SCD: Gifts Ungiven

[DirkGently]

Gifts is often pretty close to the front of the list in terms of safe unbans for most people I think, but since it tends to be a big point of contention I figured it might help to have a separate thread on the topic, so other threads don't get monopolized by pro/con Gifts arguments.

So I'm personally pro unbanning gifts - I'd like to use it the same way I use Intuition, which is primarily to set up loam and/or pull some political shenanigans (counterspell + loam + cycling land + cycling land with T&N on the stack, lol). I don't think these sorts of value piles are particularly dangerous to the format, and it doesn't seem to be the main crux of peoples' arguments against it. I've seen someone call gifts "double demonic tutor + double entomb", but I can't really think of any combination that would put it anywhere near that level of strength functionally, simply because most cards are either much better in hand, or much better in grave, and you can't count on them to go where you want. Stuff like Loam is an exception, but Loam is also a relatively low-powered card, all things considered. If you got to double demonic tutor and your best choice was life from the loam...wtf are you even doing?

There is some concern about the use of gifts with commanders that enable graveyard recursion, which would make it more likely to function as a quad-tutor and potentially generate a lot of value. Muldrotha, Mairsil, Kess, Dralnu, Bruna, Scarab God, Sedris, Jace, Emry...I think those are the most powerful of the bunch. While it is strong with those commanders for sure, I also feel like a lot of those are in the "has to die ASAP" list to begin with. Like, if Bruna ever gets to attack, I'm already assuming somebody is going to die. And I think Intuition in stronger in many regards - the 4th thing you tutor is presumably the weakest thing, and 4 mana is a lot more than 3 when you're trying to pull shenanigans. But it's definitely a strong interaction worth considering (It's also worth considering banning Kess, and giving WotC a smack every time they make such a dumb commander, but I digress).

As far as combos, I hear a lot of bluster about how scary gifts is, but at least from my experience it always seems to end up in one of the following places:

-explicitly cEDH piles like flash + hulk + regrowth + noxious revival. Ok, fine, it's pretty good at enabling that sort of thing, but that's already beyond the purview of the banlist. Doomsday is legal. It's whatever.

-clunky piles like kiki + conscripts + reanimation + reanimation, which sort of defeats the purpose of the efficient 4-mana tutor since you're then paying 10 mana for the combo pieces, and open to all sorts of disruption. If T&N would be a more efficient way to play your combo, it's not a problem imo.

-"It just wins without even building around it" with no specific cards ever mentioned. This happens a lot and it's pretty annoying. Specifics or GTFO.

If there's powerful combos to be set up (ideally that don't require cEDH-style tech), I'd love to hear about it, but so far I've been unable to find anything that remotely scares me in a casual setting. I'm curious how the cEDHers feel about it too, though - 4 mana for a tutor seems like quite a bit to me, especially if you're then investing more mana to recur the actual things you wanted. Would gifts actually be problematic, or would it just be a good but reasonable piece of the deck?

[folding_music]

I don't think it's a power-level issue that leaves it on the banlist so much as an unsightly consistency issue? Legal Gifts would be another step towards decks being gigantic Doomsday piles and another step away from the opening hand meaning a thing. I wouldn't stand in the way of an unbanning cos I don't play at anywhere near the hardcore level some of you do so if being able to play long.dec is more important than the unpredictable essence of a casual format then do it. It's a headscratcher as to how we got here, though.

edit: I feel like if you're naming a list of oppressive tutors and value engines which have been winning tournament games of magic for two decades there isn't *that* much casual value in the fact that you cast them while Cromat's your commander rather than Thrasios & Tymna or what have you; every tutor made available to people who will always tutor for an attempt at an immediate irresistible win makes the game more competitive at every power level, and a lot of people are gonna be turned off by that development.

[DirkGently]

I'm afraid you lost me a little. It is a strong tutor, no doubt, and every tutor does make it more possible to build more consistent decks. Beyond that I'm not really sure what you mean about cromat vs T&T etc.

Personally I'm not the "tutor for an immediate irresistable win" kind of guy. I mean, if I have a win I take it, but I generally don't built easy wins into my decks. I do value consistency, though. I like having a plan. I don't generally like the "big pile of synergistic cards" approach to deckbuilding.

