Standstill vs. Brainstorm

[Sawse]

I have been on the fence on the debate of Standstill vs. Brainstorm, and with no definitive answer, I went to do my own test. I took 100 7-card draws and took down the number of times I drew card-x (The slot of Brainstorm or Standstill) and I found out the percent that each time allows for a tempo advantage (After all, that's why we play fish, right?) These are the situations I took down (If i miss any, feel free to conduct the test yourself and add)
Brainstorm
Brainstorm with a Mox Sapphire and a shuffle effect
Brainstorm with a shuffle effect
Standstill
Mishra's Factory with a Standstill
Mox Saphire Standstill and Timewalk (Turn 1 drop with TW Turn2 Standstill)
Turn 1 drop with a Turn 2 Standstill
Mishra's Factory Standstill Mox

Out of 100 draws, Card-X was drawn 48 times (There are 4 in a 60 card deck, so quick math says this is slighty above average, I think)
So there is a 48% Chance to draw Card-X
Brainstorm
Brainstorm with a Mox Sapphire and a shuffle effect 3% Chance in your opening hand, 6.25% chance if a Brainstorm is in your hand.
Brainstorm with a shuffle effect 23% chance to have this in your opening hand. 47.91% chance if you have a Brainstorm in your hand.
Standstill
Mishra's Factory with a Standstill 14% Chance. 29.16% with a Standstill in hand.
Mox Saphire Standstill and Timewalk (Turn 1 drop with TW Turn2 Standstill) 1% Chance.  2.08% chance with a Standstill in hand.
Turn 1 drop with a Turn 2 Standstill 18% chance in opening hand. 37.5% with a standstill in hand.
Mishra's Factory Standstill Mox 2% chance in opening hand. 4.16% chance with a standstill in hand.

After looking at these numbers Brainstorm has a high occurance of Brainstorm with a shuffle effect, which gives you 5 ancestral recalls. Standstill had a very low occurance of the most broken plays, but a turn 1 drop and turn 2 standstill does not appear too much.
It appears that Brainstorm is the best choice due to consistency in what makes it powerful, the combonation of a shuffle effect and brainstorm.
Standstill is also becoming easier to play around which is making it a more and more situational card whereas Brainstorm to kick off your turn 3 gives a huge tempo boost and dig.

Notes:
This was just the opening hand. If i had an Ancestral I did not cast it becuase i wanted to see the occurance of these situations.
Mulligans were not done, this is strictly 100 draws of 7 cards with shuffles between every draw
Important numbers: 3 Moxen, 6 Fetch lands, 4 Card-X, 4 Mishra's Factory, 0 Cloud of Faeries

[Moxlotus]

That is not taking into account at all what deck it is, what the optimal play turn 1 would be (faerie conclave or Lavamancer), what deck you are facing, and the rest of the cards in your hand, and what tempo (if any) you are generating.

Decks like Fish can't use pure statistics because you can't put a number on tempo and faeries.

[Sawse]

The list was U/r/g so there were no Faerie Conclave. What I am trying to say with this is that Brainstorm is more constistently strong than Standstill is.

[cssamerican]

Standstill is also becoming easier to play around which is making it a more and more situational card

I notice many people say that, but let me ask you how in the hell do you play around Standstill in scenarios such as this (Which are very common):

Turn 1

Fish player puts Volcanic Island
Fish player puts Grim Lavamancer into play
Fish player passes

You play a land and cast something Fish player FoWs it.
You pass

Turn 2
Fish player puts Mishra’s Factory into play
Fish player puts Cloud of Fairies into play
Fish player puts Standstill into play.

If you wait for him to get up to seven cards for you play around Standstill you will freak’n lose the game. Standstill might be conditional for some decks, but it isn’t a conditional draw spell for Gay Red it is Ancestral Recall 2-5.

Gay Red is a collection of crappy cards; you just win because you have so many crappy cards to play. Brainstorm doesn’t draw cards it only replaces crappy cards; however, in Gay Red crappy cards can only be replaced by crappy cards, last time I checked replacing crappy cards for crappy cards is a waste of time and mana.

