Congrats on the finish!

Sounds like Tasigur was pretty good for you. Would you play 2 again?

Yes, it works like we want it too. Still not sure that makes it good enough. The 1 Wasteland, 1 Reflecting Pool hands are pretty brutal mulligans.

I was skeptical when I first suggested her to you, but she's been very good for me so far. I even think Gush decks should consider her if they want a card for Storm or the mirror. She has an awful name and mechanical overload, easy to overlook/underrate.

For those unfamiliar with her:



It's funny how similar the core of the list is to some you were posting years ago. Thalia, Bob, Hierarch, and Mayor have been a team for a while.

That's quite a large hatebear!

Been trying out a Collected Company variation of the Madrid list with some updates. I have no results worth putting any stock in, just some playtest anecdotes.

The Meta has changed a lot in the past year, but we also got one strong new human.



He's relevant in every matchup save Storm and Dredge. Having more outs to Tinker bots is great if not as relevant as it was a year ago, but bouncing Delvers or Mentors or Revokers or Golems and the like is what makes him playable. The deck encourages opponents to play to the board, and then Reflector Mage punishes them for trying to answer the board with their own creatures. Our plan is to swing with a bunch of Bears, so bouncing their one blocker for two attack steps while adding to the board is kinda perfect. It's not the card that Venser is, but three mana for Man-o'-War is the maximum we can really afford to pay for it.

Current list:

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Dark Confidant
4 Containment Priest
4 Reflector Mage
3 Mantis Rider

4 Abrupt Decay
3 Collected Company
2 Sudden Shock

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Mana Confluence
4 Cavern of Souls
4 City of Brass
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mutavault

Sideboard
4 Aegis of the Gods
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Notion Thief
1 Lightning Bolt
2 Tormod's Crypt

Notes:

• I have no idea if Collected Company is playable, and scaling back on 4cc humans is the biggest cost of playing the card. The reason for Company is that it makes the deck a lot harder to play against while providing a tutor for specific answer-bears the same way Dig Through Time did for blue decks. It's a tricky spell to play and about half the time I think I cast it in the wrong spot. Sometimes you want to cast it upkeep to find a Thalia. Sometimes you want to shield it with Thalia while the opponent is tapped out and resolve it on your mainphase. Sometimes you want to play it opponent's EOT as a way to answer sweepers.
• Sideboard games against control you get to hold up Notion Thief and CoCo. Assuming neither access to Cavern nor the opponent playing a draw spell, I have no idea which you are supposed to cast EOT.
• Mantis Rider replaces Exava here because of Company's inclusion. As a combat dork, Mantis Rider is much better against Workshops than Exava. Rider is about the same as an anti-Jace card. You can also live the dream and open with Heirarch, then start swinging for chunks of four damage in the air on turn two.
• I cut the Meddling Mages because I don't think they're very good. Against combo decks you're better off holding up Decay or Priest instead of guessing what tutor/draw spell they will beat you with.
• The Oath matchup is fine with 4 Priest, 4 Aegis, 4 Abrupt Decay. The Storm matchup is fine with 4 Aegis, 4 Thalia. That said, I have no clue what the deck is already win-more against and what the control elements really need to be tuned towards.

It's slightly annoying that it can't bounce Revoker, but otherwise seems quite good.

Eldrazi Mimic into Phyrexian Dreadnaught isn't good enough but it's pretty adorable.

and somehow Priest still exiles Jace, Vryn's Prodigy...

You can't cast Izzet Charm off Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Wasteland, Ancient Tomb, or Cavern of Souls. The decks that might want a card like this play less than eight instants or sorceries and certainly never have the mana to cast Izzet Charm.

She is really really good.

Like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, if she was pushed just a little more she would be absurdly broken. Were she a 2/2 for three mana, she would probably not be playable. As is, she is very good.

We shouldn't underrate the value of a 2/3 with a really good ability in a format saturated with 2/1s with really good abilities. The ability to hold off slightly buffed monk tokens, Young Pyromancer, Thalia, or Phyrexian Revoker makes her an extremely strong play in those matchups. Usually one has to decide between using mana to play a creature like Pyromancer or a card advantage effect like JVP or Dack Fayden or a draw spell. Jori's ability to both hold off attackers and draw cards is very powerful. Against durdling blue opponents, she can present a clock while at least cycling and often threatening to take over the game. She can advance or retard tempo all the while drawing cards. That combination is rare, and well worth paying three mana for.

Perhaps something with considerably fewer Goblins

4 Goblin Lackey
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
1 Restoration Angel
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Monastery Mentor
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Gush
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Pyroblast
2 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
1 Ponder
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Dig Through Time
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Repeal
1 Dack Fayden
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
4 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria


Probably either too fair to work as a combo-control deck and too broken to work as a fair deck, but Goblin Lackey is scary here and lets you punish people for not having many ways to deal with creatures in a potentially more powerful way than DRS or Delver of Secrets. If they spend a Misstep or a card or a turn dealing with T1 Lackey, you just win the game with Jace. Kiki combos with Mentor, Snapcaster, Dark-Dwellers and, of course, wins the game directly alongside Restoration Angel. Building off Lackey opens up some interesting sideboard options against Workshops.

You make a really fascinating point about Chalice's restriction that I now feel I overlooked, especially considering just a few weeks ago I argued it helped explained Mentor's ascent.


