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Jeff - thank you so much for posting all of this. It was great to meet you and it was a lot of fun playing against you!
I'd also like to give a huge thanks to Elliot D for bringing a ton of old school decks so that we could jam a lot of games between rounds.
My name is Ryan and I'll go ahead and give a little tourney report and respond to a couple of comments people have made about my deck.
Pretournament: The night before, I was seriously considering playing grixis pyromancer. I think it has OK game against shops and I liked the idea of having discard against storm. Dread of night can really help against mentor and I've played a lot of Jeskai delver, so it seemed reasonable. I also sleeved up a BUG deck that won a tournament in Europe because I love me a Deathrite Shaman and it seemed like wastelands wound be good against a meta that's usually heavy on shops and 4 colored decks. Anyway, at the last minute, I decided to just play what I was comfortable with and it seemed to serve me well (I lost in the quarterfinals of a Eudo tournament a few months ago with an earlier version of this deck).
Round 1: Adam on standstill.
G1: Adam's a super nice guy and I really enjoyed my games with him. Game 1 didn't go great. I mulligan to 5 and lose in a grindfest to mishra's factory beats after Adam basically wasted all of my land away. I scoop when he plays a crucible. I showed Adam a mentor, but he was able to dispose of it pretty quickly. However, he didn't see an underground sea, a tutor, or any of the grixis silliness in my deck. I was a bit worried because game 1 took half an hour and I didn't want to draw.
G2: I only mulligan to 6 and win relatively quickly when I assemble vault key. Adam was caught pretty offguard by this and re-sideboards
G3: similar to game 2. Adam misteps my key when I'm trying to vault key, but I'm able to cast yawgmoth's will the next turn and rebuild the combo to finish the game.
Round 2: Aahz on Uba stax
G1: I keep a hand with mana crypt, a land, vault, key, and top. I'm still nervous because I know I'm playing against shops (Aahz had looked through my deck and knew what ridiculousness I was playing, so there would be no surprises here). I was able to get vault and key out, but not befor losing a bunch of life and before a sphere and a lodestone were in the field. I ended up with a tinker in hand, but was a mana source away from tinkering away my mana crypt, which killed me.
G2: I had a sweet hand. I landed dack and an energy flux. I even stole a smokestack and put a soot counter on it. It turned out ugly.
G3: Very similar to game 2
Round 3: Dustin on Doomsday
G1: Dustin forgets to force my turn 1 mentor and loses
G2: Dustin doomsdays. I don't have a force, but I've got a million other counterspells and a swords to plowshares. Dustin plays ancestral in his first draw after doomsdaying, which I counter. I then counter a gush. I end up landing vault key and winning.
Round 4: Jeff on Shops
G1: I got shops'd
G2: I land a turn 1 energy flux and Jeff scoops after a couple of turns
G3: I mulligan an opening hand with a land, an ancestral, and not much else out of fear that I'm just going to get sphered out. My mulligan hand features 2 forces, a basic mountain, a chewer, and a blue card. This draws the game out for a while. I end up landing an energy flux, but not until after Jeff has decimated my life total with a legionare and a factory. Jeff's report spells out what happens well enough
Round 5: ID
Quarterfinals: Elliot's write up is spot on. He didn't see the tinker coming in game 1 and I top decked the tinker to finish the combo in game 2. I felt like I won game 2 only because Elliot made a mistake. Still, it was a fun, interactive, and friendly game.
Deck thoughts/history:
Please keep this in mind as you read my thoughts: I'm not very good at Magic. I make many basic deckbuilding mistakes and I don't even know if I take magic seriously enough to ever build anything really effective. However, I do like to have fun. One of my first decks that I really had fun with was when I starting adding Mentor to my delver list back when mentor came out (a lot of people were doing this), so I've always loved trying to cast a bunch of spells and make my mentor and tokens huge. I also like broken stuff (because vintage is broken). Anyway, about a month before eternal weekend last year, I put together v1 of this deck, which I have dubbed "Mentorlicious" (I've been playing it online- my handle is McNinjaSauce- since then if only because it's one of the few decks I have that I've taken the time to update after the dig restriction). I play tested it against my friends Brian (on shops) and Eric (on Doomsday) for about 4 hours straight and just got destroyed. So, I took BUG to eternal weekend and got destroyed playing that.
