There is a thread for Gifts Ungiven, but not one for Intuition. Nevertheless, I'd like to talk about cards that are good with these two spells rather than the cards themselves.
Intuition and Gifts Ungiven are both powerful spells. The "worst case scenario" is that you tutor for the card(s) you need. Possible alternate scenarios (or upsides) are finding graveyard-based synergies. I like both cards because, like Fact or Fiction (or Jace, Architect of Thought), your opponent has to decide what's best (and worst) for you without generally having knowledge of your hand. Gifts and Intuition are skill-intensive cards all around, and should influence the way you're drafting if you are intending to play them in your deck.
I know that Unburial Rites is a common target for Gifts, along with usually a powerful, mana-intensive creature (or two) and a means to discard cards. I imagine you could try to do something similar to this with Intuition, but your opponent chooses what goes to your hand with it. Flashback spells are powerful, and Lingering Souls and Faithless Looting are pretty generally agreed upon as cubeworthy. Other graveyard interactions like Genesis are obviously nice things to search for, as well.
In this thread, I'd like to highlight cards that are especially powerful, backbreaking, and/or synergistic to search out with Gifts Ungiven or Intuition. I want to include both cards, but I'm wondering if I need to jump through a lot of hoops to make the cards more than good.
Unburial Rites works pretty well with them too, as well as Deep Analysis and generally stuff that likes being in the graveyard. If you have some number of them, it's surprisingly easy to think of some wombo-combo gift sets.
Specialities about the cube: U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
Life From the Loam. It was the only card that made us maindeck Intuition/Gifts, for the most part.
What lands do you combine Life from the Loam and these cards with? Maybe we just haven't played it out, or we play differently or something, but just having Life from the Loam and Gifts Ungiven or Intuition doesn't seem like I'm ready to win the game (now or later).
NewbornMuse, do you think Deep Analysis is playable in a 450 cube?
Well, any deck you play Loam in has lands you want to combine with Loam. Intuition and Gifts grab Loam and the lands you want to get with it together. It tutors up your whole combo and can't be broken up.
NewbornMuse, do you think Deep Analysis is playable in a 450 cube?
It's a specialized blue card draw spell. If you specifically push graveyard strategies, it's definitely good/cool enough. If you don't, it's not. There are two ways to make it good: 1) If you can use it to pay for discard costs, you can unlock its card advantage without the clunky four mana cost. That's pretty good. I like to think of such plays as "discarding the first cast". DA's first cast is "3U, draw two cards", so that's fine to throw away. It's different with, say, Firebolt, the card you're throwing away is a lot better, so the synergy between Merfolk Looter and Firebolt is worse than the synergy of Looter and DA. 2) If you get it into your grave from your library, you've actually gotten a free spell, which is very strong and of course ultra stylish.
Last weekend, I played with Konfusius' cube and my deck was basically everything that said graveyard or discard. Pack Rat + Squee is teh nuts, Fact or Fiction goes into overdrive, and Smallpox was good both times I drew it. In this deck, I could use the frontside of Deep Analysis (that's a pretty lackluster card) to pay for Waterfront Bouncer, Pack Rat or Smallpox and end up with a good draw spell, or make plays with Fact or Fiction and Gifts Ungiven. The deck was a little schizophrenic, but between the many graveyard cards and the discard outlets, a tactic would usually emerge and be pretty decent.
Fastest win: Mox Diamond into Waterfront Bouncer, Bouncer bounces himself to discard Grave Titan, Animate Dead, concede, GGGGG.
Specialities about the cube: U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
i don't run either of these in my 360 but i like them a lot. i could see putting them in again. they reward thoughtful deckbuilding and drafting and can be interesting and fun to play. any time you have 3 or more redundant effects or regrowth effects they can act as straight tutors (at instant speed, with CA in the case of gifts).
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
The best way to make Deep Analysis good is to cast it. It's splashable 4-for-1 card advantage. I'd play it at 360.
Other good things to grab are the black recursive creatures (Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, Reassembling Skeleton) as well as cards like Vengevine.
Don't forget Squee, Goblin Nabob. Regrowth, Eternal Witness, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Reveillark, Karmic Guide and reanimation spells can really screw up your opponent's decisions. And any combination of those in a single pile can take all the decisions away from your opponent and it's basically a double tutor at that point.
We also used Intuition/Gifts in counterburn decks to grab 3/4 burn spells FTW. I can see it being good with flashback/unearth burn spells now like Devil's Play and Firebolt as well as Chandra's Phoenix and Hellspark Elemental.
I don't really see anything else other than fetchlands in your cube.
Crucible of Worlds is there as well. That plus any old land that can sacrifice for benefit and it's on.
While it's not in wtwlf's cube, throwing Horizon Canopy into this mix is pretty much a guarantee of game-winning card advantage. Of course, we're talking about one heck of a draft here...
You can tutor redundant effects cards into your hand (e.g. agro creatures, finishers) as well as redundant spells counterspells, burn, removal if need be. Intuition can also tutor 3 basics for mana fixing.
