In today’s article i will be talking about best practice when casting one of magic’s trickiest spells: Brainstorm. As with all of my articles the focus will be upon use in Cube, however learning to use Brainstorm efficiently is helpful in any format where the card is legal.

Brainstorm is easily the most powerful card quality spell in all of Magic. It affords the most options and has the best synergies. People frequently compare it to Ancestral Recall as it is one mana to draw three cards. If you can negate the drawback of Brainstorm then you are in many ways as good off as you would be after casting the infamous Ancestral. Despite the potential power of Brainstorm it is actually quite a do nothing card if not used correctly.

With a lot of the card quality effects you just fire them off, make the good choices and carry on better off than you were before. Things like Preordain are very self contained, you don’t need to use it in a certain way to get it’s effect. I see a lot of people using Brainstorm like Preordain and as a result they are getting basically no value from the card at all. They seem to assume that like most other card quality it will be doing things for you on its own and they will cast a turn one Brainstorm with no follow up. This can be right but it is rare, certainly correct less often than I see it done.

There are only a couple of occasions I will use a turn one Brainstorm. The first is is in response to a targeted discard spell. In this instance the Brainstorm is much more like a soft counter than a card quality effect. You are using it to hide your key spells on the top of your deck so as to dodge the discard. Every now and again you can luck out and have them entirely miss as a result. Equally this can be more of a reason to hold onto a Brainstorm. If you expect to have a significant hand throughout the game and are playing against someone with targeted discard then it is well worth saving your Brainstorm if you are able.

The second is when I need to dig into my deck specifically for things I want to do right away. I might keep a one land hand with a Brainstorm and a significant two drop on the draw. If I don’t see my second land right away I will end of turn Brainstorm so as to be two cards deeper into my deck on the following turn so as to be able to cast the the relevant spell with greater odds. It is like a tempo play, you are not filtering away weak cards but getting the ability to play things sooner than you other wise might. While a viable play it is usually a bit of a bail out plan much like Demonic Tutor for a land turn two. You don’t want to be in the position to have to use it this way but you are really grateful for the option to do so when you need it.

Lastly I will use a turn one Brainstorm when I already have a pretty perfect hand and curve. This is literally just cycling the card and will likely not impact the game at all for several turns and perhaps not at all. Basically it might give you some extra options and it means you will have an extra mana spare several turns down the line. This is pretty rare although having cards with delve or even delirium do make this a little more profitable as a line of play. If you have other synergies with Brainstorm it is almost never right to waste it like this. All told, all the turn one uses for Brainstorm are not really using the card as a card quality spell.

The best use for a Brainstorm in general terms is when you have a couple of cards that are presently of no use in your hand plus a way to conveniently shuffle your library, or at least scry/mill away the top cards. This is when you get closest to that Ancestral feeling of having three brand new cards to use without being locked into to known weak draws. Fetch lands are the best shuffle effects to use but there are absolutely loads you can use in cube. Factoring the convenience of those shuffle effects in some way I would want at least three good shuffle effects in any given deck before I greatly value Brainstorm for this use. As this is the most powerful way to abuse Brainstorm, it isn’t actually that good of a pickup when you don’t have the supporting library manipulation.

When this is how you plan to use your Brainstorm you should look to hold onto it until you have also found a suitable library manipulation effect. This works in reverse as well. If you are playing Brainstorm but have not yet drawn it you should where possible hold onto any suitable library manipulation effects. The difference in value between a cycled Brainstorm and one that filters two cards away is so vast that it really is worth going a little out of your way to maximise your odds of getting the good outcome.

Often you will be forced into positions where you can potentially filter two cards but it will cost you an extra critical mana to do so effectively making you a turn slower. In such cases you are far better off just filtering one card away and making the good tempo play. Card quality itself does not win a game, it puts you in a better position to make better plays. You never want to forgo a good play to gain more card quality as that totally defeats the point.

Having told people off for playing Brainstorm turn one and wasting it I then see them have a completely polar reaction and only ever use Brainstorm when they can get the perfect instant shuffle right away. Forcing yourself to use Brainstorm in its highest potential return way makes it overly awkward a lot of the time and you might as well just play Thirst for Knowledge at that point. Brainstorm is good because it is a one mana cycling card if you need while scaling up to do some more serious work should you have appropriate setup and need for that instead. It has a range of modes so to speak and using the right one for the situation, regardless of the isolated value of that play, is the optimal way to use Brainstorm.

Although considered a card quality spell there are other reasons you might well be playing Brainstorm in your deck which makes using it even harder! I mentioned being a soft counter to targeted discard already. You don’t typically play Brainstorm for this reason but it is a nice bonus when it comes up. You actively play Brainstorm to compliment cards which put things into play from your library or things that trigger based on what it on the top of your library. A Tinker or Academy Rector deck will try and pick up a Brainstorm so that if it draws the relevant targets it is able to return them to the deck and still be able to cheat them into play. This is an aspect of Brainstorm that is far more significant in cube than other formats as it is singleton and generally lacks redundancy in the quirkier strategies. Other cards like Scroll Rack and Lat-Nam’s Legacy perform this task as well but it is still incredibly rare in cube and naturally Brainstorm is the most convenient of all of them.

Lastly we have all those cards like Delver of Secrets, Courser or Kruphix, Counterbalance and Domri Rade as well as mechanics like cascade, miracle and even dredge which involve the top of your library. As soon as you have any of these things in your deck you are not just looking at Brainstorm as a card quality effect but also as an enabler for these other things. This makes the choice of when to use it much harder. Perhaps you already have a miracle in hand you want to use soon to take control of the game however you are about to miss your turn four land drop. Do you hold the Brainstorm so as to enable the miracle or do you blow it digging for land? There are no simple answers to these situations, they must each be worked out case by case. Something as simple as having a Snapcaster Mage still in your deck might be enough to sway the choice from one to the other. A miracle is obviously a big game changing play while just getting a land hit from a Courser is fairly minor. To be good at using Brainstorm in a deck containing synergies you need to be really good at assessing the relative values and risks of the entire game!

Brainstorm itself is a fundamentally hard card as it offers so many choices, but what makes it truly hard is that each of those choices requires a good understanding of everything else that is going on. A player who has exceptional use of Brainstorm is likely very good at the game in general. Exploring that side of Brainstorm is rather more weighty than we have scope for in this article! Being ever mindful of how you are going to win a game and what your various routes to that end are is the best way to improve your game play. As such it is also the best way to ensure you are getting the most out of your Brainstorming.

If you have questions about how to play brainstorm, or any other questions about cube magic please post below in the comments.