To quote Nightmare "It's the best card in the format." That about sums it up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waikiki
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To quote Nightmare "It's the best card in the format." That about sums it up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waikiki
Brainstorm on top of doing all the cool card finding things it does in the early game, [lands, creature's, removal, SB cards etc...] when paired with one of the 7 fetchlands in the deck it allows you to turn extra lands in the late game into relevent cards. The same is true for discard spells after your opponent has no hand but is beating on you with a dude.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waikiki
Brainstorm is important because it's Brainstorm, the same reason's every other deck that runs Blue chooses to play it as a 4 of. I agree that it was a bit janky of a choice to add Blue to my already 3 color deck just for 1 card but without it I would not have won the Hadley tournament. I was already running the 4 Birds and I was going to discard over land destruction at the time so I just turned the Wasteland's into Blue Dual Lands. Tombstone needs to play Brainstorm, it's not like The Rock where you can just try to live off your top deck's. The deck needs to have an aggresive card advantage strategy.
Is there anything in the sideboard to justify the blue splash beyond the Brainstorms in the main deck? Brainstorm is a great card but does it justify making the deck more vulnerable to Blood Moon, Back to Basics and other mana deprival?
I am running 3x Engineered Explosive's in the SB at the moment. The EE are fairly easy to get to 3 color's although Bloodmoon is not a friend to this deck. My best answer for Bloodmoon is the good old fashioned turn 1 Birds of Paradise go. This is all assuming that you weren't able to force the deck to discard the Bloodmoon before they could cast it. As for the Back to Basic's the deck does have 5 basic's in here with the four birds. There are also 7 fetch lands to find the basics. On top of all that I am also running 3x Krosan Grip in the SB.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Yes Brainstorm is completly worth it, I would not have won at Hadley without them.
Well, it's an interesting statement about Brainstorm's effectiveness. I guess there are 4C decks out there splashing green just for Goyf at the moment too.Quote:
Originally Posted by konsultant
The history of Brainstorm is well short and to the point but at the Winter Wonderland tourny I went so far as to run Ponder as a splash color, Geoff wasn't sold and I did this for a DIG effect due to the needing to find an anser issue. Ponder worked pretty well but it didn't really make or break the deck. Geoff in testing was running into mid late game issues with to many land in hand and not being able to fix that issue ezily. In went Brainstorm as Geoff and I are both or were avid landstill players it was an ez fit for us to incorporate a crazy landbase for the utility of fixing our hands.
On Magus of the Moon Bloodmoon, Turn 1 Birds/Swamp/Plains seems like it is over simplified but that is the only thing you need. A Turn 1 Bird fixes any of your mana issues and if your holding Snuff Out or STP the Basic Swamp/Plains is the only fix you really need.
On playing LD over Discard? I like to control the board and feel like Deed is a better call along with the stifling of your opponents Tempo. In many of the 'Faster' Thresh based decks your opponent runs fewer and fewer lands(The Deck that won worlds ran 15) A turn 1 Waste a Turn 2 Sinkhole makes those decks cry. That being said with Thresh being a little down latly and other decks on the rise the format shifts a little and makes the Discard route a little more effective.
Creature Choices:
Tarmagoyf: A No brainer as it is probably the one of best card ever printed.
Doran: Doran beats Goblins, and is a huge help in this decks bad matchup Survival, as he is Shriekmaw proof and big game hunter proof.
Eternal Witness: Returning Buisness spells and bouncing a witness is gold, if you have never tried to deal with regrowing a witness off a witness into a STP let me tell you it is some fun.
Birds of Paradise: The card Geoff and I have laughed at and STPed our whole magic life we play this to add speed and fix mana problems that could arise.
Exaulted Angel: Life swings are important, Also you do a lot of damage to yourself as stated earlier You should start your game with three land in play and at 13 life. The power of flight is wonderful too.
Tombstalker: Flight - 5/5 for 2 mana? This guy is crazy good he usually ends up giving you 5 life for 2 mana as he draws a lot of STP's.
as for other creature spells well none have lived up to the ones above.
This deck still runs the same as it did in its conception you trade cards, and you gain card advantage in the form of Harmonize and Eternal witness. This is the basic philosophy that has made many decks over the years very good decks and this deck is no different.
I just want to say I'm a huge fan of this deck. I had watched quite a few testing games that Geoff played a few weeks ago, and watched with glee as he emptied his hand in the first few turns every game, then would spend one turn playing Harmonize and there he was, back in the game with more answers/threats. The inclusion of Brainstorm also seems to be great.
@Geoff: I was just wondering what the board looked like for the last tournament. Also, how did Crime/Punishment work out for you?
@Bob: Does your build still include Lilliana Vess? Or did it gets dropped in your build as well? Actually, I guess I'm just wondering what your deck looks like in general.
My intuition would be that Brainstorm isn't as good here as it is in base-blue decks, because you end up having to use your fetchland to find a blue source so that you can cast Brainstorm, rather than holding it back to shuffle with afterwards. Am I correct? (Note that this is a separate question from whether or not Brainstorm is, nonetheless, worth splashing for.)
