Not too long ago, Richmond, Virginia, played host to the largest Constructed event yet, and my good friend Brian Liu took it down, making it look easy. His tournament was fantastic and full of plenty of great stories. But I’m selfish, so this is about me, my tournament, and my deck.

Let’s start with a quick rundown of how the event went for me-I lost a lot of games that felt easily winnable. I ran Glenn McIelwain’s post-Valencia Twin list, which seemed extremely well-positioned in the expected environment of Burn (due to card availability at such a large event), Tarmo Twin, and Zoo. Obviously things didn’t work out well for me, and after scraping my way into day two, I finished an impressive 8-7. The deck felt strong, regardless of this, but it was prone to strong downswings and poor variance. While the deck had a wide variety and large numbers of answers to the cards that threaten the combo, the deck could not function without drawing the correct pieces.

Games where you drew worse than average were not salvageable as they might be in other Twin decks, and the god-awful cantrips legal in this format are poor at finding you the correct pieces. When I won, I won easily. When I lost, the deck looked terrible. There were no close games.

For reference, here is the list:

[deck title=Splinter Twin]
[Lands]
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
3 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
2 Mountain
6 Island
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Deceiver Exarch
4 Pestermite
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Spellskite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Splinter Twin
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
2 Dispel
3 Swan Song
4 Flame Slash
2 Izzet Charm
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Blood Moon
1 Dispel
1 Swan Song
1 Echoing Truth
2 Mizzium Skin
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Batterskull
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The conclusion I reached from this is that I wanted greater diversity in the deck to reduce reliance on the combo. One major approach is to focus on the tempo advantage granted by the existence of the combo, which results in Dickmann’s Tempo and Tarmo Twin decks. While this is obviously strong, I struggle to get behind playing what feels like an awkward mix of a true tempo strategy and a combo. His decks also typically don’t play [card]Blood Moon[/card], which is a one-card combo in many matchups. I like that.

So where do we go with Twin, trying to increase threat diversity without trying to play a different style of game? In the car home from Richmond, my friend jokingly suggested Gifts Twin as an example of something ridiculous and awful we would come up with. Obviously, my degenerate friend Alex Neufeldt took him seriously, and we started to brew. This started as a joke, but a combo-oriented Gifts package grants a completely different angle of attack for Twin decks. The card is obviously extremely powerful, and in this post-Deathrite Modern, more difficult to interact with.

Here’s what we brewed up:

[deck title=Gifts Twin]
[Lands]
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Watery Grave
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Mountain
5 Island
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Deceiver Exarch
1 Pestermite
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Serum Visions
3 Izzet Charm
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Remand
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Swan Song
1 Noxious Revival
1 Blood Moon
1 Cryptic Command
3 Splinter Twin
1 Electrolyze
1 Batterskull
1 Unburial Rites
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Firespout
1 Noxious Revival
1 Wear // Tear
1 Griselbrand
1 Dispel
1 Blood Moon
1 Shatterstorm
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Academy Ruins
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The deck takes a Twin shell and warps it considerably, giving us the powerful edge that happens when your opponent has no idea what you’re doing. The general gameplan is to interact in the first few turns with Remand, [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], and [card]Izzet Charm[/card], then do something unbeatable, whether that’s using the Twin combo or casting a [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card].

The deck’s versatility is likely its strength, as it can be confusing for an opponent to sideboard against the Gifts plan as well as your combo.

Many matchups are skewed because of the [card]Unburial Rites[/card] plan as well. If you can catch a Melira player without a [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card], for instance, they lose quite handily to Elesh Norn.

Let’s talk about some individual card choices.

Mana

This is relatively simple; I took the mana from Glenn’s list and tweaked it. A single [card]Hallowed Fountain[/card] is what you generally want to fetch for your Rites combo, but sometimes you need an additional red, which is what the [card]Sacred Foundry[/card] is for. A black source is also nice to have for fringe situations, so it’s there. A high basic count is important in case we want [card]Blood Moon[/card], and [card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card] is amazing in grindier matchups. Its value increases because we have multiple cards that are dead in hand and because we have a one-card combo in the deck, making actual card advantage less relevant.

4 [card]Serum Visions[/card]

This card is awful. That said, we are still a Twin deck, and this card increases the consistency of finding whatever combo piece or silver bullet we need.

4 [card]Remand[/card], 4 [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], 3 [card]Izzet Charm[/card]

The things that we’re doing on turns four and five are pretty much unbeatable, so we just need to bridge up until then. These are likely the most efficient ways to do so. In addition, Izzet Charm’s looting is invaluable in a maindeck with so many bullets. You can also live the dream of discarding Rites and Elesh Norn on your opponent’s end step.