I don't really see anything else other than fetchlands in your cube.
Strip Mine/Wasteland/Dust Bowl + UG fixing land + Treetop Village would be an excellent suite to grab alongside Loam in a Gifts package. Or you could always throw in an extra fetchland or utility land into the combo piece. There are a ton of lands worth tutoring, and you get all three of them when you grab Loam as part of the package.
Plus, Loam does more than just chain lands with sac effects strapped to them, you know. When you want Loam for utility purposes, Gifts/Intuition is a straight tutor for the card.
I'm actually fine with maindecking gifts without loam or crucible or unburial rites on certain occasions.
I ended up with 3 titans, Keiga, Meloku, and Drana in a deck once and just played gifts as a way to get 2 of them in my hand in the late game for all the finishing power in the world (or if I need the mana I suppose it could have gotten 4 lands)
If you're wondering why I had all of those in the same deck and why I had such a bad curve, we were playing our cube using wizards wacky draft and we roll for a random one. (I got aim high...so my lowest cmc was like a 4).
Have a helicopter drop you off out front. Light your cigar with a small Indonesian boy holding a black lotus. Then bust out a craw wurm deck with no sleeves. Raw dog shuffle, loose terribly, flip the table, leave in a hovercraft.
Lonely Sandbar and Tranquil Thicket can be considered for the Loam package. I'd also totally run these two lands in slow Control / Ramp decks with a heavy land count.
Great motivation for adding a utility land subdraft. I've done it once now and it was way too fun.
Since its been awhile for recent comments, does anyone run Intuition in their cube these days? I love the card and am curious how viable it could be in cube.
I don't like giving my opponent this much choice over draw effects like this. Gifts at least gets you two for one (even if they are the worst 2 of the 4 you fetch - combo aside). But I much prefer Fact or Fiction because even though your opponent meddles, the final choice of what to grab is up to you.
At three mana, I prefer other options (Compulsive Research / Thirst for Knowledge / Frantic Search). And with Treasure Cruise and Dig through Time sometimes costing 3, I can't see needing more draw effects. Intuition/Gifts are better combo enablers though (less draw and more about finding specific cards), so if that is a big part of your cube I can see wanting either or both over some of what I just listed. But between those two, I feel gifts is the better card simply because it still functions as an expensive 2 for 1 worst case scenario.
I don't have Intuition, but I do have Gifts.
One of my mates pulled off the utterly sick four-card selection of Keiga, Body Double, Chainer and Coffin Queen in a Dimir deck a few weeks back. We didn't know whether to pick two or just punch him in the nuts.
Intuition and Gifts Ungiven are both powerful spells. The "worst case scenario" is that you tutor for the card(s) you need. Possible alternate scenarios (or upsides) are finding graveyard-based synergies. I like both cards because, like Fact or Fiction (or Jace, Architect of Thought), your opponent has to decide what's best (and worst) for you without generally having knowledge of your hand. Gifts and Intuition are skill-intensive cards all around, and should influence the way you're drafting if you are intending to play them in your deck.
I know that Unburial Rites is a common target for Gifts, along with usually a powerful, mana-intensive creature (or two) and a means to discard cards. I imagine you could try to do something similar to this with Intuition, but your opponent chooses what goes to your hand with it. Flashback spells are powerful, and Lingering Souls and Faithless Looting are pretty generally agreed upon as cubeworthy. Other graveyard interactions like Genesis are obviously nice things to search for, as well.
In this thread, I'd like to highlight cards that are especially powerful, backbreaking, and/or synergistic to search out with Gifts Ungiven or Intuition. I want to include both cards, but I'm wondering if I need to jump through a lot of hoops to make the cards more than good.
My cube list on CubeTutor.
Both are very much under construction. Please stop by and talk about it!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
450, Peasant*, unpowered**
Specialities about the cube:
U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
What lands do you combine Life from the Loam and these cards with? Maybe we just haven't played it out, or we play differently or something, but just having Life from the Loam and Gifts Ungiven or Intuition doesn't seem like I'm ready to win the game (now or later).
NewbornMuse, do you think Deep Analysis is playable in a 450 cube?
My cube list on CubeTutor.
Both are very much under construction. Please stop by and talk about it!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
It's a specialized blue card draw spell. If you specifically push graveyard strategies, it's definitely good/cool enough. If you don't, it's not. There are two ways to make it good:
1) If you can use it to pay for discard costs, you can unlock its card advantage without the clunky four mana cost. That's pretty good. I like to think of such plays as "discarding the first cast". DA's first cast is "3U, draw two cards", so that's fine to throw away. It's different with, say, Firebolt, the card you're throwing away is a lot better, so the synergy between Merfolk Looter and Firebolt is worse than the synergy of Looter and DA.
2) If you get it into your grave from your library, you've actually gotten a free spell, which is very strong and of course ultra stylish.
