Monastery Mentor

[brianpk80]

Couldn't resist. 

[Protoaddict]

I feel like this is a good card for the "MIRROR." Monk unaffected and everything gets pumped, Pyromancers entire party wiped out. Also kills a number of other things without touching your dudes (if you are using a white creature base.)

[VibeBox]

You can always just name "Monk" and that will off the tokens while reducing the power/toughness of the mentor himself. 2 plagues would ensure no further mentors for the rest of the game.

yeah this was pointed out to me irl and i so relieved. i think im sticking with it now. turning mentor into a 1/1 prowess is good enough considering its value in other matchups imo.

Along similar lines, I like Echoing Truth in that spot a lot.

definitely looking at echoing truth lately.

Moat Caltrops?

moat is interesting actually
caltrops has the same problem as it had against delver. they will just hurkyle's/rebuild and swing through it

[thecrav]

Moat Caltrops?

moat is interesting actually
caltrops has the same problem as it had against delver. they will just hurkyle's/rebuild and swing through it
[/quote]

For what it's worth, this is less of a problem if you're playing online!

[sirgog]

I feel like this is a good card for the "MIRROR." Monk unaffected and everything gets pumped, Pyromancers entire party wiped out. Also kills a number of other things without touching your dudes (if you are using a white creature base.)

Zealous Persecution is harder to cast, but less mana and its effect is considerably better.

[MaximumCDawg]

If you absolutely must go with a Holy Light effect, even Night // Day is probably better.




EDIT: Whoops, I was thinking of Profit//Loss.



Alternatively, you can do it like pod does and run this guy:



Being Human makes him uncounterable with Cavern, so maybe he's cool for the mirror match.

[Protoaddict]

All of these options require you to play esper, where the deck right now can very safely be UW to support caverns, if we are talking about building the deck not in the U/R shell. I think in this case I very much like the simpler mana base, since you want to be able to get to 3 mana AND mana for counters, where as the curve in U/R was lower because your top kill card capped out at 2.

[Wagner]

Sudden Shock is a cheap option for red decks. Kills mentor all day long and can't be avoided.

[serracollector]

Absolute Law and Absolute Grace stop all the bolts sudden shocks abrupt decays and dismembers of the world. If you truly fear these cards try one in your sb and smile.

[sirgog]

Sudden Shock is a cheap option for red decks. Kills mentor all day long and can't be avoided.

SS kills the Mentor but does not stop it making one Monk under most circumstances. It's also a terrible card except against Mentor.

[MaximumCDawg]

Sudden Shock is a cheap option for red decks. Kills mentor all day long and can't be avoided.

SS kills the Mentor but does not stop it making one Monk under most circumstances. It's also a terrible card except against Mentor.

It's uncounterable removal.  It's narrow, but it's not "terrible" by any means.  Not being able to nail a Jace who has Brainstormed or a Golem is what makes it less than stellar, but it's not BAD.

[Wagner]

Sudden Shock is a cheap option for red decks. Kills mentor all day long and can't be avoided.

SS kills the Mentor but does not stop it making one Monk under most circumstances. It's also a terrible card except against Mentor.

Compared to Profit/Loss and a few other cards mentioned, it holds up fine. Yes, it's narrow, but it can kill Mentor and Pyromancer, Bob and a few other critters. Yes Bolt is better against Jace and Golem, but arguably worse against Mentor, can't have it all.

[Ten-Ten]

So far, seems the best way to beat mentor is:
Win before Mentor hits battlefield.
Or
 Play Bomberman with aether spellbomb, engineered explosives and echoing truth. Not to mention your very own Mentor.

I can totally see Monastery Mentor being restricted. Stronger than Tinker/Colossus, Imho.

[oshkoshhaitsyosh]

Sudden Shock fellas. It's tech I use in RW hate bears and landstill lately to beat mentor and clever strategies paired with other removal spells of course

[serracollector]

I swear im gonna start sideboarding Absolute Law just so he cant be shocked.

[sirgog]

So far, seems the best way to beat mentor is:
Win before Mentor hits battlefield.
Or
 Play Bomberman with aether spellbomb, engineered explosives and echoing truth. Not to mention your very own Mentor.

I can totally see Monastery Mentor being restricted. Stronger than Tinker/Colossus, Imho.

Tinker wasn't restricted because of the Colossus (or other random fatty) interaction. Tinker gets much more broken stuff, like Time Vault, Memory Jar, etc.