The original build had 4 mentors and the mana base was probably a little greedier than this mana base. I just wanted to build a deck with a lot of bombs that people would want to counter and a diverse set of win conditions. I like playing aggressively and I like doing broken stuff. I don't think that this deck is all that innovative: it's just adding a few cards to the mentor deck to enable vault key and, if you have vault key, you may as well have a tinker bot. Besides having fun, the other motive behind this deck was to have the possibility of a turn 1 kill because those are cool and sometimes you need something like that to win a game in an unfavorable situation (i.e. against storm). I think I remember Rich Shay mentioning during VSL commentary that the reason why dragonlords are in the sylvan mentor decks is to go over the top in the mirrors. I really like how sphinx does this (it really paid off vs. grixis delver in my quarterfinal) and sometimes it's just the right hay maker at just the right time. It's also usually much cheaper to cast because of tinker. That being said, I don't think that this deck is very good. It's kind of hard to play because you get some weird draws (which leads to more mulligans) because the deck doesn't have one or two main game plans: it really has 3 with a Jace ultimate as plan 4. This means that you have to be able to switch gears as cards come into your hand, which makes it tougher. You also have to know when to pick fights and when to bait people. There are times when I bait out a counterspell with wither a vault or a mentor to set up a win with something else. There are times where Yawg's Will helps you put together your vault-key or it helps you build a sweet army of monks. There are a lot of mini decisions that really influence what your game plan is at any point in time. Anyway, the deck's multiple win conditions is a strength and it's lack of focus is a weakness. I've been making a few tweaks here and there over the past month to make it smoother and a bit better (i.e cutting a mentor, a misdirection, a mystical tutor, and a underground sea for a spell pierce, a volcanic island, a treasure cruise, and a card that I can't remember right now). I've also gone back and forth on the dack/jace split). Still, it's a lot of fun to play and I've been working on foiling/beta-ing out as much of the deck as I can.
The other thing that clearly helped me was the element of surprise. I clearly caught Adam and Elliot by surprise with tinkering. Most people just don't splash black in their mentor lists (in part because it may not be very good).
Anyway, that's my deck and my tournament report. Thanks for reading.
I'd also like to give a huge thanks to Elliot D for bringing a ton of old school decks so that we could jam a lot of games between rounds.
My name is Ryan and I'll go ahead and give a little tourney report and respond to a couple of comments people have made about my deck.
Pretournament: The night before, I was seriously considering playing grixis pyromancer. I think it has OK game against shops and I liked the idea of having discard against storm. Dread of night can really help against mentor and I've played a lot of Jeskai delver, so it seemed reasonable. I also sleeved up a BUG deck that won a tournament in Europe because I love me a Deathrite Shaman and it seemed like wastelands wound be good against a meta that's usually heavy on shops and 4 colored decks. Anyway, at the last minute, I decided to just play what I was comfortable with and it seemed to serve me well (I lost in the quarterfinals of a Eudo tournament a few months ago with an earlier version of this deck).
Round 1: Adam on standstill.
G1: Adam's a super nice guy and I really enjoyed my games with him. Game 1 didn't go great. I mulligan to 5 and lose in a grindfest to mishra's factory beats after Adam basically wasted all of my land away. I scoop when he plays a crucible. I showed Adam a mentor, but he was able to dispose of it pretty quickly. However, he didn't see an underground sea, a tutor, or any of the grixis silliness in my deck. I was a bit worried because game 1 took half an hour and I didn't want to draw.
G2: I only mulligan to 6 and win relatively quickly when I assemble vault key. Adam was caught pretty offguard by this and re-sideboards
G3: similar to game 2. Adam misteps my key when I'm trying to vault key, but I'm able to cast yawgmoth's will the next turn and rebuild the combo to finish the game.
Round 2: Aahz on Uba stax
G1: I keep a hand with mana crypt, a land, vault, key, and top. I'm still nervous because I know I'm playing against shops (Aahz had looked through my deck and knew what ridiculousness I was playing, so there would be no surprises here). I was able to get vault and key out, but not befor losing a bunch of life and before a sphere and a lodestone were in the field. I ended up with a tinker in hand, but was a mana source away from tinkering away my mana crypt, which killed me.
G2: I had a sweet hand. I landed dack and an energy flux. I even stole a smokestack and put a soot counter on it. It turned out ugly.