Last weekend, I played with Konfusius' cube and my deck was basically everything that said graveyard or discard. Pack Rat + Squee is teh nuts, Fact or Fiction goes into overdrive, and Smallpox was good both times I drew it. In this deck, I could use the frontside of Deep Analysis (that's a pretty lackluster card) to pay for Waterfront Bouncer, Pack Rat or Smallpox and end up with a good draw spell, or make plays with Fact or Fiction and Gifts Ungiven. The deck was a little schizophrenic, but between the many graveyard cards and the discard outlets, a tactic would usually emerge and be pretty decent.
Fastest win: Mox Diamond into Waterfront Bouncer, Bouncer bounces himself to discard Grave Titan, Animate Dead, concede, GGGGG.
450, Peasant*, unpowered**
Specialities about the cube:
U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
Cube talk, design community and much much more!
Other good things to grab are the black recursive creatures (Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, Reassembling Skeleton) as well as cards like Vengevine.
Don't forget Squee, Goblin Nabob. Regrowth, Eternal Witness, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Reveillark, Karmic Guide and reanimation spells can really screw up your opponent's decisions. And any combination of those in a single pile can take all the decisions away from your opponent and it's basically a double tutor at that point.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
What are good lands to fetch? Are we talking about a UG deck that plays Life from the Loam, Gifts Ungiven, Intuition, and Wasteland and Strip Mine?
I don't really see anything else other than fetchlands in your cube.
My cube list on CubeTutor.
Both are very much under construction. Please stop by and talk about it!
Cube talk, design community and much much more!
Crucible of Worlds is there as well. That plus any old land that can sacrifice for benefit and it's on.
While it's not in wtwlf's cube, throwing Horizon Canopy into this mix is pretty much a guarantee of game-winning card advantage. Of course, we're talking about one heck of a draft here...
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Basically both can act as a 3rd Entomb/Buried Alive so you can tutor creatures or spells into your graveyard. So it works with: Recurring creatures like Gravecrawler, Reassembling Skeleton, Bloodghast, Squee, Goblin Nabob, Chandra's Phoenix, Pyrewild Shaman, Hellspark Elemental, Hell's Thunder, Vengevine, Incarnations : Genesis, Wonder, Flashback: Lingering Souls, Faithless Looting, Firebolt, Devil's play, Reckless Charge, Chainer's Edict, Deep Analysis. Call of the Herd, Unburial rites, Dredge: Life from the Loam. Retrace: Raven's Crime + lands.
It also works with tutoring for creatures to Animate Dead, Living Death, or Recurring Nightmare, or spells to "Snapcast" with Snapcaster Mage or Yawgmoth's Will, or anything you simply want to Regrowth with Eternal Witness,lands to loam or return with Crucible fo Worlds. A combination of those cards can lead to the combo wins you are loooking for.
You can tutor redundant effects cards into your hand (e.g. agro creatures, finishers) as well as redundant spells counterspells, burn, removal if need be. Intuition can also tutor 3 basics for mana fixing.
For fringe effects, It can instantly pump your Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary if need be, or fuel for Grim Lavamancer or Deathrite Shaman
I have Gifts in my 450, but not Intuition. After this thread I am now wondering why not? I guess I will put it back in and test it.
Strip Mine/Wasteland/Dust Bowl + UG fixing land + Treetop Village would be an excellent suite to grab alongside Loam in a Gifts package. Or you could always throw in an extra fetchland or utility land into the combo piece. There are a ton of lands worth tutoring, and you get all three of them when you grab Loam as part of the package.
Plus, Loam does more than just chain lands with sac effects strapped to them, you know. When you want Loam for utility purposes, Gifts/Intuition is a straight tutor for the card.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
I ended up with 3 titans, Keiga, Meloku, and Drana in a deck once and just played gifts as a way to get 2 of them in my hand in the late game for all the finishing power in the world (or if I need the mana I suppose it could have gotten 4 lands)
If you're wondering why I had all of those in the same deck and why I had such a bad curve, we were playing our cube using wizards wacky draft and we roll for a random one. (I got aim high...so my lowest cmc was like a 4).
Great motivation for adding a utility land subdraft. I've done it once now and it was way too fun.
Cube talk, design community and much much more!
At three mana, I prefer other options (Compulsive Research / Thirst for Knowledge / Frantic Search). And with Treasure Cruise and Dig through Time sometimes costing 3, I can't see needing more draw effects. Intuition/Gifts are better combo enablers though (less draw and more about finding specific cards), so if that is a big part of your cube I can see wanting either or both over some of what I just listed. But between those two, I feel gifts is the better card simply because it still functions as an expensive 2 for 1 worst case scenario.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
One of my mates pulled off the utterly sick four-card selection of Keiga, Body Double, Chainer and Coffin Queen in a Dimir deck a few weeks back. We didn't know whether to pick two or just punch him in the nuts.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
My cube
My cube on Cube tutor
I'm OP_Forever. I'll be putting this in my signature for a while so everyone know I change my nickname.
Gifts has been pretty good for us, though.
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
lichess.org | chess.com
My favorite selection has to be Loam, Witness, Volrath's Stronghold, Recurring Nightmare.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!