Mantis Rider

Creature — Human Monk

Flying, vigilance, haste

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

TypicalTimmy on Card creation challenge

9 months ago

Thanks, griffstick! I was on break while I made the card so I didn't have time to use MTG Design.

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Mantis Adept {2}{R}{W}

Creature - Insect Monk (Mantis artwork) (Rare)

Vigilance, reach

Mantis Adept has first strike when blocking or being blocked by creatures with flying.

Ever cautious, the Mantis Adept specializes in long graceful strides and strikes, seeking to disable vital areas of the body in single, swift attacks.

4/3

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Would be a lovely curve topper in Draft, especially on a plane ripe with flyers. Tarkir would be a good home for it, except they don't have insect people so you'd likely want a Human atop of it, a la Mantis Rider. But I rather liked the idea of a Mantis as the Monk herself. Obviously inspired by Kung-Fu Panda.

And that's exactly what the next challenge is. Take another master of the arts from Kung-Fu Panda and make them a creature. You can make them a legendary homage, or just a nice little nod like I did. Either one is fine.

Daveslab2022 on

1 year ago

Mantis Rider is an honorary lightning Angel.

wolfhead on Commander without the Legendary Rule

2 years ago

Drogskol Reaver for sure

Monastery Mentor if they had partner

Mantis Rider for fun.

Orcish Lumberjack for even more fun.

If there's already strict upgrades actually out there then I'll just claim it's for nostalgia's sake,

But also let me know what they are haha

wallisface on The New Most Competitive Modern Deck--Dryads

3 years ago

Omniscience_is_life, some examples of how the 5 modern-playable tribes operate, to give you an idea of what you’re up against:

• Humans have creatures that grow very bog very quickly in both Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant . Almost every other human is then actively ruining the opponent ability to play (i.e. Meddling Mage , Kitesail Freebooter , Reflector Mage ), or providing backup damage (i.e. Mantis Rider )

• Spirits function down a similar line to humans, except with everything in the air, and lots more lords. They buff with the likes of Drogskol Captain and Selfless Spirit , and disrupt with the likes of Skyclave Apparition , Spell Queller and Mausoleum Wanderer . They even have built in protection in the form of Rattlechains and Selfless Spirit .

• Goblins are a hyper aggressive deck aiming to win by comboing off, or besting you down. Their combo pieces are Conspicuous Snoop and Boggart Harbinger (putting Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker on top then Sling-Gang Lieutenant to win). They can easily assemble their pieces with the likes of Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader . They also have a lot of aggressive go-wide threats to try winning without the combo.

• Merfolk are less interactive than the 3 above decks, and because of that, generally weaker. Almost everything they run is a lord and/or grants islandwalk ( Lord of Atlantis , Master of the Pearl Trident etc), and they aim to simply race the opponent by swinging in with lots of 5/5 unblockable merfolk thanks to the likes of Spreading Seas . They basically aim to race the game, so their interaction is just to mess with their opponent, like Merfolk Trickster , Harbinger of the Tides etc.

• Elves are a straightforward deck. They makes a butt-load of elves, generate waaay too much mana, and then win the game through Ezuri, Renegade Leader , Shaman of the Pack , and Elvish Warmaster .

The above decks can all win their games by turn 4 or 5, most of them giving the opponent constant grief while doing so.

As a further example, Slivers are not a modern-viable tribe, because just throwing creatures down on the board and hoping for the best doesn’t cut it in the modern environment.

I think you need to consider what you’re actually getting out of Dryads, and whether you want this to be a competitive deck, or a casual/meme deck.

Snowmen1 on Undying Retribution

3 years ago

Ok, as an update to this deck, I have played just over 50 matches with this deck between mostly online on cockatrice and in paper with friends. I am at a win-rate of about 27-11 against tried and true meta decks. when accounting for what I would call "jank" or otherwise just unproven, I am at 35-14. I have played against such decks as: Humans, Hardened Scales, Gruul Midrange, Yorion Flicker (pre and post ban), Eldrazi Tron, Green Tron, UW Control, Death Shadow (Mono-Black, Grixis, Jund, and Sultai), Burn, Prowess (Red and Izzet), Devoted Druid Combo, Spirits (UW and bant), Storm (though I need more testing here), Combo Goblins, Dredge (though I need more testing) and Titanshift.

Though I mostly see players that can see the interactions of the deck, it is quite a unique and unorthodox deck, and reasonably good players have made misplays- especially in seeing the interactions with Retribution of the Ancients as well as just seeing the mutate mechanic. I Also made changes to the deck over this testing period, though minor, in order to aid the deck is hard matchups as I identify them. I also have made misplays myself as I learned the ins and outs of the deck (and obviously still continue to do so). I also played most of my games with random people on cockatrice, which I have heard plenty of things about people not being good players on cockatrice, even though I would not say that is necessarily true. For these reasons and more, I would definitely take these results with a grain of salt and accept that there is a margin of error here (For better or for worse), but I think it is still great to learn from the testing that I have done over the past few weeks.

