Hello again lads and lasses. As you may have guessed, this is my week for Star City Daily. Today I’d like to cover some ground that should be pretty much common knowledge for the real competitors in Vintage already, but may just be something you’ve never actively thought about.
Sure, ten or more slots of a good Blue-based control deck will be all about drawing cards. However, casting these cards as they come up is actually not the most efficient way to go about improving your hand and increasing your hand size. When it comes to the important Blue instants, it is absolutely crucial to keep in mind that patience is a virtue. I’ll begin with Brainstorm as an example.
Brainstorm
Brainstorm is pretty much auto-include in every control deck. The only other similar effect as aggressively costed as Brainstorm is Bazaar of Baghdad, which isn’t really a viable option in anything other than decks built around it. The key to abusing Brainstorm to its fullest lies in generating virtual card advantage. Take this Control Slaver hand for example:
Island, Mox Jet, Brainstorm, Flooded Strand, Mindslaver, Pentavus, Force of Will
The obvious way to make this hand a little better is to use Brainstorm to ditch those heavy artifacts, and find a second Blue card for your Force of Will. However, it’s not as simple as casting Brainstorm on the end step. Yes, doing so may net you a Mana Drain to go with your second Blue source, but that’s really not what we’re after. This hand is too weak to risk drawing one of those giant artifacts again, and unless Brainstorm turns up Thirst for Knowledge, Goblin Welder, and an accelerant, you won’t be able to do anything with them quickly enough to ensure you stay in the game. You realistically need to use Brainstorm after you’ve already played the Flooded Strand, and rely on Force of Will to answer any early threats that your opponent may have.
Brainstorm is really interesting in that there are quite a few more intricacies in abusing it than there are for most Bther blue spells. Sometimes casting it at all can be a poor idea. Look at this hand:
Volcanic Island, Polluted Delta, Thirst for Knowledge, Mana Drain, Sol Ring, Brainstorm, Goblin Welder
The correct play here depends on the matchup, but in most cases I would just go with Sol Ring and cast Thirst for Knowledge on the following turn. The rest of the cards in this hand are so good that you don’t really want to get rid of any of them, and as such you should save Brainstorm for when Thirst resolves and you inevitably draw a couple extra worthless lands, or additional Goblin Welders or something. Saving a Brainstorm like this will make all the difference in a tight control mirror, and it’s one of the reasons that somebody that really knows their way around a Mana Drain fueled deck like Andy Probasco or Rich Shay will fairly consistently run circles around their competitors.
When you are considering a very early Brainstorm like on turn 1 or 2, be sure to consider the following.
1) Is my hand in need of improvement right now?
2) Will I have access to a way to ditch unnecessary cards?
3) What is my opponent playing, and how can I set up my hand to beat them in ways that their friends will make fun of them for months afterward?
If you can’t answer these questions yet, do not cast Brainstorm yet.
Thirst for Knowledge
Thirst for Knowledge is a great spell under consideration for those of you who want to play a major Blue competitor. While I’m not going to claim Meandeck Gifts is awful (because it’s not), I do wholeheartedly agree with Probasco’s article that Thirst for Knowledge belongs in the optimized version of the deck.
Thirst is similar to Brainstorm in the respect that it can be outrageously stronger if you hold on to it until it will definitely be an improvement. However, its requirements are much easier to satisfy, and you have to account that it’s both card advantage and of a higher mana cost, making it a very juicy Mana Drain target. As such, it’s usually better to avoid sitting on it, and get it out of your hand whenever your opponent is unable to play their Mana Drain.
When casting Thirst for Knowledge, analyze these questions:
1) Do I have the artifact already in my hand?
2) Is my hand in need of improvement?
3) Is my opponent likely to cast Mana Drain?
The third is by far the most important. Keep that in mind.
I hope you guys enjoyed installment one of my daily series. Tomorrow I’ll go over how to cast Gifts Ungiven, and touch up a bit on Mana Drain and Fact or Fiction.