AK Scroll Control (Urb Drain Tendrils) *Codename: Bill Cosby

[Evenpence]

This deck is extremely versatile, and will most likely be a mainstay and a very popular addition and deck within Vintage for quite some time. I expect it to be just as popular if not moreso than Gifts.

Why would I make this radical claim?

I believe the following points, and note these are all opinions except for perhaps no. 2.

1) The deck does everything Gifts wants to do just a little bit better.
2) It has a great Gifts matchup.
3) It is easier to play than Gifts.
4) It is funner to play than Gifts.

So, I'm sure you want to see the decklist by now. Here you go.

14 Lands
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria

9 Artifact Accelerants
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
5 Moxes

24 Base Blue Cards
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge

5 Other Blue Instants
2 Misdirection
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall

8 Other
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Time Walk
1 Burning Wish
1 Recoup
1 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard: (any of the following and more that you want)
Many Empty the Warrens
Timetwister
FTKs
REBs
Duresses
Echoing Ruin
Mind's Desire
1 Tendrils of Agony
you know, normal stuff.

Some talk about the deck:

I) Intuition/AK. Think of this deck like Gifts, but with Intuition in the Gifts slot. Intuition does everything Gifts wants to do and much more.

a) Early game: It is 2U compared to 3U. This almost always equates to being a turn faster. This is important because while Gifts is setting up turn 2 to play Gifts, you might have already played Intuition turn 1. If they're setting up for a turn 3 Gifts (which is normal) you've almost assuredly already cast a turn 2 Intuition. It's worth noting that you don't have to go for AKs - that you can actually just win by getting mana or tutors like a Gifts pile.

You can also scroll for Ancestral with the help of 4 Merchant Scrolls.

b) Mid game: It creates card advantage piles much easier than Gifts. This is how the deck beats blue-based control decks, which is what I designed it to do. After you resolve the first AK (you don't even need to), you can scroll up the 4th AK fairly easily, and from there you should easily win the game.

Notice: 2U, Intuition. 1U, AK. 1U, Scroll, 1U AK. All very low mana costing cards, so each part is easier to protect with drain mana. Notice how Drain mana is also more easily abused in this deck than in Gifts.

c) Late game: Because of the enormous amount of cards you have in hand by this point, winning should be fairly simple. However, Gifts does have some advantages over the deck by this point if both decks have access to a large amount of mana. Gifts gets you +1 CA while Intuition gets you 0 as a card - this is significant because when you have enormous amounts of mana, the number of cards in your hand is important because they actually win you the game - not the massive amounts of mana.

This deck seeks to gain unbelievable card advantage in the midgame, then move to the late with tons of cards in hand (and, tons of mana).

II) 4 Merchant Scrolls.

a) Early game: Fetches Ancestral (or Force of Will, or Misdirection, or virtually anything in the deck).
b) Mid game: Fetches 4th AK.
c) Late game: Fetches answers to problems (Chain of Vapor, Mystical-Burning Wish or anything else).

Fills the same roll as Gifts, but has more versatility in being able, for 2UU to get you 4 cards.

The synergy between this card and the 4th AK is what caused me to actually take the time to sit down and create the deck. While looking at Codi Vinci's list, (which is the clear beginning point for this deck) I asked myself, "Why would he run a horrible card like Thirst for Knowledge and not something better like..." And that's when it hit me.

III) Cabal Ritual.

I'm not running Mana Vault. This card helps to get black mana and also helps off late game intuitions to get you enough mana to win. I have never wanted Dark Ritual or Mana Vault over this card, but that's preference I suppose.

IV) Burning Wish.

This is a very recent addition. It gets answers in the board for the current gamestate. It also allows for a secondary win condition, which, imo, is needed. I ran just 1 Tendrils in the main for a while, but wasn't satisfied.

V) 24 mana sources, including Cabal Ritual.

Might seem low, but you draw tons of cards and very rarely need mana. 24 is sufficient for me, but some have preferred 25 (again, including cabal ritual, or dark ritual, but not including mana vault).

The deck is much less mana hungry than a deck like Gifts although this deck would like very much to chain multiple things together.

