Escape Brain Freeze

My kneejerk reaction is no. Pithing needle stops resolved tormod's and crop rotation can be countered\silenced. Faerie Macabre is a bit of a problem, but not as much as you'd think since our first BF is never in the yard when they have priority. They can exile LED, but then we'd still have 6-9 'draws' to find either a petal or another LED. I think we'll have more of a problem with Abrupt Decay than we will with crypt\bog. At this stage though I think we're overengineering. I'm going to take my list to at least an FNM before I consider making any changes.

It might also be the case that a Mentor plan B is just "better" than trying to fight Grave-hate. I just watched Ark411 get pretty wrecked by sideboard Mentor on stream.

Just got my first trophy with Underworld Breach, and have a 9-1 overall record with this build. I still think enlightened tutor isn’t necessary: I’ve played with versions with 3-4 and honestly also did fine with them, but I didn’t like how they played after mulligans, didn’t like the mana constraints of either having to fetch plains or tundra early, and just feel like it’s good for goldfishing and bad for playing against real opponents.

I’d rather play some more reactive cards (spell pierce/fluster), have more blue cards for force of will. The best draws (read: hands where underworld breach is in the top 10 cards of library) are even better because cards like thought scour make the cards in graveyard bottleneck disappear, and often allow you to go off very reliably (though non deterministically) without brain freeze.

As for spell pierce/fluster being bad because we want to be cantripping t1 (a valid FTW concern), thought scour helps with this too (instant speed) And it’s totally fine with a lot of hands to go island/go and cantrip t2. Or ponder, play petal and leave up veil/fluster/pierce if needed.

I’ve cut intuition as well. Playing 3 burning wish main and 1 in the Sb. The logic is that bw is more important in sb games in some matchups (finds shenanigans and rev silence which aren’t as necessary g1). So my ways to get breach into play are having it in hand or milling via bfreeze/thought scour then bw for sevinne, or bw for infernal tutor lines. Doesn’t sound as reliable as it’s actually been in practice. I’ll acknowledge it could be runhot, but so far it’s been plenty consistent.



//enchantments (4)
4 underworld breach

//instants (24)
4 brain freeze
4 force of will
4 brainstorm
4 thought scour
3 veil of summer
2 spell pierce
2 pact of negation
1 flusterstorm

//sorceries (8)
4 ponder
3 burning wish
1 preordain

//artifacts (8)
4 lion's eye diamond
4 lotus petal

//lands (16)
4 scalding tarn
4 misty rainforest
2 snow-covered island
2 volcanic island
1 prismatic vista
1 snow-covered mountain
1 tropical island
1 taiga

//sideboard
1 burning wish
1 infernal tutor
1 tome scour
1 grapeshot
1 sevinne's reclamation
1 reverent silence
1 shenanigans
1 empty the warrens
1 pyroclasm
3 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
1 flusterstorm
1 surgical extraction


Sb plan vs non fow combo (tes/ant) is usually -2 pact +1 fluster +1 wish
Vs delver/interactive blue -4 thought scour (worse when surgical comes in) +3 cov +1 flusterstorm
Vs most leyline decks, d and t, etc all the bounce and bw come in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemon

My kneejerk reaction is no. Pithing needle stops resolved tormod's and crop rotation can be countered\silenced. Faerie Macabre is a bit of a problem, but not as much as you'd think since our first BF is never in the yard when they have priority. They can exile LED, but then we'd still have 6-9 'draws' to find either a petal or another LED. I think we'll have more of a problem with Abrupt Decay than we will with crypt\bog. At this stage though I think we're overengineering. I'm going to take my list to at least an FNM before I consider making any changes.

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Many times they can’t even exile LED with macabre if you’re careful. Sac led for uuu, recast led from gy first. Cast brain freeze and led is on the table. They never have an opening to macabre anything relevant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

Just got my first trophy with Underworld Breach, and have a 9-1 overall record with this build.

...


//sideboard
1 burning wish
1 infernal tutor
1 tome scour
1 grapeshot
1 sevinne's reclamation
1 reverent silence
1 shenanigans
1 empty the warrens
1 pyroclasm
3 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
1 flusterstorm
1 surgical extraction

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Congratulations on the trophy! When do you end up using Empty the Warrens? It seems like most of the time you can get a decent storm count you can just win with Grapeshot (at least that's my experience with the Jeskai build).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

Many times they can’t even exile LED with macabre if you’re careful. Sac led for uuu, recast led from gy first. Cast brain freeze and led is on the table. They never have an opening to macabre anything relevant.

