General Blue cantrips or "Why not run a billion Brainstorms?"

[Erik Twice]

For a long time, I have had three blue cantrips in my cube:



But I've noticed two of those are sorceries and I've been tempted to do a Wadell and just run lots of Brainstorms over them. But why? I don't know why I should choose one over the other. So here are some questions for you:

1) Why do you run blue cantrips?
2) What makes you choose one over another?
3) Is the sorcery/instant separtion vitally important and does it represent a noticiable change in power level?

Discuss.

 

[Velrun]

1) Yes I run blue cantrips.

2) I choose to run almost exclusively blue cards that has flash speed. I do make a few exceptions and Ponder is one of them because it has a sweet alter. This information is probably not very valuable to you. Blue is a flash color in my cube. This makes counterspells and permission control playable. It also gives blue a free identity without having to ‘work for it’.

3) I wouldn’t say so. I think Ponder and Preordain is as powerful as Brainstorm. And even more powerful than Opt. I would run lots of Brainstorms if I had a high amount of shuffle effects. Otherwise I personally like diversity in the long run.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I used to run a lot of one mana black discard spells (Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, etc.), but over the years I've accepted grillo's wise words, and replacing them with 2 cmc alternatives has worked out great. Since draw and discard are two sides of the same coin, I wondered if good 1 cmc cantrips aren't exactly as enabling as the one mana discard options are "disabling". Recently I've decided to replace all of my good one mana cantrips (Ponder, Serum Visions, etc.). So, what cantrips do I run then? I'm glad you asked

Cyclers


Cantrips

 

[shamizy]

1) Why do you run blue cantrips?

They help to smooth out draws and give early plays to a color that doesn't really establish board presence till the mid-late game. Most U/x decks in my cube tend to care more about card quality than quantity and being able to dig to your high impact cards or making the most of each of your plays is essential to playing a game effectively if you're more of a control-y deck.

2) What makes you choose one over another?

Variety and power level of different effects. Brainstorm is the best if you have access to shuffle effects, but multiple Brainstorms can have diminishing returns in the same deck if you don't have enough. Getting Brainstorm locked into something like 3 lands absolutely sucks. In those cases, I would much rather have had a Ponder that could have shuffled me out of a bad position into something different. A lot of times you just want to dig deeper into your deck for something specific, so I like having cards that can scry away bad draws as well. I used to have multiple Brainstorms in earlier iterations of my cube but I've found that I just like having a variety of different plays available for my drafters. It's just more fun that way. I run the following cards:



3) Is the sorcery/instant separation vitally important and does it represent a noticeable change in power level?

Not really. I think Ponder is actually the most powerful of the cards in a vacuum due to the ability to re-shuffle, but Brainstorm becomes the highest quality of them when you can integrate another shuffle effect with it. Preordain is nice if you're just trying to dig deeper towards more impact plays and drawing you into a card that you've scryed towards is just really good for control decks. Opt is the least impressive, but it has fun interactions with stuff like Stormwing Entity, Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor so it'll stay for a while. It really just depends on what the deck wants. A control deck is happy with most any cantrips they can get their hands on and all they really want is efficiency. Having one mana plays when you otherwise have only reactive spells ready to go is great for sculpting your hand and making the most of your future draws.

What mostly matters is the individual quality of the spells. I'd say for me it's something like Brainstorm = Ponder > Preodain >> Opt.