You make the play

[obituary 95]

I don't know if this belongs here but if it does not then I wish for a mod to please move it.

So the other night I ran into this situation on cokatrace and I am intrested in seeing what a more expereinced players would do.

my opponenent wins the role and goes first. he plays a scrubland and plays a thoughtseize. and I reveal my hand.

my hand composes of
counterbalence
sensi's diving top
brainstorm
sword of the meek
batterskull
thopter foundry
Island.
What is the right play? and is there a correct play?

[Goin Aggro]

My snap reaction is either Brainstorm or SDT,

but depending on his deck and the answers he has available to him, it might be beneficial to take something else. (For example, if he's going to go T2 Hymn, he's probably going to want to take Brainstorm rather than top.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Brainstorm grabs you maximum tempo, if he doesn't draw a land on his turn he has to drop Top and use it against on his upkeep, meaning he's spending two turns dicking around.

[ScatmanX]

Nice one.
But no one can say for sure, because it depends a lot on his hand.
I could see myself taking Brainstorm and Top, decause he is probably playing some Deadguy/BW Stoneblade deck, that may have Vindicates and Phyrexian Revoker/Tidehollow Sculler to deal with other cards when he needs too.

[KrzyMoose]

Your opponent should probably take Brainstorm. You basically have to go runner-runner-runner Land in order to do anything and you're not really interacting with him, at all. Taking Brainstorm means you'll likely have to spend several turns just durdling around.

[JamieW89]

If he's playing UBw Storm without a way to win soon he'll probably take Counterbalance. If he can win next turn he'll take brainstorm.
If he's on a midrange deck with a fairly aggresive hand he'll take Brainstorm.
If he's on a midrange deck looking to play a long game he could take the Top.

And obviously the remainder of his hand also matters; if he has a revoker he'll take the brainstorm for example.

[SpikeyMikey]

To me, this thread is proof that people overrate Brainstorm. There are almost no situations inwhich I would take Brainstorm, including with Revoker in my hand; I'd rather have Revoker for Foundry in case they do find a second land. 99 times out of 100, I'm taking Top.

[Fry]

I would take top, the top is reusable card manipulation that is hard to destroy.
The brainstorm is a one shot deal, granted they would net gain a card, but I would them not have the reusable manipulation even if they can protect some cards from hymn.

[Tammit67]

my hand composes of
counterbalence
sensi's diving top
brainstorm
sword of the meek
batterskull
thopter foundry
Island.
What is the right play? and is there a correct play?

You kept that hand? GREEDY

[SpikeyMikey]

You kept that hand? GREEDY

But it has a brainstorm!

[DragoFireheart]

But it has a brainstorm!

- It's a shit hand waiting to turn your game into a loss. Pretty ballasy to keep it though.

[SpikeyMikey]

I was being sarcastic.

However, I'm willing to bet that at some point in the last 5 years, every one of us has kept a hand as bad or worse. So I'm not going to judge. He's probably better than 50% on coming out of that hand without getting fucked.


To elaborate on my earlier statement, you take Top because taking Top has a much bigger effect on the game. Without a fetchland to shuffle, Brainstorm is going to draw 3 cards, put 2 back, then spend the next two turns redrawing dead cards. In essence, without a fetch, what Brainstorm says is "draw a card". So if he Brainstorms and doesn't find shit, he's dead in the water for several turns before he gets through the chaff he put back on top. So the effect of a Brainstorm without a shuffle effect is to advance his hand by 1 turn(the 1 draw step he "skips past" by drawing the extra card from Brainstorm). Top, on the other hand, is reusable to dig 3 cards every turn, that is, it advances his hand by 3 turns. It's more mana intensive, but he has literally everything he wants in that hand.

He doesn't have a fetch in hand right now. He has next turn's draw step and then a Brainstorm, so 4 cards deep (the correct play here would actually be to wait until his turn 2 to Brainstorm to try and minimize the chance of missing that second land drop, but most players will Brainstorm EoT turn 1 because they're bad). He's obviously playing Countertop Thopters, so there will likely be 23 lands with between 7 and 9 fetches. Either 7 or 8 fetches gives him a less than 50% chance of seeing one in the next 4 (44% and 49% respectively). If he doesnt' see a fetch, I've got an extra 2 turns to set up my position before he burns through those dead cards and towards more relevant cards. Furthermore, his deck is set up to run to the long game, where Sensei's Divining Top shines by eliminating dead draws. If he somehow makes it out of the mana screw, I do not want to give him the best card in his deck.

[joemauer]

That was a greedy hand to keep.

Anyway it really depends on what his hand is composed of but top or counterbalance seem like good choices. If this guy has a slower hand(lot of three drops) then counterbalance. If he has a bunch of discard top would be a good snag. If he has some quick aggressive creatures with aether vial then thopter foundry would be the biggest threat.

Really depends what the other player has.

[joemauer]

Oh and yes SpikeyMikey was spot on right why top is the better snag than brainstorm.