U/r/g might have some better quality cards that are worth Brainstorming for, in that case I can see how Brainstorm could be better. But if a deck isn't designed to abuse Standstill I see no reason to use that deck to compare Standstill to Brainstorm since Standstill will only be used in decks that are specifically designed to break the card such as Gay Red and Landstill.

[Zelc]

The thing is, Brainstorm does NOT give you card advantage.  It gives you card quality.  In a deck where there is little difference in quality of cards, it'd be better to use Standstill.  In a deck where there is a noticable difference in quality of cards, it's better to use Brainstorm.  In Gay/r, everything is just as bad as everything else ( ).  In WTF/r, that's not the case (or so I've been told, I've never played the deck).  Additionally, WTF/r cannot benefit from the uber-broken Turn 2 Cloud of Faeries, Standstill.  WTF/r also has a worse manabase than Gay/r and needs the early hand fixing more.  Finally, you have to consider the fact that without the ability to gain card advantage, Aggro-Control has a hard time winning through removal.  If the rest of your deck is not geared to gain card advantage (4x Curiosity, 1x Ancestral isn't enough, as one of card advantage's tasks is to offset removal, which 2 for 1's Curiosity), then Brainstorm won't help as much as Standstill.

One other thing: Mishra's factory can be dropped at any time past turn 2.  Additionally, Standstill can be dropped at any time past turn 2.  Turn 2 River Boa, Turn 3 Curiosity, Standstill is pretty sweet.

[Sawse]

Im not trying to get into a pissing contest here, but if your opponent does wait until you have 7 cards in your hand to break the standstill, wouldnt that essentially be the same as brainstorm becuase your just going to drop crappy cards for the new crappy cards you just drew off the standstill (Which, if we agree on that, would then bring the argument in a complete circle back to its a matter of preferance)[/i]

[goober]

if your opponent does wait until you have 7 cards in your hand to break the standstill, wouldnt that essentially be the same as brainstorm

Yes, a Brainstorm which had 4 Time Walks attached to it, or in other words Brainstorm+10 damage or so.  Which is a little better than Brainstorm.

Fish doesn't win by playing the best crappy cards, it wins by playing a lot of them.

[Sawse]

I notice many people say that, but let me ask you how in the hell do you play around Standstill in scenarios such as this (Which are very common):

Turn 1

Fish player puts Volcanic Island
Fish player puts Grim Lavamancer into play
Fish player passes

You play a land and cast something Fish player FoWs it.
You pass

Turn 2
Fish player puts Mishra’s Factory into play
Fish player puts Cloud of Fairies into play
Fish player puts Standstill into play.

Thats a turn 1 play with a turn 2 Standstill.

Turn 1 drop with a Turn 2 Standstill 18% chance

Also i had said this was a U/r/g list with no Cloud of Faeries, but i do see your point that it is a strong play but from the testing it does not happen 1 out of every 5 games (Thats also a 5 card play, which is why i was saying Brainstorm is consistently good considering it is 2 cards and does not require opponent reaction to give you a draw, but on the upside it[standstill] does give you mini-time walks)

[cssamerican]

Turn 1 drop with a Turn 2 Standstill 18% chance

In Gay Red it happens a hell of a lot more than 18% of the time...I am not sure how your getting your statistics, but in most Gay/R decks you have 12 turn 1 drops.
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Faerie Conclave
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Mox Sapphire (I put the Mox on the list because in hands in which you get one you will have a turn 1 play.)
That virtually guarantees the ablity to play a turn 1 drop (You don't always do it because it it isn't the best play all the time)
The odds of having a Standstill in your first 8 cards is somewhere near 50%; therefore, it is likely that that percentage would be near 50% as well.

Like I said early if the deck is made to abuse Standstill, Standstill is better than Brainstorm. You tested your theory on WTF, a deck the creator of proudly admits was not designed around massing a bunch of crappy cards, but rather using better quality cards to gain an advantage. The reason why your results show Brainstorm is better is because you compared it to Standstill in a deck that wasn't designed to take advantage of Standstill. Look at it this way, Standstill is better than Brainstorm in Fish, Gay/R, and Landstill. Brainstorm is better in any other deck that uses blue.

