Monastery Mentor
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Brawl 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
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Monastery Mentor

Creature — Human Monk

Prowess (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)

Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, create a 1/1 white Monk creature token with prowess.

nUKe13 on nUKe13 Mardu Pyromancer

4 days ago

I know I haven’t posted in a long, LONG time, but maybe I can explain why I chose certain cards and what changes I’ve made

Metropolis39 - I appreciate you diligently working with me to help the deck grow and adapt. March of Reckless Joy was a consensus of other Mardu Pyro players and myself discussing draw potential. Since the deck was leaning more and more , it made sense to lean on it as a good card filter/threat finder. But, it definitely came at a cost of being particularly devastating if countered. Hopefully there comes along some decent card draw like we once enjoyed with Faithless Looting. So, yeah, March was a feeble attempt to fill the void left by Looting.

YamishiTheWickedOne - also, thanks for your enthusiasm as well as I’ve been working on the deck. Even if the techs are suboptimal by meta standards, I appreciate you trying to see from my POV. For win-cons, the deck has always tried to 1) grind through and dismantle opponents’ game plan, 2) go wide with tokens, and 3) swing with creatures and burn spells. So, the deck doesn’t really rely on one specific threat sticking (like Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. That being said, I was wrong about excluding (at least 1) Kroxa. The utility it provides the deck, from discard, to burn, to clock, to giant-ass beat-stick is really what this deck needs.

I’ve been experimenting with returning to the roots of Young Pyromancer and Manamorphose, and I’ve been testing out Monastery Mentor-based builds. It definitely feels more glass cannon with Mentor, but when it pops off, it’s insane!

Thank y’all for your patience and dedication to the build. I greatly appreciate it.

sylvannos on Hoax Storm v2

2 months ago

@FireMind42: Yeah in that case, you'll want to go for Underworld Breach or Paradoxical Outcome (or something weird with both). I'd lean more towards Paradoxical Outcome because it lends itself better to straight U/R Storm. Not to mention, it opens up Displacer Kitten + Coveted Jewel shenanigans. Then you won't have to rely on rituals so much (Desperate Ritual, Goblin Electromancer, and Seething Song are especially awkward). You can then fit more artifact mana and draw spells.

You'll still want Bolas's Citadel because you're never going to actually spend black mana to cast it and the card is just the nuts in Storm. Memory Jar is always fun with Hullbreacher and Narset, Parter of Veils, but Bolas's Citadel is like Yawgmoth's Will and Yawgmoth's Bargain in one card that can be Tinker'd for (especially with Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, and Ponder). You'll still need Sphinx of the Steel Wind in your sideboard, which is another card you're never going to actually cast.

Since you don't want Monastery Mentor, you'll have to get by with Laelia, the Blade Reforged. Sometimes you'll want to Grapeshot. Sometimes you'll want to Brain Freeze. Sometimes you'll want to Empty the Warrens. Other times, you need something that can get big quick and an easy way to do that is Laelia, the Blade Reforged, Treasure Cruise, and Dig Through Time. She's mostly for Underworld Breach, but I'm not sure you'll need that with Paradoxical Outcome.

I also don't know how I forgot to mention Mind's Desire in my original post. That's the reason to play pure U/R Storm in Vintage LOL. Personal Tutor may also have a potential spot somewhere in this list. It grabs Tinker, Grapeshot, Time Walk, Mind's Desire, and draw 7s. I'd even consider it over the second copies of Past in Flames and Grapeshot.

sylvannos on Hoax Storm v2

3 months ago

To start with, there's a few cards that have better Vintage equivalents. Overmaster and Spell Pierce should be the 3rd. and 4th. copies of Force of Will. Leftover space from cutting those can be Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, or Flusterstorm. You don't need Faithless Looting because we have Paradoxical Outcome, Sensei's Divining Top, Gush, Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, and Brainstorm to choose from. Merchant Scroll also belongs in here, because you can use it to grab Ancestral Recall at the very least. Usually you want it to make sure you have protection in hand by grabbing countermagic.

Library of Alexandria isn't good in this deck. And you're not the type that needs 8x sources, so Steam Vents can go, along with a few copies of Volcanic Island (1 or 2). Replace all of these with four copies of Scalding Tarn and basic lands. Or even just play 6x fetches. You need to be able to shuffle after using Brainstorm, Ponder,and Sensei's Divining Top.

From here, you have a solid U/R Storm shell. However, I wouldn't play straight "Modern U/R Storm, but Power 9" dot dec. 2 mana is a lot for Goblin Electromancer, there are easier ways of winning than Grapeshot, and so on. The question then becomes "Where to go from here?"

Hope this helps! Welcome to MtG's oldest and greatest format.