Generally, one should try to pilot this deck from a very controlling role up until turn 4 or 5 usually. You can obviously draw more broken hands that allow you to win earlier, but the key to the deck is creating overwhelming card advantage, and then using those cards in your hand to win the game via resolved Yawg's Will or Chain of Vapor re-bouncing.

I have won about 40% of the games off Chaining my artifacts back to my hand. It's non-reliance on the graveyard is also a wonderful aspect.

I have almost always won against resolved enemy Tormod's Crypt. The ability to go 3rd AK, they break T-Crypt, you go 4th AK (I've done this far too many times to count, and it's really not difficult at all), to draw 4 cards is very powerful.

Anyway, I'll stop babbling and let you all comment on the deck. I'm sure you all will be very happy playing it in the future, and again, it is very customizable (Joe Davis plays Tinker+Colossus, which I think is atrocious), as well as talking about it on the various forums.

You can call it AK Scroll Control or Bill Cosby. We've been calling it Bill Cosby for a while, but can make the change to AK Scroll Control or something else if someone gives it a better deckname.

The following people deserve credit for this deck:
Eric Becker (I.T. - you have to start somewhere in this long line)
Blake of 0-2 Drop (Created Drain TPS variant a good while ago)
Cody Vinci (Created 1st Place Richmond Drain Tendrils List)
Desolutionist (Shawn Anthony)
Emildn (Brandon Adams)
Team Blitzkreig as a whole
Team ICBM as a whole

Good luck with the deck, and have fun drawing so many cards.

EDIT:  So I forgot to tell you why we codenamed it Bill Cosby.  I was trying to find an easier way to say Ak Scroll Control (it has some flow to it, but it isn't quick to say), so I was talking to Desolutionist, and he said something about Bill Cosby, then I remembered:  When I played Halo alot online, I was ranked very high.  However, there was always this one guy who could always beat me, and his Xbox Live username was Bill Cosby.  I thought it was funny.  That's how it came about - pretty lame story in comparision to what you were expecting, I'm sure.

Jello Puddin!

[Vegeta2711]

Why is this deck better than say... Tog? You substitute Tog with Tendrils and it looks near identical.

[assassin]

I@N from ICBM was actually testing a tog list exactly like this, but dropped tog because it wasnt strong enough.  I think the fact that most decks are running wipe away now makes creature kills harder.  Trinkbind is a problem for this deck but you will see it less maindeck.  I think this deck is strong because you have the draw package of gifts (merchant scroll+Ancestral Recall) in addition to the intuition/AK engine.  In a gifts dominate metagame this deck will do well because it can get lots of card advantage.

[Methuselahn]

Why is this deck better than say... Tog? You substitute Tog with Tendrils and it looks near identical.

And to add to that, if you also add Tinker Colossus, then the deck is basically T1T.  

I liked the concept much better like, 2 years ago when Italians flooded their meta with AK/Scroll Lists.   Your deck name is cute, but this concept is archaic.   I'd probably find something good to say, but you don't even go over matchups for this known concept.

[Imsomniac101]

Why is this deck better than say... Tog? You substitute Tog with Tendrils and it looks near identical.

And to add to that, if you also add Tinker Colossus, then the deck is basically T1T. 

I liked the concept much better like, 2 years ago when Italians flooded their meta with AK/Scroll Lists.   Your deck name is cute, but this concept is archaic.   I'd probably find something good to say, but you don't even go over matchups for this known concept.

Agreed. There was a thread about it ages ago by Negator13 I think.

[emidln]

Are we still having this disagreement on the 4th Intuition? I've said since we put together the initial list (which looked nothing like T1T/Tog/Intuitive, more like Gifts with AK and 0 Intuition) that a single Gifts is amazing. I think that the ability to win a war of attrition on a topdecked Merchant Scroll or other tutor and Gifts for Will far outweighs the benefits of the 4th Intuition, especially in a deck where we already play 7 ways to find Intuition plus card draw.

Anyway, the major difference now that I look at the latest T1T lists I found in Negator13's thread and from the results I've seen posted here on TMD are the sideboard plan to beat fish and stax (cards weren't available before), the presence of the 4th Scroll in some lists, and Misdirections. We've talked about this on our team boards and realized that it is a direct descendant of Tog, only about 10 cards off what Josh Franklin top8'd with at Worlds 2005. In any event, there should be a more current thread. The last post on the Intuitive Gifts/T1T thread is a year old.

