Ungiven Puns

Ok, heres the setup; Im playing Rhinos, stock list I'm tapped out and do not have any interation up, no creatures on either board and my opponent is on 4c Blink (Yorion) my Opponent has [[Wrenn and Six]] on the field with 2 loyalty and 5 lands in play and I know they have a 6th land in hand (Wrenn +1) a 4c Omnath and [[Yorion, Sky Nomad]] in hand. End of my turn my opponent casts [[Gifts Ungiven]] and presents [[Time Warp]], [[Underworld Breach]], [[Eternal Witness]] and [[Emphemerate]] what do I put in the Grave to prevent them winning or getting to an unwinnable boardstae their next turn?

My Thoughts:

If I give them EWit and any card they can play EWit, grab Ephemerate cast it and grab timewarp giving me 1 turn to answer it or they go infinte.

If I give them Breach and any card it adds a 2 mana tax and they can repeat the loops above,

If I give them Ephemerate and Timewarp they play Onmath, fetchland get 5 mana and take another turn now with Omanth, W6 and Ephemerate up for insurmountable value.

how would you split the piles and why?

These Holiday Gifts are UNDEAD! We're bringing back [[Gifts Ungiven]] + [[Unburial Rites]] in #MTGModern Esper Reanimator.

» Video — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSApc1ZESBI
» Decklist — https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4494904#online

Esper Reanimator is a combo deck much like the Legacy version but ported to Modern. Our [[Faithless Looting]] is a little more hopeful and is called [[Faithful Mending]], we also have a few other cards in a similar vein. Instead of [[Reanimate]] and [[Entomb]], we have [[Persist]] as well as [[Unmarked Grave]]. The clause on these cards is that they don't work well with Legendary creatures which is why you won't find any copies of [[Griselbrand]] in this deck.

That said, we have some spice in this list! Some technology from the early days of Modern — GIfts Ungiven! We're looking to only select two cards off of Gifts Ungiven so that they both go to the graveyard. The idea is to get a creature and then Unburial Rites and now Flashback the Unburial Rites to bring back your selected threat.

A big thank you to Andrey for this donation deck!

This deck was so awesome. Hope you enjoy it! If you do, please don't forget to subscribe, like, and comment!

Assuming [[Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker]] & [[Deceiver Exarch]] are in your library, you can cast [[Gifts Ungiven]] end of opponents turn finding just Kiki & Exarch. Opponent is forced to put both into your graveyard.Then you untap, play land, cast [[Graceful Restoration]] getting them both back.Combo kill.

Possible Esper shell win condition there.

EDIT:
Someone pointed out below that Karmic Guide could be a better combo piece with Gifts Ungiven. So I've updated my list.

Hello r/ModernMagic

Long time Magic player although I primarily play Commander and I've been interested into casually dipping my toes into Modern.

I played Modern casually many years ago (6+ years ago) and I fondly recall playing a Bant Midrange/Control Gifts Ungiven deck that was so much fun to pilot along with an Esper Gifts variant.

I'm curious what a contemporary Gifts Ungiven set would look like? What would some key synergies and Gift piles look like and has anything changed since Unburial Rites/Elesh Norn (I'm sure a lot has changed)? Any deck lists I can look at for reference (I looked online but couldn't find anything recent and post MH2)

Just looking for something decent in a casual Modern setting (not looking for super high competitive power level but also want to remain relatively budget friendly if possible, no $25+ cards if possible).

I don't want to play Storm so no Storm Gifts Ungiven recommendations please.

Ecological Appreciation

>X2G
>
>Sorcery
>
>Search your library and graveyard for up to four creature cards with different names that each have mana value X or less and reveal them.
>
>An opponent chooses two of those cards. Shuffle the chosen cards into your library and put the rest onto the battlefield.
>
>Exile ~.

This seems like a very funky yet also very powerful tutor. It's similar to other tutors like [[green sun zenith]], [[finale of devastation]], and[[chord of calling]] which already see a lot of play. But rather than getting just your best creature, you basically get your 3rd and 4th best creature (unless you bargain with an opponent). Quite notable that it also grabs creatures from your graveyard.

It’s a Saturday morning in John and Marina’s house, it’s close to 6:00 am and everyone in the house is having that blessed super comfy kind of sleep that only comes from knowing that unlike the rest of the week, today you don’t have to get up.

Technically Marina and Jhon are roommates, and they have separate rooms, but that line has been crossed a thousand times, so much so that the night from Friday to Saturday they don’t sleep alone. Why? Well… let’s just say that fluffies call the act “special huggies” and leave it like that, what’s important is that they’re comfortably asleep in each other’s arms.

