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.

IHATENAMES on Ever Watchful

1 week ago

Cool deck i love the commander! Overall looks like it can hold down the board but has trouble finishing games. So I would suggest looking into more wincons.

Perhaps the instant sorcery make a token permanents like Monastery Mentor Docent of Perfection  Flip Talrand, Sky Summoner

Candlekeep Inspiration blue over run effect. With all of the instant/sorcerys

Unique not from hand cast cards maybe worth considering some are better then others.

Hidden Strings

Future Sight

Spelltwine

Synthesis Pod

Mind's Desire

Chaos Wand

Isochron Scepter

legendofa on Is WotC Being Inconsistent in …

1 month ago

Again, not a professional designer. But:

Compare Whispering Wizard to cards like Monastery Mentor or Third Path Iconoclast. I would say if or got added to the cost and it became a 2/2, it would be more likely to be triggered on any use. is the weakest color for continual token generation.

Sunshot Militia would need a shift up to at least uncommon, if not rare. It's already a reasonably efficient pinger, in that it can be activated multiple times in a turn and hits each opponent. Adding or maybe to the mana cost and upshifting the rarity would be enough to remove the restriction, I think. Ghirapur AEther Grid and Kyren Negotiations are my references here.

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

nUKe13 on nUKe13 Mardu Pyromancer - PRIMER

9 months 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

11 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

1 year 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

1 year 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

1 year 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).

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