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Oh I like this line.

Well, boys, looks like it's gonna be a cold day in Hell.

@ Jblinder: Congrats on the trophy! A couple questions:

1) How did you mulligan given that you were not running Tutor - how often did you have to rely on a breachless hand and how did you get breach?
2) Given that you're only running 16 lands and 4 petals, how late did you combo out with protection from veil or storm? I'm an advocate of more lands precisely because this combo is more mana-hungry than apparent and I didn't really find myself with mana open for cards like veil during the combo turn.
3) I'm a huge advocate for tome scour - but why 4 instead of 3 allowing you to wish for 1?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cire

.
3) I'm a huge advocate for tome scour - but why 4 instead of 3 allowing you to wish for 1?

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Thought Scour and Tome Scour are different cards.

It appears some people are playing Thought Scour, others are playing Tome Scour. Not typos.

I'm not convinced Thought Scour is good. It doesn't work as a combo piece and only mills for 2. The only things it has going for it are it's instant speed (easier to play with counters) and it replaces itself. When I tested it, I found a random draw really wasn't that helpful and I'd prefer a proper cantrip, tutor, or combo piece. It may come down to play styles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

Thought Scour and Tome Scour are different cards.

It appears some people are playing Thought Scour, others are playing Tome Scour. Not typos.

I'm not convinced Thought Scour is good. It doesn't work as a combo piece and only mills for 2. The only things it has going for it are it's instant speed (easier to play with counters) and it replaces itself. When I tested it, I found a random draw really wasn't that helpful and I'd prefer a proper cantrip, tutor, or combo piece. It may come down to play styles.

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Ah, my bad. Haven't tested Thought Scour at all - Feel like it might take cantrip spots?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cire

@ Jblinder: Congrats on the trophy! A couple questions:

1) How did you mulligan given that you were not running Tutor - how often did you have to rely on a breachless hand and how did you get breach?
2) Given that you're only running 16 lands and 4 petals, how late did you combo out with protection from veil or storm? I'm an advocate of more lands precisely because this combo is more mana-hungry than apparent and I didn't really find myself with mana open for cards like veil during the combo turn.
3) I'm a huge advocate for tome scour - but why 4 instead of 3 allowing you to wish for 1?

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1) I actually don’t mulligan very aggressively. Almost any hand with a couple cantrips (with brainstorm at a premium and thought scour a downgrade in speculative hands) and a couple lands is one I’ll trust to get there.
2) with force of will being fairly reliable free counter with a higher blue count, and especially so in land-light hands, plus 2 pacts, and often no need to fetch non basics into wasteland before the combo turn, the mana has been reliable. 16 “feels” right at the moment but I haven’t looked at the hypergeometric distribution. I’m not always jamming combo at the first opportunity, and land light hands generally have some cantrips to slow down and sculpt in the fair blue matchups. Much like ANT has played in the past, you can sculpt hands to win longer games.
3) there is a tome scour in the board. The four-of in the main is thought scour. It’s an instant speed cantrip that mills target player for two and most importantly draws a card. I’m not interested in tome scour in the main since it only is useful for the combo turn. Drawing a card with the effect is very important, and so is being instant speed.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Thought Scour and Tome Scour are different cards.

I'm not convinced Thought Scour is good. It doesn't work as a combo piece and only mills for 2. The only things it has going for it are it's instant speed (easier to play with counters) and it replaces itself. When I tested it, I found a random draw really wasn't that helpful and I'd prefer a proper cantrip, tutor, or combo piece. It may come down to play styles.

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thought scour is kind of like a card that says "draw 1.5 cards." you know how you have hands that need brain Freeze and LED, but those cards don't really have much use outside the combo turn? a line i'll use decently often is to ponder into a thing i want in my hand, a brain freeze (which i want but don't need in my hand), and something else i don't want. i can then use thought scour as a "shuffle" and effectively i've also "drawn" the brain freeze. even a blind thought scour fuels the graveyard at the worst, while replacing itself. milling an led or brain freeze often lets you brainstorm away redundant copies to sculpt perfect hands for the combo turn. this is less useful post board against grave hate, so they often come out.