There are certainly people who would use Gifts to put together fast combo wins in cEDH. Maybe in near-cEDH as well. For casual play, though, I don't see Gifts doing that, at all. I see it either fetching 4 big bombs, or 4 board wipes, or whatever. Maybe political stuff like 1 board wipe plus some value cards, and showing it to someone who wants the board wiped. All those things sound like fun to me, personally, I think it's a card with some really interesting play, and a high skill cap. Nothing amuses me more than people saying "Pssh, gifts is broken, you just search for WXYZ", and then it turns out their combo doesn't even work if their opponent gives them the right cards

[pokken]

There was a ridiculously long thread on gifts on MTGS back in the day and I came into it like "WTF ARE YOU NUTS GIFTS?!" and someone said: "Do something more broken with it than tooth and nail."

And I tried. And I tried. and the best thing I came up with is worse than emergent ultimatum now.

Combo of dream halls + enter the infinite which still requires 10 mana and a blue card in hand to chuck to halls. Or some variant of reanimating kiki + exarch that still costs more mana than tooth and nailing them in and is vulnerable to creature removal.

With isochron scepter/dramatic reversal // flash hulk // thassa's oracle+pact/consult there's probably a more concise line now, but that still likely costs a minimum of 8 or 9 mana total.

The flash hulk double reanimation package still costs 9 mana (flash + gifts + regrowth) over turns, and exposes Hulk/Flash in the graveyard to grave hate and makes the combo sorcery speed. Snapcaster is probably better I guess.

Fundamentally, this card is just a powerful tutor that has more attack surface than intuition at the most broken end, and is probably a pretty fun experience. Groups always love working together to split my intuition and fact or fiction and it's way more fun than demonic tutor for a combo piece secretly then gg.

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If you look at how intuition is used in my Ephara deck (as a graveyard value engine that alternates as a tutor) that's almost surely exactly how gifts will be used in casual. It's a pretty cool value engine that's worse than most (remora, study, necropotence) but that doubles as a diabolic tutor.

[Sinis]

I think it's definitely fine to unban. I think analysis should probably include the format philosophy, though, so I'll give 'er a go. For reference: Gifts Ungiven.

> Cause severe resource imbalances

Likely does not. It's important to note that people sometimes only select two cards making it a de facto double-Entomb for 3U, but I don't think this is especially problematic. Even outside cEDH applications (are there even cEDH applications?), this doesn't result in anything too intense.

> Allow players to win out of nowhere

This was once the contention, but I don't think it's relevant anymore. Some people suggest that it's a storm problem, especially with cards like Yawgmoth's Will, Recoup and Past in Flames, but I don't believe so. Once upon a time, a Vintage article writer named Stephen Menendian had some puzzles for Gifts Ungiven in a storm context, but, I think EDH decks are far less consistent than that, and many of the clutch pieces will be either out of reach, or simply not as effective. It's definitely not the same as Coalition Victory or Biorhythm, both of which have been cited to have this problem.

> Prevent players from contributing to the game in a meaningful way.

Definitely not. Quite the opposite, it might enable a player to have agency in a game they would otherwise not be in.

> Cause other players to feel they must play certain cards, even though they are also problematic.

Probably not? I don't think Gifts Ungiven will result in people playing Stranglehold or Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver more or less than before.

> Are very difficult for other players to interact with, especially if doing so requires dedicated, narrow responses when deck-building.

Definitely not.

> Interact poorly with the multiplayer nature of the format or the specific rules of Commander.

For me this is the big selling point: I believe that Gifts Ungiven interacts very well within the multiplayer nature/specific rules of Commander. Gifts Ungiven gives you the opportunity to cooperate with another player in a very mechanical way, similar to Fact or Fiction.

Obviously, there's room for abuse, but as above, I don't think it's as catastrophic as to require a ban.

> Lead to repetitive game play.

It may, but I would venture it is less so than other tutors in the format. I believe Demonic Tutor is more worthy of being banned than Gifts Ungiven for this criteria.

