[Deck] Funky Thresh (the new sexiness)

[thefreakaccident]

Well recently I've gotten bored with all of the tournies being completely composed of top tear decks (gobbos and Thresh), although I have my own threshold varient. I have played for almost 6 years now and have always come to the same conclusion; the best deck one can make is aggro-control. I used to play a Pikula-like deck containing Braids, Cabal Minion. I have had great success with that deck in the past (but it flops to 2 of the teir 1 decks which is a BIG problem). I also played some combo decks, some being Belcher and Iggy Poop. Recently I began playing with a new varient of thresh though (having a great matchup against all three teir decks and many other decks as well). This is the list for now and the matchup annalysis will come after.

Lands// 18
2 polluted Delta
3 flooded Strand
2 windswept Heath
3 tropical island
2 tundra
3 underground sea
1 forest
1 island
1 plains

Creatures// 14
4 werebear
4 nimble mongoose
3 meddling mage
3 Dark confidant

countermagic// 9
4 Force of Will
3 counterspell
2 Daze

board control// 8
3 swords to plowshares
2 darkblast
3 stifle

Cantrips// 11
4 portent
4 brainstorm
3 syrum visions

Side Board//
3 engineered plague
3 leyline of the void
2 phyrexian furnace
3 sacred ground
4 energy flux

Match annalysis:

Goblins:
55/45 preboard (my favour)
I have as many answers/ threats as they have threats. Usually the two most threatening things they have to offer are ringleader and vial. These are the two most painful cards they have in the deck. Everything else can be overlooked, but once they are able to resolve one or the other the game is lost, for I can no longer control what they play and I simply cannot keep up with the serious card advantage gained by a single ringleader, but if those two cards are kept at bay then the match is quite winnable, because they have no 'real' threats anymore.
70/30 Postboard (my favour)
I usually board like this -3 Confidant (Bob) +3 plague
The game is the same, but I have 3 bombs in the deck that I can dig for if need be and cripple my opponent.

Thresh (UGW & UGR)
70/30 Preboard (my favour)
We have the same counter/ disruption, but I have more. I usually get into a slight standstill with them until confidant comes online and they become overwhelmed due to my card advantage gained.
80/20 Postboard (my favour)
I now have leylines and fernaces (which they may have as well, but I can go without the grave). It turns into a battle with 1/1's and 2/2's instead of 3/3's and 4/4's. The leyline usually spells GG anyways though.

Solidarity
60/40 Preboard (my favour)
I have counter, stifles, and mages main board to deal with their high tide comboing evilness. But even with all of this extreme blockage I have had a leathal brainfreeze resolve before (which really makes me sad to see).
60/40 Post board (my favour)
It stays the same because neither decks have a real good side board against one another.

Rifter
40/60 preboard (their favour)
If I get the counter/mage awesome sauce that I need I can win, but they simply have way too many bombs for this deck to handle (Wrath, Rift, Humility). Thresh in general just cannot take the extreme punishment; plus there have been countless time when they have cycled a decree for like 7 dudes when I do not have a stifle.
20/80 postboard (their favour) They get to board in massive grave/creature hate when you have nothin'.

Pikula
30/70 preboard (their favour)
All thresh decks have a bad matchup against Deadguy Ale. The discard and the LD are just way too much for the fragile mana base to handle. Yuo can still win due to early mongeese (which they cannot touch) and early disruption.
45/55 postboard (their favour)
The game looks the same except I now have an ace in the hole (sacred Ground). Once I lay down the sacred ground I basically win because they cannot disrupt my mana base anymore (which is the only reason the deck can beat thresh in the first place)

Fish (BU WU)
90/10 preboard (my favour)
We have the same counter/draw ratio, but my creatures are much larger and I have MD darkblasts which have the potential to kill all of their creatures all by its' lonesome.
90/10 postboard (my favour)
Same as before except they now have graveyard hate and I have plague which cleans them up quite nicely.

there are many other decks I can talk about (because I have done extensive testing), but no one wants to read a thousand words worth of text.
so discuss, insult, criticize, or actually give helpful meaningful appreciated advise (instead of attacking me like a wounded animal).

[Cait_Sith]

Umm ok, some questions on the matchups.

You are running a 4 Color Thresh deck. Goblins runs Wasteland and Port normally. How is it that you never seem to be colored screwed? You don't even have a basic swamp to fetch so they can easily turn off your black mana. I am confused then how this magically adds on 10%.