Have you considered Etched Oracle? I've been wanting to put that card into decks the past few days, and this one seems like the perfect fit. It's like a Loxodon Hierarch, except it Ancestral Recalls rather than Healing Salves. (Okay, yeah, not exactly. But close.)
On the Brainstorm splash -
Is it as good in this deck as it is in a blue based deck?
-I guess the awnser is yes it is. You run 7 fetchlands and 4 BoP and it really solves a lot of problems the deck was having pre Brainstorm. If there was a better card that we could play that said draw three cards(The deck does play Harmonize)we would probably run that over Brainstorm. Honestly there isn't an acceptable substitute or we woldn't have splashed blue.
Have we tried Etched Oricle?
-The honest awnser is no, I actually needed to look the card up. The deck if we used that instead of brainstorm would only be a 3 color deck and she would only have 3 counters on it leaving the draw 3 card clause unplayable. Also he is just not the same calibre as the creatures already in this deck.
On My decklist
-Think no discard and add 4 Vindicate and 3 Pernicious deeds.
There were other variations to the list but that is basically the big difference.
On My board choices
3 Orim's Chant
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
3 Engineered Plauge
I was actually thinking of Oracle in place of Harmonize or so (and a four mana 4/4 who casts Ancestral Recall seems powerful enough to me). Playing it with only three colors as a Hill Giant would obviously be pointless.
Why splash for Brainstorm when you could Run Divining Top instead and maintain a decent manabase.
Top is not Brainstorm. I will grant you top is very good and in my build I actually run 1, however the ability to draw 3 cards and put any two cards in your hand back is just supirior to anything else. if you want to try running top over brainstorm and adjust the manabase a little feel free to do so, in our testing top is nowhere near as good a call.
On the other hand it's reusable (translating into massive late-game CA), pumps Goyf, and saves your manabase a lot of trouble. Honestly, you're already running Therapy and Thoughtseize--I fail to see why you would need to put stuff back on top of your library--ever. Likewise, wasting a fetch on a blue source just to play Brainstorm... not convinced. In all honesty, I think that there are better cards to take up that slot, because I don't think that the tradeoff is either worth it or all that essential.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raider Bob
I'll leave the point well enough alone, however; you're aware that a lot of us are not at all convinced by Brainstorm, and that's good enough for me. If ever you need slots, however...
I don't have a whole lot to offer to the rest of this discussion, but on Oracle: he always costs five. Period. It only takes one time, losing a 4/4 Oracle to a Tin Street Hooligan for no gain, to teach you to never do it again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Illissius
Now that you splash Blue, have you considered Fact or Fiction for a few of the Harmonize slots? Seems like FoF would be an overall better play if you could support the stretch in the manabase. Theres also some synergy with Eternal Witness and Cabal Therapy to boot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raider Bob
The 2 Crime/Punishement worked fairly well. They would be the weakest card in the deck but they are non targeting removal and after SB there are 3 EE that can come in as well. Much to my surprise I found myself casting Crime more than Punishment but in a few games a Punishment out of no where was crippling for my opponent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim
The SB should be a meta call, with the colors you have access to, you have SB options to cripple any of the tier one or two decks that are out there. The SB entirely depends on what you are running in the MD, Bob doesn't need EE because he runs Deed in the MD. The core of the deck are the creatures and the card advantage, you can run whatever the hell you want for disruption.
I prefer Harmonize over Fact simply because you don't have to have Blue mana for this deck to run effectivly. You are going to need to get Green Mana or you are screwed, you can go the entire game without Blue mana and still play a very strong game. The Brainstorms are not meant to be cast in the early game unless you are looking for something. If you switch the draw all to Blue you then make it much easier for your opponent to shut off your draw engine. Honestly I love Harmonize in this deck, after playing it for awhile now I see no need to change it.
As far as whether or not Brainstorm belongs in the deck, the only card I know of that has the same effect is Scroll Rack. If I was having problems casting things in this deck I would consider other options, but I have run through a few tourneys now with this build and I haven't had mana or color issues.
I don't mean to sound like I'm contradicting myself about having the colored mana you need so you should play Brainstorm and then not having it so you shouldn't run Fact, my point is that if they waste your blue sources you can easily live without Brainstorm for awhile but if it was shutting off all of your draw effects it would be much more difficult to recover from.
Not to mention, Harmonize is the do-diggity with Witness.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raider Bob
The Harmonize Witness trick has allowed for some ridiculous card advantage, that paired with the discard on opposing counterspells is how you can crush most control decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Legend
Typical play,
Turn 1 land bird, go
Turn 2 land thoughtseize, therapy
Turn 3 land Doran
Turn 4 land Harmonize thoughtseize, flashback therapy
Turn 5 Eternal Witness(Harmonize), Therapy
Turn 6 land Harmoize, flashback therapy
Card use 12, Cards in hand 6 if going first
Card count +11 for tombstone. This is not atypical for this deck, this deck can run faster but this is the slow card advantage route it typically runs.
I think we've unfairly glossed over Fact here - what's-his-face said something about it, and nobody addressed it. If we're gonna make angels cry with our manabase already why not rock Fact too?