's what it is in my paper deck. I have
Windswept Heath
instead of a more color-appropriate fetch because it's the one I have. It does get all of our colors thanks to
Hallowed Fountain
and
Godless Shrine
, so it's not too much of a drawback, but at some point I will replace it with the appropriate fetchlands.
