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The original wording didn't have "up to 4", it said "4", but how this was explained to me was that since the deck is hidden information, the game treats it as though the deck itself is a pandora's box where you can have the entire deck as the same card. So when he searches the library, he needs 4 different cards. He "fails to find" more than 2 different cards in his deck. The ruling was built in because you can still gifts with say 1 card in deck, and a player must fail to find.
Correct, because you could - theoretically - play a deck that has only 1, 2 or 3 different cards left in it when Gifts Ungiven resolves (you could have milled or drawn most of your deck or you could have chosen to play a deck that contains 50+ islands, who knows ?). Since you are not required to share the information that there are 4 or more different cards left in your deck, you are allowed to "fail to find", turning Gifts Ungiven into an expensive but more flexible Buried Alive.
@@NStripleseven Well, it's my way of explaining it. Failing to find more than 2 cards because you want to get both of them into the graveyard for a combo has been the bread and butter of Gifts Ungiven for about a decade now, maybe longer.
While in the early days of Magic sleeves were not allowed in competitive play, they were legal as early as 1999, and definitely in 2005 (when this match took place). Both Karsten and Asahara were playing with sleeved decks earlier in the tournament, so I am tempted to believe the story above that the players were asked not to play with sleeves due to glare on the cameras.
It’s from the glare. Randy mentions this on the commentary. Btw I was playing in 1994 and sleeves were a joke. My black lotuses were hitting the floor at school UNSLEEVED BABY
For those wondering, the last card that Asahara puts into play is an out-of-focus Zur's Weirding, the ninth edition art. It would have enabled him to keep Karsten from successfully drawing the Goryo's Vengeance, but when the enchantment made Karsten reveal that he already had Vengeance in hand, Asahara conceded.
Basically Gifts Ungiven let him choose up to 4 cards from his deck. The opponent then chooses 2 of the cards to be sent to the graveyard and the remaining cards that weren't chosen went in hand. The thing is that you can choose "up to" 4 cards, allowing anywhere from 0 to 4 cards. Choosing 2 cards automatically forced the opponent to discard those. Goryo's Vengeance then allows him to put a legendary creature (one of the dragons) from his graveyard into play with haste, attacking for the win.
While Gifts Ungiven is a pretty broken card, I have to give it props for requiring skill to use to its full effectiveness. This video goes to show that.
ITS YA BOI it’s very very busted in higher level magic. In EDH i think it’s banned because you can go Gifts for 3 fatties and unburial rites and then just win.
Super Senshi I think it’s more banned in EDH because it just tutors four cards. But Intuition is legal, so I don’t know what the hell to say. The EDH ban list is very very weird.
The wording changed to "up to 4" to make it more clear to the newer players without changing any aspect of the card itself, since the original wording could have been confusing to the them. But ya, this is probably the first documented application of gifts in this manner.
Gifts Ungiven is a blue instant that lets you search through your deck for up to four cards. Your opponent then chooses two of them to go into your graveyard and you put the rest in your hand. Karsten chose to only gifts for two cards, resulting in the card forcing his opponent to put both in the graveyard.
I found what I was looking for. Rule 701.15b states "If a player is searching a hidden zone for cards with a stated quality, such as a card with a certain card type or color, that player isn’t required to find some or all of those cards even if they’re present in that zone." the stated quality in this case is different card names.
It's interesting - the updated text on newly printed Gifts Ungiven says 'up to four', but the original Kamigawa version just says 'four' and leaves it to clever people like Karsten to work it out. Also interesting that this play is basically implying that you have cheated and everything else in the deck is more copies of the same two cards.
At the time gifts wasn't for up to 4 cards, it was for four cards with different names. Because the library is not a public zone you could choose to only find two cards as the rest are hidden. They've since changed to card to reflect how it can be used to make it easier for newer players.
As explained by Hugepotatoe: He chose 2 Legendary Dragons: Yosei, the Morning Star and Kokusho, the Evening star, both are 5/5 Flying dragons, his opponent is at 5 life, and he needed those in his graveyard, as he has Guryo's Vengeance in his hand, which allowed him to bring one of those dragons to the battlefield from the graveyard, give it haste (so that it can immediatly attack), and win him the game.
Other key cards in this sequence: Asahara had Form of the Dragon in play, which means he cannot be attacked by creatures that do not fly. Karsten used reclaim to put Gifts Ungiven on top of his deck, then used Sensei's Divining Top to draw it, leaving him just enough mana to cast said Gifts, only find 2 cards, thus forcing his opponent to do what he really did not want to do. :P. (Give him the tools to win the game.)
well dang I hadn't noticed that you wrote that. thanks for correcting me. as I said though I was going on memory so I'm not surprised I left that out. I'm glad there are people that can speak up and correct the "correctors" like me.
