MTG Salvation

I feel that below 360, one of these cards is expendable - which do you prefer and why? Which is weakest?

I think Serum Visions belong here too. In cube I actually think it's ofte better than preordain.

If you have to cut one of the 3 mentioned it should be preordain imo.

Quote from MagicFever

I think Brainstorm is the weakest ... in cube.

Me too - if played turn one. It should almost never be played before you have a shuffle-effect or are in dire need of something to save you. If played as Recall (combined with shuffle) more than as a cantrip it's by far the best of the three imo.

During the draft process, it's Preordain > Ponder > Brainstorm for me. During play, Brainstorm is obviously the strongest when you have a shuffle effect, but on average, Preordain is the best by a considerable margin in my opinion.
At 360 though, Brainstorm might surpass Ponder simply because of the density of fetchlands, but I don't have any experience with Cubes that small.

I was thinking about making a similar MCD thread for while, but never actually wrote it. My thread would have been about the following cards:

• Preordain
  
• Ponder
  
• Brainstorm
  
• Serum Visions
  
• Sleight of Hand
  
• Opt

This is also pretty much how I would rank them, though I've been thinking lately that Serum Visons may actually be better than Brainstorm in cube.

Ponder and Brainstorm get better when you have easy access to shuffle effects, because you have more control over which cards to keep and which to get rid off. While Ponder has a shuffle option itself, Brainstorm has no such thing. This can result in the card only helping short term, because you will draw your two worst cards over the next two turns. Without a shuffle effect, Brainstorm will be nothing but a cantrip long term, while all the other cards play more like actual Impulse-like card selection. For this reason, Serum Visions may very well be better than Brainstorm in cube.

Edit: Good point on Brainstorm being better in smaller cubes. Having multiple fetchlands in your deck really helps that card.

Brainstorm is my favorite. It's the worst on T1, but it's an instant, it has the highest impact on your hand and it's great with shuffle effects of any kind.

Ponder is my next favorite because it can dig the deepest when I'm looking for a specific type of card, and it gives me more information before I decide what to do with the top of my library.

Preordain is my 3rd favorite of the cards. It's overall the most solid and it's great on T1. But I think it has the smallest chance to be a clutch spell.

I play the first two at 360, and all three in anything bigger. I don't like the other cantrip spells enough to run them in cube.

Quote from bondafong

I think Serum Visions belong here too. In cube I actually think it's ofte better than preordain.

If you have to cut one of the 3 mentioned it should be preordain imo.

Portent over Serum Visions 100% of the time. That card is so sweet.

All 3 at 360. They are all good, and are crucial fixers.


1 Brainstorm
2nd and 3dPonder/Preordain (not discussing which is better)
4th Portent
5th Serum Visions
6th Slight of hand

I think we can all agree that Brainstorm is much much worse than any other of the good Cantrips without a shuffle effect or Thoughtscour should you run that, so are you guys who are ranking Brainstorm #1 saying that you always have enough shuffle effects in your blue decks? How many fetchlands / early shuffle effects is even enough to make Brainstorm consistently better than Ponder and Preordain? I'd say you'd need at least three, probably four and more. Does that really happen always?

Quote from Sylar teh evil

I think we can all agree that Brainstorm is much much worse than any other of the good Cantrips without a shuffle effect or Thoughtscour should you run that, so are you guys who are ranking Brainstorm #1 saying that you always have enough shuffle effects in your blue decks? How many fetchlands / early shuffle effects is even enough to make Brainstorm consistently better than Ponder and Preordain? I'd say you'd need at least three, probably four and more. Does that really happen always?

You don't need a shuffle effect. If one of the top three cards is a card you can use it's always better than ponder.

Also being an instant is quite important too. You can play it after keeping counter mana open.

Quote from Hicham

Also being an instant is quite important too. You can play it after keeping counter mana open.

Without a shuffle effect this is like the worst use of a brainstorm ever, EOT brainstorms without the shuffle effect is one of the worst traps in legacy.

Quote from Sylar teh evil

During the draft process, it's Preordain > Ponder > Brainstorm for me. During play, Brainstorm is obviously the strongest when you have a shuffle effect, but on average, Preordain is the best by a considerable margin in my opinion.
At 360 though, Brainstorm might surpass Ponder simply because of the density of fetchlands, but I don't have any experience with Cubes that small.

+1

This post says everything that I would say in this thread.

Echoing what others say. Brainstorm is kind of like Top, super good in constructed where you have infinite Fetchlands, but not nearly as astounding in cube where your average deck will have 1.125 Fetchlands (assuming 8 man). If you do not have at least 4 shuffle effects Brainstorm is far and away the worst.