As for Anubis, Jhon and Marinas’s pet dog, he is softly sleeping in the backyard next to a gnawed floofalo femur, which is his favorite chew toy.

It’s a blissful quiet morning and under other circumstances, there wouldn’t be much activity until 9:00 am but… today is not a normal day. Today “Sunny Huggie Gardens”, the local humane fluffy shelter is testing one of their well-meaning but incredibly stupid schemes to get people to adopt one of the many unsanitary little biotoys that they pick up from the streets.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Right at the break of the morning Camila, an employee at “Sunny Huggie Gardens” is traveling through a residential part of the city. With her, there is a pink and purple mare Pegasus called Gummy. Gummy has a special harness that allows her to comfortably push a cute red toy wagon, she is acting like the horse of a little carriage. The toy wagon is carrying four foals, which are extremely well-groomed and cleaned to the point that their fluff is almost lustrous, they just had a very thorough bath earlier and had some perfumed powder put on them so you can almost ignore the typical stench of a fluffy… almost. The fillies have little bows on their heads and the colts have a cute bowtie on their necks, they are as cute as a foal can get.

As they advance through the city Gummy constantly babbles about how practical it is to carry babies this way.

-Wook Shewtew Mama! Gummy cawwy so many bebehs in witow wagon! Witow wagon am soooo nicey to Gummy and bebehs, tehehehe Gummy WUVS witow wagon wawkies.

Mares absolutely love carrying babies this way, to her minuscule fluffy brain the wagon ride is like the most accelerating ride at a theme park, and ever since they left Sunny Huggie Gardens, Gummy has been incredibly happy.

-Come on Gummy let's find a home for these babies! Sa

On the base level I understand that FoF is stronger since you are given the end choice rather than the opponent but deck construction sometimes swings that favor (ie storm still runs gifts).

Are there still any arguments to run gifts over FoF in utron? I know it's kinda fallen out of favour but the gifts package (buried ruin, crucible, academy ruins, mind) is the only reason I could think of.

I have a [[Muldrotha, the Gravetide]] deck, and I only just realized today that [[Gifts Ungiven]] is banned. A good replacement would be [[Intuition]] but it’s $35, and I don’t want to spend that much money. Does anyone know any other cards that let me tutor for multiple things, maybe into my graveyard? It’s better if it can tutor for more than just creatures, although [[Buried Alive]] or [[Entomb]] could work.

I'm cleaning and ... I've had a few friendships end suddenly over the past year, but not before I'd bought and stored gifts for those people. Sometimes I think about still sending them as intended so that I wouldn't have to think about it anymore. It feels weird to keep them and weird to consider donating them or giving them to different friends. But yeah, kind of sad to have a stash of ungiven gifts for dead friendships.

I've been wanting an [[Intuition]] for my spellslinger combo deck but they run at about $40, and when I saw [[Gifts Ungiven]] at $8 in the display case at my LGS I bought it right away, thinking I could use it as an in-line replacement. When I got home I searched online, curious to know why I had never heard of this budget replacement before.

Well, it turns out Gifts Ungiven is banned in EDH, and I wasted $8 on a card that I can't use.

Anyone else ever unknowingly bought a "banned" card?

With the reveal of Jace's signature spellbook, I've been wondering why gifts ungiven is considered so much worse than flash/hulk combo. I've lost my fair share of games to flash/hulk combos early in the game before I could do anything. They both seem ridiculously fast and can win pretty much at instant speed. Why is one ok to be unbanned but not the other?

The January B&R update left many players questioning where does Modern go from here? How diverse can the format actually be and what decks are going to come out at the top of the metagame? First off, the GBx midrange shells will see resurgence in both popularity and power with natural predator Delver of Secrets taking a hard hit. Pre-Khans Delver strategies were not particularly powerful and hadn’t been on the radar since the early days when people were playing Isochron Scepter and Steppe Lynx in their UWR Delver decks. Obviously the deck rose to nearly forty percent of the metagame after Treasure Cruise turned out to be every bit as good as it could have been. The tempo decks that had cheap threats and interaction followed up with massive card economy drove the likes of Liliana out of the format. It was just simply too difficult to fight and attrition war against Treasure Cruise. Now that Cruise and little brother Dig Through Time are banned attrition looks a lot more attractive. Liliana, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Lingering Souls all look to have become a lot better now that there are fewer Forked Bolts and Young Pyromancers running around.

