Originally Posted by
Navsi
Sorry, but I think you're completely looking at this the wrong way.
About FoW: I think you're overestimating the amount we want to Escalate this card. Most of the time Brutality is 'Choose one - Duress / Disfigure'. Against nonblue decks, or if you have completely irrelevant cards in hand, you can escalate, but you don't really need to for it to be a good card. Against Force decks, it's like a Therapy - it guarantees your game changing spells get through onto the battlefield, with the added benefit of being able to kill a Deathrite if necessary also.
About velocity: I don't understand you here at all. You have a lot of sources of card advantage in the deck, and you're playing a lot of cards you don't necessarily want in every matchup, and you're trying to stabilize and grind in a lot of games. Brutality lets you use the worst card in your hand as a free duress/disfigure when you cast the other, or drain 2 against Burn, but most importantly escalating doesn't cost mana. Being able to turn excess cards into effects without paying for them is very relevant when you're trying to turn the corner before your opponent's clock kills you - most of the time you are constrained on mana rather than cards when trying to stabilize (especially in SE) so being able to turn cards into effects without costing any mana is a pretty important effect to have available.
Brutality also greatly improves the Burn matchup, which is very relevant for a slow grindy deck that doesn't play white.
It also improves most combo matchups, which is pretty major, given that you're again dedicating a lot of slots to cards which present neither a fast clock nor disruption, having additional discard to slow down Show & Tell / Storm / etc seems like exactly the sort of thing you want to be doing. You can't reasonably expect to stop them with just Therapy.