Pfh. If you're going to run Dragons, run Form. GOOOOOD FORM.

Old player out.

Form of the Dragon is an awesome enchantment. I run it in an Enduring Ideal deck, where the goal is to play 4x Paradox Hazes and a bunch of other really cute 1 of enchantments (besides 4x Form of the Dragon so I didn't draw them all) - what the deck does is.. well.. anything I really want, since I have tons of answers in my deck and end up playing multiple enchantments per turn for nothing. It was a local and kitchen table Legacy winner for a while, honestly - it held its own with stuff like Propaganda, Story Circle, my coveted copy of the Abyss, etc. I still have it here in my big white longbox of decks, actually.

As many options as it had, I just fetched Weirding. Nothing more fun than a lockdown. Then there was that new version floating around Nejii showed me with the whole white thing and the other things. Bah.

Zur's Weirding? I have it in sideboard for competitive play. I'm still very surprised how resilient this deck is when it honestly should not be - but I love toolbox decks.

I think you're talking about Enduring Ideal, Synl? I too always liked toolbox decks, but I always ****ing sucked at building them and put in way too many tools. I even tried playing that godawful End of Hibernation thing once or twice, which went exactly as well as you would expect, OTL. (Much more success with protean hulk though. )

P.S gifts rock is back!? I thought that would have died by now. Sheesh.

Gifts Rock is eternally living - it only mutates to ensure the metagame weeps the maximum tear output.


edit: Gifts Ungiven is one of the best blue cards in Extended and even Legacy - as long as it exists, Gifts Rock will as well. To be honest, it was 'reprinted' in From the Vault: Exiled as one of the 15 most powerful/metagame abusive rares ever to be printed.

I seem to remember a lot of its components coming from invasion block but I might have been exaggerating that or mixing it up with flow rock or something. Gifts, hierarch, shocklands, the new fetchlands, putrefy, eternal witness...yeah, I guess it still has a bunch of material left. (Does it even run all that stuff still?)

That is Shouta Yasooka's Gifts Rock decklist, which is one of the more notable ones in 2009 - 2010 Extended season.

Good Form was the only competitive deck I ever played. Toolbox is also my favourite type of play (see Zur as my main EDH, etc.). Think I fooled around with old Rock. The one that wasn't adding this new stuff like Gifts and such and whatnot. Bah.

Gifts Ungiven. So, so much. Who doesn't, though?

My favorite use for Gifts in casual decks are definitely the color architect decks. CoP: White, CoP: Blue, Aurora Griffin/Fylamarid/Mind Bend/Flickering Ward/whatever isn't in my hand.

(Also Mind Bend. Maybe my favorite underplayed blue card ever.)

Best choice for packages ever for Gifts: 1 Wrath of God + X.. OR 1 Damnation + Y.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Gifts is my favorite card ever because of the way it plays headgames.

Gifts isn't two piles. You pick four, they pick two.

Whup, sorry, thinking of a TOTALLY different card. I'm building a deck with Fact or Fiction, I tend to mix the two in to one card in my head sometimes.

EDIT: In truth, you can still TECHNICALLY force in to board clear if you also include Day of Judgment.

EDIT2: Gamewinning Gifts Packages from the decklist above:

Wrath + Day of Judgment + X + Y

Miren + Yosei + Life from the Loam + Emeria

Wrath + Day of Judgment + Makeshift Mannequin + Eternal Witness.

I think they're all sort of givens as to why - the X + Y could be two potentially deadly cards put together, or just two very undesirable cards your opponent wouldn't want you to have - thus forcing in to 2 board clear cards or 1 + another card. The middle is immensely dangerous because it's a plan for the future. No matter what you get, you will have your combo in the future of the game: losing Miren + Emeria means you can Loam them back, losing Loam + Yosei means you can Emeria back the Yosei, losing Yosei + Emeria is another Loam situation, etc. The last is just an incredible undesirable setup: either they have you two board clears to isolate a powerful blocking + card recursion engine, or they have you that engine, or either piece of that engine that can (unsurprisingly) regain the other.

Much more efficient to make subtle facial expressions and a comment about mana, then pull a land with Gifts. People will choose the known quantity over the unknown quantity almost every time.

Are you guys discussing cards or algebra? I used to play Magic, but none of what you're saying is making any sense to me.

I would just buy a buttload of packs and make a deck out of whichever color I got the most cool/badass cards of. I almost always beat my friends, so I figured I was good.

There's a competitive style dedicated to that approach. It's my personal favorite, actually!

Woah, that's a weird gifts rock, they almost entirely cut out the black. That's barely even rock anymore. Interesting use of STE too, I thought that had the crap nerfed out of it in 11th (that was the one rules change I didn't like, gah.)

I have custom built my bleew deck to be a giant pain in the to play against.

Unless you can destroy my mana. Then I just curse at you.

And it's illegal in at least 3 different formats.

Yes, it's the oddest incarnation of Gifts Rock or Gifts Control I've ever, ever seen. There's virtually no black - despite it being in extended, Mortify and Putrefy and woefully absent due to other, better removal being available. :/

I went to one of the Pre-release Worldwake drafts, and I got like, everyone's cards. They lifted the rares and gave me the rest.

So yay. I now have the framework for a red deck, a black deck, and a dragon deck.