Logistical question about the forums: What criteria being meet will move this from Deck Creation to Developing Competitive? Not trying to say I want it there, I actually think this is a great place for it. The main purpose of the deck is to be a fun and interesting option for newer players or players looking for a new FNM deck. Just curious what the "line of separation" is between these two subforums and whether we're a few finishes away from crossing it.
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Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
Mentor is a super strong back up plan, but I feel the primary win condition is still doing 20+ damage to the dome with Grapeshot. Will definitely increase the number of keepable hands, haha
The Puresteel Paladin with cheap equipment idea is out there for years and it was effective... to draw cards. But I never found good way to win.
I thing combining the existing deck with Monastery Mentor is genius.
Now I am seeing people here trying to create a deck without him and I am seriously wondering how are you planning to win?
Will it be just a "storm deck" and the Grapeshot is the only win condition or am I missing something?
In my testing against Abzan, I win the majority of games because of PP. Mentor is a great backup plan that increases the number of threats in your deck and gives you more keepable hands, but it's not as strong as Paladin. I agree that lists should use it, probably 2-3 copies. But from what I have seen of the cards in practice, it needs to remain a secondary win condition to the primary win condition of PP. As for PP being just a kind of "storm deck" enabler, that's only sort of accurate. One big difference is that Storm can't win on turn 2 barring the most insane and improbable draws. Paladin can. Cheeri0s also has a higher turn 3 win rate than does Storm, even if we compare hands where Storm has Electromancer and cheeri0s has PP. That added speed is a big difference between the decks.
I also am not sure where this notion that "PP + cheap equipment was out there for years but you can't win with it" comes from. The only problem was that the deck was stuck on 4 win conditions. Mentor just ups that count to 6-8. The deck was perfectly capable of winning before Mentor. It was just much more fragile.
Interesting deck, I have played against a variant using jeskai ascendancy for extra draw. I would like to try a version with 1 Mass Hysteria and some Myth Realized. Mass Hysteria to do a haste attack with your monastery tokens and you can also equip paradise mantle to a token so you can keep playing spells like retract and finish with a massive army attack or just play grapeshot.
I also am not sure where this notion that "PP + cheap equipment was out there for years but you can't win with it" comes from. The only problem was that the deck was stuck on 4 win conditions. Mentor just ups that count to 6-8. The deck was perfectly capable of winning before Mentor. It was just much more fragile.
That was Caleb Durward's Puresteel Paladin.dec back in standard 2012(?), post-rotation of ZEN block and attempting to resurrect Caw-blade.
@topic, I think mentor will be a bit clunky to re-attempt the combo, although Abzan will not always hold a Maelstrom Pulse. Trying to go off on another turn still requires you to have a back up PP in hand. Once the opponent knows how you badly need PP to combo-off, they wouldn't even attempt to remove Monastery Mentor.
Please don't make crap up. This is such an obvious word vomit it's ridiculous. Something about the internet and people thinking they need to say something to fit in..
So far, with the 18 equipment count, have you had any issues getting off the ground with the combo? What is now your essential combo turn? With the decrease in cereal, does it push the turn back to 3-4 to ensure you have a mana available to dedicate to a draw spell should you dry out, or has it been consistent turn 2-3 kills? I ask as I like the idea of coming out of the gates at light speed, as that was the key to my success. Just curious as to what you are experiencing with your current can trip style flavor.
BTW. Absolutely love the Forge tender tech. Stops bolts of different flavors, and I'll be damned if eidolon of the great revel isn't a good as target!
The other way around if you got the Paladin already the chance to whiff is only greatly increased if you draw into too many Serum Visions instead of equipment. But you whiff mostly because of lands. I will as soon as possible try to get statistical data through goldfishing. But the combo goes off turn 2-3 regularily. (felt 70%)
I'm very skeptical of this. You can't even draw Pureseteel in keepable hands in 70% of games by turn 2-3, even with mulligans. So I struggle to see how you can straight up combo out and win in 70% of games too. Do you have an updated list reflecting the changes you mentioned above?
Also, I'm pretty sure you can't keep ever keep a hand with only equipment, retract, mox, etc. You need that hand to have a threat (similar mulligan rules as Infect). This is one reason I like Muddle, because although slow, it's still a turn 4 Paladin undisrupted. That's better than casting SV on turn 1 or 2 and whiffing into no PP, because then you are probably in topdeck mode for at least another 1-2 turns just praying you draw that Paladin. Of course, it's worse than just having another win condition in that slot instead, so there's that to think about.
The other way around if you got the Paladin already the chance to whiff is only greatly increased if you draw into too many Serum Visions instead of equipment. But you whiff mostly because of lands. I will as soon as possible try to get statistical data through goldfishing. But the combo goes off turn 2-3 regularily. (felt 70%)
I'm very skeptical of this. You can't even draw Pureseteel in keepable hands in 70% of games by turn 2-3, even with mulligans. So I struggle to see how you can straight up combo out and win in 70% of games too. Do you have an updated list reflecting the changes you mentioned above?
