[Deck] Canadian Thresh (a.k.a. RUG Tempo, Tempo Thresh)
Tempo Threshold Primer
by Shugyosha
Prelude
Threshold decks in the current metagame are rarely distinguished by color alone due to a growing number of card combinations that are usually more defining for the deck than the splash color one adds to the basic UG shell.
The card combination Stifle / Wasteland is the key feature of the so called Tempo Threshold archetype designed by Lam Phan. Stifle's primary use during the first few turns of the game is to counter fetchland activations while Wastelands take care of played non-basic lands to effectively deny your opponent to participate in the game. As you won't always have all the tools to disrupt your opponent's landbase reliably, incoming spells are met by a very powerful suite of counterspells that can be played while using Wastelands due to the low costs: Daze, Spell Snare and Force of Will. Depending on variant and splash color there are also several other ways to deal with spells that will be discussed in detail below. After you wreaked havoc in the earlygame your creatures hit the board (or the Mongoose dropped early will finally have threshold) and make short work of the weakened opponent.
Well, so much for the gameplan. As you might know, plans rarely survive first contact with an enemy and same holds true for the strategy of Tempo Threshold. Cards like Counterbalance, Humility, Solitary Confinement, Moat, creatures of similar or higher powerlevel or simply a very solid manabase can push this archetype into a defensive role quickly. That's the reason why Tempo Threshold usually dedicates several slots to flexible answers to such problems. Within the archetype Tempo Threshold can be easily distinguished by those slots that lead to different mid- to lategame plans (although you don't want to get into the lategame).
This Primer will give you a basic overview of the established variants, their advantages and disadvantages compared to each other and some insight how to use certain key cards. Sideboards and when to play which variant will also be discussed in a more general way at the end of the article. Please keep in mind that the following text is addressed mostly to readers that are not as familiar with Tempo Threshold as longtime players of the deck.
Basic list
Tempo Threshold first surfaced at Gencon in 2007 without a splashcolor:
1 Breeding Pool
4 Tropical Island
2 Island
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta (later lists added a Forest for a Fetch)
4 Wasteland
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Werebear
4 Brainstorm
4 Portent (became Ponder, see below)
4 Predict
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare
4 Stifle
1 Rushing River
1 Snapback (became Wipe Away pretty quick)
The UG list shuns removal in order to play 12 creatures and drawspells which lead to a very aggressive and straightforward playstyle. Creatures that hit the board have to be raced. The two bouncespells are your only way to deal with any resolved problem encountered and should be used with great care. Just bouncing a permanent to “gain tempo” without the possibility to counter it, destroying the lands needed to replay it or deal a deadly blow in its absence is something you should avoid. Even bouncing your own creature in face of removal is usually a bad idea as you play enough replacements but loose one of your two most flexible outs. Therefore decks with a high permanent density like beatdown (with many low cost creatures and burn as removal) can give UG a headache. If the aggressive gameplan doesn't come together quickly it is often difficult for the deck to get the last points of damage through a stalled board.
A potent way to combat fast decks (with their low manacurve) is Counterbalance/Top which is therefore often played in the sideboard. So UG can simply switches roles and becomes the control deck after sideboarding. The problem of resolved permanents remain though.
A word about Portent: It has been replaced in every Threshold deck since Ponder has been printed. Although you can draw a beater or a Wasteland directly in your turn with Ponder, there are still unique advantages to run Portent. Looking at the top cards of your opponents library when he desperately needs a land can win you the game alone as you sometimes simply timewalk for one blue mana. Used in conjunction with Predict you can even mill his best card away which seems like a “danger of cool things” situation but actually happens more often than one might expect. The key is to play your drawspells only when you can maximize their effect (or when you are in trouble of course). Especially Predict shouldn't be played blindly.
My teammate and I made the test once and ran UG with Ponder (him) and Portent (me). After the seven rounds of the tournament neither seemed better or worse.
Red variant a.k.a. Canadian Threshold
The reason for red seems evident when you read about the weaknesses of UG Tempo Threshold. It gives you access to Burn which not only acts as removal but can deal the last points of damage if the board is stalled or looks bad:
4 Tropical Island
4 Volcanic Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare
4 Stifle
1 Rushing River
1 Wipe Away
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fire / Ice
As you can see eight burnspells replaced four creatures/drawspells which leaves us with a slightly less aggressive list after the initial disrupting strategy because you drop less creatures. Therefore we get more flexible cards to end the game and deal with creature heavy decks. In addition to burn the Ice side of Fire / Ice can support the early disruption strategy by tapping lands without card disadvantage as well as tap attackers and dig for answers on the defense or tap blockers to deal more damage. The two bouncespells are still included for the multitude of cards that burn cannot deal with.
But as brutal as Canadian Threshold is there are still some serious issues to address. First of all compare the landbase of UG and UGR. You will see that the red variant's manabase is very easy to attack too. Although you have Spell Snares (Sinkhole, Life from the Loam -> Wasteland), Stifle (Wasteland) and Fetchlands to delay attacks on your own manabase the core of the problem is that you are defending your manabase instead of disrupting your opponent's manabase as you have no basic lands to fall back to.