I'm late on this but when you get to search an area that is is hidden i.e. your library, face down cards, etc. you get to choose how many from that area you pick. So if it says search your library for 4 cards then you can "find" 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 cards.
It refers to a card called gifts ungiven. You can set gift up to garuntee that no matter what 2 cards your opponent picks, you'll end up with the 1 card that you're needing at the moment (usually with the help of cards that can bring cards from your graveyard back to your hand).
Connor - this is not quite true. If you are searching a hidden zone for cards *with a certain quality*, you can fail to find, as it is theoretically unknown whether cards with that quality even exist. In Gifts Ungiven's case, that quality is "cards with different names." For a card like Parallel Thoughts that say "search your library for seven cards, exile them in a face-down pile," you are required to find seven cards, or all the cards in your library if it contains seven or fewer.
The wording change came much later (in fact, just this year), but was done to spell out on the card what used to be corner-case comprehensive rules knowledge, known as the "fail-to-find" rule. Either way, using Gifts Ungiven as a makeshift Buried Alive was a perfectly legal play.
yes but when searching an unknown zone ie the library you can fail to find enough cards, since the content of the deck is unknown you can say that the remaining cards are all swamps for example thus gifts can't get them because they don't have different names.
That's exactly what I said. You'd omitted the "stated quality" portion in your original comment. I gave the full rule and some examples of where it does and doesn't apply. Gifts Ungiven works, but the rule as you described it was incorrect for several other cards including Parallel Thoughts.
2:42 YOU BET YOU CAN! its literally a rule "You can choose to find fewer than four cards if you want. If you find one or two cards, your opponent must choose for them to be put into your graveyard, even if they don’t want to. (2017-03-14)" so this play is absolutely brilliant so Frank karsten can Goryo's Vengeance one of them
Tier refers to the metagame share of the deck. Tier 1 decks are the most played decks, not necessarily the most powerful, though there is a strong correlation between the two. Also, tier 2 decks are still "very good" decks.
So the ruling is that since it’s possible to have a deck in which you can only get some limited number of unique cards (less than 4), you’re allowed to “not be able to get” the required 4.
In this match specifically they asked the players to play without sleeves as it was causing glare on the cameras and making it unable to recognize the cards
actually it is true. it is in the MTG rules. I printed out a copy and I read most of the interesting things and that was there. I read that about 10 months ago so i don't remember exactly where in the rules it is but if I find I'll post it as a reply to you. I'll be checking tomorrow.
Not quite, or at least, not how I'd explain it. Gifts lets you search for "up to 4" cards, then your opponent chooses 2 that go to your graveyard and the "rest" go to your hand. What this player did is search for two cards exactly as his "up to 4" and so his opponent was forced to choose both of them to go to his graveyard because there was no 3rd or 4th option.
So! Asahara played Enduring Ideal, a card that let him put an enchantment from his deck into play every turn, for free. He chose a Form of the Dragon, which is an enchantment that deals 5 damage to anything at the beginning of his turn, but also sets his life total to 5 each turn. It's good on an empty board, because it's a super fast clock. Karsten had Goryo's Vengeange in hand, which is a cheap spell that returns a legendary creature from his graveyard to the battlefield and gives it haste for a turn, and then it makes him sacrifice it. He had powerful legendary dragons in his deck, and he needed to put them into his graveyard. He played a card called Gifts Ungiven, that allows him to tutor for up to 4 different cards and show them to the opponent, who has to choose two of them to put in his graveyard. Usually, this card was used to fetch some combination of cards that make it so that no matter what the opponent's choice is, the end result would be the same (say, creature + creature + reanimate spell + reanimate spell) but in this case his opponent would just not give him the chance to toss the creatures in his graveyard, which really was the only possible bad scenario for him (Asahara would have been more than happy than let Torsten play non-haste creatures, because he could steal them by tutoring Confiscate from his deck). Torsten's intuition was to only tutor for TWO cards instead of the full four, so that the opponent would be forced to put them both in his graveyard. This allowed him to play Goryo's Vengeange to revive a 5/5 dragon with haste and go in for the kill.
who relaly needs to find a life, the guy making a legit commento n a video about a hobby they are interested in, or the guy coming onto that video when he clealry doesnt want anything to do with it and insulting the people who do?
This series should be called something else, like "Great Moments in Competitive MtG" or something, I don't find the coverage particularly great in any of these and that title takes the attention away from where it should be, directed at the players.
