[Article] It's the Fear! An Interview With David Gearhart

Wastelock is fine against TES and Threshold. In fact, it's quite nice as a go-to play against the combo decks. Without Raven's Crime or Wasteland, you run the risk, especially against combo decks with Orim's Chant and Wipe Away, of even getting Counterbalance up but getting blown out because you don't win in time and they put the nuts together in your mouth. The point isn't how good singular Wasteland is (it's randomly awesome or piss-poor in most matchups equally) but whether the cost of one colorless land is justified by the cost of infinite Wastelands. And yes, just Wasting the opponent is poor, that's why you need some other play to go along with it, like cycling land into recurring a creature or Raven's Crime for the Hymn. Dredge, cast Loam, Waste your land, discard two cards is an incredibly powerful play.

Needs more Demigods, btw.

Waste-lock's good against TES, but you're missing what I was saying.

It's fucking awful as a one of.

You shouldn't blow an Intuition to set it up either. Not when Counterbalance is way better.

Yeah, Raven's Crime is good against TES, I know that. But, playing Raven's Crime makes you more reliant on the graveyard. Which is a bad thing with all the grave hate running around nowadays.

Right. Demigods. Right. I won't even respond to this because it will probably get me warned. So, how about this, I just won't respond.

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Originally Posted by Deep6er

Waste-lock's good against TES, but you're missing what I was saying.

It's fucking awful as a one of.

You shouldn't blow an Intuition to set it up either. Not when Counterbalance is way better.

Yeah, Raven's Crime is good against TES, I know that. But, playing Raven's Crime makes you more reliant on the graveyard. Which is a bad thing with all the grave hate running around nowadays.

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If you don't have either piece, you can't Intuition to set up Counterbalance.

And I'll gladly trade all the opponent's graveyard hate for my singular Raven's Crime. Loam->Waste, Crime, Loam is basically everything you want Counterbalance to do, but you can set it up with a single Intuition. And if they go to heavy graveyard hate, it's not like you don't have the Counterbalance engine to fall back on.

Seriously, that's like saying "I don't like Yawgmoth's Will because I lose to Tormod's Crypt". Sure, but it's just one card, and the power outweighs the disadvantage.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

If you don't have either piece, you can't Intuition to set up Counterbalance.

And I'll gladly trade all the opponent's graveyard hate for my singular Raven's Crime. Loam->Waste, Crime, Loam is basically everything you want Counterbalance to do, but you can set it up with a single Intuition. And if they go to heavy graveyard hate, it's not like you don't have the Counterbalance engine to fall back on.

Seriously, that's like saying "I don't like Yawgmoth's Will because I lose to Tormod's Crypt". Sure, but it's just one card, and the power outweighs the disadvantage.

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Have you played a lot of ITF, Anusien?

I'd like to hear more from emidln in the future.

Maybe something with the legacy all star team? Didn't Bardo do an article about that a while back?

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Originally Posted by Anusien

If you don't have either piece, you can't Intuition to set up Counterbalance.

And I'll gladly trade all the opponent's graveyard hate for my singular Raven's Crime. Loam->Waste, Crime, Loam is basically everything you want Counterbalance to do, but you can set it up with a single Intuition. And if they go to heavy graveyard hate, it's not like you don't have the Counterbalance engine to fall back on.

Seriously, that's like saying "I don't like Yawgmoth's Will because I lose to Tormod's Crypt". Sure, but it's just one card, and the power outweighs the disadvantage.

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Misleading. Counterbalance (given TES's curve) is perfectly fine as a standalone against them. Especially considering things like Brainstorm.

If they hit you with a Crypt, then they've countered Intuition. Extirpate too (even though that card is fucking terrible).

Falling back on the Counterbalance plan after losing an Intuition for nothing is harder.

You're trying to pull the deck into too many directions, which is guaranteed to weaken it. Forcing Intuition to do too much is going to kill you.

Plus, you have a bunch of shitty cards in your deck. Sure, they're good with Intuition, but they're fucking terrible on their own. Needing Intuition to make a bad card better is stupid.

Good article. I enjoyed it as I've enjoyed watching ITF's changes over time. Thanks.