on the combo turn without brain freeze, thought scour digs really really hard. while tome scour puts 5 in your graveyard, this puts only 2 but one in your *hand*. that's better than 3 to the graveyard in most situations. i'll do stuff like, uuu for led, cast led from grave, sac for rrr. if there is a petal in my graveyard i'm more likely to make all blue mana...the key is if we draw burning wish we don't want to have to then use 3 cards to cast LED and *another 3* to cast burning wish since we'd have to discard it. now i can cast any future cards i draw off the scour without having to exile more graveyard cards. so cast scrour and wish or brain freeze in either graveyard or hand wins the game. drawing ponder puts another card in the graveyard and draws another non random card, petal is just a free mana and the third card in the graveyard, and led is even better. now obviously, tome scour is better on the combo turn, don't get me wrong. but you really can go for it aggressively with thought scour in most situations nonetheless.

i've found that all the little things thought scour does, in addition to being instant speed to be able to hold to pitch to fow or leave spell pierce mana up make it a better card in the maindeck than preordain.

i *really* can't wait for someone to e tutor up a breach in the mirror and thought scour targeting *them*, but i haven't pulled that off yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

you know how you have hands that need brain Freeze and LED, but those cards don't really have much use outside the combo turn? a line i'll use decently often is to ponder into a thing i want in my hand, a brain freeze (which i want but don't need in my hand), and something else i don't want. i can then use thought scour as a "shuffle" and effectively i've also "drawn" the brain freeze. even a blind thought scour fuels the graveyard at the worst, while replacing itself. milling an led or brain freeze often lets you brainstorm away redundant copies to sculpt perfect hands for the combo turn.

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Tome Scour does all those things too. I've used it to "reshuffle" after Brainstorms and Ponders while putting the LED/Petal in the graveyard. A blind Tome Scour also fuels the graveyard.

Advantages:
-Digs deeper, higher chance of finding LED/Lotus Petal
-Hit higher graveyard count faster to better support things like escaping Pact/Flusterstorm for protection and holding priority to keep LED and BF out of the graveyard
-Replaces Brain Freeze, so you don't even need to find it. 1 fewer card to find. With Thought Scour you still need to find a BF.

Disadvantages:
- Doesn't replace itself. This seems bad on paper, but in practice I found the random draw from Thought Scour rarely gave me a card I needed.
- Sorcery speed. Instant Thought Scour makes it easier to hold up countermagic or mill the opponent in response to something.

Quote:

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i *really* can't wait for someone to e tutor up a breach in the mirror and thought scour targeting *them*, but i haven't pulled that off yet.

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Yeah, this is where Thought Scour shines. You could mess up enemy tutors, cantrips, Counterbalance, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

on the combo turn without brain freeze, thought scour digs really really hard. while tome scour puts 5 in your graveyard, this puts only 2 but one in your *hand*. that's better than 3 to the graveyard in most situations. i'll do stuff like, uuu for led, cast led from grave, sac for rrr. if there is a petal in my graveyard i'm more likely to make all blue mana...the key is if we draw burning wish we don't want to have to then use 3 cards

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The 3 cards to GY is better than 1 to hand.

Your scenario: Thought Scour + LED + Breach -> Maybe draw something good like Burning Wish, but 67% chance the Wish ends up in GY instead of hand and you have to escape it anyway, only with fewer cards in GY

Other scenario: Tome Scour + LED/Petal + Breach -> Deterministic storm loop. It doesn't just dig. You keep casting it over and over to increase your GY size until you hit Brain Freeze to win, and you will have enough cards to escape the BF.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

Tome Scour does all those things too. I've used it to "reshuffle" after Brainstorms and Ponders while putting the LED/Petal in the graveyard. A blind Tome Scour also fuels the graveyard.



Disadvantages:
- Doesn't replace itself. This seems bad on paper, but in practice I found the random draw from Thought Scour rarely gave me a card I needed.



The 3 cards to GY is better than 1 to hand.

Your scenario: Thought Scour + LED + Breach -> Maybe draw something good like Burning Wish, but 67% chance the Wish ends up in GY instead of hand and you have to escape it anyway, only with fewer cards in GY

Other scenario: Tome Scour + LED/Petal + Breach -> Deterministic storm loop. It doesn't just dig. You keep casting it over and over to increase your GY size until you hit Brain Freeze to win, and you will have enough cards to escape the BF.

