I’m reaching for the UAD when I need a true to life authentic plate, then the Pro R (and sometime the Exponential R2) plate for a large processed sound thats fast to dial in…is anyone else with both of these doing the same?
If you want uber control over the plates, neither the Pro R or R2 give it to you (as they’re not plate emulators). You can’t manipulate crosstalk or change the material composition of the emulated plate. But do any of you find yourselves using the plate preset patches on the Pro R anyway for similar reasons?
UAD for me as well. Most of the time though, I reach for impulses. I have an incredible impulse library that is so scary real, it’s been my go to. The only actual verb/plate I use is the UAD plate and the UAD EMT. If you’ve not really given impulses a fair shot, give them a try Jonathan and buy some quality impulses. I think you will find them so intense, you may actually like me a little. LOL! 
I’ve been using either the Waves impulse/IR loader, or Voxengo Pristine Space. Totally blown away by them. They do plates, halls, gates, everything…and they are of course real rooms as opposed to verb. I know you probably know about them and use them already…but if not, they are definitely worth looking into. There are sites that offer some really awesome free ones too. I have a link somewhere…these guys are so obsessed with shooting impulse responses, they just go nuts and give them away for free. They use all state of the art gear to do this…high end mic’s and pre’s. I think it’s noisevault.com or something. Or noizevault…one of them. Last time I was there, the impulses I grabbed knocked me out of my chair. 
Noisevault it was…site is gone. I just did a search on free impulses and my whole board lit up. 
I loved the Slate Verbsuite for the last several months, then recently I started to struggle with it. So I got that Liquidsonicy Seventh Heaven Pro, which is 100% a convolution verb. And I’ve been throwing it all over mixes the last few days, and its been wonderfully easy to dial in. This thing is so easy that I can that scroll down a list of 10 presets, and 8 of them are immediately in the ballpark.
The Bricasti itself though is algorithmic which is strange to me, because every time Ive heard one I was just blown away by it. The Valhalla and the R2 are also algorithmic. But the thing about the UAD EMT isn’t so much algorithm vs plate, its the control you have over the specific plate models.
I have the Waves version of the Bricasti, and favor the LiquidSonics one infinitely more. The Waves Bricsati is an impulse too of course.
The one i have been impressed with of late is the Melda MConvolutionMB https://www.meldaproduction.com/MConvolutionMB