Thanks for the feedback all, sometimes I fear these less focused articles are just whistling in the wind.

Nowadays – An article about Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Monastery Mentor, Gush creature decks, Thirst for Knowledge, Dark Confidant, Workshops, Dragonlord Dromoka, and Moxen; or, Why I hate Sudden Shock (puremtgo.com)

yeah, it continues to bewilder me why this card isn't seeing play in basically every deck with Underground Seas.

would like to thank Craig both for organizing and lending me cards. Also to the two other players who offered to help me out. I had a great time!

Hoping to play in this but need some help.

I'll gladly pay the entry fee of anyone willing to lend out 10 of the following 17 cards

4 Force of Will
1 Flusterstorm
7 Blue Fetchlands (ideally 4 Tarns, but beggars can't be choosers)
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra

PM if you can hook me up and want to optimize your EV on Saturday.

Thanks!

Remora is a difficult card to evaluate, and it's inclusion pretty significantly changes a deck's positioning. As you note, it did do quite well pre-announcement. Kevin Cron was a consistent advocate of the pairing of Gush and Remora since Mentor was spoiled in January, and while I'd defer to him on the subject, I do think Jace is likely just better. Despite having a higher casting cost, he is actually less mana intensive. I think the fourth Jace is probably better than either the first Top or the first Remora. Meanwhile, the possibility of opposing Jaces actively makes Remora worse by giving decks a card advantage spell that happens to be a creature.

Thanks for the feedback.

tito del monte, I'd consider replacing one of your more aggressive cards (Mox Emerald/Jet, Young Pyromancer, if you're playing him) with a Gitaxian Probe to help diagnose if you're making positioning mistakes.

JTMS is definitely a consideration, as are a number of cards I omitted. Islandswamp makes a good point about the mirror, and Engineered Explosives might warrant inclusion since it can sweep both tokens and flipped Jaces. In that same vein, Repeal is going to be an increasingly important card as JVP sees more and more play. I think Jeskai Ascendancy over a second Dack is also a realistic option, albeit difficult to conclusively justify through testing.

The Rise of Monastery Mentor

URW Mentor has been the best performing deck since the DCI's announcement. Unlike the Winter and Spring of this year, we are seeing a single coherent archetype with a large number of common cards. I wrote briefly about what this deck looks like and how the B&R announcement led the shell to where it is.

agree. A lot of people looked at Brian's 75, decided a priori what type of deck it was, changed ten cards, and then stopped playing it after they didn't win 80% of their games.

3 < 4

Painful Truths should be played in any deck with the mana to cast it. It doesn't matter that it is sorcery speed. It doesn't matter that you need three colors. What matters is that it nets cards at a rate matched only by Treasure Cruise, Ancestral Recall, or Demonic Tutor for Ancestral Recall.

Painful Truths is pretty great alongside Jace, Vryn's Prodigy because even as just a singleton, you get a third functional copy of Treasure Cruise to double-down on.

meanwhile, a month later the card is still bugged with Containment Priest and Hallowed Moonlight

Thanks for the feedback

youhavenogame,

- I think Strip Mine is necessary right now as Library is a lot better than before Dig's restriction and Tolarian Academy is the best way Grixis decks have of beating a Stony Silence. My lands at the moment are 8 fetches, 3 volcs, 1 tundra, 1 island, 1 strip. Having just one basic is a real thing, but I expect the Blood Moon decks to move away from their namesake card when they realize it does a lot less work in a world where not everyone is counting on paying UU for Dig Through Time. The Moon-Chalice deck already struggled to beat Delver without Chalice @ 1 because without Chalice it had no answer for Pyroblast. Against Shops, Wasteland is still obviously a card, but it actually gets somewhat less threatening because being able to keep cantripping for more land means that we have functionally more lands than previously. Also, without Chalice sphering off 1 cc spells, Wasteland isn't always that big a deal.

- I strongly believe four Delvers to be the correct number. The deck is so much better when it has one on turn one or turn two. In a lot of matchups the power differential between it and Young Pyromancer is not worth the latter's additional cost and I just want something to put pressure on them and make the deck function properly. It also might be the best card in the deck against Workshops.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/laboratory-notes

An article in which I overcome my own typos to report findings of playtesting in the first week of the new format. I argue URw Delver gains ground in the metagame, relay some observations about new Workshops, and talk how Gush aggro-control might built and likely mis-built. Even those who would not entertain the thought of playing anything other than broken Vintage right now can read to get some ideas about building a good Delver deck to be the blue buzzsaw in your testing gauntlet. Enjoy

It does. Hallowed Moonlight creates an identical effect, as far as these cases are concerned. The Creature status of the God entering play is the same type of replacement effect as Jace returning transformed. I also have a response from WoTC that Hallowed Moonlight/Containment Priest should not be exiling Jace.


I initially submitted the bug report on September 5th. That response is from yesterday after I followed up after seeing that the bug had yet to be fixed.

@gkraigher, as I said yesterday, we eventually came to the conclusion it was a bug.

After discussing it some more, I've been told it is indeed a MTGO bug.

This equivalent example was cited to me:

from http://blogs.magicjudges.org/blog/2015/09/11/magic-judge-monthly-august-2015/

MTGO and at least two judges I've asked about it say that Containment Priest exiles Jace when he's trying to flip. I'm still unsure of whether that's the correct interaction, but I would definitely want to find out before using them alongside each other.