2 [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]

This is both a fantastic value card and part of our non-rites gifts piles most of the time. You definitely want more than one, but two or three is likely the correct number. You also get to flashback [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], which upsets Travis Woo greatly.

1 [card]Swan Song[/card]

This card is well-positioned in the deck to protect your combo, as none of them care about a 2/2. I can also imagine situations where you want to Gifts for it to stop a combo on the following turn.

1 [card]Cryptic Command[/card]

We run Snapcasters and [card]Noxious Revival[/card], so sometimes we can just Cryptic lock someone while we get our stuff online. The card is also kinda just really good.

1 [card]Electrolyze[/card]

In a Pod-heavy metagame, this card can be a great source of value. We’re a Snapcaster deck, so a singleton can be cast twice if needed. However, it’s entirely possible that this should be another [card]Cryptic Command[/card] or a stronger bullet.

3 [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card]

Un. Beatable. However, you don’t want to draw multiples, and this deck gets to see quite a few cards, so three is likely the correct number.

1 [card]Blood Moon[/card], 1 [card]Batterskull[/card]

This is a powerful gifts package against many fair decks, but specifically UWR Control and BGx or Jund Variants. Maindeck [card]Blood Moon[/card] lockouts are extremely powerful, and [card]Batterskull[/card] is difficult to beat in a [card]Blood Moon[/card] game. To be fair, Blood Moon’s stock has gone down recently with different changes in the meta, but having access to it without overloading on it is likely still worth it.

1 [card]Unburial Rites[/card]; 1 [card]Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite[/card]; 0 [card]Iona, Shield of Emeria[/card]

This Gifts package ends unprepared matchups very quickly. For the uninformed, Gifts allows you to pick up to four cards, then makes your opponent pick two to put in your graveyard. So if you only find two cards, those go to your graveyard, allowing for an easy reanimation combo. Elesh Norn is unbeatable against Pod decks, assuming they don’t have their singleton answers available or a [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] in play. Iona is likely not good enough in this format and not worth the slot, given that we’re struggling for space already. However, it easily could be.

Sideboard

1 [card]Anger of the Gods[/card], 1 [card]Firespout[/card]

These splits of similar cards allow us to manufacture a Gifts package where we’re assured the cards we want. Mass removal at three damage is very good right now, so these cards are where we want to be against Zoo, Pod, Affinity, Hatebears, and similar decks.

1 [card]Noxious Revival[/card]

In grindier matchups, it’s likely that we’ll have to cast Gifts twice over the course of a game, and having a second [card]Noxious Revival[/card] available makes the second Gifts more powerful than it would be without. In addition, [card]Noxious Revival[/card] is marginally playable in a combo deck in general since going down a card to [card]Vampiric Tutor[/card] out of our graveyard is marginalized when the card you get will win you the game.

1 [card]Wear // Tear[/card], 1 [card]Shatterstorm[/card]

Our Affinity Gifts package. Wear//Tear also has applications elsewhere, for example when people bring in cards like [card]Rest in Peace[/card] and [card]Ghostly Prison[/card].

2 [card]Vendilion Clique[/card]

We are a Snapcaster Mage/Lightning Bolt deck, meaning it’s possible for us to win difficult matchups through damage. [card]Vendilion Clique[/card] gives us additional points in that plan, while generally disrupting and being fantastic.

1 [card]Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir[/card]
Sometimes you just have to go deep, and Teferi goes very deep.

1 [card]Griselbrand[/card]

In some matchups, Elesh Norn is marginal at best, but we still want to be able to punish a tapped out opponent with a Gifts when they’re playing around [card]Blood Moon[/card] with basics. [card]Griselbrand[/card] is the highest-impact way to do that against, say, Jund or UWR.

3 [card]Engineered Explosives[/card], 1 [card]Academy Ruins[/card]
We already have Gifts, so why not include a way to lock out certain decks? [card]Engineered Explosives[/card] is very strong in addition to being a catch-all answer for hate cards, and [card]Academy Ruins[/card] also adds value to our [card]Batterskull[/card] plan.

This list is far from perfect, and different variations can include [card]Sun Titan[/card] as a way to recur combo pieces and [card]Blood Moon[/card], or a less combo-oriented build that plays only one of each piece, choosing instead to focus on playing a control game. Regardless, I’m fairly certain the deck has plenty of potential, as Gifts is an incredibly powerful card. Let me know if you have any feedback!