Okay, so according to your post you run more removal than UGw and UGr Thresh. Most builds run pieces of removal, you run 5. That isn't a godlike difference. Further more 2 pieces of your removal do virtually nothing once they achieve Thresh. You actually run fewer counterspells than most Thresh builds (10-12 is the industry average now) and fewer cantrips which makes filling your graveyard slower without Darkblast. Also, have 3 copies of one card that COULD provide more card advantage does not automatically make your deck far superior. Remember you will almost ALWAYS lose at least some life to Confidant, ad thanks to 4 Force of Will it could easily kill you.

Your Solidarity MU seems low, but don't go own about OMG I CAN CRUSH THIS when you boast a 60% MU. You make it sound like them winning is a rarity when your numbers say it is distinctly possible.

You Rifter MU dropped slightly also from lower counterspells, but this is understandable.

Sacred Ground does not stop DGA dead. They can attack your hand until they Vindicate the Sacred Ground and then chew up your mana base.

Edit: You double threaded, and welcome to the Source.

[sammiel]

Fish (BU WU)
90/10 preboard (my favour)
We have the same counter/draw ratio, but my creatures are much larger and I have MD darkblasts which have the potential to kill all of their creatures all by its' lonesome.
90/10 postboard (my favour)
Same as before except they now have graveyard hate and I have plague which cleans them up quite nicely.

Heh, no.

That's all that really needs to be said, but I'm sure a mod would rightfully jump all over my ass if I didn't include anything more.

You either playtested against a terrible build/player of fish, or you didn't playtest at all and just made up your results. Judging from the sweeping generalizations you make, and the fact that you SB plague in against fish, it seems to pretty obviously be the latter. In addition, there are many different builds of fish, and there is absolutely no way you can claim a 90% win rate against all of them.

You have a suboptimal cantrip base, a sideboard thats all over the place, and lack the game-finishing power of enforcer.

Starting with your cantrips: I'm sure there are people who will disagree with me, but I can't imagine playing threshold without mental note. There are decks in the format that you *lose* against if the game goes late, and no spell in threshold arsenal helps that more than mental note. Portent is just bad. I don't like Predict, but I would play it over Portent.


chalice/trinisphere destroys you, wasteland destroys you, your goblin match is nowhere near as good as you claim it is, in short, this is strictly worse than good threshold.

[morgan_coke]

you've gotta cut the white if you want confidant. i tried to port thresh to extended, experimenting with all three color splashes (ugr, ugw, and ugb), and confidant is awesome in this deck, but four colors is just way too much. Nether Traitor actually makes a somewhat nice addition to the deck, especially if you're running mental notes like you should be. you're also making a mistake by running more Counterspells and fewer Daze. One of the best things about Daze is that even if they have mana up to pay it, it will still stop sinkhole and vindicate by just bouncing the land. Sacred ground is pretty much junk. If you want to combat LD, run some LftLs. they not only make further LD fairly pointless, they fill you hand with cards you can pitch to brainstorms and time walk the ld players gy.

[Nydaeli]

The thread from a little while ago on U/G/b/x Threshold (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4029) might be helpful, especially Mr. Nightmare's lists, which look quite similar to what you have.

Your matchup percentages are really, really questionable. Consider:
- UWB Fish runs Jotun Grunt. Then again, you seem to be referring to some really janky Fish variant that runs all 1/1's or something.
- Few Threshold variants have positive Goblins matchups. In your list, Confidants and Mages are essentially dead against Goblins. Stifle and Darkblast should help some, but I still doubt that it is better than 50/50.
- There is no way the pseudo-mirror is so drastically in your favor, even if you do have a slight edge and decent post-board hate.

Lastly, the fourth STP should definitely be included. The only reason I can think of not to run it is so you can name it with Mage, which may be your rationale, but I think it's still correct to run 4.

[troopatroop]

Fish (BU WU)
90/10 preboard (my favour)
We have the same counter/draw ratio, but my creatures are much larger and I have MD darkblasts which have the potential to kill all of their creatures all by its' lonesome.
90/10 postboard (my favour)
Same as before except they now have graveyard hate and I have plague which cleans them up quite nicely.

there are many other decks I can talk about (because I have done extensive testing), but no one wants to read a thousand words worth of text.
so discuss, insult, criticize, or actually give helpful meaningful appreciated advise (instead of attacking me like a wounded animal).

