Originally Posted by
benthetenor
To be clear, if I were to take Solidarity to a tournament tomorrow, this is not the build I would run; there are tweaks that I would make based upon years of experience and personal preferences, none of which I'm going to talk about here as it will simply cause more confusion. Besides which, as I said, my personal preferences towards the deck should have no bearing on the build that you play. That's why they're personal preferences. But I do want to comment on some of your questions, to clarify.
Stifle on a fetchland has never been a huge concern for me. Which is not to say it can't happen, but much more that the difference between playing 6 and 8 Fetchlands has almost no impact on your vulnerability to Stifle; you're just about as likely to draw a hand full of fetchlands against an opponent with Stifle with 6 fetches as with 8. Trimming on Fetchlands to hedge against Stifle makes no sense since the most likely thing is that they will have one, maybe two Stifles, which are just as likely to get you with 6 fetches as with 8. The most important part of beating Stifle with this deck is learning how to play around Stifles out of RUG Delver, not trimming a card that's great for you because you're scared of an imaginary opponent with three Stifle in hand. If you really didn't want to get a fetchland Stifled, then you should be playing a deck with no fetchlands. The key for me has been that playing with 8 fetchlands instead of 6 gives you the opportunity to fetch out, on average, one extra land every other game, which does a lot to decrease the number of dead draws mid-combo by thinning the deck of extra lands. This is especially important when you're trying to go off on three lands, as the difference between having fetched twice and three times is really fairly large. All that being said, this is a preference of mine, one that I feel has proven itself enough to be considered to be standard in any list I would recommend, but the deck functions well with 6 fetchlands, and always has.
Brain Freeze did not need Visions of Beyond to be great, it already had Flash of Insight in the old builds (and Snapcaster Mage in the new ones) along with Brainstorm as cards that played well with it. Having two means that a) you don't have to dig through your entire deck to find one and b) you are stronger against counterspells because it becomes feasible to simply have two Brain Freeze in hand to double-freeze them at the end of a counter war and win anyway. You win with Brain Freeze, and it is the least dead kill-condition of any combo deck I've ever played. It's not like Tendrils of Agony in Storm or Progenitus in a Natural Order deck, in that there's no need to shuffle it back with a Brainstorm if it's in your opener or if you draw it at an incorrect time. Playing with only one increases the number of times that you have to super go-off and draw your entire deck before you find a kill condition, which leads to sloppy, haymaker plays that are much more vulernerable to disruption. Naturally drawing your Brain Freezes lets you win small, forcing you to consider more efficient lines of play for shorter kills that have less of a chance of something going wrong, which increases the consistency and viability of this deck. You don't need any one card or line of play to win, which is a strength. And you need every strength you can with this deck; the cards just aren't all that powerful in and of themselves.
