Pick the Brain MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Pick the Brain offers a nuanced approach to maintaining card advantage. While it does not directly allow you to draw more cards, it disrupts the opponent’s hand by allowing you to choose and exile a nonland card, thereby indirectly shifting the balance in card quantity and quality in your favor.

Resource Acceleration: The delirium feature of Pick the Brain serves as an accelerator. Once delirium is activated, not only do you get to exile any nonland card from the opponent’s hand, but you also get to search their graveyard, hand, and library for any number of cards with the same name to exile. This can drastically reduce the resources available to your opponent while enhancing your long-term strategic positioning.

Instant Speed: The ability to play Pick the Brain at instant speed would significantly increase its utility by allowing players to react to opponents’ threats in real-time. Unfortunately, Pick the Brain is a sorcery, so strategic planning around the timing of its play is crucial to maximize its potential for resource disruption.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One of the hurdles while harnessing the power of Pick the Brain lies in its upfront cost of a card from your hand. This trade-off mandates careful hand management to prevent being at a card disadvantage, especially when playing against decks that can exploit such situations.

Specific Mana Cost: Pick the Brain demands both black mana and generic mana, which can be restrictive. Decks not centered around black may struggle to consistently meet the color-specific mana requirement, ultimately narrowing its integration into a diverse array of strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: The base cost set at three mana might make players pause, considering alternative disruption cards that cost less. In fast-paced matches, wherein efficiency and board presence are pivotal, the mana investment for Pick the Brain could postpone critical plays.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Pick the Brain is a valuable addition to decks that thrive on disrupting opponent strategies. Its ability to target the hand lends itself to various playstyles, making it a flexible choice for sideboards or main decks.

Combo Potential: By enabling the delirium condition, it can vastly improve many setups that capitalize on knowing the opponent’s hand composition. Combining with graveyard strategies enhances its utility, as it removes threats before they can be played, aligning with both control and attrition tactics.

Meta-Relevance: In a game where information is power, Pick the Brain excels. It’s particularly effective in metas heavy with combo decks, as preemptively removing key pieces can significantly disrupt an opponent’s game plan and secure your path to victory.

How to beat

Pick the Brain, a unique sorcery from the world of Magic: The Gathering, can be quite a disturbance, piercing through an opponent’s strategy with its coercion-like effect. The card allows for an intricate look at the opponent’s hand, not only granting the chance to remove the biggest threat but also to memorize the remaining cards to anticipate future plays. This sets up for psychological advantage and potential game-swinging exploitation of the opponent’s tactics.

To circumvent the impact of Pick the Brain, consider diversifying your deck with a mix of threats, answers, and utility cards. Redundancy in your deck ensures that losing a single card won’t fatally cripple your strategy. Moreover, employing instant-speed draw spells or flash creatures can replenish your hand after it’s been disrupted, nullifying the advantage granted to your opponent. Additionally, while Pick the Brain can exile a card from the game entirely, this requires delirium, which is dependent on your opponent setting up their graveyard. Interrupt this setup by employing graveyard hate cards like Relic of Progenitus or Tormod’s Crypt to undermine their plan and protect your key pieces. By maintaining a robust and flexible game plan, the sting of Pick the Brain can be mitigated, keeping your strategy on track towards victory.