I lol'd. 90/10 huh? EXTENSIVE testing.

[thefreakaccident]

I did expect the hostility of the brood to come out but this is to be expected. To those obvious fish fans who are attacking me; beleive it or not fish does not have an extremely good matchup vs. thresh (I usually only see UW and UR in my meta never having playtested vs 3c or non-blue varients), the matchup here is good because the backsides of most of my opps creatures have been 1 (see dark blast implications?). I didn't meen to be offending to anyone (which obviously I was), but these were my results that I have gotten from playtesting (albeit I have only had the deck for a year now, which isn't long at all for playtesting). The goblin LD seudo disruption isn't that much of a devastation, because I can keep a fetch in hand (beleive it or not). The deck isn't perfect (infact against stax I basically scoop), I just liked it. So if anyone is going to post anymore on this thread I have to ask that you give advice or helpful criticism, or just don't post.

IF YOU AREN'T PART OF THE SOLUTION YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!!!!!

[lukatron2]

one suggestion I had for you...swords to plowshares is the best single creature removal spell ever printed and I can't really see any reason not to run 4...also, seems as though darkblast is just a meta call for you, which I suppose is good, but in all actuallity, its not too hot against gobbos...all their important/good goblins have a toughness of 2, so unless you're double darkblasting them, its not that hot against gobbos, and it isn't really good against thresh after they get thresh...sure darkblast helps get thresh a little but is it really that hot without plague?...also, I'm not a huge fish fan...I actually HATE "hanni fish" but maybe the fish decks you're testing against are sub-optimal builds...I mean no offense but IF your match up IS infact 90\10 (I believe you), the builds you're testing against are probably pretty crappy (no offense)

[Lego]

Yes, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here and talk about the Fish matchup. I'll ignore the others for now. I've just got to say it because inflated matchup percentages are one of my biggest pet peeves: going 90/10 with any deck against any other deck is incredibly difficult. This means that for every 10 games you play against Fish, you win 9 of them. Most decks goldfish 90/10... you're going to lose one game in 10 to manascrew or mulliganing or just bad draws. I'm not saying it's impossible, just incredibly difficult. It requires something along the lines of Solidarity versus Life (which is probably more like 95/5, but that's neither here nor there).

I'm trying to understand why you find Engineered Plague so effective versus Fish... the fish decks I've been seeing recently have a creature base of Azorius Guildmage, Meddling Mage, Dark Confidant, Mother of Runes, and Jotun Grunt. Name Wizards and you kill Confidant and make the Mages 1/1s. Name Cleric and you hit Mother of Runs. Sure, not a horrible trade-off, but certainly not game winning.

You're not testing against something like Grim Lavamancer, Stormscape Apprentice, Meddling Mage, Voidmage Prodigy, Dark Confidant, are you? I could see how Engineered Plague would be good there, but I can't see how keeping bad decks in your playtesting lineup improves your deck.

[thefreakaccident]

For the most part (in my playtesting) as I have said I generally see UR fish creatures usually being..
2 voidmage prodigy
4 lavamancer
4 spiketail
4 cloud of faieries
or at least something close to that extent.
the UBW build has only recently began to be played here in San Diego (where the only innovative decks are being created). I play according to the meta i'm in not the dream ones you guys have in mind 1/3 gobb 1/3 thresh 1/3 solidarity...

As for everyone else, most people here haven't began to start with those such creature bases, so I will playtest for a week or so against those you have listed and see where it lies. The UR matchup is for the record (as of now) good.

[thefreakaccident]

I will try to fit more swords into the deck (if anyone would have any suggestions as to how to fit the fourth into the deck). I refuse to add more cards than 60, because anything above the card count of 60 generally is sub optimal. I will say that the fourth swords would be quite nice to have.
Does anyone have any good advice besides the guy with the sword Idea, or is it just gunna be criticism from here on out...
I just wanna know if I should ever post here again, because I'm not going to want to If i'm going to get no positive outcome...
maybe -2 darkblasts +1 swords +1 confidant; just an idea someone plz give me some advise (not another offensive attack). IBA

[Nightmare]

Matchup Percentages inflated.
Claims of "The only innovative decks are created in San Diego."
Sparse use of the Shift Key.

All together, enough to get the thread locked. Please read the Forum Rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/announcement.php?f=24) before continuing your posting, thank you.