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disagree *strongly* with "random draw from thought scour rarely gave me a card i needed" logic. that's like saying the draw step is overrated because i often don't draw a card i needed. every card, every draw step obviously matters. drawing a card off thought scour matters too. *a lot.*

tome scour mills *5* cards to the graveyard and is deterministic. *5* to the graveyard and 0 to hand is obviously better on the combo turn. i won't argue there. on the combo turn tome scour is better. but my argument is that 1 to hand and 2 to graveyard *is* better than *three* to the graveyard on the combo turn (i can see if there was confusion because i was comparing to tome scour in the same breath above).

anyway let's test this to see if it's indeed better than mill *3*. float some mana, cast thought scour. do you want two randoms to the graveyard and one to your hand or 3 randoms to the graveyard? i'd rather have one going to my hand. the cards that get milled (with 2/3 chance like you said to be the card you need) are the same in either scenario. however, the third card, if it is a non-land, non protection spell, is much better positioned in your hand. for instance if its a brainstorm, you get to cast it, the brainstorm still goes to your yard and you get another best of 3 in your hand. even lands you draw will eventually go back because suppose you have only enough cards in grave to thought scour once more, but you've drawn 3 lands. instead of casting the last thoughtscour, you cast led, and discard those lands which refuels the scour.

thought scour is non-deterministic, but from most reasonable positions you "get there" if you have to go for the combo and don't yet have the freeze.

Pretend that Veil of summer is blue for a moment, I'm wondering is what are the chances you would rather have an enlightened tutor over thought scour? The basis of your build and my last build are very similar, the only real difference seems to be (1) amount of mana sources and (2) thought scour > tutor. The other differences are small (more protection pieces, types of protection and amount of burning wishes (and a lot of that is due to the color options presented by not running tutor, running less land, ect.)). I am completely willing to conceed that I run too many mana sources, I'll chalk that up to me being a worse player and not mulliganning, cantripping right. However, I feel it should be easy to see whether you would rather have thought scour or the tutor? That OR veil is just so good you are running scour over tutor just to be able to also run green?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemon

Congratulations on the trophy! When do you end up using Empty the Warrens? It seems like most of the time you can get a decent storm count you can just win with Grapeshot (at least that's my experience with the Jeskai build).



Oh I like this line.

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I just used empty the warrens in this situation: game 3 slow depths opponent with 3 lands in play untapped, no board, 6 cards in had, and played surgical in game 2. they obviously have some combo of crop/surgical. i find burning wish. i ponder. play petal. play petal. play led. bw and crack led (for bbb to rep infernal tutor to try to bait crop for bog in response; they don't bite). Make 12 goblins.

actually they used double crop and made marit lage on their turn. now i needed to topdeck a cov or echoing truth which got boarded in. or what i actually topdecked, which was underworld breach with a stocked graveyard! they were able to surgical brain freeze in response, but i was luckily able to chain cantrips into bw for tome scour and pulled out a nail biter.

so even though the goblins didn't win that game by attacking, they did actually win this game because any other line gets destroyed by crop for bog.

empty is also for situations vs delver when they stick something like a grafdiggers cage. often a line like veil, they force, you led, petal, bw and make goblins is enough.

that intense goblins game just happened to take my next league record to 4-0. can't even describe how well i'm running to be honest. topdecking that breach and getting there with cantrips and no freeze?...almost not even real life. speaking of which i'll tell one more "run good" story from the trophy league. i promise it's worth it!

g2 on the draw vs TES, i keep spell piercex2, thought scour, brainstorm, ponder, brain freeze, fetchland. plan is to hope to not die t1, leave spell pierce/scour up for their t2 and then start sculpting for a win or more protection. but they ad nauseum naturally t1. what are my chances in this spot? they go to 1 without a kill! but they set up deterministic kill next turn with hope of ghirapur on the table. so i can't win right? unless... i draw led. ponder, crack for RRR and blind hit breach (would be better if i had to shuffle and found it, but didn't)!
i'll update if i get the back-to-back trophy!

EDIT: I lost a super-close g3. faerie macabre shut me down on my first (t2. combo turn). then was able to set up a win again on t4 and krosan grip got me. I deserve it for chirping about my luck. 13-2 overall still though!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cire

Pretend that Veil of summer is blue for a moment, I'm wondering is what are the chances you would rather have an enlightened tutor over thought scour? The basis of your build and my last build are very similar, the only real difference seems to be (1) amount of mana sources and (2) thought scour > tutor. The other differences are small (more protection pieces, types of protection and amount of burning wishes (and a lot of that is due to the color options presented by not running tutor, running less land, ect.)). I am completely willing to conceed that I run too many mana sources, I'll chalk that up to me being a worse player and not mulliganning, cantripping right. However, I feel it should be easy to see whether you would rather have thought scour or the tutor? That OR veil is just so good you are running scour over tutor just to be able to also run green?

