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Originally Posted by
iostream
Sorry if this is a rude question, what exactly is the advantage of this style of deck (either Mentor or the Grixis Control shell a la Rich Shay) as opposed to just the usual Grixis Delver builds that have won a bunch of tournaments lately? I really like the look of this deck, but I'm just curious what the strengths and weaknesses of the deck are, what metagames it's better suited to, etc. Specifically, it seems like Grixis Delver, Miracles, and OmniTell are the decks any Legacy player should really be gunning for, and it's unclear to me that this has any advantage over the tried-and-true Delver decks. From what I understand in this thread, the OmniTell matchup gets better, the Miracles matchup gets worse, and it doesn't look like the edge in the Delver matchup is particularly large...
Its not a rude question. Whenever someone has a new idea in legacy, the question should always be "how is this any better than what already works?". Often times people are just trying new things for the sake of being different/unique, and its NOT better than what already works. I don't think this is the case here though.
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...The archtype is still developing, and there a lot of possible variants that change the matchups. Like some lists have deathrites, stoneforge, more/less planeswalkers, etc. I think what I played is closest to the best version of the deck, but I could very well be wrong.
For my list, these are roughly the matchups, based mostly on small amounts of testing 2-4 matches but also some theory crafting.
Favored: Team Ameriaca, Elves, Infect
Slightly Favored: Omnitell, Storm, Lands
Even: RUG, BURG or Grixis delver, Grixis control, Reanimator
Slight Unfavored: Miracles, MUD
Unfavored: Jund, Merfolk, Burn, 4c Loam
Stoneblade, D&T, Maverick can vary between slightly favored, to slightly unfavored depending on their exact set up.
It generally plays most simialar to grixis control, but can kill big or shrouded creatures easier, meddling mages, and a more explosive threat (mentor), while grixis gets burn, a lower curve, blasts and blood moon.
Is this deck better positioned than miracles, omnitell, grixis delver or control? I'm not entirely sure, its very hard to objectively determine which deck is best. I think this deck is certainly good. In an abstract sense, I think it is about within +/-5% of Grixis Control's power in the meta. Grixis control is well established as one of the top decks in the format right now and this might be a bit better, it might be a bit worse, but it is very close.