The banning of Birthing Pod was coming eventually. The card becomes better every set and limits the design space WotC can take in creatures because of the toolbox nature. I for one had been crying for its banning for a long time. I do not believe that the Junk Pod decks were too good. I don’t believe the Melira combo builds were even good at all post Khans. I do believe however that the card Birthing Pod was way too good on its own. Having played a lot of Legacy during Survival of the Fittest’s reign as king I had seen the writing on the wall. A single card enabling such a diverse and powerful toolbox will ultimately be damaging to the health of the format. Perhaps in the future cards will be printed that will offer strategies that are more powerful or balance out the power of Pod and it will be safe to return to Modern but for now I’m looking forward to a few months (or years) of not playing against a Survival deck with a better matchup against almost every deck than the 50/50 midrange decks like Jund and Junk.

Golgari Grave-Troll is an absolutely busted Magic card and Dredge (despite my love of several cards featuring the mechanic) was a mistake. Given the opportunity I would erase it from history despite the loss of my personal favorite Magic card Life from the Loam. That being said I’m not convinced that t

There's two _ _ in the name

So [[gifts ungiven]] exists. [[Realms uncharted]] exists as a green version of it. So what would the other portions of the cycle look like? What would they get out of your deck?

Hi guys, so I was thinking about picking up an [[Intuition]] for my [[The Mimeoplasm]] deck and it got me thinking that it is strange that intuition is legal but [[Gifts Ungiven]] is banned. I know the reasoning given is you can just go find cards that make the choice irrelevant but that seems even easier to do with intuition.

For instance, I can grab [[Prime Speaker Zegana]] + [[Fathom Mage]] + [[Phyrexian Dreadnought]] and the best option for the opponent is to put the dreadnought in my hand and make me pay one more mana on my turn. Basically I would need a third copy of the ability in my deck to make the same thing happen with a gifts ungiven.

Obviously this is a very limited scenario and maybe I'm missing a situation where gifts performs much better than intuition. Maybe it would matter more if I cared about getting the cards to hand as opposed to graveyard? But from what I can tell, intuition has very similar power level to gifts and I think its strange that one is banned and one is not. Thoughts?

Picture Here

Opened my Jace Spellbook this morning and it came with 2 non-foil brainstorms but no Gifts Ungiven. Do I contact Wizards about this kind of thing?

Go play Storm, people. It's alive!

Source

Decklist on TappedOut

So right now I am currently rocking UW Control. However a part of me has been wanting to try something different and I had heard about using Gifts Ungiven in a reanimator strategy. I'm not sure what the best shell for this would be, but because I have the UW control pieces I decided to try it out in a deck that looks almost like Esper Control.

I'm looking to get some opinions before I get some of the pieces I don't have. I am going to proxy it out to try against some people soon but I wanted some opinions now first.

Some of my questions include the following:

I have Terminus as my main sweeper. I believe that Terminus is needed now so you have the possibility to sweep the board early. To support this I also have Jace who can brainstorm away things like my reanimation targets. However, does this make Gifts Ungiven worse since I can't do a pile like Snapcaster Mage + Wrath + different Wrath?

How good is Esper Charm? I have heard a few comments that one of the reasons you play Esper is for Esper Charm. It is good card advantage and mainboardable enchantment hate. Not sure if I have the slots for it though. I slotted in 1 but I don't know if that is worth it.

Should I find slots for Teferi? Teferi is just a very powerful planeswalker. I don't know what I should cut for 1 or 2 copies of Teferi though.

Also I am not sure how my sideboard it. About half of it matches my current UW sideboard but I am not sure if there is other stuff I want or need. Especially from black which I just have as essentially a splash colour right now. A single Thoughtseize and Inquistion in the sideboard for stuff like the control matchup sounds like it might be mediocre in reality.

Hi everyone, I've created a 4c gifts ungiven deck that has six different packages.

Here's the list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3069835#paper

I would love any suggestions for more packages/packages that don't currently work/card changes in general.