[EvilSirMark]

you also state in your post that you would wait until the fish player had 7 cards in hand to break the standstill?? From everything i've ever read here on the manadrain this is completely wrong, everything I've read has recommended breaking standstill ASAP... a good fish player is goin to be able to capitalize on your fear of breaking his standstill, he'll build his hand strength, he'll poke and prod with his gay army. Those mini time walks are precisely what he's hoping for. These little boosts in tempo are precisely what the deck was designed to take advantage of.

[Zelyon]

It really does depend on the build.

The u/r/g variant I use runs 0 fairie conclaves (too crappy IMO), 4 Mishra's Factories, 4 Grim Lavamancers, 4 Quirion Dryad and 4 Cloud of Faries. After extensive testing, I determined that Standstill was simply a superior option in my particular build.

A similar build with 0 Cloud of Faries might lead to a different conclusion.

[Roxas]

Standstill is good in fish, because fish is designed around Standstill.  There is almost no contesting this.

However, Brainstorm has two key advantages that Standstill does not have:

1.  Brainstorm allows you to keep one-land hands with otherwise good cards, hands that you would usually mulligan.

2.  Brainstorm is far less situational than Standstill.  Unlike Standstill, it can help you dig to find an answer to a threat the opponent has on the table.  It can also dig for Force of Will during your opponent's turn.

Anyway, it is useless to directly compare the two.  Contrary to what seems to be commonly believed, Standstill is -not- a real draw spell - the manner in which it is played closer resembles either a threat or a lock component.  It plays a different role than Brainstorm, and so the two don't need side-by-side comparison.

---------Appendix: Playing Against Standstill----------

Against fish, you want to break Standstill ASAP to minimize their damage dealing and overall tempo gain.  On the other hand, if played in a more controllish deck (such as Landstill), you want to wait until the Standstill player has seven cards in hand and then break it at the end of their turn.  This way, Standstill is about as good as an expensive Brainstorm (and, in some situations, far worse).

[Moxlotus]

In Orlove's WTF Brainstorm is superior I believe because of lack of Faeries in general and more powerful cards.

In Gay/r Standstill is definitely more powerful.  

You should've stated what deck it is in the first post.  The fact that people don't read all  of the other posts has led to the confusion.  If anything you should edit the decklist which you tested into the first post to avoid further confusion.

[TheIneffable]

In Jacob Orlove's version of WTF/r, Standstill just has a huge lack of synergy with the changes he made.

First, Brainstorm helps guarantee you have the colored mana when you need it. Secondly, it only has 4 manlands, Gay/r can, on some occasions, just drop Standstill on an empty board and know that if there are 6 manlands left in the deck, it should draw one soon, while WTF/r has only 4, hindering the chances of drawing one. Thirdly, Orlove plays without Cloud of Faeries, meaning that it is impossible to play a threat and Standstill on turn two without a Mox. Fourthly he plays with CotH, a spell that costs 3 and then 4 mana, not working very well with Standstill.

Zelyon's build of WTF/r can opt to play with Standstill due to the fact that it runs Clouds and no spells over 2 mana. It does suffer from the same mana issues as Orlove's and 2 fewer manlands.


Faerie Conclaves do suck, IMO, but they are a necessary evil, they make Standstill more threatening in Gay/r. Usually if you draw Conclave and Factory you can't afford to activate both, Conclave is for those times where you cannot draw your Factories or they have been blown up.

[theorigamist]

Zelyon's build of WTF/r can opt to play with Standstill due to the fact that it runs Clouds and no spells over 2 mana. It does suffer from the same mana issues as Orlove's and 2 fewer manlands.

Even with Clouds, in a three colored build with only 4 man lands I'd rather have Brainstorms than Standstills.

[Sawse]

Moxlotus:
Next time I will put down the decklist, I was doing the testing mostly for myself to see which was stronger so I didnt even think of putting the decklist up (Selfish me =( ).

[TheIneffable]

@theorigamist: Some people still prefer Brainstorm even in a build such as Zelyon's, but it is more feasable to play Standstill in Zelyon's build as opposed to Jacob Orlove's.