Intuition – MTG Throwback Thursday (1997)

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Intuition is a simple card, on its face, and it very quickly leads you down a rabbit hole of very powerful lines of play – getting almost anything you want into your graveyard, if you choose wisely, finding the last piece of your combo, or just a card to pitch to Contagion. It also leads you into some pretty crazy mind games. You can search for three different things that present different threats to your opponent; you can search for wordy cards your opponent is going to have to read three times to understand; you can search for a card (hopefully not your only copy) you know your opponent’s deck can’t beat, just so they know it’s there. I wouldn’t be surprised if Intuition’s psychological aspects had won as many games over the years as the card advantage it generates.

Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
EDH/Commander: 4/5

Intuition is not a card that looks like a lot up front, but it’s one that plays a lot better than it initially appears. The obvious plays include to grab three copies of the same card (so that your opponent must let you have one of them), three cards with similar effects, or cards where their ultimate destination is irrelevant (such as Life from the Loam and some land cards, to give one example). It’s a powerful tutor in Legacy, because of its instant speed and flexible mana cost (and being in the unequivocally-best color in Legacy), and it still sees play to this day in decks that rely on specific combo pieces to get going.

It’s similar to Gifts Ungiven, though that card is hilariously broken while Intuition is merely very good. Since you must always reveal three cards to your opponent if you have at least that many in your library, it doesn’t enable the really busted tricks of its successor, but it’s still very good! As Intuition is a Reserved List card, a copy will put you back by about $50, but it’s a nigh-necessity in specific combo decks that need to get a specific card out or set up plays around a particular sequence.

Constructed: 4.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 3 (Tempest Limited did not have the payoffs to make this work well; this is a card that needs a deep card pool to shine, which Limited is very much not about)
Multiplayer: 3.5 (more people means you can pick the opponent most likely to give you what you want)
Commander: 4 (Gifts Ungiven is banned here, so this is as close as you can get)

Phat
Pack
Magic
YouTube

Hello everyone and welcome to Pojo’s Card of the Day!

Today we’re taking a look back into the past and we’ve got something particularly juicy to feast upon and it’s Intuition!

Intuition is an incredibly strong card that plays along with one of Blue’s minor themes in the form of decision making. You might know another example of this style in Fact or Fiction or the new Theros Beyond Death card, Atris.

I fondly remember using this card way back in the day… Story Time!

So back when I lived in Kansas, there was a casual legacy tournament that my library would hold in their meeting room once a month. It was a really fun and mostly social event, it wasn’t like a competitive thing but simply fun and people would bring wonky theme brew decks and things like that. I had this Mono Blue Tron deck that I would use and one of the cards I found was Intuition, I would use this card to fetch out the missing Tron Pieces.

I don’t think they hold that tournament anymore sadly, but in the spirit of Throwback Thursday, I fondly recall those days I’d spend hanging out in a library basement playing Magic with a motley group of people I called friends.

Constructed 2/5 – There are better options for Legacy now to fill your graveyard and much better options for a tutor.

Commander 5/5 – For U/x commander decks that like graveyard strategies this is a great version of buried alive or something to get for flashback spells.

Multiplayer 4/5 – A strong option for political games and a great way to make an alliance in the heat of battle!

Limited 2/5 – You don’t want to empty your bombs from your deck, unless you’re going full on reanimator.

Cube 1/5 – Like Legacy, there are better tutor options and ways to fill your graveyard, and like in Limited you don’t want to dump your good cards into the grave!

Phat Pack Magic is a channel dedicated to Magic: the Gathering and creating awesome coverage of local events for formats like Cube, rare pack drafts, and now FNM Pioneer videos! Check it out at YouTube.com/PhatPackMagic