If you could only get BSC with it, Tinker may not have ever needed restriction. After all Natural Order into either Craterhoof or Progenitus is considered fair in a weaker format, Legacy.

Re Mentor being restricted - there are plenty of answers available at sorcery speed that solve it very, very effectively. Toxic Deluge, Virtue's Ruin, Dread of Night (the best one), Supreme Verdict, Tabernacle - whenever Mentor feels unfair, the actual unfair card isn't the Mentor, it's the Time Walk with it.

[MaximumCDawg]

I, for one, adore the tension that is added to the format with a card like Mentor.  Look at how we're discussing new tech to stop it.  This sort of thing means that sideboard space gets stretched even thinner - you need space for shop, dredge, mentor, storm (maybe), blue.  It's this kind of stress that makes a format good because it means you can't just run the restricted list and have answers for everything on tap.  I love mentor just as much as I love dredge - it keeps decks so tightly tuned that you can win with rogue decks sometimes!

[Chubby Rain]

I can totally see Monastery Mentor being restricted. Stronger than Tinker/Colossus, Imho.

Is this the Vintage Issues forum? No? Alright, don't want to get warned so I'm going to hold my tongue.  

There are plenty of answers available at sorcery speed that solve it very, very effectively. Toxic Deluge, Virtue's Ruin, Dread of Night (the best one), Supreme Verdict, Tabernacle - whenever Mentor feels unfair, the actual unfair card isn't the Mentor, it's the Time Walk with it.

The problem with these answers is that they tend to be rather inefficient or incredibly narrow. Ruin and Dread of Night are almost exclusively for Mentor decks. Supreme Verdict is powerful but expensive and difficult to cast. Toxic Deluge is a risky play and Tabernacle is quite poor in my experience against Mentor: compared to Young Pyromancer, the number of tokens you need to kill your opponent is much less.

Sudden Shock fellas. It's tech I use in RW hate bears and landstill lately to beat mentor and clever strategies paired with other removal spells of course

It can be a good answer but you generally need it in hand and castable when they play Mentor. Otherwise, the Mentor has already done it's job by creating 3-4 tokens with Prowess.

Edit: My "solution" has been to play 4 Mentors and have some way to go over the top of other Mentor decks.

[Guli]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get ahead but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

[Stormanimagus]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get a head but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

qft. I love how I said how broken this card was going to be right out of the gate and yet a large number of Vintage elite still stick to the argument that Pyromancer is better at playing the control role and still has a place in the meta. I couldn't disagree more. This card is more insane than Pyromancer in just about every meaningful interaction it has in the format. Pyromancer will soon be gone. . . . Forever.

-Storm

[diopter]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get a head but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

qft. I love how I said how broken this card was going to be right out of the gate and yet a large number of Vintage elite still stick to the argument that Pyromancer is better at playing the control role and still has a place in the meta. I couldn't disagree more. This card is more insane than Pyromancer in just about every meaningful interaction it has in the format. Pyromancer will soon be gone. . . . Forever.

-Storm

Mentor is really good but you just can't forget about its worse interaction against Shops. Which you can fix by running more mana... Which breaks the successful mana light template that made Delver with YP really good in the first place.... And then we come full circle.

[Stormanimagus]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get a head but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

qft. I love how I said how broken this card was going to be right out of the gate and yet a large number of Vintage elite still stick to the argument that Pyromancer is better at playing the control role and still has a place in the meta. I couldn't disagree more. This card is more insane than Pyromancer in just about every meaningful interaction it has in the format. Pyromancer will soon be gone. . . . Forever.

-Storm

Mentor is really good but you just can't forget about its worse interaction against Shops. Which you can fix by running more mana... Which breaks the successful mana light template that made Delver with YP really good in the first place.... And then we come full circle.

Having that light mana base never made Delver strictly better. Stephen Menendian often talked about gush decks being strictly "better" because they were able to eschew lands for business spells like preordain and maybe that was true back then, but times they are a' changin'. Having a stable mana base and lots of moxen is a much more sure-fire way to consistently establish control of a game, ESPECIALLY vs. shops. We live in a Vintage format that is defined in large part by permanent wars and no longer just Card Advantage wars. So I actually defy you to make a valid argument for why Pyromancer is truly better vs. Shops than Mentor. I'm gonna just cut you off at the pass here and say that the 3 mana vs. 2 mana argument is not a valid argument cause we are arguing in the context of totally different shells.

