Giving PaleoGifts

Having a week off of work gives me a lot of time to pursue my hobbies, in this case Magic: the Gathering. And since no one else is around, that means I have lots of time to play the old Microprose game.

Yesterday, I put together Gifts circa 1995. It’s quite handicapped, almost as bad as Ichorid. Ichorid is down to one creature—Nether Shadow—and it’s way worse than Ichorid or Ashen Ghoul. Gifts loses its combo and its aggro win conditions, so Tendrils of Agony becomes Fireball, and Darksteel Colossus gets replaced with, uh, Colossus of Sardia.

Not to mention that you don’t have any good draw spells (Brainstorm), Mana Drain and Force of Will, or tutors. The only tutor in the game in the game is Demonic Tutor, and the fact that you can only use it once is pretty rough and a real skill tester. Draw spells got replaced by Jayemdae Tome and Library of Alexandria (which are now critical). Mana Drain became its own retarded brother, Drain Power, which actually hasn’t been too bad. And the counters became four-of Counterspells, Power Sinks, and Force Spikes.

It’s not terrible. But it has a hard time against creature decks, which just happens to be what it’s going up against. As such, I had to put in Pestilence and Earthquake to keep the weenies under control.

Oh, and did I mention that Yawgmoth’s Will had to get replaced by Animate Dead and Reconstruction. That’s probably the most depressing, though I’ll admit it’s nice to be able to reanimate a win condition. Also, Recoup became Fork for some odd reason, and it seems to work pretty well.

You can see what I’ve done here:

6x Island
4x Underground Sea
4x Volcanic Island
1x Library of Alexandria
2x City of Brass
3x Drain Power
4x Counter Spell
4x Force Spike
4x Power Sink
2x Hurkyl’s Recall
2x Transmute Artifact
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Reconstruction
2x Animate Dead
1x Pestilence
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Dark Ritual
2x Fireball
1x Earthquake
1x Fork
3x Jayemdae Tome
5x Moxen
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Black Lotus

It’s strange to think that card-drawing never really became part of blue until Ice Age gave us Brainstorm. And even then Brainstorm wasn’t really too insane without fetchlands. Before then, people thought blue was broken because it could say “No” so well.

Anyway, the deck hopes to play out like this: Counter everything until you get enough mana to play and protect Jayemdae Tome. Then get a lot of mana and make a win condition.

What really happens is that they get a Llanowar Elf through or something and put you on a 20 turn clock, which is sometimes not enough. The change I’ve been considering for this (especially in light of the fact that the computer loves creature enchantments) is replacing the Force Spikes with Unsummons or Boomerangs.

It’s basically like playing modern-day Gifts in extreme slow motion. Even the endgames play out the same, though over six turns with Colossus of Sardia instead of two with DSC.

In one game, I was lucky enough to Drain Power my opponent’s eight swamps to hardcast Colossus and Demonic Tutor for Time Walk, taking him to 11. Colossus was then tapped for the next three turns as I built more mana to Hurkyl’s Recall my moxes and Mana Vault into a Fireball for 16 and the win. Not too shabby, though I’d like to see that happen in an actual game.

Another game (against the Whimsy deck I built, which is based on exploiting a terrible card, and is therefore terrible) saw me Fork my opponent’s Ancestral after casting one of my own. That was pretty cool. I believe I ended that game by Fireballing for 23 after Draining my opponent’s Power, Dark Ritualing, and Reconstructing my Lotus.

Drain Power is actually decent protection for a game winning Fireball or Earthquake because it taps them out. The computer isn’t smart enough to float mana for counterspells. In real life, Drain Power is terrible.

My testing suggests that in the one-game series I usually play, old gifts is pretty bad. It loses to the poor mulliganing rules I talked about in my last blog, and it loses when the opponent gets a hand with lots of cheap threats because it can’t stop them all. In a three-game match, though, it’s pretty threatening. You can pull something together two games out of three a surprising number of times, and a reanimated Colossus of Sardia is pretty threatening to any deck trying for the ground assault.

This deck would probably be most helped and most hurt by becoming five colors. Green would add Regrowth as “Yawgmoth’s Will #3” and Birds of Paradise as acceleration and fixing, while white would add Wrath of God or Moat for protection. As it is now, though, I haven’t been mana screwed yet, except for the fact that I sometimes don’t have the 23 mana necessary for a Fireball with Counterspell backup.

Anyway, it’s fun to play, and every once in a while it will just draw something completely retarded and come back to win even though it’s far behind on life, just like actual Gifts builds. I especially like using Colossus of Sardia because it’s really, really dumb. Consider how bad that creature is compared to Darksteel Colossus, which costs only two colorless mana more.

I like doing these old versions of modern decks to see how well I can capture their flavor and mechanics.

So far, Fish in almost any color have probably been the most accurate ones, since there have always been weenies and cheap disruption. Force Spike isn’t that bad a card since it’s almost as effective as Daze, and playing UB Fish circa 1995 reminded me of the power of Black Knight in a weenie environment using Swords to Plowshares. 1995 UR Fish is probably the most fun to play, though.

Using Workshops and Bazaars in this program is almost unfair, though, because the computer doesn’t know how to use them, so whenever they randomly play one of these decks, they do it wrong. (One Dragon player put down two Bazaars in the first two turns and took himself immediately to three cards and stayed there, with no lands.) Plus, playing a second-turn Triskelion or reanimating a Shivan Dragon against a weenie horde is really unfair from your side.

Playing PaleoGifts, as you can see in my assessment above, is fun. It’s all about digging for answers and making an enormous amount of mana. It’s definitely a long-game deck, though, which means it loses to a lot of aggro.

The one card I really wish was in the Microprose game is Word of Command, so I could make PaleoSlaver. Since it’s not, though, I’ll have to figure out something else.

Oh well, maybe I’ll be able to figure out something else—Drain Power into Nevinyrral’s Disk or something. I’ll figure it out. It’ll be cool.