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i'm not so sure it's easy to see when you'd rather have e tutor vs thought scour. in goldfishing, e tutor will always outperform thought scour unless you have breach, and sometimes but prob under 50% when you have breach and no led. if you have breach and led, thought scour pretty strictly outperforms.

what's difficult to determine is the effect of the card disadvantage in real games (and lets ignore even the times you pitch scour to fow). maybe thought scour leads to a hand with one extra key protection spell or land down the line, even though your goldfish rate drops. i believe this deck is certainly capable of jamming fast, and i mostly do, but there are games where i chill til turn 6. doing the math on whether it's better in those types of games is difficult because in strict math/goldfishing games t6 is considered "failure" basically.

i am virtually certain "failure rate" goes up with scour over e tutor. you simply don't t2/t3 breach as often. but i am confident (though not nearly as certain) that "game win % vs an interactive opponent" goes up with scour, and i think it's difficult to measure that.

also, fwiw, i think orim's chant/silence are actually as good or at least close to veil. worse against discard, obviously, but really important vs cards like crop rotation. i think veil is a "little" better. so having to play white and lose veil isn't the biggest drawback to e tutor closing off green. the main reasons are that fetching plains or tundra early are both awkward and that reverent silence is an absolute house of a burning wish target.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

anyway let's test this to see if it's indeed better than mill *3*.

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I thought you meant mill 3 vs draw 1. Thought Scour mills 2 + draws 1. Tome Scour mills 2 + mills 3. The difference between them is mill 3 vs draw 1. The sentence started with "while Tome Scour puts", so I thought you were still comparing it to Tome Scour and assumed the 3 came from that difference. The card in hand isn't better than 3 more milled in that scenario.

I wasn't arguing anything about a card that only mills 3, because we aren't considering cards that do that. +1 card in hand is better than +1 card in the yard, obviously, but there aren't interchangeable cards that offer that tradeoff. The options are: Thought Scour, Tome Scour, or maybe some other cantrip like Preordain.

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disagree *strongly* with "random draw from thought scour rarely gave me a card i needed" logic. that's like saying the draw step is overrated because i often don't draw a card i needed. every card, every draw step obviously matters.

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Slippery slope fallacy. It's one card, not every draw step.

Over the 1 card I disagree with you, but acknowledge this is a controversial point.

More cards are better. The question is if 1 card makes a difference winning games that we couldn't have otherwise won vs the win benefit offered by the other spell. It's not just "replaces itself vs doesn't" but "replaces itself vs mills 2/replaces a combo piece". That's more difficult than it seems and I think it deserves more testing.

Cards matter. But card selection matters more. Most of our other spells provide card selection (Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, ETutor, Burning Wish, Intuition, even Gamble). We can use them to dig into better cards and also improve our next draw step. Because of all the cantrips, tutors, and fetches in some lists, almost every draw is sculpted. We aren't at the mercy of random topdecks until midgame after disruption. When we are topdecking, we topdeck much worse than fair decks because we need to sculpt specific combinations of cards (the exception is Breach. Breach is an amazing topdeck, so tutors to find it are also amazing topdecks).

Thought Scour gives no control over what you draw, and you can't even use other cantrips to set up the card that will go to hand. Manamorphose was like that. Getting a card back is good, but without card selection it was rarely drawing what was needed and more likely to give you something redundant, while taking up a spot of a card that could provide selection. Is marginally filling the GY worth that?

I cut my Thought Scours for Preordain, which digs deeper with more card selection, but doesn't mill. Overall it gave me more consistency.

As for Thought Scour vs Tome Scour, there are situational differences. What are you digging for? Thought Scour is worse at digging for BF or LED. Tome Scour replaces BF and digs for LED better. Thought Scour gives you the chance to dig for other cards that need to be in hand, like Breach, protection, Wish, or lands, but it also gives no card selection and fuels the grave less.

I think there are merits to both and it deserves testing. Cire has good results with Tome Scour. That was probably goldfishing, though G1 often plays out like a goldfish and mill is bad postboard.

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thought scour is non-deterministic, but from most reasonable positions you "get there" if you have to go for the combo and don't yet have the freeze.