Pyromancer DECKS run, on average: 15 land (sometimes 14 pre-board), 3 moxen (sometimes 2), 1 Lotus
Mentor DECKS run, on average: 15 land (sometimes 16 after board), 5 moxen, 1 mana crypt, 1 sol ring, 1 Lotus (sometimes mana vault). They also are often running a much more stable 2 color mana base.

Sooooo, please stop making the CMC argument. It is just not something I'm going to acknowledge as valid. Mentor also has the best tools for beating shops in Engineered Explosives and Hurkyl's recall (Hurks is also just naturally insane in a mentor deck on offense AND defense).

[healo]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get a head but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

qft. I love how I said how broken this card was going to be right out of the gate and yet a large number of Vintage elite still stick to the argument that Pyromancer is better at playing the control role and still has a place in the meta. I couldn't disagree more. This card is more insane than Pyromancer in just about every meaningful interaction it has in the format. Pyromancer will soon be gone. . . . Forever.

-Storm

Mentor is really good but you just can't forget about its worse interaction against Shops. Which you can fix by running more mana... Which breaks the successful mana light template that made Delver with YP really good in the first place.... And then we come full circle.

Having that light mana base never made Delver strictly better. Stephen Menendian often talked about gush decks being strictly "better" because they were able to eschew lands for business spells like preordain and maybe that was true back then, but times they are a' changin'. Having a stable mana base and lots of moxen is a much more sure-fire way to consistently establish control of a game, ESPECIALLY vs. shops. We live in a Vintage format that is defined in large part by permanent wars and no longer just Card Advantage wars. So I actually defy you to make a valid argument for why Pyromancer is truly better vs. Shops than Mentor. I'm gonna just cut you off at the pass here and say that the 3 mana vs. 2 mana argument is not a valid argument cause we are arguing in the context of totally different shells.

Pyromancer DECKS run, on average: 15 land (sometimes 14 pre-board), 3 moxen (sometimes 2), 1 Lotus
Mentor DECKS run, on average: 15 land (sometimes 16 after board), 5 moxen, 1 mana crypt, 1 sol ring, 1 Lotus (sometimes mana vault). They also are often running a much more stable 2 color mana base.

Sooooo, please stop making the CMC argument. It is just not something I'm going to acknowledge as valid. Mentor also has the best tools for beating shops in Engineered Explosives and Hurkyl's recall (Hurks is also just naturally insane in a mentor deck on offense AND defense).

But 3 mana vs 2 mana argument is not only the question of different context. At least, I'd say you can't simply ignore this fact by saying those cards are played in different shells.

Versus shops, resolving 2 mana spell is easier then resolving 3 mana spell, period. It doesn't really help having more moxes, crypt, sol ring when you are facing chalices, wastelands or even basic sphere effects. What matters is how fast (or if at all) you are able to resolve your threats against shops. In this case, Pyromancer is just better (similarly to Oath of Druids, where being able to play land+mox+threat is the deal here). It reminds me how people always argue about rebuild vs hurkyl's recall. There are ways to stop hurkyl's recall and it doesn't cycle, but still, hurkyl's recall is overall being played way more, due to the simple fact that the hole between 2 and 3 mana, especially versus shops, is enormous. I'd say that you could apply similar logic here. I might be wrong of course, but I definitely think it is a valid argument.

[xouman]

2 vs 3 mana is huge. As healo pointed, that's the main advantage between hurkyl's and rebuild. But prowess for all and being triggered by all non creature spells is also huge, whereas rebuild effect is not THAT good compared to hurkyl's.

Pyromancer and mentor currently belong to different decks, in order to make the best from them. I'd say mentor is better overall (specially in the mirror), but pyromancer is cheaper and that has lots of advantages.

[mueller]

Monastery Mentor has numerous advantages over Pyromancer in the Shops match-up.

These include:

• Being able to pump and trade with Lodestone Golem
• Being able to pump and destroy Assembly-Workers
• Having tokens able to pump and trade with Assembly workers
• Generating tokens off 0 cmc Moxen means that Workshop's threshold for stopping sorcery speed token production and pumping is an additional sphere-effect.
  
• Generating tokens off 0 cmc Moxen means that Tangle Wire and Smokestacks are also less effective
• Taking such advantage of artifact mana and Sensei's Divining Top that it behooves Shops to play Null Rod, reducing the viability of Steel Hellkite and Powder Keg as good answers.
  

