[Deck & Primer] UGB Intuition-Thresh

Mr. Shine, your deck sounds significantly different.

From what I've read so far, you don't have Ponder, Noble Hierarch, or Daze. Your early game is replaced with Spell Snare and Mana Leak instead.

You run a much larger density of removal, with 3 EE's and some amount of Vedalken Shackles.

You aren't running Worm Harvest, and I'm assuming you aren't running any other recurring/tutorable win conditions either (aside from possible Ruins/Shackles shenanigans).

These sort of differences are why our matchups differ.

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I think where I might also have been coming up short is in my underplaying of Loam

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Against control decks, yes. Loam/Sandbar/Sandbar is the same amount of draw power as Standstill, except your casting it every turn. Casting Worm Harvest every turn is also a savage beating.

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Not the best playing, but this is where WH/Gigapede come in to maximize the available CA from Loam as well as synergy with the wincon of choice (outside of Knight and Goyf)

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Lonely Sandbar also maximixes the available CA from Loam. Once you have the mana available to do so, why would you draw 1 card from the top every turn when you can draw 2 from the top AND make a land drop every turn? Loam/Sandbar/Sandbar is a very solid initial Intuition pile for this very reason. No need to re-invent the wheel when you can just take a page out of Aggro Loam's handbook. Benefit here is that instead of running 6-8 cycle lands, I only need to run 2 for the same/similar effect.

But yes, WH/Gigapede also helps maximize the CA from Loam.

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While I should probably just try it out myself, I'm not convinced of Daze's place in this kind of list; as I see it, Daze is best used to protect early threats (in whatever form they are in) in situations where where losing tempo is minor compared to resolving said threat. That said, I prefer to swap in some less conditional countermagic because I dont really see people tapping out to deal with our threats that dont even come out until T3. Although, how often do you use it to back up EOT3 Intuition?

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Daze is so strong in my deck. I run Noble Hierarch to help offset any sort of tempo loss from returning a land to hand. Daze helps make sure that an early Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary, and especially Intuition, can resolve. Wasteland makes Daze a relevant counter past the early game and into the midgame.

The only time that being set back a land drop really matters is when I'm attempting to set up the Intuition/Loam engine. Outside of the Intution/Loam engine, this deck (my list, anyway) is an aggro/control deck, not a control deck. Daze is very good at countering spells when I want to curve out early to cast cantrips/creatures/etc.

I don't think Daze is going to work out in your list. You are playing a much slower control version, and you want to keep making land drops to effectively use EE and Shackles. You are also staying untapped on your early turns to cast Spell Snare and Mana Leak, where I'm curving out to cast cantrips/creatures/etc.

Also, Noble Hierarch enables turn 2 Knight of the Reliquary and turn 2 Intuition, which your list lacks. Having Daze to protect either of those plays is extremely important in alot of situations.

I think you should try to playtest with my deck as is, without making any changes. That way, you can make comparisons to your list and my list and then come to your own conclusions, rather than trying to plug things like Daze into your list and having them fail miserably.

tl;dr Without the playsets of Noble Hierarch and Wasteland, Daze is much weaker. I wouldn't recommend trying it without those.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to test your list. I sense an interesting hybrid between the two, and there is definitely room to tailor the deck to the metagame as it changes. Being someone who loves to beat aggro, I'd definitely start somewhere in the area of fitting in some more explosives and a Maze of Ith. I like the look of Noble Hierarch, though.

Anyway, I'll get back to you in a bit, I'm going to be out of town for the week so no magic for now :P

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Being someone who loves to beat aggro, I'd definitely start somewhere in the area of fitting in some more explosives and a Maze of Ith.

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I never said I don't beat aggro. I said I don't crush aggro.

I also think that 1 Maze of Ith and 2-3 (additional) EE's would be a good idea in my sideboard.

Well, I'm back from my extended holiday. Looks like a lot of testing awaits me.

Let me begin by saying that I am not convinced that getting rid of black is necessarily a better way forward. I will continue tinkering with the UGB formation, although I will also give Hanni's UGW version a spin. For now, I'm comfortable entertaining both configurations within the purview of this thread. Having been able to do some minimal testing since my return, I have a few comments to make--but they all bear on the UGB version of the deck.