[Evenpence]

Why is this deck better than say... Tog? You substitute Tog with Tendrils and it looks near identical.

This list kills with Tendrils, as you've already pointed out, and not a creature.  Pretty significant difference if you ask me.
This list runs red.  Again, pretty significant difference.
This list runs Merchant Scroll.  Can't say I've seen a Tog deck running 4 Intuition, 4 AK, 4 Merchant Scroll, but maybe I'm way off.  Again, pretty significant.

And to add to that, if you also add Tinker Colossus, then the deck is basically T1T.

Control Slaver and Gifts are only a few cards apart, right?  Especially now that Rich Shay has developed his Dry Slaver list, maybe we should just call them all Gifts lists with different numbers at the end or something.  Gifts and Slaver are less than 15 cards apart.  Dry Slaver might be much less however.  As already mentioned, this and Tog are like 10 cards apart.  It's a pretty significant departure from Tog and does not play out at all like Tog wants to play out.  You're not trying to storm to 10 in the end game with Tog.

In the above post, I mentioned how this deck is not reliant upon the graveyard as you can simply chain-bounce a bunch of artifacts to your hand (you'll almost always have more than Gifts or Slaver, for instance, because you draw many more cards) then replay them to get to a storm count of 9.

Maybe you can't see past that wave of differences, but the deck isn't just Tog without Tog.

I'm also pretty sure T1T doesn't run red for burning wish, recoup, empty the warrens, or any other good red stormish card that can be abused with intuition.  But you know, it's all the same because they have 4 AK, right?

I liked the concept much better like, 2 years ago when Italians flooded their meta with AK/Scroll Lists.

That's cool.  This list, to the best of my knowledge, isn't one of them.

Your deck name is cute, but this concept is archaic.

Archaic?  First of all, two years ago, were the Italians throwing red into the deck?  Were they running a 4/4/4 configuration of intution, aks, and merchant scrolls?  Were they running storm combo kills?  Second, what do you define as archaic?  Is Tinker-Colossus now archaic because Brassman and a few other people (myself included) aren't running it any longer?  Is it no longer viable, simply because it is a combination that has not been seen in a while?  I think this deck's tournament results would upset that notion.  Third, get off your high horse.  I'm trying to introduce a tiny spark of life into the metagame, and you're being nothing but Mr. McStifle.

I'd probably find something good to say, but you don't even go over matchups for this known concept.

The point of my post was not to go over matchups.  Is that seriously why you 'can't find something good to say?'  I mean, you could have just asked me to give the matchups instead of trolling. Keep it civil - Godder

Anyway, you should be able to go to those other threads on Togless Tog and T1T to find the matchups, because this is the same deck, obviously.

[Corvel]

You claim that this deck is better than gifts, but I am failing to see how.  You talk about the power of Merchant scroll into the fourth AK, which will draw you cards.  However it strictly doesn't have the potential to set up to win the game like a Gifts Ungiven does.

Intuition does everything Gifts wants to do and much more.

This is simply not true; the power of Gifts is finding four cards of which your opponent must give you two.  Getting one card of their choice out of three simply doesn't allow you to set up as many broken situation where you can win.  While it may allow you to draw cards it doesn't actively help you to win nearly as much as Gifts Ungiven.

[emidln]

You claim that this deck is better than gifts, but I am failing to see how.  You talk about the power of Merchant scroll into the fourth AK, which will draw you cards.  However it strictly doesn't have the potential to set up to win the game like a Gifts Ungiven does.

Intuition does everything Gifts wants to do and much more.

This is simply not true; the power of Gifts is finding four cards of which your opponent must give you two.  Getting one card of their choice out of three simply doesn't allow you to set up as many broken situation where you can win.  While it may allow you to draw cards it doesn't actively help you to win nearly as much as Gifts Ungiven.

Recoup/Will/Lotus

That said, I like a single Gifts in this deck because it can be abused in much the same way that Gifts abuses it and I like playing with busted cards.