---

I think, given that Doomsday and Intuition exist, that Emergent Ultimatum will soon be in print, Gifts Ungiven can come off the banlist. There are many 'lesser cousins' of Gifts Ungiven that also remain legal and seem to be barely of concern. Tooth and Nail, Protean Hulk, Final Parting, Jarad's Orders. While they all differ in cost or effect, it doesn't seem like Gifts is so outlandishly different that it needs to be banned.

I certainly don't see Gifts being worse than any existing options, and, given that it (may) provide agency for other players (very much unlike Doomsday), I think it would be an exciting addition to the format.

I have not heard of any Gifts piles that would result in "Win out of Nowhere" or "Repetitive gameplay", but if anyone ever had any, I certainly welcome someone to supply them.

[cryogen]

Biggest issue with Gifts is that it only asks you to have 4 mana on the player's to your right EOT and and hitting 5 mana of the correct color(s) to do your thing on your turn. It's exactly what Tooth and Nail asks you (do you have 7/9 mana), only it asks that question a few turns sooner.

I'm not sure if that alone should be the deciding factor, but it is certainly an important consideration to take into account.

[pokken]

Biggest issue with Gifts is that it only asks you to have 4 mana on the player's to your right EOT and and hitting 5 mana of the correct color(s) to do your thing on your turn. It's exactly what Tooth and Nail asks you (do you have 7/9 mana), only it asks that question a few turns sooner.

I'm not sure if that alone should be the deciding factor, but it is certainly an important consideration to take into account.

What's winning the game with 5 mana after a gifts, that isn't flash hulk?

[onering]

Gifts is often pretty close to the front of the list in terms of safe unbans for most people I think, but since it tends to be a big point of contention I figured it might help to have a separate thread on the topic, so other threads don't get monopolized by pro/con Gifts arguments.

So I'm personally pro unbanning gifts - I'd like to use it the same way I use Intuition, which is primarily to set up loam and/or pull some political shenanigans (counterspell + loam + cycling land + cycling land with T&N on the stack, lol). I don't think these sorts of value piles are particularly dangerous to the format, and it doesn't seem to be the main crux of peoples' arguments against it. I've seen someone call gifts "double demonic tutor + double entomb", but I can't really think of any combination that would put it anywhere near that level of strength functionally, simply because most cards are either much better in hand, or much better in grave, and you can't count on them to go where you want. Stuff like Loam is an exception, but Loam is also a relatively low-powered card, all things considered. If you got to double demonic tutor and your best choice was life from the loam...wtf are you even doing?

There is some concern about the use of gifts with commanders that enable graveyard recursion, which would make it more likely to function as a quad-tutor and potentially generate a lot of value. Muldrotha, Mairsil, Kess, Dralnu, Bruna, Scarab God, Sedris, Jace, Emry...I think those are the most powerful of the bunch. While it is strong with those commanders for sure, I also feel like a lot of those are in the "has to die ASAP" list to begin with. Like, if Bruna ever gets to attack, I'm already assuming somebody is going to die. And I think Intuition in stronger in many regards - the 4th thing you tutor is presumably the weakest thing, and 4 mana is a lot more than 3 when you're trying to pull shenanigans. But it's definitely a strong interaction worth considering (It's also worth considering banning Kess, and giving WotC a smack every time they make such a dumb commander, but I digress).

As far as combos, I hear a lot of bluster about how scary gifts is, but at least from my experience it always seems to end up in one of the following places:

-explicitly cEDH piles like flash + hulk + regrowth + noxious revival. Ok, fine, it's pretty good at enabling that sort of thing, but that's already beyond the purview of the banlist. Doomsday is legal. It's whatever.

-clunky piles like kiki + conscripts + reanimation + reanimation, which sort of defeats the purpose of the efficient 4-mana tutor since you're then paying 10 mana for the combo pieces, and open to all sorts of disruption. If T&N would be a more efficient way to play your combo, it's not a problem imo.

-"It just wins without even building around it" with no specific cards ever mentioned. This happens a lot and it's pretty annoying. Specifics or GTFO.

