I was named after my Grandpa Carl. While I have no recollection of the man, as he passed within a year after my birth, I do remember his wife, and my Grandma, Marge. Even once my mom and biological father split up, my mom always made sure both my sister and me got to see Marge on a regular basis. Some may find it odd that I so casually refer to her strictly by her first name. It is not done out of disrespect or lack of appreciation for her, but rather because she had insisted on it. She felt she was too young to go by the grandma moniker, and asked that she be called by her first name, which my sister and I always did. I assume my cousins did as well, although I rarely was around at the same times they were.

One of the oddities about Marge was that as far back as I can remember, she seemed to dislike pets. If she stopped by the house, the dogs were locked in a room to stay away from her. She never expressed any affection for any four-legged companion. Some would think nothing odd or bizarre about this at all, and I would tend to agree, if it wasn't for one thing. At Marge's house, she had an ornate, clear, glass container, filled with formaldehyde that contained an actual, physical, heart. I was always told it was the heart of her cat, who had passed years previously. I have no idea how many years, as I had never seen her with any animal. Ever. I'm not sure if she kept that heart until her death, but I know for a fact she had it, and displayed it, from as far back as I can remember, say from age four or five, until I left for the Air Force at twenty. While growing up, I guess I just thought that was normal. I mean, sure, no one else I knew kept dead animal internal organs in jars displayed around the house, but since that was part of my earliest memories, it never dawned on me until much later that that was somewhat of a peculiarity.

Funny enough, I had almost completely forgotten about that memory. It wasn't until I saw this, that my memory was jogged:

Oh...wait...hold up...I meant this:

I'm a big fan of this card. This is more than likely due to the fact that it interacts in much the same way as one of my all-time favorite cards. Until it was banned, I loved to play Bloodbraid Elf. Now, I wasn't one of those folks who played it in Jund. As you may have guessed, I was purely a Gruul guy, and played it in earlier versions of Green Moon. The amazing, cascading elf was able to cast any spell with a converted mana cost less than it had, and it had a pretty sweet interaction with split cards, since, if either half met the criteria, the cascade effect would select it, and you could then cast either side.

For those that are unaware, there is a good write up on the Ask a Judge blog on how Brain in a Jar works with split and fuse cards. Even though the Brain can only hit Instant and Sorcery cards, unlike the elf, it does have the added bonus of being able to cast the fuse version of the fuse split cards, as well as having the other split card upsides that the elf gave us. [Full disclosure before continuing: Brain in a Jar is broken on MTGO and does not work as it should within the rules. I have filed the bug report on it, but, obviously, I have no idea when it will work as it should within the rules.]

One of the best known Elf-Split card decks was the old Boom/Bust Zoo list. Here is one version, for reference:

A quick search online, and I was able to locate the above list. I recall seeing decks, either like this or very similar, do very well for a couple Modern seasons, until the banning of Bloodbraid. Given twenty-one creatures, or at least sixteen if you discount the mana dorks, coupled with disruption like Blood Moon and lots of burn, and add in the Armageddon component of the Bust side, and it's easy to see how this deck could be a force to be reckoned with back in the day. I'm not sure, four years later, if everything transitions well.

Lots of new cards and abilities have come out since this was a viable deck, and the loss of Bloodbraid is significant, since you lose the "free spell" that you frequently were able to get as early as turn three. Also, as happens with larger formats, Elspeth, Knight-Errant has not held up as well in Modern. The loss of twenty-five percent of our attacking creatures, coupled with the desire to add Brain in a Jar to the deck, required a little more work than simply slapping in one for the other. Here is the initial test deck I put together:

I think it's possible that I want to cut the number of Brains down to two, rather than the three I've included here, but I really need to test it out before I would do so. If I went that way, I would probably move a lone Thrun, the Last Troll to the main, and consider cutting the Seal of Primordium from the board all together to make room for a couple Grafdigger's Cage in there. That would up the threat count in the deck as well, since it suffers a bit without the BBE. I also thought it made sense to add the latest hotness that is Nahiri, The Harbinger in place of Elspeth, and pair it with the single Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, like all the cool kids are doing.

I'm not saying this deck is going to take the world by storm, but I like that we can at least think about revisiting the old archetype and possibly come up with a viable re-hosting of it. I'm not the only one who has been inspired by the Brain, though. None other than Sean Abrams, AKA, BrewSpyTheMagicGuy on Twitch, has also caught the fever.

I've watched several streams where BrewSpy was testing this deck, and some of the predecessors. It's been a ton of fun to watch in action. He goes a little deeper than the Zoo list I posted first, having added the fuse split card Beck/Call for creatures and to refill his hand, and Odds/Ends as a spicy double-creature removal spell. I've noticed that as he plays, it's not unusual for him to sideboard out the complete Brains-Split card interaction, and bring in the ever popular Nahiri-Emrakul package. This works as a nice change up to people bringing in artifact hate for the Brain, or even Trinisphere as a hate card against the spells cast with Brain. Outside of those two options, which could be mixed/matched is needed, is the package of the usual Jeskai control shell, with counters, Snapcaster Mage, and a burn suite.

Knowing the Sean is headed to GP: Charlotte, I hope he does very well with the deck. If nothing else, I hope he does well enough to at least get his deck published, since it's not like I can hope for a feature match, since there is no coverage of the pending Modern Weekend. Besides the two decks listed here, there is one more that I stumbled across, modified some, and think could be playable:

Much like the usual build of the Grishoalbrand deck, this deck aims to get a fatty in the graveyard, and then animate it until end of turn. A lot of this deck overlaps quite a bit with the deck it is attempting to emulate. But there are two distinct differences that should be noted. The first is that while Goryo's Vengeance can only target a legendary creature, the Entering half of Breaking/Entering can get any creature...from ANY graveyard. With the Brain ability being able to be activated as an instant, thanks to the lack of the "Use the ability only when you could cast a Sorcery" wording we so commonly see, you still have the ability to respond to your triggered shuffling effects from Emrakul. The other big difference is cost. On MTGO, Goryo's Vengeance will set you back over 15 tickets for each one, with a playset costing you about 62 tickets. A complete playset of both Brain in a Jar and Breaking/Entering will set you back less than four tickets combined. Even in paper, the prices are similarly skewed, with Vengeance running almost $40 a pop, and over $155 a playset, while the combined cost of the other eight cards is merely $13. Sure, Emrakul is not cheap, and neither is Griselbrand, but there are plenty of other budget options available for huge creatures that end games, like Worldspine Wurm, It That Betrays, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and Doomgape, to name a few. If cost has been the thing holding you back from this sort of a deck, you now have another option...a budget option...available.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of possibilities ahead for take advantage of the Brain. While getting the bigger half of the split cards from Dissension and Time Spiral on the cheap is nice, there are lots of fuse cards from Dragon's Maze that can really reward your abuse. It's not often that we get tools to so easily abuse and cheat card costs for big effects. With so much brewing space available, and so many options floating around, I can see the Brain in a Jar picking my brain for quite some time.

Peace,

Carl Wilt