Pointed Discussion

I used to play Brainstorm a lot back in the day.
It's a beautiful, yet simple, card.

Well Its An Instant Cool For The Coatl And Anything With High Draw Mechanics For Cheap

Best non-restricted blue instant for U.

In addition to being a great draw spell, Brainstorm can be used to hide cards from discard spells.

it is restricted in vintage, mitch

While Brainstorm is good, I prefer to use Scroll Rack to hide my cards. As for drawing, well, obviously Brainstorm is better.

he must be taking one wicked shit

Niv-Mizzet changes this stuff in lightning bolts

The second best draw spell of all time, I still dreaming that maybe it will be reprinted someday.

the thing about this card is that a lot of the time it is actually effectively drawing you 3 cards.

think about how often 2 cards in your hand are either just land u wont need until turns later or just a situational removal spell or anything you dont need this turn or the next.

it digs deep to find answers and is one of the best cards ever printed.

Favorite card hands down

They did reprint brainstorm, nerfed it a bit and called it Ponder

why did i throw away my mercadian masques commons year ago...none of the stores i go to have a masques brainstorm :( anyways, this thing is ancestral recall reprinted if you've got a useless hand

I love when you're opponent thoughtseizes your 2 card hand, then you draw three, leaving just lands in your hand and all your good cards on top.

Functional (almost) reprint: Ponder. But Ponder is actually better. You can shuffle your library if you really don't like the cards drawn. I still like this card better. Just the nostalgia I guess.

Imagine a format where players are willing to pay 2UU for this. Oh wait, you don't have to.

This is what my face looks like when i draw crap cards..

I think he just came

This is better than Ponder for the simple fact of draw seven abilities. If you need to keep any thing that is in your hand that you are about to lose to Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar, Brainstorm and put those cards from your hand on top of your library. Instant speed wins. Suck that Ponder lovers!

I drew three Supermen with this once.
No joke.

4.5/5

Ponder would be better than this if it were an instant.

This is what my face looks like when I draw three cards.

You remember back in school when they taught you tricks to pass the test without learning anything? My favorite one was 'the answer that uses more words is usually right'. This rule, like every other, is completely terrible to follow unless you know WHY you're doing it, but I posit that BRAINSTORM, using more words and therefore giving you MORE OPTIONS and complexity, is actually BETTER than ANCESTRALL RECALL.

Think about it this way- Ancestrall Recall is good for exactly one thing- putting lots of cards from your library into your hand. Why would you want to do this? To have more spells to play, or to dig through your library for one spell, or to combine with other cards for a sometimes convoluted, sometimes straightforward huge advantage. Brainstorm actually does 2 of these JUST AS GOOD as Ancestrall Recall, and one of them lots better.

Let's take a painfully obvious example: Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. You draw a card, you deal a damage.

Because Brainstorm is worded so awesomely, it does the same amount of damage with Niv-Mizzet as Ancestrall Recall does. (and the same as Lightning Bolt for you Red-Blue enthusiasts, but you already knew that :D )
This applies to all other cards worded like Niv-Mizzet 'whenever you draw a card...' IN ADDITION, you get to 'hide' cards from Duress effects, 'hold' cards past #7 without discarding, or any number of things you can think of to do this effect. Heck, putting two back even is a small guard against self-mill. So most of the cards that specifically make drawing cards even better than it already is would probably prefer Brainstorm, because of that Magic wording.

Now let's look at digging: if you're only looking for one specific card, you don't want two extra clogging up your hand. You want the card you're looking for, with no strings attached.
For this kind of mana bargain, you don't get better digging unless its got the word 'Tutor' at the end of its name. You want to play this even in a deck with with Tutors, both because redundancy is good and because of the extra options this card gives you beyond 'Search your library for a card. Warn target opponent to ready their counterspells. Do nothing else.'

Having more spells to play: you can even choose to keep all 3 of your new cards, and throw back two cards from your starting hand if they aren't to your liking, so you are down 2 bad cards and up 3 good cards, which is just freakin great. The absolute, most pessimistic and ignorant way to look at it is 'just' changing the order you are drawing your cards in (as if that isn't good), plus a cantrip. This way of thinking says that this is drawing you only one card for one mana. At Instant Speed. Its about a 1000x better than a card that literally was only 'U: instant. draw a card.', but even that card would be just swell to have. You are adding cards to your hand for a bottom dollar bargain of mana.

Speaking of bottom dollar price tags, compare this to Ancestrall Recall. You know how many Mint Condition Brainstorms you could get for an Ancestral Recall? lots. A playset of every printing, with enough left over to buy a foil Jace, the Mindsculptor if you felt like it. Just saying.

To be fair: Ancestrall Recall puts 3 cards into your hand that STAY there. When is this better?
When you need all 3 of those cards in your hand right now.
Aren't worried about Duress effects
Don't have 2 SPARE cards to send to the 'holding zone'
Have a combo which specifically references # cards in your hand.

Admittedly, the first 3 of these might accurately describe preparing for a Counterspell War, and again, Brainstorm is found mostly in Counterspell War.Protect the Combo.dec.

But as for '#cards in your hand', I don't recall Slifer the Sky Dragon ever being all that great in any game, Magic or otherwise. There's better. (I know he's not MTG, its just the card that symbolizes that kind of ability to me.)

Obviously, Ancestrall Recall would not have such a high pricetag on it for no reason, but mostly I think it's due to being ENORMOUSLY more rare than Brainstorm. People have called Brainstorm the poor man's Ancestral Recall. I call Ancestral Recall the brute's Brainstorm. No subtlety, no pinache. It's almost Red in terms of how blunt of an instrument it is. Brainstorm is by far Bluer and, just maybe, better.

The art is your face when your next three cards are lands.

I can see this going well with cascade, lets you place cards on top of your library from your hand to cascade into if you dont have the mana to play them

Its about a 1000x better than a card that literally was only 'U: instant. draw a card.', but even that card would be just swell to have.

Fleeting Distraction is good?

You've got something on your lip...