I have some findings to share here about these games:

• This deck has a huge capacity to grind. Obviously turning your two-for-ones into like four-for-ones is good when the plan works, but just fighting with your opponent over getting the engine assembled while swinging in depletes them while bolstering the deck in most situations. As one of many examples, I managed to beat sultai-reclamation by getting the opponent to draw their deck out. I did this by pressuring their life-total while holding down Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, forcing bad cryptic plays by attacking, and just forcing bad lines. Though I did not count this in my win/loss because the opponent left after game one (which was like forty minutes) and I would consider the deck to be "jank" after the recent banning, I can confirm that the deck was close to meta because I saw all but seven of the cards the opponent was playing (which were in hand). point is though that the deck can grind HARD.

• I find that against really fast decks like Prowess and Burn, you find yourself in a spot where you have to try to stabilize, and even end up getting outgrinded because of the constant pressure and considerations that have to be made on your life total which lead to sub-optimal lines. Though I had a decent amount of wins as well as losses in these matchups, I decided to add Life Goes On to the sideboard, which has really helped to improve the chances of winning here. I chose specifically Life Goes On because gaining eight life is particularly potent and almost always going to be active in this deck. This card also plays well in the deck because you will find a lot that the deck is practically built to leave up one untapped land for Retribution of the Ancients activations or casting Village Rites, which just makes having this card extra flexible, letting you play the lines you want to even if your life total is pressured (at least with the play-style I typically opt for when playing the deck).

• I almost always side out Eldritch Evolution games two and three. I have pretty much relegated the use of this card to only being used for having the ability to combo more often and give flexibility for the given matchup I see in game one. The only toolbox stuff that I keep this card in for is against decks like storm and dredge really (though there may be other matchups where I need this that I haven't identified yet), where I will not only be able to essentially have additional copies of say Yixlid Jailer, but also be able to get a Lurrus of the Dream-Den to loop Nihil Spellbomb or Scavenging Ooze. The other toolbox card that I have for Eldritch Evolution is Phyrexian Revoker, but more often than not I would not have these two cards in the deck at the same time because this card has really only been used to deal with opposing Scavenging Oozes, even though I would still sideboard this card in as a toolbox card against say an opposing yawgmoth deck if that's something I'll ever see. For the most part though, opt for the play-to-the-board tempo/aggro plan when you can.

• In matchups where I see discard spells, Unearth has been an absolute powerhouse. In the past, I would sideboard this card out no matter what to avoid being hit by graveyard hate as hard as this deck can be, but I found that you REALLY want this against discard spells and one-for-one removal decks just because it adds so much artificial redundancy. For what it is worth, cycling also helps dig too.

• I found that I almost always side in Gemrazer. The mix between being able to interact and put on pressure is uncanny. I usually just side this card in as a hedge against graveyard hate, but there are so many random situations where you would want to have this card regardless of if you have a target for it or not (I'll list of a few random situations I found against various decks).

Places that I side in Gemrazer for: Show

- Takes out Eidolon of the Great Revel in burn matchups without you having to lose any life. great for racing.

• Against Titanshift and other land-based ramp decks takes out Dryad of the Ilysian Grove (which is a good blocker against the deck a decent amount of the time) as well as Amulet of Vigor where you expect to see it.

• You automatically side this in against Tron and Eldrazi Tron. You need to race, and this card helps you do that while taking out a lot of the cards those decks play

• Tribal decks (Mainly Humans and Spirits), take out opposing Aether Vials while being able to block flying threats like Mantis Rider and Assorted spirits profitably in most situations.

• I just side this in against control to help go faster, deal with graveyard hate, and just kill planeswalkers randomly, also trades up in creatures against removal because you get two back after the card is removed

• Hollow One (not mainstream, but believe me I've seen it, and it's pretty good), destroys and trades with Hollow One, also blocks Flamewake Phoenix

Once again, I want to iterate that this is a card that is in the deck to reactively deal with artifact and enchantment based graveyard hate while maintaining a very proactive position, everything that this card does in addition is an added bonus, and can even drive you to side this card in even though you otherwise might not want to, just because it is that good.

In general, I would say that I love the deck and it is very fun when you can choose between playing a quick aggro game and a slow and methodical approach to playing. As I eluded to in the beginning of this post with saying I have played the deck in paper, I now have a completed build (minus the Verdant Catacombs)!

plakjekaas on Quest for weirdness

3 years ago

There's an actual humans deck in modern running Mantis Rider ever since Unclaimed Territory was printed '^^

Ominous Seas in Standard

Omniscience_is_life on Quest for weirdness

3 years ago

Rielle, the Everwise+landfall

let's get some love for Mantis Rider in modern

SynergyBuild on Modern to Commander

3 years ago

bChulane doesn't really go with any of the tempo disruption strategies that Modern Humans has. It really feels like a normal edh creature deck, which just happens to use the same creature type.

Modern Humans is entirely based on Kitesail Freebooter's ability with Meddling Mage to shut out combo decks, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben's ability to slow them down and protect your board, and the Champion of the Parish, Mantis Rider, Thalia's Lieutenant setup to end the game at fast speeds with the otherwise weak hatebears. Adding in the rest of the deck you see that the goal of Humans isn't to combo with humans, but to be an anti-noncreature deck with hatebears, which use Aether Vial to get around counterspells, and then use Cavern of Souls as well as a tribal base just to pump out a bit more damage and consistency in the Modern format.

Drawing cards and playing additional lands as you speed through your deck of creatures isn't Humans, it's much more akin to Legacy Elves.