The first thing that I have to say is that I think Hanni is right about Raven's Crime no longer being worth its weight--it used to be a formidable weapon against control-oriented decks, but it simply no longer really does the trick against today's control decks. Accordingly, I am using its slot to test Unearth, as was suggested earlier.

With Unearth, however, a few other changes become necessary. The first task is to up the Witness count; to that end, I am cutting Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Its primary synergy was with Raven's Crime, meaning that it's now much less useful. That gives us +1 Witness. I don't feel that two Witnesses suffice to guarantee their (and Unearth's) full exploitation, however, and so I decided to cut Genesis (tear) in favour of a third Witness. While Genesis is still a better source of recursion than Stronghold, it's a little weaker without Nimble Mongoose any more, and it would be excessive and too hard to set up given the new sources of recursion (Witness and Unearth). I have opted to keep Stronghold at the moment, since it adds redundancy to the recursion plan.

With those changes in place, I have decided to replace Shriekmaw with Fleshbag Marauder, which benefits from Unearth and helps give a small chance of victory against creatures with Shroud. I have temporarily relegated Shriekmaw to the sideboard, where I have also eliminated the last two Blasts, leaving one free slot that I'm not yet sure how to fill. I suppose the sideboard will change depending on the metagame's shift anyway.

In the limited testing that I did just now, the changes have proven very beneficial, and the deck has seemed more streamlined. Unearth is particularly strong, and is well complemented by Intuition. I don't know whether more than one is desirable, since it would open up the deck to a wider range of hate and increase its dependency on creatures dying, but the one copy is working fantastically well at present. I just finished a series of six games against RW Vial-Goblins, losing 2-1 the first time around and winning 2-1 the second. Unearth and Eternal Witness were central to all three wins. I hesitate to say much more, since more testing is required, but I am very pleased with the deck's newfound engine. Now, to figure out how to beat Jace 2.0 control consistently.

Thanks for your comments and input, and keep it coming. Hanni & co.: don't forget to update with your UGW testing results! I'll be testing it myself soon-ish, and will feel competent to comment then.

Well, after some more testing, I think that the Witness/Unearth plan is a keeper for the UGB version of the deck. By far my favourite move has been to cast Intuition for Witness/Witness/Unearth, and then proceed reanimate both Witnesses at once and either get Unearth or something else back again. More than once, I've used that trick for more or less infinite (well, infinitely recurring) chump-blockers. It also allows Witness to take on a much more aggressive role within the deck, giving you a larger army faster than any non-aggro deck (giving you a *slightly* better chance versus Jace 2.0). Alternately, it allows for better next-turn-delivery Intuition piles with Witness/Unearth/Card X.

My next step is to test enough to amend the primer, and then to test out the UGW version that's been proposed.

Well, after some more testing, I think that the Witness/Unearth plan is a keeper for the UGB version of the deck. By far my favourite move has been to cast Intuition for Witness/Witness/Unearth, and then proceed reanimate both Witnesses at once and either get Unearth or something else back again. More than once, I've used that trick for more or less infinite (well, infinitely recurring) chump-blockers. It also allows Witness to take on a much more aggressive role within the deck, giving you a larger army faster than any non-aggro deck (giving you a *slightly* better chance versus Jace 2.0). Alternately, it allows for better next-turn-delivery Intuition piles with Witness/Unearth/Card X.

My next step is to test enough to amend the primer, and then to test out the UGW version that's been proposed.

Well, I haven't done much of what I planned. I'm still tinkering with the UGB version of the deck, having decided that although Witness + Unearth is an awesome plan/complement. I have also decided, however, that I just can't go on with the mana curve and mana base the way they are: it's too inconsistent.

Don't get me wrong, it works, and it works well enough, but there's no room for error. I still lose a number of games to poor opening hands which need to be mulled to five or four. The result is that playing the deck is more complicated than it should be, ideally, which is a real downside. As such, I have decided to take a radical step to fix the problem: I'm cutting Deed entirely (relegating it to the sideboard for now) and bumping the land count by two (one Catacombs, one Bayou). The final slot could go back to Deed or EE as an extra out against Zoo before boarding. As an alternative, I'm testing a single copy of Submerge (or I suppose it could remain empty, but I'm fairly committed to 61 cards, and it doesn't make much difference to the deck's inner workings). I'm keeping Fleshbag Marauder in the main (rather than Shriekmaw) for now.

