In regards to your list, Ninja is really iffy. You just don't have enough early men (Factory active AND paying 1U is pretty darn late in the game) to get him rolling reliably. Also, you just don't have enough men for him to reliably work period. Cabal Therapy is a huge card that needs re-examining. I'd run Duress or Thoughtseize over it any day. It's benefits aren't enough and, again, you don't run enough men, let alone men you want to get rid of. Also, Trinket Mage loses a ton of potency if you're running Null Rod.
Finally, I wrote an article about UWB, but it's not exactly conventional wisdom in the eyes of the usual Fish people. A preliminary list and explanations can be found
here.
The core of Jotun Grunt, Dark Confidant, and Trinket Mage (with his package of awesomeness) allows wide flexibility to hit the format where you need. There's been a few updates to the list in that article I posted.
My list had only one plow main, but it could be more in the board (I added two myself, cutting the Maindeck one for another Counterbalance). I don't run Mage at all, but again it's my biases coming into play here. When I build, I always imagine the other side of the table. Mage has never been a contributing factor to a loss in Vintage to me. In fact, Disenchants and Kataki's went away too. I wanted anti-storm cards. Leylines got ripped out for Jailer and another Crypt too.
(Maindeck -1 Plow +1 Counterbalance as a "common" metagame call)
3 Yixid Jailer
3 Energy Flux
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Sphere of Resistance
1 Wasteland
1 Old Man of the Sea
The general, severely rough, plan is:
IchoridI have the maindeck Needle and Strips, but more importantly I have the maindeck Grunts which will force them to have to win early or not at all. Post board, the Jailers and the Crypt come in. Against the Manaless (or near Manaless builds) you can bring in Spheres too just to make their anti-hate more impossible to land.
Pitch Long and Grim LongWhat I lack in Null Rod, I more than make up for in Counterbalance. There's no Rebuild for Counterbalance. Post board, I have the Spheres and the man-plan isn't so great against me. The downside here, as with any Aggro-control list, is that they will always have the ability to just go broken and you just might not have the goods fast enough.
SlaverWhile I have multiple avenues to hit Welder recursion (Grunt, Needle, etc) and slow down Will, Counterbalance-Top is amazing in many cases. However, one of the biggest weapons you have is the plentiful ability to Stifle fetches to keep the basic lands at a minimum while Wastelanding the non-basics they are forced to play. I like Old Man against them, but there are many other options. Extirpate would be cute here too.
Workshops (kind of vague, because there are so many flavors)
Fortunately, I get around Thorn quite decently. There's so many different branches, that the strategies change with each build. You can do many neat things like Stifle an Upkeep effect to keep things non-symmetrical, ramp up permanents with Trinket Mage, get around Magus with Trinket Mage, shut off their Welders with Grunts, etc. Post board things get a ton better with:
+3 Flux
+1 H Recall
I had two Kataki, but Flux is much better here and I just didn't need that much to beat them. Also, I've seen decks like MUD easily circumvent a Kataki with Metalworker and Academy, but it's much more harmful with Flux. Worse case, you just add a few Kataki back in the board to overload the matchup.
That's the general plan, but admittedly I've been putting more effort in other places. I personally never feel playing more men in Vintage is the best way to go, but this is what I'd do (with testing to make sure I'm not a crackpot) if I were so inclined.
Good luck with the list, hopefully some of my post was helpful.