[Evenpence]

You claim that this deck is better than gifts, but I am failing to see how.  You talk about the power of Merchant scroll into the fourth AK, which will draw you cards.  However it strictly doesn't have the potential to set up to win the game like a Gifts Ungiven does.

Intuition does everything Gifts wants to do and much more.

This is simply not true; the power of Gifts is finding four cards of which your opponent must give you two.  Getting one card of their choice out of three simply doesn't allow you to set up as many broken situation where you can win.  While it may allow you to draw cards it doesn't actively help you to win nearly as much as Gifts Ungiven.

You can set up all the end-game piles to win the game with recoup that Gifts can.

I mentioned already that you don't always need to go for AKs, and that you can many times just win the game on the spot with your first Intuition.

Intuition is better than Gifts because it is faster and is not restricted by only being able to get cards of different names.  This means that you can utilize a secondary draw engine like AK instead of simply relying on Ancestral Recall.  Those two reasons are why this list has a favorable Gifts matchup.

[Godder]

I can't help but notice that this thread is simmering away, so I'd like to remind everyone to stay on topic and don't take anything personally.

[Corvel]

Recoup/Will/Lotus

To argue that this Intuition "pile" is even close to as strong as many of the Gifts piles seems unreasonable.  This pile can do good things but it is still not nearly as close as Gifts to being a direct link to victory.  Card number four is truly what makes Gifts Ungiven busted.

This means that you can utilize a secondary draw engine like AK instead of simply relying on Ancestral Recall. Those two reasons are why this list has a favorable Gifts matchup.

What's the reason for using a card that can win you the game as a draw engine?  It seems that MDG's Scroll for Ancestral plan does just as good of job of putting the deck in position to win as using Intuition for AK.  I think that your deck is almost too concerned with drawing cards.  I'm not saying that the deck won't be exceedingly good at drawing a lot of cards and then winning with a ToA.  The point I'm trying to make is that I think MDG accomplishes the same thing in a less broken and more efficient manner, and in Type 1 efficiency is vital.

[diopter]

Evenpence,

I'm wondering about this deck's Ichorid matchup. I haven't picked it up in a while, but I imagine that it shares MDG's weakness to Ichorid. Chalice doesn't pose *as* much of a problem, but even then, I don't think the win can be assembled by turn 3 under pressure from the trifecta of Unmask/Leyline/Chalice. What are your thoughts?

Great job with the development of this deck! Its power is impressive.

[emidln]

This deck has an outside chance of pulling off turn 3 Timetwister by going turn 1 Scroll -> Mystical, Upkeep Mystical for Burning Wish, Wish, turn 3 Twister or turn 1 Tutor, turn 2 Wish, Turn 3 twister.

[RaleighNCTourneys]

Hey... I've toyed around with this idea as well, and I picked my choices for the Drain Tendrils list over a more Intuition/AK/Scroll type engine. Colby... I think your presentation of the deck would have been much better if you didn't make outrageous claims to get people's attention. You said that this deck is "a very superior drain tendrils" and everything Gifts is but better. Erroneous. Erronoeus on both counts. I have some questions about you choices.

I don't understand your lack of Rebuild and basic lands. How do you expect to win through artifact lock pieces, chalice in many non-shop decks and waste effects? You're playing slow combo... turn 3 wins are rare and turn 4-5 is what you will be looking at best. If not basic lands, I think at least Rebuild is in order. Chalice on 2 is so bad for your deck. You can't scroll for your only answer and you can't cast your only draw spells other than Recall/Bstorm.

You said "Why would he [myself] run a horrible card like Thirst for Knowledge and not something better like..."

Diversity of threats. What if you get chaliced? What if your graveyard is being hated? I'm glad we both agree that Tinker/Colossus is suboptimal in a deck like this. I assume, then, that you realize how potent a Drain deck focused only on Tendrils can be. At the same time, it can be very fragile and not having a back up plan like Tinker means you need to account for potentially game breaking cards your opponent can play that will affect your plan. TFK and Rebuild accounts for this. Winning through a sphere with a deck like this is nearly impossible if not answered. Similarly, I don't understand why you would run Cabal Ritual over Dark Ritual. Dark Ritual shines when you are trying to win through a chalice on 2 or graveyard hate. Cabal Ritual does little or nothing to win through this hate and just adds to the massive amounts of 2 CC spells you run. I'm really not offended or anything I just don't see how this is superior to Drain Tendrils? I've tested and tested all sorts of blue/black Tendrils control decks (including ones similar to this one) and I think cards like 2x Rebuild, Gush, Frantic Search, 2x Maindeck Tendrils (to optimize the chances of not having to tutor for it and bring able to tutor for "good cards"), Dark Ritual and TFK are what make slow blue/black tendrils decks into a Drain Tendrils deck that can expect turn 2-4 wins and play through lots of artifact and graveyard hate and expect to win.