Icbrgr on Minor Misstep

3 months ago

@SpammyV cascade is one of the "decks to beat" at my LGS and I think that's honestly what got me so pumped for Minor Misstep to begin with... but knowing that stupid deck they will just Violent Outburst on my end step with Force of Negation in hand anyway (I really really hate that deck lol)

@Gidgetimer no worries at all honestly just thanks a bunch for helping me look into/understand how the ruling works.

@wallisface I think I'm leaning that way too in thinking that if this kinda countermagic has a main deck "home" then I'd say that some sort of tempo build... and have always been a sucker for Monastery Mentor/Young Pyromancer builds.

wallisface on Minor Misstep

3 months ago

Yeah Gidgetimer, you're incorrect here. The MV of a spell with X in its value takes the value of X into account when they're on the stack, so the MV of Prismatic Ending, Engineered Explosives, and Chalice of the Void will always take the X into account while on the stack - and so often Minor Misstep will not be able to target them (just to add further, Prismatic Ending can NEVER have MV 0 because it has a required white-pip in its casting cost).

Icbrgr I think the problem is that the card is competing early-game with Spell Pierce, and then late game with Counterspell and Archmage's Charm... there's just such a narrow application for the spell that it feels iffy to be running mainboard. Saying that, I do think it could see some play in limited number mainboard (1-2 copies at most), and possibly some sideboard play also. I just feel there are too many other solid control cards that Minor Misstep might not have too narrow an application to be the optimal choice in almost all decks.

One thing that could be interesting is pairing Minor Misstep with Spell Snare. While neither are optimal in terms of countermagic, they might allow for some aggressive tempo-based control where mana is tight (i'm thinking the Monastery Mentor decks that a lot of people have been toying with since seeing AspiringSpike brewing in that vein, though something like Sultai-Shadow might also be interested in this approach).

Pinkfluffyant on The Art of Deflection

4 months ago

I would say however that Third Path Iconoclast seems to top Monastery Mentor

zapyourtumor on The Art of Deflection

4 months ago

The deck could definitely use some tuning, but I like the concept a lot, especially the flavor bonus of Jeskai plus a deflection theme.

Cards to Cut

First off I would cut a lot of the straight up bad cards. Divine Reflection obviously fits with the theme but the card just takes too much mana and offers too little for what it costs.

Shu Yun doesn't really do much for the 3 mana he costs, and his double strike effect even makes you pay two more mana every time.

Boros Charm is really more of a burn card, and I don't think it does very much in a tempo list like this. The indestructible choice can come in clutch sometimes, but the 4 damage or double strike options seem pretty mediocre. There are loads of great cards to run in Jeskai, and I don't think this is one of them.

Snapcaster Mage is obviously a great card. However, assuming you're on a budget, you also have to consider the fact that this card is taking up 1/3 of your decks price (for only 2 copies). More importantly, I'd actually argue that Snappy is far too slow for your tempo deck, which wants to be relatively aggressive with early threats like Swiftspear and Delver. The extra $40 you save can go towards some really nice upgrades for the deck, some of which I will suggest below.

The Manabase

I've had to build manabases for multicolor budget decks before, and I feel your pain. This is always easily my least favorite part of deckbuilding on a budget, and it just feels bad in general that your deck can't even run smoothly without spending a ridiculous amount of money on lands. But that's what WotC decided its going to make half its profit from so it is what it is.

I'm not going to make any specific card suggestions here, but your manabase is pretty clunky. This isn't really a criticism, since any manabase below a triple digits is going to be clunky, and I think the combination of basics+checks does an okay job all things considered. Thank god none of your cards have double pips of one color. I think any number of shocks are going to be out of your price range. Check lands are nice, but they basically require shocks to work well. Some other land cycles you can look into are Painlands, Innistrad Slowlands, Temple (Scry) lands, Amonkhet Cycle lands, and Pathway lands.

Maindeck Card Suggestions

Path to Exile: While some of the deflection cards can hit creatures, you technically only have three copies of bolt in the removal department. In my opinion, you should definitely expand that to a more diverse suite of removal spells which can cover all the bases. Path is probably the best catch-all creature removal you can run. It excels in the midgame, removes annoying threats like Murktide, Archon of Cruelty, Primeval Titan, Yawgmoth etc, and only costs one mana. It's also affordable! I think running around 1-2 copies would be good, with potentially another in the sideboard.

Prismatic Ending: A very strong removal spell that compliments Path very well. While path takes out all the high cmc creatures, ending deals with the cheap creatures easily while also dealing with any other problematic permanents. Most 3+ color decks of this kind that run white should run this card in my opinion. Ending also dropped in price a lot so it's quite cheap.

Lightning Helix: I definitely think you should max out 4 copies of bolt first, but helix would be like copies 5+. It also kind of fits the deflection theme since it gains you life (equivalent to preventing damage) while also dealing damage.

