Pointed Discussion

Why didn't they update the art? Bah.

I STILL don't get why this card is supposedly powerful.

4-mana for getting any card your opponent picks out of 4? and then?

Great card. I think the key sentence here is card advandage + tutoring wrapped up into one. Plus if you play combo decks, you can get all the pieces with one card. Example: Grindstone + Painter's Servant + Academy Ruins + Life From the Loam, or Vampire Hexmage + Dark Depths + Volrath's Stronghold + Life From the Loam. With your back against the wall you can fetch 4 removal cards and get to keep two of them etc. etc.

I love giving my opponents a choice between dark depths, crop rotation, grim discovery, and vampire hexmage. Absolutely hilarious to see the look on theit faces.

One of the best, would have been better with new art though.

@ spectermonger: select Vampire Hexmage and Grim Discovery to go to the graveyard. That gives you Dark Depths, but at least you gotta work for the 20/20.

This is another one of those cards that sets up a little minigame for you or your opponent. 5/5 for that alone, but this is darn good. I can see why they banned it. I love how CoK (and the block as a whole) are like this; there are almost exclusively cards that blow mightily outside of Limited and then we get this or Sensei's top or Sakura Tribe Elder or something.

My friend plays vintage. Here's how he uses the card.
Friend: "I play gifts ungiven. I fetch... vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, cruel tutor, and grim tutor."
Opponenet puts two of the tutors into the graveyard.
Friend: "Okay, here's the card I was really looking for..."

Crucible of worlds, Academy ruins, Mindslaver, and another Gifts ungiven; what do you choose?

Haha, this'd be amazing in a recursion deck. I wonder if anyone else sees how?

I'd give a choice of Painter's Servant, Grindstone, Argivian Restoration and Tinker, if you've got at least one other artifact (probably one that gives mana) on the battlefield.

@Tommy9898: Crucible of Worlds and Academy Ruins to the graveyard, Mindslaver and Gifts Ungiven to the hand. These selections delay your opponent the most, by probably two or three turns.

@Gilder_Bairn: Put Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor into the graveyard. If your opponent has enough mana in his next turn to pull off his combo after casting Grim Tutor ('cause he probably won't cast Cruel Tutor first, it's too slow), then you're dead. Otherwise, you've bought yourself a turn or three 'cause he'll cast Cruel Tutor first, then Grim Tutor next turn, then maybe combo or one more turn..

@blackjackz: The first scenario you presented is good. You'd have to pick Grindstone and Painter's Servant to the graveyard, with Academy Ruins and Life from the Loam to your hand. That would delay for two or three turns. The second scenario, I'd pick Dark Depths and Life from the Loam to the graveyard. That way, all you have is a Vampire Hexmage and a Volrath's Stronghold, which doesn't enable any super combos right away.

@Flying-Toaster:
I thought so too. I was like "what the hell, opponent divides the piles to be evenly powerful and you have to throw away possibly good cards, how's that good ?". But then I have seen a couple of times what a Fact or Fiction can do (used aginst me, bah). Fact is, I nearly never guessed what my opponent planned to do and he was always content to throw away four cards just to keep the one he needed (or 3 and 2). It simply speeded things up for him and that proved to be valuable as hell.

And here, what you do is not just draw, you search your library for four cards and keep two of them. If you have apropirate deck and choose carefully, it's usualy a win-win situation.

And if you have something to pull the other two out of graveyard, you can have all of them with a bit of effort. It can also work great with any cards that have some effects from a graveyard. Unearth, flashback, incarnations like Anger and similar stuff. That way, no matter what your opponent picks, those cards willl always be usefel one way or another.

chimney imp ,wood elemental ,one with nothing and the last card won't matter, cause when your opponent realizes he will face at least one of those 3, he will concede for sure.

Really could be used in any type of deck because it's instant. Too bad the art doesn't stick out.

The ruling on the card says you can look for less than 4 cards, so I think the best things to choose would be Pandemonium and Saproling Burst.

If you wanted to search for 2 more cards I would use Replenish and Attunement but it would be most preferred to just choose the 2 cards you want to go into the graveyard.

This card works awesome with cards that want to go into the graveyard from your library or just want to be in the graveyard. ex: angerwonder also, reanimate targets or flashback spells.

For similar art, see realms uncharted.

I only play Magic online, and now that ME4 is out, I've been having a lot of fun with this card.

Search for: Time Vault, Voltaic Key, Academy Ruins, Reconstruction

The opponent either gives me what I really wanted to search for, or they give me enablers to get those cards back.

If my hand already has a combo piece, I might search for Tinker.