If there's powerful combos to be set up (ideally that don't require cEDH-style tech), I'd love to hear about it, but so far I've been unable to find anything that remotely scares me in a casual setting. I'm curious how the cEDHers feel about it too, though - 4 mana for a tutor seems like quite a bit to me, especially if you're then investing more mana to recur the actual things you wanted. Would gifts actually be problematic, or would it just be a good but reasonable piece of the deck?

Its not hard to set up piles with good black recursion and generally good cards like Mikeus or Notion thief and snapcaster, wheels, etc. These combos will not be cheap enough to win turn 4, so this would be more of a concern of it just making the combo paths even more consistent, and having a relatively cheap instant that can grab them consistently. Even if you are running Hulk as value and not using flash, you still will usually have other ways to sac it and recur it. Having it fetch these sort of combos, the ones that exist between cards that are already just good, combined with recursion that is already just good, means that it doesn't actually have to be built around to have access to a combo path. These kinds of combos are not going to be the most efficient or powerful combos out there, and Gifts is not going to be the preferred way of getting them. The problem comes from Gifts just making them more consistent, and serving as a great backup for getting them. Alone, this would simply not be an issue, as its not problematic enough to warrant a ban, but Gifts is also a card that adds a significant increase to deck consistency and repetitive play when played for value. Its potential to grab those sort of combos does not make it scary, it is merely another knock against it when looking at its total impact. Then, even when looking at its total impact, I'm still not convinced it needs to remain banned. I don't think it adds anything to the format, but I don't think its harmful enough or violates the philosophy of the format enough to remain banned, though I think it probably falls just enough inside the right sight of the borderline to warrant a change in status. The two big changes in the format being that its value engine mode is not as strong as it used to be and that preventing combo isn't the priority it used to be.

It may still end up being an issue, it may get unbanned and then end up in every U/X deck and create a lot of annoying gameplay where people just grab their combos, value piles easily and become the archenemy, and it has the tendency to play slow, but I don't think we actually have enough of an idea on how it would play in the modern format to say that. Let it happen and re ban it if it does. Personally, Hulk is worse, and even T&N. I'd rather see both of those banned.

[onering]

Biggest issue with Gifts is that it only asks you to have 4 mana on the player's to your right EOT and and hitting 5 mana of the correct color(s) to do your thing on your turn. It's exactly what Tooth and Nail asks you (do you have 7/9 mana), only it asks that question a few turns sooner.

I'm not sure if that alone should be the deciding factor, but it is certainly an important consideration to take into account.

What's winning the game with 5 mana after a gifts, that isn't flash hulk?

Not much, unless an opponent screws up the pile.

[folding_music]

Sorry if my earlier post was a little hard to follow. The main point is that Gifts itself isn't a totally objectionable card but that it contributes towards that critical mass of tutors that end up being the death of innocence at the lower power end of the format. When a tutor isn't on the banlist, people'll play it, and the rule zero conversations always focus on the way that these players only use their historically busted tutors, bullets and wins suite to drive into town once a week to do groceries, hardly any combo kills on them whatsoever, and then in practise they're playing a stack of competitive cards vs people doing pet deck things, using the tutors they said would always aim for Death Pit Offering to go grab silver bullets, wide-eyed and innocently proclaming "this deck is only a six out of ten because I didn't include Omniscience, maybe you should speed your deck up to compete with MY reality", etc. I like having a tutor effect this huge on the banlist because inconsistency is what I want from the game and if that sign post goes away, some of my potential game groups go away.

[pokken]

Sorry if my earlier post was a little hard to follow. The main point is that Gifts itself isn't a totally objectionable card but that it contributes towards that critical mass of tutors that end up being the death of innocence at the lower power end of the format. When a tutor isn't on the banlist, people'll play it, and the rule zero conversations always focus on the way that these players only use their historically busted tutors, bullets and wins suite to drive into town once a week to do groceries, hardly any combo kills on them whatsoever, and then in practise they're playing a stack of competitive cards vs people doing pet deck things, using the tutors they said would always aim for Death Pit Offering to go grab silver bullets, wide-eyed and innocently proclaming "this deck is only a six out of ten because I didn't include Omniscience, maybe you should speed your deck up to compete with MY reality", etc. I like having a tutor effect this huge on the banlist because inconsistency is what I want from the game and if that sign post goes away, some of my potential game groups go away.