Cody

[BreathWeapon]

Burning Wish is bad, the point of Intuition Tendrils is to reduce the mana costs of Gifts Tendrils, and Burning Wish adds an additional 1R to Tendrils or Warrens. The deck is better off with Warrens MD, where it can be drawn, tutored for, included in Intuition piles and is immune to counterspells.

I also think this deck has a problem with UU; is Library of Alexandria necessary?

On to something constructive, against what match ups does this deck SB out Accumulated Knowledge?

[Methuselahn]

This list kills with Tendrils, as you've already pointed out, and not a creature.  Pretty significant difference if you ask me.
This list runs red.  Again, pretty significant difference.
This list runs Merchant Scroll.  Can't say I've seen a Tog deck running 4 Intuition, 4 AK, 4 Merchant Scroll, but maybe I'm way off.  Again, pretty significant.

Yeah, I guess I don't see a lot of decks run 4 Intuition outside of Dragon nowadays.  

The list has Tendrils and not Tog as a win condition, you're right, but this fact is much more important in something like Standard than in Vintage.  Tog never won because it resolved a Tog.  Tog won because it often out drew or out brokened the opponent, which is how Tendrils wins.

Yea, I'm almost positive all T1T decks were 2 color.  

And to add to that, if you also add Tinker Colossus, then the deck is basically T1T.

Control Slaver and Gifts are only a few cards apart, right?  Especially now that Rich Shay has developed his Dry Slaver list, maybe we should just call them all Gifts lists with different numbers at the end or something.

Brilliant.  Let's do that.  We've never been known to stick our team name or celebrity names in front of decks, instead, like 'Dry' Slaver, we've tried to be descriptive.  The latest CS list that Rich piloted is in fact very much like a Gifts deck, except the build focuses Gifts Ungiven moreso around Tinker than Will.  Yeah, it's very close to most Gifts deck.

Gifts and Slaver are less than 15 cards apart.  Dry Slaver might be much less however.  As already mentioned, this and Tog are like 10 cards apart.  It's a pretty significant departure from Tog and does not play out at all like Tog wants to play out.  You're not trying to storm to 10 in the end game with Tog.

Well first you say that Gifts and Slaver are 15 cards apart, and go on to say the decks are very similar.  I'm not sure how that helps your argument when you compare T1T to your own and say that they only have 10 cards that're different but your deck is a significant departure.  I don't get it.  Wouldn't that make Slaver in this case an even more significant departure than the one your deck takes?

It looks to me that 'your' deck wants to draw a bunch of cards while playing the control role, then explode all over your opponent's face in one turn.. just like Tog does!   Again, the end card that puts your life total at zero is trivial here.

In the above post, I mentioned how this deck is not reliant upon the graveyard as you can simply chain-bounce a bunch of artifacts to your hand (you'll almost always have more than Gifts or Slaver, for instance, because you draw many more cards) then replay them to get to a storm count of 9.

Yeah, chain bouncing with CoV is a great way to go lethal and work around graveyard hate.  If you've ever played Psychatog, Mr. Teeth played around things like Tormod's Crypt all day long too.  Repeal and EtW is another nice way to avoid GY hate.

So you're saying I can almost always draw many more cards than Gifts and Slaver?  I bet Tournament results would prove this.  The facts that I see around the world are that people have dropped Intuition for Gifts because Gifts wins.  If your teams can prove with tournament results that the entire world is wrong and that Intuition is in fact more powerful than Gifts, then I will eat my hat.

Your deck name is cute, but this concept is archaic.