A wonderful card which can help solve almost any puzzle for a deck.

4.5/5

This is probably my favorite card in the entire game. It has it all:

*It's a tutor.
*It's card advantage.
*It's an instant.
*It takes some amount of thought and deck construction to use properly.
*It has fantastic artwork.

The deep, lush blues are almost hypnotic, and they set a perfect tone with the sort of cold and pensive expression of the moonfolk pictured. The little bottles she has somehow reminds me of the painting Six Persimmons.

One thing I really like about this card is that it encourages a diversity of win conditions. I ended up with three of these in my artifact deck and just put in every artifact with a strong non-tap activated-ability-based win condition I could find, and it works wonders.

Me: "End of your tun I play Gifts Ungiven. OK, sort them out."
Them: Looks at my board which consists of two Grand Architects, three Vedalken Certarchs, two Trinket Mages, two Master of Etherium, and three Etherium Sculptors. Then looks at the four cards: Molten-Tail Masticore, Masticore, Memnarch, and Academy Ruins.
Me: "Take your time."
Them: *whimper*

Obviously it's not the fastest game-winning fetch like the Painter's Servant/Grindstone/Academy Ruins/Argivian Restoration combo, but as I've said about other combos, that one makes God kill kittens, and I happen to like kittens.

And for those who want to be REALLY cruel, you could even throw Call to Mind and/or Mnemonic Wall in to the mix, just for the lulz. Make your opponent basically choose between giving you 2 win conditions or giving you 2 more Gifts Ungiven.

With graveyard recursion, this card is a win-win.

I tutor Iona, Shield of Emeria, Inkwell Leviathan,
Woodfall Primus, and Sphinx of the Steel Wind with Reanimate or Exhume and Careful Study in hand and crack an evil smile as my opponent realizes it just doesn't matter XD

This card is ridonkulous, plain and simple. It tutors any card, which is unusual for blue, and puts half of those cards into your hand.

If you're running a 2 card combo and include 4 of both pieces + 4 Gifts Ungiven in the deck, you've basically made it so that one of 8 cards will fill in either half of the combo that you're missing (ie. 2 Gifts Ungiven would allow you to complete the combo, as you could tutor 4 of one piece with one, and 4 of one piece with the other, ensuring you end up with what you need). If you have cards which provide access to your graveyard, then this tutoring is even more ridiculous (considering splashing blue in WB knights to easily get Haakon into my graveyard, then the other three will basically let me get 4 knights of my choice given I'll have access to my graveyard).

I get the feeling though if I pick some up and start running them in casual combo decks (ie. those combos which are really convoluted or very expensive), then my friends are gonna get pretty peeved. ^^

the mimeoplasm

Im gonna snag me Squire, Tahngarth's Glare,Dwarven Pony and the mighty Wood Elemental.
No one can top my picks. NO ONE.

I'm at three, he has a grip full of burn spells, but is tapped out and has no creatures in play.

"EOT Gifts Ungiven."
"Okay, there's nothing you can do . ."
"Showing Iona, Shield of Emeria and Unburial Rites"
"Wait, what? You need to show me *four* cards"
"I failed to find"
"What? Judge!"
Judge > "Whenever you search a hidden zone, you can fail to find cards. This is perfectly fine."
"So how do I choose then?"
"Well, you choose two of these cards and put them in the graveyard"
"Um, I don't want these in the graveyard, can't I fail to find?"
"Not a hidden zone, sorry."
"Ugh. Fine. Put them in the graveyard."
"Okay. My turn. Untap, upkeep, draw, flashback Unburial Rites targeting Iona-"
"I concede."

Gifts Rock is a Legacy deck built around this card's weird advantages.

And it got a huge boost recently. Noxious Revival FTW, you instant-speed topdeck a card Entombed with Gifts during their end step. They never see the Revival coming, once you've tapped out for Gifts.

So why, oh why is the official ruling on this card that you can tutor up less than 4 cards? It opens the door to nasty things because the card effectively reads "search your library for 2 cards with different names and put them into your graveyard". One card being unburial rites and the other being some kind of game-winning creature (like Iona, for example).

I have seen this explained all over the web, and I still don't get it. Wizards/DCI, admit you got it wrong and change the official ruling to reflect the actual text of the card. Not "up to 4 cards" but "4 cards", no ifs, no buts...

Grizzly Bears, Runeclaw Bear, Bear Cub, Forest Bear.

I'M GETTING TWO 2/2 BEARS AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

@Akym
The reason you can pick less than 4 cards is because the word Search always always always means you can fail to find if you wish. So I can search for 4 but only find 2. It's different than Target 4 x, because there has to be 4 targets, and if one fails, then the spell does.


