Dies to Removal

Egads! We have a front page that's relevant to this topic?!?

http://diestoremoval.com/frontpage/node/9

Damn, that sounds awesome. Seems pretty cheap as well.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to customize, lots of interchangeable pieces that can be swapped in or out according to budget and availability. And in multi, it's one of the generals that has the highest win rate in our playgroup. It's fast, very hard to slow down or hate out, always has cards in hand, and you can't always tell when it's about to kill you.

Killing Thada 3rd turn slows it down significantly, but it's still going to get there in the end with the rest of its ramp and card advantage package. And a lot of people may not want or be able to kill the Thada quickly enough before the damage is done, especially if your countershield comes back up. If you can steal one or two Sol Rings
before she gets picked off, she's done her job.

Even a relatively untuned build can be pretty dangerous - any deck with that much mana, that much card advantage, and blue access, can make itself a real headache.

Probably one of the simplest generals to start building cutthroat with is Thada Adel, ramp style.

Cram in a healthy contingent of multi-mana mana rocks aside from Thada, fast mana a la Grim Monolith, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, Everflowing Chalice, Phyrexian Metamorph, Worn Powerstone, Copy Artifact, Scuplting Steel, Extraplanar Lens, Tezzeret the Seeker, maybe Gauntlet of Power. That gives you a level of mana ramp in conjunction with Thada that ought to be ridiculously unfair.

While ramping, sit back on around 10-12 counterspells, adjusted according to your meta, sprinkle in some blue removal (Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Curse of the Swine, etc.) and some good creature theft to the tune of about 8 slots total, pump in Knowledge Exploitation/Time Stretch/Time Warp/Temporal Manipulation/Walk The Aeons/Diluvian Primordial/Notorious Throng(if you roll that way), finish with things like
Lightning Greave'd Eldrazi (don't forget Pathrazer of Ulamog), Memnarch, Sphinx Ambassador, possibly Rites of Replication, Blightsteel Colossus, Bribery. The rest of your deck is just about every card draw spell you can find that generates three or more cards for you: Stroke of Genius, Jace's Ingenuity, Opportunity, Mind Spring, Braingeyser, Recurring Insight, Concentrate, Deep Analysis, Tidings, Jin-Gitaxias, Myojin of Seeing Winds, Blue Sun's Zenith, Jace the Mind Sculptor, etc. Mystical Tutor doesn't hurt.

Add Back to Basics, and you're pretty well set.

You're monoblue, so you've got access to counters and removal, but you can also ramp much faster than what most other decks are capable of doing. If you're in a position to be aggressive fast, you can potentially start casting hasty Eldrazi turns 4-5 with the right start, but you're also well-positioned for the long game, since you don't have to over-extend or burn cards from hand if you don't want to, but can quietly ride on the back of
Thada, build up massive mana and/or card advantage, and wait for your moment to strike. Since you can grab other people's Lightning Greaves basically at will, it's pretty easy to arrange for a hasty threat to come down and basically one-shot people at your discretion, without giving them any opportunity to react.