Packages are:

• reanimator (fatty + rites)
• removal (path + pulse + sphere + mythos)
• wrath (day of judgment + verdict + wrath + end hostilities)
• repeated discard (loam, raven's crime, urborg, ghost quarter)
• can't touch this (worship, thrun, regrowth, snapcaster)
• crumble to dust (extirpate, ghost quarter, regrowth, snapcaster)

Some explanation of card choices (feel free to suggest changes):

• teferis - both are great in control decks, why not add two of each
• inkwell leviathan - elesh norn isn't as fast of a clock and I'm not sure what her -2/-2 ability is meant to deal with, plus the unblockable against islands is nice (plus my meta doesn't really have go wide decks)
• talismans - we don't have any 2 cmc plays, so why not ramp into gifts on turn 3 (this makes our reanimator kill 1 turn faster)
• chemister's insight - i chose this over the fourth lingering souls because you never know when two extra cards will be more helpful than two 1/1 flyers
• end hostilities - we have three other 4 cmc wraths, and this deals with stoneforge equipments

Sideboard is definitely not right, I'll work on it.

Thanks for checking my deck out!

I think [[Search for Azcanta]] is perfect for this deck. Does it make it any stronger of a deck? It's always been a fun deck concept but I could never seem to get it to work. Here is a sample list I brewed up for discussion:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/900253#paper

Edit: Added Goryo's and JVP and Obzedat. Liking the direction this is going

I know this techically isn't basketball related, but I know most of you have it

I even emailee customer support and haven't gotten back to in 2 days

Also the location options are limited, which is strange. I live in NY yet it only has "DC" "LA", etc, theres no search option for location

The primer has a couple such as:

 

-Last tron land, Map, Crucible, X (To get last tron land)

-Mindslaver, Crucible, Academy Ruins, Buried Ruins (Mindslaver Lock)

-Ugin, OStone, Cyclonic Rift, EE (Board Clear)

-Snappy, Thirst, Condescend, Supreme Will (Good stuffs)

-Snappy, Gearhulk, Dismember, Spatial (Removal)

-Wurmcoil, Treasure Mage, Academy Ruins, X (Wurmcoil)

 

as well as (not mentioned in the primer):

-Island, Snow covered Island, Oboro, X (Blue source)

-Wurmcoil, Mindslaver, Ugin, Walking Ballista (Threats)

 

Are there any other major combinations that I am missing?

 

Also, is it worth running Buried Ruins just for the Mindslaver lock combination? Since in order to get the lock from that pile the following turn, you have to have 15 mana open (if they give you crucible & buried ruins or crucible & academy ruins, in order to enable the loop you have to cast crucible at some point) which just seems kinda bad and a 'win more' scenario. Or is Buried Ruins just good enough to run on it's own?

Hey folks. I'm sure many of you have seen or heard of Unstorm before and I'd like to show everyone my spin on it with Gifts Ungiven. Credit goes to Pascal Wagner for creating and piloting the deck.

Obligatory Hook Line

Does this deck...

• Produce infinite mana? Check
• Win through infinite life? Check
• Blind your opponent with dozens of Lightning Bolts? Check
• Win at instant speed? Does it spawn infinite elemental tokens? Does it play with the card Gifts Ungiven? Check, Check, and Check!

If any of the above statements appeal to you, please feel free to check the deck out!

Link to my decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-ur-unstorm/

Copy Pasta description from TappedOut:

I initially found out about this deck when Pascal Wagner found some success with it at MKM Series Rome. I adopted the full list to try it out, found a lot of things to like in this deck, and decided to add my own twist to it.

In general, the deck plays a lot like a U/R control deck with cantrips in the early turns. The goal isn't to combo out as soon as possible, but to maintain a stable board state until you are able to safely perform the combo. You'll be burning the opponents' creatures with Lightning Bolt, countering their threats and gaining tempo with Remand, all the while trying to put counters onto Pyromancer Ascension.

My list is slightly different from Pascal Wagner's as it makes use of Gifts Ungiven and Snapcaster Mage in place of Cryptic Commands and Visions from Beyond. The reasoning to this is to increase your probability of finding spells that you need with Gifts packages, and being able to recur anything dumped into the graveyard with Snapcaster Mage + Noxious Revival. Playing the Gifts Ungiven package also changes the sideboard by playing differently named cards that perform similar functions to allow yourself some flexibility when choosing Gifts packages (e.g. Wear // Tear and Disenchant).

*I jokingly told my friend that Noxious Revival is the secret MVP of this deck. Noxious Revival is what makes this deck work by functioning as a Demonic Tutor, your primary combo-kill, graveyard protection, graveyard disruption, and putting counters on Ascension incr

been out of the game for a few years, last time I was brewing a deck, 4C gifts was still a thing, albeit a fringe thing, is it too slow for the current format?

I really liked the tool box aspect of the deck, I had been playing Lands in legacy at the time, is there any other deck that has the same versatility that I could pick up instead?