Archaic?  First of all, two years ago, were the Italians throwing red into the deck?  Were they running a 4/4/4 configuration of intution, aks, and merchant scrolls?  Were they running storm combo kills?  Second, what do you define as archaic?  Is Tinker-Colossus now archaic because Brassman and a few other people (myself included) aren't running it any longer?  Is it no longer viable, simply because it is a combination that has not been seen in a while?  I think this deck's tournament results would upset that notion.  Third, get off your high horse.  I'm trying to introduce a tiny spark of life into the metagame, and you're being nothing but Mr. McStifle.

Again, haven't seen 4 Intuition outside of Dragon, so I guess you got me there.  As far as Italians running 4 AKs, 4 Scrolls, and Tendrils,  yeah, the ones that I talked to and played against at Gencon ran that setup.  I don't know about other people, but our team cut Colossus in most of our builds ages ago.  I think more people have done this than you may think.

I don't think Intuition is optimal here because of the mounds of evidence of Gifts Ungiving winning tournaments where Intuition used to.

I'd probably find something good to say, but you don't even go over matchups for this known concept.

The point of my post was not to go over matchups.  Is that seriously why you 'can't find something good to say?'  I mean, you could have just asked me to give the matchups instead of trolling.

Anyway, you should be able to go to those other threads on Togless Tog and T1T to find the matchups, because this is the same deck, obviously.

Okay, could you give me the matchup analysis and how you would sideboard versus, say, Pitchlong, MDG, Manaless Ichorid, Dragon, a stax deck of your choice, and fish??

I apologize if I came off as a negative nancy.  You are a respectable guy and I hope I didn't offend you.  If anything, I'm only trying to be harsh on a deck archetype.

[LotusHead]

My experience with AK based decks is that they are great when no one else is playing AK's (and Chalice for 2 is kept of the table).

As long as your build is the only AK build (and no Leyline or TCrypts hit the field) then everything is golden.

As Leyline and TCrypt are in people's maindeck and SB, there is some risk, obviously, but in America, AK's are not being used much.

Go for it!

[Akuma]

This is T1T, end of story. I think it's great that we are discussing it, but let's not get carried away and say that we are talking about a new deck. T1T has been using the Tendrils + Colossus kill for well over a year now, it has always run 3 colors (Ubr), at least 3 Merchant Scrolls, etc. You should actually take a look at those lists to see if any of the tech used there helps out with your version.

With that out of the way...

Have you guys considered the Cunning Wish with this deck, or is it best to leave it out? How about Empty the Warrens? I have been testing it in my T1T build for a few months, and it has been great, especially against prison.

[ErkBek]

When I first looked at your list, I thought how did you fit all of those cards? 14 Land and zero bounce spells really worry me a lot in a deck like this. I had been running a similar list about 3 months ago, except it with these changes

-1 Drain
+1 MisD

-2 Scroll
+2 Duress

-1 Recoup
-1 Wish
-1 Cabal Rit
+1 Rebuild
+2 Land

I don't think you need 4 scroll and the recoup in this deck. Most of the time you win by resolving Intuition -> AK. Somewhere in those 7 cards should be either Scroll(->MT), MT, VT, DT, or Yawg Will. So why do you need Recoup in the deck?

16 lands may be one too many, but I think 14 in dangerously low. You'll notice in most decks I design I run a few more than accepted number of mana sources (my fish deck runs 24-25, compared to others who run 21-22). The reason for this is consistency. 14 lands me that there is a land every 4.28 cards compared to a land every 3.75 cards. This results in less mulligans, which is pseudo card advantage.

You can always board out a land vs. decks that don't have a mana denial strategy.

I noticed that there has been something going on lately on TMD. People are posting decklist that completely disregard Stax and fish. Seems like a single wasteland and a Chalice will do you in for game 1.

Do you find this deck works vs. stax do to the IT/AK engine, plus SB empty the warrens?

[emidln]

Burning Wish is bad, the point of Intuition Tendrils is to reduce the mana costs of Gifts Tendrils

The point of Intuition is that it is an efficient draw spell and a tutor in the same slots for less mana than Gifts. Burning Wish doesn't factor into the equation since we MD Tendrils and that is what we go for unless we can't for some reason.

