Since Monastery Mentor was spoiled I have been trying to find the right build of an mentor deck, because mentor is a broken card. I tried UWr in a stoneblade shell but also in a shell with top/CB/terminus (similar to Claudios GP winning list) but black seemed like the more appealing splash. I tried all kinds of configurations esper, testing delvers, linger souls, stoneforge, cavern of souls, deathrites, 2-4 planewalkers, and CB/top/terminus. Through my various iterations of the deck I initially started out with 2-3 mentors and 2 therapies, but quickly realized that therapy and mentor where the best part of the deck since every time I drew either card my deck got to be broken. After upping both to 4ofs everything seemed to come together. Ultimately this is what I have come to:
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Marsh Flats
2 Island
1 Plains
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 Baleful Strix
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Dig Through Time
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Counterspell
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
Sideboard:
4 Meddling Mage
2 Disenchant
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Zealous Persecution
1 Null Rod
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Toxic Deluge
The list I settled on is similar to what Kotter alluded to in this article: http://www.starcitygames.com/article...-Top-Tier.html
It is essentially grixis control with white instead of red. Grixis control at this point is a very proven archtype, and this gives up some of red's strengths for some very good benefits of white.
Grixis:
- Cheaper main threat (pyromancer)
- Bolts (reach)
- Blasts, this is probably the biggest boon
- Access to blood moon and better artifact hate
Esper:
- Meddling mage/cannonist are amazing right now with Omnitell and storm being the combo decks to beat.
- Mentor being objectively more powerful than pyromancer and kills much faster. All tokens demand quick anwsers.
- Way better late game. Mentor is a much better threat than pyro and if cabal therapy is drawn late in the game, it's not dead, it's an overrun.*
- Not having any difficulty with goyf, angler, etc
- Better sweepers (Zealous Persecution) goes a long way in helping vs elves, mentor, or mother of runes decks.
- Access to life gain, enchantment hate, and versatile removal cards like council's judgment or vindicate.
*this is a big deal. Untapping with mentor and 2-3 tokens is almost always game over.
The list I have above is probably far from perfect. The 2/2 daze/counterspell split, the MD IoK, the SB deluge and timely reinforcements and the 4 MM, 0 Cannonists are all things that are likely not correct.
I have not played in any large events with the deck yet, but it has been very good in testing so far and I plan on attending an SCG IQ with this deck soon.
Is anyone else playing anything like this? Does anyone have any suggestions, especially with the bolded things above?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)