On another subject, Hey burn decks, cut this
Unburial Rites, Sphinx of the Steel Wind

I feel like it should have been up to four cards and your opponent puts half of them rounded up or down as they choose into your graveyard. Too easy abuse the always put 2 of them into the graveyard ruling.

I never liked this card, until I used.

Is just plain simple TOO powerful.

I have and artifact U/B deck, with at least 3 combos, and my search optios are almost always:
Vampiric Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Thinker

Anyways I get one card to look for the Yawgmoth's Will and other card to get the piece I need for the combo.

As I said: TOO powerful.

most mean cards to choose
YAwgmoth's will
regrowth
time vault
voltaic key

This really needed to exile the cards your opponent picks. Right now it's "combo piece, combo piece, thingy that returns combo piece from graveyard, thingy that returns combo piece from graveyard. U mad?"

@Akym: Suppose for the sake of argument that I cast Selective Memory before using this, removing everything from my library but Islands. If I then cast Gifts Ungiven, I would be unable to complete its effect. How do I prove this? Does my opponent get to see my deck? That would be unfair (suppose I'd left eight other cards in there: four copies of two spells he hasn't seen yet and shouldn't get to know how many copies I have of). So the only option is to allow me to claim "oh, not enough cards" without proving it (since needing a third party to verify is even sillier). Which means I can make that claim at any time.

Ok, REALLY?
What's with the makes-no-sense ruling? The whole idea behind this card is to put both you and your opponent into a bind, to make at least one of you THINK every time it is played.
It doesn't say "up to" four cards. Why allow someone to choose ONLY two, thereby forcing the opposition into choosing the very same?

If you really "fail to find" 4 uniquely named cards, the onus should be on you to PROVE it by revealing the hidden zone (library in this case). *** it, that's less retarded than this ruling.

At the very least, this card is a 4 mana {U} double Entomb.
At the very most, this is 2 Entombs and 2 Demonic Tutors all rolled into 1.

WTF.

@Flying-toaster I suppose your opinion supersedes hundreds of tournament placer's

This is the highest rated card in the modern frame. The next highest rated card is Chalice of the Void, followed by Sensei's Divining Top. So much for Kamigawa being "the worst set since Homelands," as one of my friends called it, and definitely not "an insult to the awesomeness that was Mirrodin"

A beautiful gem from the Kamigawa block.

It's so splashable!

@Fictionarious
First of all, read the oracle text.
Second of all, see below for how "Failure to Find" works.
Third, revealing a hidden zone (like your library) is not something I would recommend you try at a DCI-sanctioned event. That's called Looking at Extra Cards and will get you a warning from a judge.

@swords_to_exile
"The reason you can pick less than 4 cards is because the word Search always always always means you can fail to find if you wish. So I can search for 4 but only find 2. It's different than Target 4 x, because there has to be 4 targets, and if one fails, then the spell does."

That's not entirely true. You can only fail to find if the card you search for has to fulfill stated criteria. For example, you can fail to find on Gifts Ungiven (even if the Oracle hadn't updated it to "up to 4 cards") because all of the cards must have different names. Likewise you can fail to find with cards like Survival of the Fittest because the card is required to be a creature. However, as long as your library has cards in it, you can't fail to find with Demonic Tutor, and the like... because the search has no criteria other than that the card be... well... a card.

@Everyone else that doesn't understand "Failure to Find"
Relevant part of the rules:
701.14b 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.

Think about it this way - if you have to prove a card fulfills certain criteria, which you can tell easily by whether or not the card forces you to reveal them to your opponent, then it is possible that you cannot fulfill those criteria, and since you cannot reveal hidden zones, your opponent just has to accept your failure to find.

As a somewhat unrealistic example for Gifts Ungiven, your deck is made up of 57 Islands, 1 Gifts Ungiven, 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and 1 Treasure Hunt. When you cast Gifts Ungiven, you will always fail to find on at least one card: you will only ever find at most 1 Island, 1 Jace, and 1 Treasure Hunt. At the very least you will find 0 cards (if you have no cards left in your library).

Certain cards have to have complex wording to take into account "Failure to Find", such as Signal the Clans, which would be fairly imbalanced if it were just "Search your library for 3 creatures, reveal them, and add one at random to your hand" (functionally the effect) because you could simply fail to find on 2 creatures and add one to your hand for .

You can rig it to make it a win/win for whatever your opponent picks. Definitely too powerful.

@rp 11/26/2011

Iona choosing red? aww man! now my volcanic hammers and incinerates are useless!
Tap 2R, ghostfire targeting you. response?