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If you're in that position, have you ever tried escaping Ponder? I've "gotten there" before by chaining Brainstorms and Ponders into gas. You get the same benefit of putting cards in hand and getting to cast them, only with more choice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

i am virtually certain "failure rate" goes up with scour over e tutor. you simply don't t2/t3 breach as often. but i am confident (though not nearly as certain) that "game win % vs an interactive opponent" goes up with scour, and i think it's difficult to measure that.

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It could be measured by testing real games, and keeping track of how often that extra card mattered vs how often we just want to tutor for what we need. Some matchups are attrition wars, but most decks will attack specific pieces and being able to find replacements for those pieces quickly might win games more than just trying to win a topdeck war.

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Originally Posted by FTW

I thought you meant mill 3 vs draw 1. Thought Scour mills 2 + draws 1. Tome Scour mills 2 + mills 3. The difference between them is mill 3 vs draw 1. The sentence started with "while Tome Scour puts", so I thought you were still comparing it to Tome Scour and assumed the 3 came from that difference. The card in hand isn't better than 3 more milled in that scenario.

I wasn't arguing anything about a card that only mills 3, because we aren't considering cards that do that. +1 card in hand is better than +1 card in the yard, obviously, but there aren't interchangeable cards that offer that tradeoff. The options are: Thought Scour, Tome Scour, or maybe some other cantrip like Preordain.




Slippery slope fallacy. It's one card, not every draw step.

Over the 1 card I disagree with you, but acknowledge this is a more controversial point.

More cards are better. The question is if 1 card makes a difference winning games that we couldn't have otherwise won vs the win benefit offered by the other spell. It's not just "replaces itself vs doesn't" but "replaces itself vs mills 2/replaces a combo piece". That's more difficult than it seems and I think it deserves more testing.

Cards matter. But card selection matters more. Most of our other spells provide card selection (Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, ETutor, Burning Wish, Intuition, even Gamble). We can use them to dig into better cards and also improve our next draw step. Because of all the cantrips, tutors, and fetches in some lists, almost every draw is sculpted. We aren't at the mercy of random topdecks until midgame after disruption. When we are topdecking, we topdeck much worse than fair decks because we need to sculpt specific combinations of cards.

Thought Scour gives no control over what you draw, and you can't even use other cantrips to set up the card that will go to hand. Manamorphose was like that. Getting a card back is good, but without card selection it was rarely drawing what was needed while taking up a spot of a card that could provide selection just to marginally fill the graveyard.

I cut my Thought Scours for Preordain, which digs deeper with more card selection, but doesn't mill. Overall it gave me more consistency.

As for Thought Scour vs Tome Scour, there are situational differences. What are you digging for? Thought Scour is worse at digging for BF or LED. Tome Scour replaces BF and digs for LED better. Thought Scour gives you the chance to dig for other cards that need to be in hand, like Breach, protection, or lands, but it also gives no card selection and fuels the grave less.

I think there are merits to both and it deserves testing. Cire has good results with Tome Scour.




If you're in that position, have you ever tried escaping Ponder? I've "gotten there" before by chaining Brainstorms and Ponders into gas. You get the same benefit of putting cards in hand and getting to cast them, only with more choice.

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I agree with a lot of what you said. All of it def deserves testing, and none of these options (preordain, thought scour, tome scour, e tutor) are strictly better than one another. I have been doing more winning with thought scour and have been happier with the gameplay than e tutor. i haven't tried tome scour main.

regarding escaping ponder over tome scour. scour is basically *almost* strictly better. ponder is look at 3 draw 1 of your choice. thought scour is much closer to "draw 3" with breach in play. you can play the random card you draw *or* either of the two you milled *and* if you don't want to play the milled cards, or even any of the cards, they fuel the next scour. and not only that, when you ponder, you're putting two cards you don't want (if you do want them then either ponder or scour have already won) back on top of the deck. so the next ponder only looks at one fresh card (or a shuffle for random) while the thought scour sees 3 fresh cards. ponder is only better on the exact last iteration, where you will no longer be able to scour again so you need to draw into an exact card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jblinder

i am virtually certain "failure rate" goes up with scour over e tutor. you simply don't t2/t3 breach as often. but i am confident (though not nearly as certain) that "game win % vs an interactive opponent" goes up with scour, and i think it's difficult to measure that.

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I think I'll test my build from this post against a friend for about ten games vs. same list with E-Tutor replaced by 2 Tome Scour and 2 Thought Scour (and mana base edited since I don't need white) and report back how much I missed E-tutor if any.