Also, Mentor Decks will have more total Noncreature spells than Pyromancer decks had Sorcery and Instant spells, meaning they simply have more spells with which to generate tokens.

[diopter]

Storm: from your comments, it sounds like you haven't played Delver. If you have, you would not be so quick to scoff at the virtual CA of the light manabase in e.g. the Grixis matchup. It's at least worth considering as a practical reason for running YP over Mentor.

Also, you're kinda rude. You need to be really sure you're right before you can get away with that. In this case, you are off the mark.

---

Mueller: Young Pyromancer holds the most important advantage against Shops - it might actually come into play.

[Protoaddict]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

It is quite the problem honestly. You can get a head but all they have to do to come back is resolve a Mentor and cast a mox or two.

Someone disagrees with you. May I propose that Mage may be a great answer against the list. Even more so than it was against Pyromancer, where it kinda wasn't.

- Delver / Pyromancer running red could bolt it or pyroblast it and then resolve pyro, where as U/W only has swords which is a worse answer because of the life gain and less versatile.
- This can be made uncounterable via cavern, unlike the other answers.
- This answer swings for damage, where are a bolt or a token sweeper does not.
- Mentor comes down later because of his higher CMC on average, even with the extra mana sources which gives you more of a window to sneak in mage.
- A mage deck can also afford to run other more narrow answers that hurt the mentor deck without being out of place in their list. Things like stony silence, RIP, Rule of law effects.

[dangerlinto]

Someone disagrees with you.

You forgot the most important part.

The 2nd Mage names whatever you were going to use to remove the first Mage.

[MaximumCDawg]

There is no one card answer against Mentor that is also efficient. This forces other decks to have several soft answers and get lucky enough to have drawn these answers in time or on the right moment.

Which is awesome.  Legacy is less fun than Vintage due to the lower power level and less interaction (yep, I said that) but what makes it really fun is that there are DOZENS of viable decks.  This is partly because, once you peel the top layer of the power level pyramid away, the next layer down is broader, but also because it is very difficult to sideboard against every possible strategy.  Vintage is more fun when this is more true.  In the last five years, Vintage has undergone a renaissance in this regard, with the old school standard pillars merging (null rod, other types), collapsing (storm) and changing into unrecognizable shapes (drain). 

Mentor and Pyromancer are both amazing cards that do stupid-but-not-broken things in Vintage and keep pushing this diversity.  The fact that they don't work in the same type of deck makes them even more amazing.  Now, just like Blue decks splinter into tons of different varieties, I think we'll start to see Ux aggro splinter into different strategies as well.

As far as answers go, people are trying to stretch their sideboard space to deal with tons of threats.  If you don't have hate for dredge and shops, you lose.  So you need 4 - 6 slots in your 75 for each of these match ups, minimum.  I could really see 4 - 6 pieces of dedicated hate for mentor/delver as well, and that means you're out of space to tune your deck against rogue decks like Elves or that kind of nonsense.

Toxic Deluge is probably the perfect thing if you want to save sideboard space.  2 or 3 of these will be live against Delver,  Mentor, various disruptive aggro decks, Tinker, and even has SOME splash utility against Shop and Dredge.  But, as you pointed out, its a dangerous play against an aggro deck that might recover its board position post-Deluge.  Gotta be able to win quickly after you spend your life this way.

Dread of Night is waaaay too narrow.  It would literally come in only for Mentor decks.  Maybe also white weenie and wizard (interesting meta bro).  Hard to justify spending this much sideboard space on a single card!

Engineered Plague at least hits Pyromancer tokens, too, and is neigh-unremovable for Delver decks.  But.. three mana?  That's a pretty steep price just to hate out a dork.

Illness in the Ranks seems like the card you want if you're looking to stop Mentor and Pyromancer, but it's so absurdly narrow.  Probably better than Dread of Night if this is your aim.

Really, I'm thinking the best option here is just to play Moat.  Because, you know, that card is cheap and everyone has a copy laying around.  It's a card type that most decks don't play removal for and it stops Mentor cold no matter what they do.  2WW is steep, sure, but it's going to blank most aggro decks entirely.

[Stormanimagus]

I concede that I am a rude and ignorant Vintage player that has only been at this for over 10 years. I will continue to ferry my wrong assessments to the Vintage community. Ok, please, by all means, continue to play Pyromancer Delver.