Going by wtwlf123's cube, his white section has 4 total shuffle effects, blue - 4, black - 5, red - 1, green - 13 (including loam), colorless - 3, gold - 0, and then the 10 fetches. If you are playing 8 mans this might not result in sufficient shuffle effects for most players as the average is 3.6 per player and some of these shuffle effects will likely make it into sideboards. Green players, of course, will likely get a disproportionate amount of shuffle effects.

I think that preordain will be best on average in most decks and on average should get picked earlier in the pack than the other two. I think that ponder and brainstorm about equal with ponder being a what you see is what you get and brainstorm having more variance depending on the other cards in your 40. I like cantrips and would play them all in a smaller cube - so I can't see you having to cut any of them. I would presume that the density of shuffle effects likely goes down in larger cubes, so brainstorm's value actually goes down the larger your cube is, though of course this is offset by the decreasing power level of the other cards you would be playing in its stead.

Brainstorm is just short of terrible in Winston cube, even at my cube size of 270. The average deck we draft has 1 or 2 fetch lands (270 card cube, 45 cards drafted per deck = 1/6 of the total fetches per deck), and you may very well not even play the ones you draft due to how Winston drafting works. Other shuffle effects exist but are as scarce as fetches or more so.

Preordain and Ponder all the way, though (and in that order).

Quote from MrDumpkins

Without a shuffle effect this is like the worst use of a brainstorm ever, EOT brainstorms without the shuffle effect is one of the worst traps in legacy.

To be fair, this isn't legacy. Legacy is full of these kind of effects, and having one without a shuffle effect is quite mediocre, especially in comparison, but if you're running a deck light on card draw, just one digging three deep can often be the difference between winning and losing.

I think Brainstorm is still quite good - it gets much better when you have shuffle effects no doubt, but I'd still run it without shuffle effect, maybe not in every blue deck, but decks lacking tons of draw effects.

-rexx

Brainstorm is not a terrible card if you can't shuffle, and I think that saying it is is kind of silly. It's not the card that it is in legacy if you can't shuffle, but Brainstorm is widely regarded as the best card in legacy (even those who disagree will think it's pretty close).

Brainstorm is better than ponder if you wouldn't want to shuffle, and don't have another card to shuffle with. It does the same thing but at instant speed and you can put cards from your hand back instead of only cards from the top 3 cards of your deck. You have the disadvantage of not being able to shuffle the top 3 if they're bad, but this is pretty close to being cancelled out by Brainstorm's advantages. People get hung up on the games when they couldn't shuffle away bad cards from a brainstorm and knew that two bad cards were coming - in this case brainstorm gets you a card closer to the next card that does something, it doesn't "screw you over"! It sometimes seems like it does, but if you didn't have the brainstorm the game would be even worse. It's the sense of futility when drawing useless cards that exaggerates how "bad" brainstorm is in these games.

That being said, the main reason that brainstorm is the best of these cards (even in pauper cube) is because of shuffle effects. A brainstorm with shuffle has a much higher upside to the best case scenario of either ponder or preordain.

Yeah but you still actually have to have them. Without shuffles.. it's less useful

Quote from eidolon232

Having 1 good card on top of your deck doesn't do anything unless the whole 3 cards package helps you win the game (or the game ends earlier).

I think this is true, but doesn't tell the whole story. Brainstorm has plenty of uses outside of finding an answer. Early game it can dig for a land (it seems like people tend to forget this HUGE part of Brainstorm), midgame it can dig for a creature or removal. At any time it can be used to hide a key card from selective discard/Persecute. It triggers 3 "whenever you draw a card" triggers for only 1 mana, whenever you want, should you be running Niv-Mizzet or something.

I just think that people have gotten to thinking that the card is trash without shuffle effects. I think shuffling can make the card better, but it is far from a bad card without it.

-rexx

You're not alone Rexx, I also think the card is fine to smooth out the order of your draws and your curve in the early game. I've also used it to hide cards from my opponent's discard spells and stuff. And put Tinker/Order/Pod targets back into my library. The card does lots of stuff. And it's pretty sick with any shuffle effect.

Thanks, I had also just remembered that it works great with Dark Confidant, Future Sight, Oracle of Mul Daya and Words of War as well, not to mention the dredge mechanic.

There may be individual things that Ponder and Preordain can do better than Brainstorm, but when it comes to versatility, the instant has them clobbered, I think.

-rexx

Math: beating up anectdotal evidence since 1993 <3

Fone numbers. Except that the obe mana you use on brainstorm usually couldn't be used on pther stuff anyway.

But the deckslot certainly could have.

I am not saying that Brainstorm is bad, but without easy access to enough shuffle effects, Preordain and Ponder are better to gain a long term advantage (meaning, not drawing useless cards) while still helping early in the game. And being an instant is far less important on a one mana card than on a pricier one.

Being an instant is always relevant. Particularly on cheap blue cards.