The following (tested) manabase could be played in certain LD heavy metagames:
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Flooded Strand/Polluted Delta
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
Another problem is the low creature count. As you can't always mulligan to get a creature there can be agonizing games where you left only ruins of your opponent's earlygame attempts but have no creature to take advantage of the situation. Problems got worse with the increased number of removal people seem to play nowadays (Path to Exile as 5th-6th Swords comes to mind). The Shroud ability of your Geese helps to circumvent removal a bit but Mongoose is easily trumped by today's creatures.
I've cut one Fire / Ice to add a Vendilion Clique which seems marginal at first but adds a lot of flexibility. Flash helps you to keep your mana open for countermagic during your opponent's turn and seeing the hand of your opponent is one of the most underrated aspects of many cards (be it discard, Tidehollow Sculler or Clique). Snatching a dredged Loam or another key card out of your opponent's hand is priceless, too. Last but not least a three power flyer can get a lot of damage through in Legacy, where small flyers are rare and flying finishers are hard to cast against a manadenial-deck. Similar reasons and the frailty against a resolved Counterbalance lead some people to add two copies of Trygon Predator main which were rarely good in my testing. Three mana for a creature without Flash often seems too much and Predator still has to live a turn before he has an impact on the board. The same reasoning holds true for Lorescale Coatl by the way which is too expensive for a mostly slow growing threat. Clique in comparison can take care of removal (Sorcery speed or against bad players) and has done something even if it hits the yard before it attacks.
Other possible Creatures that have been used within my Team to some success are Terravore and Werebear. Vore is sadly too hard to cast in a build splashing a third color however but is nice in UG (Relic hurts you anyways). Cutting some Fire / Ice for Werebear gives you the best of both worlds as your manabase becomes indirectly more stable, you have all the creatures you need to be aggressive and you keep some removal/reach (Bolts). All these changes depend on certain metagames to unfold their full potential with Clique being the Joker for unknown metagames.
Black variant
The dark version of Tempo Threshold is usually played because of three reasons. First of all you don't need to run four Werebears and four Predicts each when you can run Dark Confidant instead. The invitational wizard adds a great deal of power to the deck by providing you with more cards for lifepoints which is usually the most expendable resource of an aggressive deck and by being a small beater. The second reason is the addition of hard removal spells like Smother, Diabolic Edict and Ghastly Demise. The final, third reason is the large amount of cards available to adjust your list to the metagame: Discard against control decks (including CounterTop), Engineered Plague as a permanent solution for tribal strategies and Extirpates/Jailers against graveyard-dependant decks.
All of these elements can be splitted between maindeck and sideboard as you see fit. Especially discard and Extirpate are well paired with the aggressive nature of the deck by snatching draw spells to deny manafixing or removing a playset of duals. Again, looking at the hand of your opponent gives you a good idea at which direction your game is heading.
The following list is one I would play in an unknown meta if I had decided to play UGb:
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Island
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
4 Stifle
4 Smother
3 Thoughtseize
1 Rushing River
The disadvantages of the black variant arise from the aforementioned cards mostly. Lifeloss from Confidant/Thoughtseize together with less and slower removal (in comparison to UGr) weakens the aggromatchup again. Confidant, Thoughtseize and also Duress can be bad topdecks.
The changed color priority can also lead to problems: Although the underlying structure of the manabase is basically the same as with Canadian Threshold you will need black earlier than red which can lead to difficult Fetchland decisions and dead green/black cards in your hand. Cutting off Canadian Threshold from red means cutting it off from four cards and four options (Fire / Ice) which are all removal/reach. With black Threshold your splashcolor has draw, creatures, discard and removal.
Team America
Another deck which can be more or less defined as Tempo Threshold is the following list by Dave Gearhart (Deep6er) and Dan Signorini (Nitewolf9):
1 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tombstalker
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
4 Sinkhole
4 Thoughtseize
4 Snuff Out
Not playing Confidant opens another route with Tombstalker and Snuff Out. The new two mana drop instead of Confidant is Sinkhole which further intensifies the manadenial strategy but also (together with Stalker) shifts the deck's focus more on disruption as the usual spotremoval can now hit all your creatures.
Overall Team America has or should have a more explosive opening game and can keep up the tempo/disruption aspect quite well due to Discard, Sinkhole and Snuff Out as another “free” spell. In addition to that Stalker and Snuff Out don't care about Counterbalance further strengthening the matchups against the control part of the metagame. As with the aforementioned UG and UGb lists Team America also has problems with aggro decks due to few creautures and lifeloss. For more information see the Team America thread.
White variant
Until today no UGw Tempo Threshold list has been consistently good in tournament play. White hasn't much to offer for Tempo Threshold compared to the other colors as its removal works against your gameplan. Knight of the Reliquary is too expensive and clumsy for the Wasteland tutor effect, Jotun Grunt is slow and shrinks the own creatures. The only creature worthwhile seems to be Qasali Pridemage as the guy is seriously undercosted for its effect, solves Goyfstalls and kills annoying cards like Counterbalance (sometimes) and Chalice @ 1. Still the question remains why one shouldn't just add CounterTop to the mix and play in a more controllish fashion.