Monastery Mentor: Definitely on the more expensive side of my suggestions, but still a lot cheaper than Snappy. If you want to run a 3 cmc threat, I would highly recommend Mentor over Shu Yun. With all the noncreature spells you're slinging around, you will quickly amass an army of monk tokens with prowess.

Sprite Dragon: My replacement of choice for Stormchaser Mage. One of my favorite cards, Draggy is a threat that your opponent must answer quickly, or risk getting run over. Definitely a very solid 2 drop in this kind of deck.

Expressive Iteration: Iteration is a bit slower than most of my suggestions and most of the cards in your deck (besides Snap), but what we get for being slower is grind power and card advantage. EI is such a strong card that most decks from the aggro-midrange-tempo-control spectrum in UR colors choose to run it. Of course, if you are short of card slots then I think my earlier suggestions fit the deck a little better.

Consider: While I don't think you have space to add Consider in addition to Serum Visions, I do think it is worth cutting Visions for this card. You lose a little bit of digging power, but the instant speed is invaluable in a deck that wants to hold up mana for counterspells and instant speed removal/deflection effects. Opt works if you want to save a little bit of money since you have no graveyard synergy besides Snappy (which I think you should cut anyways).

Sideboard Card Suggestions

Tormod's Crypt: Grave hate.

Spell Pierce: Additional copies of Pierce are always good for decks with lots of those noncreature spells.

Wear / Tear: Remains some of the best artifact/enchantment removal in these colors, especially good against saga decks. Cheap also.

Hallowed Moonlight: Hits a surprisingly large number of decks right now, from Creativity to Scam to Rhinos to Yawgmoth to Living End--you get the idea.

Dress Down: This card is just crazy versatile and absolutely hoses saga tokens, and it is probably relevant in more matchups than you would expect. You can cast it in response to Murktide to make it a 3/3, you can shut down hammer and Yawg, stop Titan and Archon from using their ETBs, cast it in response to a Thassa's Oracle, etc.

Alpine Moon: Mainly for Urza's Saga, but it also stops Tron and hits some random stuff like Valakut Scapeshift and Lotus Field shenanigans.

Mystical Dispute/Aether Gust: Just decent color-hate options, if you need more flexible sideboard pieces and have extra space.

Blossoming Calm: Another card I like in decks like this, great against Burn and Rakdos Scam but also stops stuff like Archon and Yawg Combo from targeting you.

Deck Description Suggestions

Each person usually has their own style of deck descriptions, but I can give some suggestions based on my own deck descriptions.

Accordion tabs are usually my go-to, and I'm glad you already started one here.

  • Deck overview/general deck goals
  • Gameplan
  • Maindeck card choices (can be broken up into sections: creatures, interaction, etc.)
  • Sideboard card choices
  • Matchups/Sideboarding Guide (optional)
  • Nonbudget Upgrades (optional)

In terms of stylistic choices, if you contact Yeago (the site owner) on the discord and request CSS perms you can do internal/embedded CSS. You can do inline css without perms, but it is pretty limited and only allows you to customize the objects in the description itself.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading all of my comments; I hope at least some of it was helpful lol. Happy brewing!

zapyourtumor on An Attempt at Azorius Prowess

4 months ago

I highly recommend Ledger Shredder, it should be pretty strong in a UW prowess for a couple reasons. You'll be triggering its connive pretty often, which would grow it into a pretty big threat. It can help you dig for gas and discard excess lands. And lastly, prowess decks usually want a certain ratio between creatures and spells, and if you have too many of one or the other Shredder can help you dig for what you need.

Curious Homunculus  Flip and Monastery Mentor are some other suggestions I thought of for prowess creatures in UW, both of them are a little slow but both of them can be pretty strong, and especially Mentor can run away with the game just on his own.

The main weakness of mono blue is a lack of ways to deal with resolved permanents, so I'd lean a lot more on your white splash for more removal. You have 2 Paths, but depending on your meta I think you could maybe up that number. I'd also run 2+ Prismatic Ending, since it's the strongest removal in white and you can go up to X=3 if you run a single Raugrin Triome. Some RW prowess lists literally splashed white for nothing but Ending so the card is definitely pretty good in prowess shells.

I'd cut Mana Tithe, Psionic Blast, and Mishra's Bauble for a few different reasons. Tithe is that funny white counterspell, except you're literally in blue so you have better options (ex. Spell Pierce). Also, counterspells typically don't work too well in prowess decks since you want to be casting spells on your turn, instead of holding up mana for your opponent's. Psionic Blast is funny but I think the card is just too bad to justify running it. Bauble seems bad here because you have no DRC, and basically every card only cares about instants and sorceries. It doesn't buff Clever Luminancer, it doesn't let you cast Stormwing for 1U, it doesn't give Murktide a counter, it doesn't flip delver, it doesn't remove counters from TITI.

Defiant Strike could also be a consideration since it's both a cantrip and a pump spell.

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