, and Burning Wish adds an additional 1R to Tendrils or Warrens. The deck is better off with Warrens MD, where it can be drawn, tutored for, included in Intuition piles and is immune to counterspells.

We tested this and it was bad. Want to know what Burning Wish gets most often for me? Time Walk from the RFG zone. After that? Shattering Spree. After that? Timetwister from the SB. I rarely ever am forced to find Tendrils and I detest Empty the Warrens and only play it when I have to. Burning Wish is there for the random utility it brings AS WELL AS being an out to a random extract.

I also think this deck has a problem with UU; is Library of Alexandria necessary?

Yes.

[Wildthing]

For me this deck was already created quite a whil ago, look at this deck from a Vintage League in Spain

Oliver Satizábal with Intuitive

Maindeck:
1 Flooded Strand
4 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island

1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
4 Brainstorm
1 Burning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Fire // Ice
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mana Drain
3 Merchant Scroll
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Rebuild
1 Recoup
1 Sol Ring
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Wipe Away
1 Yawgmoth’s Will

Sideboard:
1 Darkblast
2 Duress
1 Massacre
2 Pithing Needle
1 Pyroblast
1 Pyroclasm
2 Rack and Ruin
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Rushing River
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Tormod’s Crypt

[BreathWeapon]

Burning Wish is bad, the point of Intuition Tendrils is to reduce the mana costs of Gifts Tendrils

The point of Intuition is that it is an efficient draw spell and a tutor in the same slots for less mana than Gifts. Burning Wish doesn't factor into the equation since we MD Tendrils and that is what we go for unless we can't for some reason.

, and Burning Wish adds an additional 1R to Tendrils or Warrens. The deck is better off with Warrens MD, where it can be drawn, tutored for, included in Intuition piles and is immune to counterspells.

We tested this and it was bad. Want to know what Burning Wish gets most often for me? Time Walk from the RFG zone. After that? Shattering Spree. After that? Timetwister from the SB. I rarely ever am forced to find Tendrils and I detest Empty the Warrens and only play it when I have to. Burning Wish is there for the random utility it brings AS WELL AS being an out to a random extract.

I also think this deck has a problem with UU; is Library of Alexandria necessary?

Yes.

People are MDing ETW in MDGifts and GiftsX, and I think Intuition Tendrils should do so as well; go ahead and use Burning Wish, but don't exclude an excellent card from the MD because of it.

Library of Alexandria is AWFUL, it just stops the deck from reaching UU on turn 2 against combo and control, and it gets Wasted against Fish. Your manabase has serious problems with UU, it needs atleast one additional Island if not two.

[roberts91rom]

Isn't it obvious? Evenpence wants people to pick up this deck so he can stomp it with Stax. Basic land problem, loses to Chalice@2 and no artifact bounce.

No, but seriously the deck does seem to completely fold to Stax, where as other Intuition decks have a favourable Stax matchup. (IT for example) Through my testing I have often found that Intuition is better at enabling combo, while Gifts is better at setting up a controlling situation. Intuition costs 1 less mana and can make piles like 3xRituals or 3xBounce spells. Gifts will never be able to do that because it is not supposed to do that. Gifts can grab piles like FoW, Drain, REB, Pyro, or Gifts, Scroll, FoF, Thirst. Intuition can never do that because it will always end up being 1 for 1. Intuition is a Grim Tutor thats sets up AK or Will, while Gifts is 1 for 2+more if you fetch draw spells.

Mana seems to be the main point of Intuition>Gifts, but it really is trivial.
Intuition/AK:2U+1U=3UU=5 mana=2 cards
Intuition/AK:2U+1U+1U+1U=5UUUU=9 mana=5 cards (This assumes Merchant Scroll->AK)
Gifts/Thirst:3U+2U+1U+U=6UUUU=10 mana=4 cards (Assured ME off Gifts)
Gifts/FoF:3U+3U+1U+U=7UUUU=11 mana=5 cards or 3-4 BROKEN cards (Assured ME off Gifts)
Gifts/Gifts:3U+3U+1U+U=7UUUU=11 mana=4 cards+the Gifts chain continues (Assured ME off Gifts)

Both are instant speed not counting the Scroll. Both "draw" at least 4 cards. Intuition is left with only Ancestral Recall, while Gifts still has other Gifts/Thirsts. This is just for card advantage. Gifts can fetch 2 counterspells where Intuition gets 1. When the 2 decks go for the Will pile, Gifts has more mana. Will, Recoup, Lotus is not the same as Will, Recoup, Lotus, Ritual/Crypt/Vault.