G3: Very similar to game 2
Round 3: Dustin on Doomsday
G1: Dustin forgets to force my turn 1 mentor and loses
G2: Dustin doomsdays. I don't have a force, but I've got a million other counterspells and a swords to plowshares. Dustin plays ancestral in his first draw after doomsdaying, which I counter. I then counter a gush. I end up landing vault key and winning.
Round 4: Jeff on Shops
G1: I got shops'd
G2: I land a turn 1 energy flux and Jeff scoops after a couple of turns
G3: I mulligan an opening hand with a land, an ancestral, and not much else out of fear that I'm just going to get sphered out. My mulligan hand features 2 forces, a basic mountain, a chewer, and a blue card. This draws the game out for a while. I end up landing an energy flux, but not until after Jeff has decimated my life total with a legionare and a factory. Jeff's report spells out what happens well enough
Round 5: ID
Quarterfinals: Elliot's write up is spot on. He didn't see the tinker coming in game 1 and I top decked the tinker to finish the combo in game 2. I felt like I won game 2 only because Elliot made a mistake. Still, it was a fun, interactive, and friendly game.
Deck thoughts/history:
Please keep this in mind as you read my thoughts: I'm not very good at Magic. I make many basic deckbuilding mistakes and I don't even know if I take magic seriously enough to ever build anything really effective. However, I do like to have fun. One of my first decks that I really had fun with was when I starting adding Mentor to my delver list back when mentor came out (a lot of people were doing this), so I've always loved trying to cast a bunch of spells and make my mentor and tokens huge. I also like broken stuff (because vintage is broken). Anyway, about a month before eternal weekend last year, I put together v1 of this deck, which I have dubbed "Mentorlicious" (I've been playing it online- my handle is McNinjaSauce- since then if only because it's one of the few decks I have that I've taken the time to update after the dig restriction). I play tested it against my friends Brian (on shops) and Eric (on Doomsday) for about 4 hours straight and just got destroyed. So, I took BUG to eternal weekend and got destroyed playing that.
The original build had 4 mentors and the mana base was probably a little greedier than this mana base. I just wanted to build a deck with a lot of bombs that people would want to counter and a diverse set of win conditions. I like playing aggressively and I like doing broken stuff. I don't think that this deck is all that innovative: it's just adding a few cards to the mentor deck to enable vault key and, if you have vault key, you may as well have a tinker bot. Besides having fun, the other motive behind this deck was to have the possibility of a turn 1 kill because those are cool and sometimes you need something like that to win a game in an unfavorable situation (i.e. against storm). I think I remember Rich Shay mentioning during VSL commentary that the reason why dragonlords are in the sylvan mentor decks is to go over the top in the mirrors. I really like how sphinx does this (it really paid off vs. grixis delver in my quarterfinal) and sometimes it's just the right hay maker at just the right time. It's also usually much cheaper to cast because of tinker. That being said, I don't think that this deck is very good. It's kind of hard to play because you get some weird draws (which leads to more mulligans) because the deck doesn't have one or two main game plans: it really has 3 with a Jace ultimate as plan 4. This means that you have to be able to switch gears as cards come into your hand, which makes it tougher. You also have to know when to pick fights and when to bait people. There are times when I bait out a counterspell with wither a vault or a mentor to set up a win with something else. There are times where Yawg's Will helps you put together your vault-key or it helps you build a sweet army of monks. There are a lot of mini decisions that really influence what your game plan is at any point in time. Anyway, the deck's multiple win conditions is a strength and it's lack of focus is a weakness. I've been making a few tweaks here and there over the past month to make it smoother and a bit better (i.e cutting a mentor, a misdirection, a mystical tutor, and a underground sea for a spell pierce, a volcanic island, a treasure cruise, and a card that I can't remember right now). I've also gone back and forth on the dack/jace split). Still, it's a lot of fun to play and I've been working on foiling/beta-ing out as much of the deck as I can.
The other thing that clearly helped me was the element of surprise. I clearly caught Adam and Elliot by surprise with tinkering. Most people just don't splash black in their mentor lists (in part because it may not be very good).
Anyway, that's my deck and my tournament report. Thanks for reading.
Thanks! As you continue to develop this deck I'd love to read more.
). When t4k was also unrestricted we made some changes in the deck, the card fit perfectly but we had to make room for it (in that point Jace tms leaved the deck). We are good friends and we live in the same town so was quite easy to test it together and exchange opinions and our different points of view, finally got a list which have not changed since then (except for some sb options). 
).
I built grixis therapy but not excited about it currently.