EDIT: There is, of course, a possibility that I'd dismissed before: replacing the Deeds with the Natural Order/Progenitus combo. That would help deal with Jace, at any rate. I'll give it whirl.

My sideboard is also radically different, but it's all for testing against the shifting metagame. I wouldn't say it's quite up to snuff yet. It's currently heavy against the graveyard, but fairly light against combo.

I'll be having a look at the white option later today, and starting on the primer update for real.

Well, I should apologize for dismissing the NO-Prog combo when it was suggested a few months ago, and then again more recently. Those of you who suggested it were right: the deck is much better with it in place (especially since I now run 3x Witnesses and 1x Unearth). The consistency with which I can call it up is staggering, and it goes a long way towards making difficult matchups become much, much easier (JaceII isn't as much of a death sentence--YAY!). I think that's definitely the way to go with the deck that I've been touting these last couple years (i.e. UGB). The downside, of course, is that the deck is getting horrendously (prohibitively) expensive to build. I'm updating my primer to reflect these changes: I should be done with that in the next week or two, I think. In the meantime, the list I've been testing looks like this:

UGB River Rock

Lands (18)

3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
3 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
1 Wasteland


Creatures (16)

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Eternal Witness
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Shriekmaw (works a little better with NO than Marauder, a little worse with Unearth)
1 Progenitus
1 Empyrial Archangel (it's either this or the fourth Brainstorm. I haven't felt BS' absence, though, and maindecking it does have its up-sides.)


Spells (28)

4 Force of Will
3 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Intuition
3 Daze
3 Natural Order
3 Snuff Out
3 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Unearth
1 Life from the Loam


Sideboard (15)

4 Chalice of the Void
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1x Open Slot


I still haven't finished testing the white splash suggested by Hanni: I got distracted, and I'm just one person. Now that I'm done my more comprehensive testing of Natural Order and Progenitus, that's what I'll be doing these next few days. Well, that, and my primer update. Should I just start a new thread, do you think?

I love how this deck is always changing, always evolving. The general shell of the deck allows for so much customization, whether it be a U/G/b list with Pernicious Deed, or a U/G/w list with Knight of the Reliquary.

I've been playing around with nothing but Vengevine lately, and it feels so reminiscent of this deck. I mean, it runs the same colors (U/G/b) and Intuition. The difference is that I've cut the slow Loam engine for the extremely fast Vengevine engine. It's funny just how similar this deck (Intuition Thresh) is to my Vengevine list.

What do you think about this, Goas?

U/B/g Vengeghast
Intuition Vengevine

// Lands
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
4 [R] Underground Sea
2 [A] Tropical Island
2 [R] Bayou
1 [UNH] Island
1 [UNH] Swamp

// Creatures
4 [7E] Birds of Paradise
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [TO] Putrid Imp
4 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [ROE] Vengevine
3 [ZEN] Bloodghast
1 [FNM] Wonder

// Spells
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [TE] Intuition
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [NE] Daze
3 [AP] Pernicious Deed

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 3 [FNM] Cabal Therapy
SB: 3 [WWK] Nature's Claim
SB: 3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 [RAV] Darkblast
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam

My normal list maindecks Entombs in place of the Pernicious Deeds for more broken starts, but I think Pernicious Deed has amazing synergy with Vengevines and Bloodghasts. Deed won't even hit Vengevines unless u pop it for 4+ (which is rare), and Bloodghast's can easily come back after a Deed.

This deck looks and feels almost exactly like Intuition Thresh, except it replaces the slow Loam engine with the faster (and more explosive) Vengevine and Bloodghast engines. The singleton Loam in the graveyard is mostly unecessary, but I'll leave it for now.

I'm curious to see what you think, Goas.

EDIT: After further testing, MD Entomb's are in fact better, but I've cut the Nature's Claim's from the sideboard for Pernicious Deed because they are extremely strong. The single Loam is junk, and I cut the Extirpate's down to 3. That leaves 2 free slots in the sideboard.