On the flipside something I like about gifts is it's very very accessible. I don't like how intuition demonic and vamp and to an extent enlightened tutor kinda price people out of tutors if they want. Gifts is never gonna be all that expensive given all its reprints and it'd be nice to have a decent tutor that's actually budget.

[folding_music]

Sorry if my earlier post was a little hard to follow. The main point is that Gifts itself isn't a totally objectionable card but that it contributes towards that critical mass of tutors that end up being the death of innocence at the lower power end of the format. When a tutor isn't on the banlist, people'll play it, and the rule zero conversations always focus on the way that these players only use their historically busted tutors, bullets and wins suite to drive into town once a week to do groceries, hardly any combo kills on them whatsoever, and then in practise they're playing a stack of competitive cards vs people doing pet deck things, using the tutors they said would always aim for Death Pit Offering to go grab silver bullets, wide-eyed and innocently proclaming "this deck is only a six out of ten because I didn't include Omniscience, maybe you should speed your deck up to compete with MY reality", etc. I like having a tutor effect this huge on the banlist because inconsistency is what I want from the game and if that sign post goes away, some of my potential game groups go away.

On the flipside something I like about gifts is it's very very accessible. I don't like how intuition demonic and vamp and to an extent enlightened tutor kinda price people out of tutors if they want. Gifts is never gonna be all that expensive given all its reprints and it'd be nice to have a decent tutor that's actually budget.

then I'd be happy for you to have Gifts Ungiven, so long as Intuition was banned. =P

[ZenN]

On the flipside something I like about gifts is it's very very accessible. I don't like how intuition demonic and vamp and to an extent enlightened tutor kinda price people out of tutors if they want. Gifts is never gonna be all that expensive given all its reprints and it'd be nice to have a decent tutor that's actually budget.

If Gifts Ungiven were to be unbanned it would almost certainly spike in price.

Also, just for reference, Gifts has been printed 5 times, I believe, to Demonic Tutor's... 12 times?

Not saying it'll ever be as much as Demonic, but I'd be surprised if it didn't hit $15 in time.

[pokken]

On the flipside something I like about gifts is it's very very accessible. I don't like how intuition demonic and vamp and to an extent enlightened tutor kinda price people out of tutors if they want. Gifts is never gonna be all that expensive given all its reprints and it'd be nice to have a decent tutor that's actually budget.

If Gifts Ungiven were to be unbanned it would almost certainly spike in price.

Also, just for reference, Gifts has been printed 5 times, I believe, to Demonic Tutor's... 12 times?

Not saying it'll ever be as much as Demonic, but I'd be surprised if it didn't hit $15 in time.

It's a lot narrower than DT, probably closer to mystical tutor in terms of prospective frequency of play. I'd buy 10 bucks after a couple years, but 5 bucks for a long time.

DT's an extremely iconic card and an autoinclude, whereas gifts is a bit of a buildaround.

[ZenN]

I don't think Gifts is any more of a build-around than Tooth and Nail, Intuition, Fact or Fiction, etc. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll spike a lot. Could only be $10, sure. It would depend a lot on if it finds a home in cEDH, which it probably would.

It's neat that it would basically be a 4 mana tutor 4 cards for a Muldrotha deck to go with the 3 mana tutor 3 of Intuition that already exists.

[pokken]

I don't think Gifts is any more of a build-around than Tooth and Nail, Intuition, Fact or Fiction, etc. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll spike a lot. Could only be $10, sure. It would depend a lot on if it finds a home in cEDH, which it probably would.

It's neat that it would basically be a 4 mana tutor 4 cards for a Muldrotha deck to go with the 3 mana tutor 3 of Intuition that already exists.

Right, tooth and nail and intuition are great comparisons. Look at the percentage of play of T&N vs. demonic tutor.

I think it'd definitely see a lot of play, probably 5-10% of blue decks, which is really not an issue.

Most people don't play intuition because it's expensive but a pretty big subset of the population can't be arsed to figure out intuition packages. I am *still* figuring out new intuition packages in Ephara, where I've played it for years. Gifts is even more complex.