This is exactly why Intuition has to play catch-up against Gifts. Intuition is broken not because it is similar to Gifts. Intuition is broken because it is an instant speed Grim Tutor that fills up the graveyard for Will.

[meadbert]

Isn't it obvious? Evenpence wants people to pick up this deck so he can stomp it with Stax. Basic land problem, loses to Chalice@2 and no artifact bounce.

Seriously, this is exactly what I thought when I read this. Colby is just tricking us into playing this so Uba Stax can be tier one again!

This post adds little to the discussion.
-Godder

[DuKeLiO]

This list is the Intuitive that catalonians are running for a year now, but it hasn't Tinker-Colossus and has little mana. This list maybe better against any kind of Gifts and maybe combo, but it has a terrible matchup against Stax and Fish that are prevalent in the no-proxy catalonian metagame. See Wiltihng post.

In my opinion it is the same deck but with some minor changes that weakened the deck vs. all not Gifts and Combo. In the matchup against Slaver your deck also is more weak beacuse you missed the Fire/Ice and your deck are also more fragile against graveyard hate beacuse with the catalonian list you simply go for the Tinker DSC and you can draw cards with Fact or Fiction. The advantages in your list are the speed I believe you have but you loose too much for this little speed gain.

Control Slaver and Gifts are only a few cards apart, right?  Especially now that Rich Shay has developed his Dry Slaver list, maybe we should just call them all Gifts lists with different numbers at the end or something.  Gifts and Slaver are less than 15 cards apart.  Dry Slaver might be much less however.  As already mentioned, this and Tog are like 10 cards apart.  It's a pretty significant departure from Tog and does not play out at all like Tog wants to play out.  You're not trying to storm to 10 in the end game with Tog.

Maybe the list of Gifts and Control Slaver are a lot of common cards, but the gameplan differs a lot and the gameplan is really what defines a deck.

[The Atog Lord]

Let's not continue discussing whether Evenpence or the Italians invented this deck. There's not really anything further to be said about it. And while everyone's been civil so far, I don't want to see things get any worse.

[The Atog Lord]

Moving on to constructive discussion:

The lack of Tinker means that this deck is especially vulnerable to Trickbind. Without using clever Burning Wish tricks, the deck would literally deck itself before winning if confronted by a couple of Trickbinds. All of the carddraw in the world won't answer them since the deck's only solution is Burning Wish. In fact, given the above sideboard, the most realistic answer the deck has to an opponent holding a couple Trickbinds in hand may actually be getting Timetwister. For that reason, you might want to consider a sideboard card that could better handle Trickbind.

[desolutionist]

This list is the Intuitive that catalonians are running for a year now, but it hasn't Tinker-Colossus and has little mana. This list maybe better against any kind of Gifts and maybe combo, but it has a terrible matchup against Stax and Fish that are prevalent in the no-proxy catalonian metagame. See Wiltihng post.

Empty the Warrens absolutely destroys Stax and Fish...  I'd actually prefer to play against Fish or Stax than any other deck in Type 1.  Even though I have yet to see a well-placed, documented Intuitive list, I'm pretty sure EtW is the defining characteristic that makes Colby's build superior.

[Implacable]

This list is the Intuitive that catalonians are running for a year now, but it hasn't Tinker-Colossus and has little mana. This list maybe better against any kind of Gifts and maybe combo, but it has a terrible matchup against Stax and Fish that are prevalent in the no-proxy catalonian metagame. See Wiltihng post.

Empty the Warrens absolutely destroys Stax and Fish...  I'd actually prefer to play against Fish or Stax than any other deck in Type 1.  Even though I have yet to see a well-placed, documented Intuitive list, I'm pretty sure EtW is the defining characteristic that makes Colby's build superior.

And do you really think that the Catalonians won't be adding Warrens?  It seems irrational to say that, because somebody was faster to add a new card, their deck design is unprecedented.