[honestabe]

It's either top or brainstorm. Unlike most, I'd wager top as the #1 card to take, as it single handedly beats discard. Then again, if he's less discard based, brainstorm is probably correct.

And if he's on storm, then counterbalance is probably right

[dahcmai]

If I am playing Storm, most definitely Counterbalance. Anything else, pretty much Top is going to be my pick. I just hate the card and even seeing that single land there, I think I would still do it since people have this mysterious way of drawing exactly what they need sometimes. If I knew someone was going to perfect draw their way out, I would want that top to keep the Counterbalance in line and stop fetch shenanigans later. I have a habit of always choosing plays that take into consideration god draws because I don't like getting smashed by the smallest percentile.

[betterthenandrew]

I take Brainstorm because the only way our hero is getting into this game is if gets a quick Brainstorm+Fetch combo to dump the extra Chaff. When my opponent has 1 land, and a bunch of mana intensive Junk I'm perfectly fine with them keeping a bunch of that mana intensive junk. The batterskull, Foundry and Sword of the Meek are basically blanks until you draw hella lands, I want you to keep those. Either top or Brainstorm will need to find lands in their 3 cards if you want to have a real chance, the advantage is Brainstorm basically gets to see one deeper t2 (because you get to cast it after your draw step, where as you will probably want to top before you draw). Sure, we could brainstorm into oblivion, but if we topped into that same oblivion we are probably almost as dead, assuming our opponent has a reasonable keep. If the enemy hand is also garbage I suppose they will want to take the Top, as it will offer more advantages as the game advances.

[menace13]

I'd keep that hand all day, I'd even play that brainstorm EOT in spite of SpikeyMike and to top it all off I'd rip an island, put the Thopter 2nd from top, slam down the Counterbalance and laugh at the lady called luck.

That's just how I roll, but that's just me.

I would take Top there though with the Seize.

[Kuma]

I don't know if this belongs here but if it does not then I wish for a mod to please move it.

So the other night I ran into this situation on cokatrace and I am intrested in seeing what a more expereinced players would do.

my opponenent wins the role and goes first. he plays a scrubland and plays a thoughtseize. and I reveal my hand.

my hand composes of
counterbalence
sensi's diving top
brainstorm
sword of the meek
batterskull
thopter foundry
Island.
What is the right play? and is there a correct play?

Your hand is the stone-cold nuts. The only way he wins is if you stumble on mana. To that end, I'm probably taking Brainstorm here. With Brainstorm on the draw, more than 90% of the time you will hit at least one land by your second turn. Without Brainstorm, the odds drop considerably. Sensei's Divining Top brings the odds back up somewhat, but it's going to eat up at least one turn to use.

No matter what he takes, he's going to need to put an incredible amount of pressure on you to be able to win. Depending on his hand, I could see arguments for taking a different card, but I think the best way to beat this hand is to make it stumble on mana.

I don't have the time right now, but if I can later, I'll calculate the probabilities for Brainstorm and Sensei's Divining Top.

EDIT: Assuming 23 lands.

Probability the CounterTop player sees at least one land by his second turn if he main-phases his Brainstorm on his second turn: 94.07%

Probability the CounterTop player sees at least one land by his second turn if he end-phases his Brainstorm on his opponent's second turn: 88.38%

Probability the CounterTop player sees at least one land by his second turn with no Brainstorm or Sensei's Divining Top: 66.25%

Probability the CounterTop player sees at least one land by his second turn with Sensei's Divining Top and no Brainstorm: 88.38%

The probabilities were closer than I thought. I'm still grabbing Brainstorm here, because an EOT Brainstorm gives him a turn two Counterbalance with a two-drop on top 88.38% of the time. It also allows him to protect against further discard by giving him the option of hiding key cards on top of his deck. If he uses Sensei's Divining Top, he can't play Counterbalance until turn three unless he hits a land on his first draw step, or is willing to not spin Top before his second draw. Even if he casts the Counterbalance, he won't be able to control the top card of his deck unless he taps his Top to draw a card.

If I'm the Thoughtseizing player, it depends on what the rest of my hand looks like. If I have a Hymn to Tourach, I'm definitely taking the Brainstorm so he can't hide cards from it. If I'm playing Stoneblade and I want to cast Stoneforge Mystic next turn, I'm still probably taking Brainstorm so he can't use it to find countermagic.

Unless I don't care about CounterTop at all I'm probably grabbing the Brainstorm.

[Tammit67]

Your hand is the stone-cold nuts.

Not having lands -> Hands that are awesome but need mana

[GradStudentGuy]

I would take the top. Unless your opponent draws a fetch-land (much more unlikely then just a land) its going to be the most damaging. Not only have you taken away one of their combo pieces you took reusable library manipulation that is hard to kill game one.

[Kuma]

Not having lands -> Hands that are awesome but need mana

Are you really going to mulligan a hand with CounterTop and ThopterSword because you won't have two lands by your second turn 6% of the time? You're 24.6% likely to have the same or less lands if you mulligan, never mind the fact the rest of your hand almost certainly won't be as good.

How anyone can throw that hand back is beyond me.