Either way, another decent ~5 dollar tutor for a few years is something I think is desirable personally,

[ZenN]

Either way, another decent ~5 dollar tutor for a few years is something I think is desirable personally,

Oh, I'm all for unbanning Gifts. Absolutely. These are good things.

[cryogen]

Biggest issue with Gifts is that it only asks you to have 4 mana on the player's to your right EOT and and hitting 5 mana of the correct color(s) to do your thing on your turn. It's exactly what Tooth and Nail asks you (do you have 7/9 mana), only it asks that question a few turns sooner.

I'm not sure if that alone should be the deciding factor, but it is certainly an important consideration to take into account.

What's winning the game with 5 mana after a gifts, that isn't flash hulk?

Well I don't like the argument as it is unbalanced in favor of all the cool things you get to do, like the aforementioned Muldrotha, or Bruna - all at a fraction of the price for an Intuition which is Reserve List. I'm simply pointing out that without assistance the critical turn for Gifts doing Gifts things is turn 5, whereas with it is 9 with Tooth, 7 if you're lucky.

[ZenN]

I'm simply pointing out that without assistance the critical turn for Gifts doing Gifts things is turn 5, whereas with it is 9 with Tooth, 7 if you're lucky.

To be fair, since basically every deck ramps, especially green ones, it's a lot more likely that you'll be able to win with a Tooth and Nail by turn 5 or 6.

[pokken]

Well I don't like the argument as it is unbalanced in favor of all the cool things you get to do, like the aforementioned Muldrotha, or Bruna - all at a fraction of the price for an Intuition which is Reserve List. I'm simply pointing out that without assistance the critical turn for Gifts doing Gifts things is turn 5, whereas with it is 9 with Tooth, 7 if you're lucky.

I suspect a more accurate assessment is Gifts critical turn 4 (Since you will often always ramp on either 1 or 2 in a decently designed deck) and turn 6 for tooth; any deck focusing on ramping to tooth and nail is going to do it pretty commonly on 6.

Ramp doesn't scale in a linear fashion, decks that need to cast 9 mana spells are going to have ramp spells that are +2 or +3 (e.g. exploration/burgeoning/azusa, worn powerstone/gilded lotus/mana vault).

But I take your point

[BaronCappuccino]

I don't think Gifts would be banned today if it were a new print in C20, and my opinion remains that cards that wouldn't be banned today shouldn't be banned any longer. I'm sure there are a handful of cards on the list that wouldn't be deemed banworthy, and if they're not banworthy, they should be allowed. I don't like the typical counter argument asking "What would X bring to the format?". It wouldn't bring anything to the format that the RC aught to worry about, not catering to cEDH style play. Casuals would do casual with it, by definition. Any definition conflict of casual is a rule 0 issue. Surely Rule 0 is appropriate for handling card issues unworthy of bans?

[Sinis]

To the people saying "Well, there are instawin gift piles".

Okay, I'll grant Regrowth+Noxious Revival+Flash+Protean Hulk is an instant win gift-pile.

But, that's not really enough to justify a ban, is it? Doomsday also has instant win piles, but is still legal, and arguably has fewer interesting applications than Gifts Ungiven. Is there another factor that anyone believes pushes it over the edge?

[MRHblue]

Its the boogyman from when easy combo was 'soft banned'. It held enough scary clout like 'untap T4 and win' that it never got adequately evaluated like Worldgorger, Metalworker, Staff of Domination, or Kokusho. I 100% support the idea it would not get banned today if it had never been printed, and holding old cards to a different standard is poor execution of the ban list.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Gifts needs an unban! All the above reasoning is solid and covers most of the bases, but this must be revisited! We must never forget the tutor who was banned for the format's sins long ago, and now deserves a chance for redemption in this modern age.

[pokken]

So the biggest pro-gifts unbanning for me (personally) is that it adds a very cheap alternative to Intuition that is not any more powerful in abstract. It can do a few interesting things Intuition *can't* do but it's mostly worse and slower for the things that are really problematic.

I hate to make budget arguments, but I have a lot of people come to my decklists and be like "but I can't spend $200 on intuition so I can't do a lot of the cool stuff." And that's a bummer.