Everyone criticizes ITF's voulnerability to Extirpate by asking "well what if they Extirpate your Tarmogoyfs?", but I can't help but smile inwardly at thinking about Extirpating Counterbalance after an Intuition for 3x CB resolves, ripping the one you got out of your hand. Or doing the same to a 3x Pernicious Deed grab. Has that ever happened, Dave, or do you typically not do the Oshit Intuition postboard when you see black game one?

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Originally Posted by Ebinsugewa

Oh no you didn't.

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No, actually, he didn't. Thank you for pointing that out, IBA.

fixt. :laugh:

Please tell me for the love of all that is holy that you're joking.

No, it's never happened.

In order, the cards that I've had Extirpated:

Tropical Island
Tarmogoyf
Pernicious Deed

I've won every single one of those games. Seriously dude, Extirpate is fucking terrible. Sure, it doesn't stop terrible people from playing it, but they're still terrible for playing it. I like my odds against terrible people, you know, because they're terrible.

In other news, I like spelling the word terrible.

Where did the title, "It's the Fear" come from?




I dunno, my friends and I were working on a Vintage port of oldschool Keeper using LftL and running 4 colors "Keeper v1.5." Not to premume to take credit for the idea -- we'd looked at earlier ITF decklists for inspiration. As we played the deck more and more, the decklist started to look more and more like ITF. Now it's basically scrapped because ITF seems better in all the remaining choices.

But it's a good sign that you're running a good decklist if you can start with Psychatogs or two Morphlings and end up with pretty much the same deck.


I hope that ITF brings back the playskill and wildly branching decision trees that were characteristic of oldschool Magic. I remember situations where I could reasonably Vampiric Tutor for Balance, The Abyss, Mox Sapphire, or Yawgmoth's Will (or four other incredibly diverse cards).

Intuition brings all the fun back of different styles under different circumstances. I'm not a good enough pilot anymore to do anything other than put a Piledriver sideways, but it gives me a lot of hope for the future of Magic that decks like ITF are being built and played by good pilots.

The deck didn't actually have a name for the first tournament that I ever played the deck in (the NoVA Dual Land Draft).

After the tournament, I'm hanging out at Allen's place with Akki (cdr now) who has the deck lists. I tell him to give me mine back to name it. I sit down, put my Ipod on shuffle and start thinking. The very first song that plays is one of my favorites, "It's the Fear" by Within Temptation.

I pieced together Counterbalance and the fear that I had every time I played against the card with Solidarity. Boom, named. Humorously enough, I was looking through the deck at the time, and Counterbalance was the card I was reading when the song came up. Seems like a pretty lucky coincidence. Plus, I like the name a lot.

EDIT: It also tied in nicely to my tournament report which was named, "The Long Forgotten Light at the End of the World" which is a line from "The Islander" by Nightwish another one of my favorite bands. I'm a sucker for power-metal.

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Originally Posted by Deep6er

Please tell me for the love of all that is holy that you're joking.

No, it's never happened.

In order, the cards that I've had Extirpated:

Tropical Island
Tarmogoyf
Pernicious Deed

I've won every single one of those games. Seriously dude, Extirpate is fucking terrible. Sure, it doesn't stop terrible people from playing it, but they're still terrible for playing it. I like my odds against terrible people, you know, because they're terrible.

In other news, I like spelling the word terrible.

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I suppose if Extirpate was floating around everywhere you could just run one or two Living Wishes. Boom, Snag back a Goyf or Trop go to town. LOL gg Extirpate. I'm also gonna have to agree on Dave in general I can't say Extirpate will ever be that awesome. It isn't even a sure thing against Ichorid =/.

Nice article I liked. ITF is a cool deck.

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Originally Posted by Roodmistah

I suppose if Extirpate was floating around everywhere you could just run one or two Living Wishes.

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Except it would be hard to cast a living wish with no tropical island. But I do agree with the viewpoint towards extirpate.

Very well done !!!

I liked the article and the deck !!!

Very interesting, how deck got its title !!!

@Deep6er : Nightwish and Within Temptation, thats my taste too, good choices.:cool:

@Deep6er: Doctor, Doctor, Doctor!

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Originally Posted by rsaunder

@Deep6er: Doctor, Doctor, Doctor!

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*Ahem*.

It would better if it were on video or in a podcast....

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Originally Posted by mercenarybdu

It would better if it were on video or in a podcast....

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For illiterate people, yes.