Also, I'm pretty sure you can't keep ever keep a hand with only equipment, retract, mox, etc. You need that hand to have a threat (similar mulligan rules as Infect). This is one reason I like Muddle, because although slow, it's still a turn 4 Paladin undisrupted. That's better than casting SV on turn 1 or 2 and whiffing into no PP, because then you are probably in topdeck mode for at least another 1-2 turns just praying you draw that Paladin. Of course, it's worse than just having another win condition in that slot instead, so there's that to think about.
Decided to see what else there is for top-of-deck manipulation and card draw. First time playing with Serum Visions and I'm going up to 4. Muddle is good, but I'm afraid it may be too slow. The matchups tonight were a touch fast on average, but that's a thing we have to be ready for. Unrelated, burn is still a monster. Here's the search and here's a few results:
I think the promising leads are in 1 cmc - chief among them is Mystic Speculation; I think our deck abuses Scry more than any other. Turn 1 it's a cheaper Anticipate, and later turns it's 50% deeper than visions, which is critical on the combo turn. Sleight of Hand has been discussed, but I don't think it's as good. Peek is bad, and Index is only good when we're heavy in fetches. At 7/15 I'm fetches I'm not writing it off, but I can't see it being much better than Speculation.
Ideas Unbound is great on the combo turn, or probably any turn. We have a reasonable amount of rotting hand at any time, and tossing 3 of them isn't really a drawback. The cost is the bigger problem, to be honest.
See Beyond and Vision Skeins are both card advantage without scry, which I'm still not convinced is right here. The drawback on See Beyond is basically not there, since we'll draw it when we combo anyway. The drawback on Skeins is not so terrible if it's EoT and sets off the combo.
Taigam's Scheming and Truth or Tale are low on the list to test -- 5 deep is great, and in particular scheming lets us toss those useless lands and other cards when we want to set up a combo. If I pull 3 lands/creatures out of the top 5 that means the cheerio in my hand will go 6 deep. Truth or Tale looks bad, but we have a pile of redundancy in Noxious Revival that setting up impossible choices shouldn't be hard. Might require upping the NR count to 4 again.
Anticipate and Telling Time are solid end of turn spells, setting up either the next turn or giving us the best card 3 deep. Easier to cast than Ideas Unbound, maybe on par with Vision Skeins? Different effect, but I think the EV is rougly the same.
My plan? +1 Serum Visions to 4, +3 Mystic Speculation. Setting up the top of the deck is critical, and I'd be fine scrying 3 on turn 1 to get that extra land, or set up a strong t2 paladin. on t2 I can speculation into serum visions, clearing a dead card, drawing a cheerio, and getting 1 deeper with visions. Counts towards Mentor, and can be re-cast at 3 mana when we've got plenty of mana and a mentor on board.
Decided to see what else there is for top-of-deck manipulation and card draw. First time playing with Serum Visions and I'm going up to 4. Muddle is good, but I'm afraid it may be too slow. The matchups tonight were a touch fast on average, but that's a thing we have to be ready for. Unrelated, burn is still a monster.
I actually don't identify any problems with the cantrips or search cards. SV is just the best in that department. Sleight is second. There really isn't any other way to cut it without these cards (except Muddle), and that's kind of where we have to be. A much bigger question for me is that of a secondary win condition. Storm has Electromancer and Ascension. Infect has Gelf, Agent, and Inkmoth. Amulet has Titan and Hive Mind. Unfortunately, we have been stuck on Paladin for a long time, and this is I think the biggest reason the deck isn't that successful. Mentor also doesn't solve any of the deck's problems. It's just a slightly worse Puresteel that requires more setup and more mana. That's fine against decks like Abzan or Jund, where you just want threat redundancy and Mentor's tokens are hard to remove, but totally useless against decks we need to race (Amulet, Burn, Twin, Infect). It's also not great against the more controlling decks that can drop threats and then tempo us into the ground (Grixis Delver, UWR Midrange), or decks that just control us out of the game (UW Control, UWR Control, Scapeshift, etc.).
Of course, we definitely don't need to find the panacea creature that solves ALL those problems. That would be impossible. But we need a win condition that fulfills at least some of those problems. And knowing Modern, the ones we want to fulfill are the "race" matchups. Because as we all know, it's good to proactive in Modern, so we want some other proactive threat that can win us the game if Paladin isn't around but with similar speed. Preferably without the same vulnerabilities as PP (he's WAY too easy to remove).
Mentor can go in the sideboard. I'm totally fine with that because he's pretty good against sweeper-less fair decks. But we need something faster in the maindeck to have a noninteractive game 1. I'm still thinking through options but I wanted to put this on people's radar as a possible place for the deck's improvement.
I don't agree that sleight is the second best. For almost every deck, I'd agree. However, we're looking for a very specific string of cards and ordering is very important. Additionally, top of deck is safer than in hand, which is relevant in a common and tough matchup (abzan). Specifically because a cheerio on the top of the deck is often worth more than one card, I'm trying Mystic Speculation as a 3-of. So far, it's been great on every turn. It can set up a stronger Serum Visions and it can set up 2 cheerios top of deck (amazing when you've got retract in hand and just need to start the engine). Try it out, please. It feels like I'm running 24 cheerios again, when I'm really down to 20 for extra threats.
Sleight will potentially see (land, land) when you've got an active paladin and two mana. Would you rather that, or speculation's (cheerio, land, land) and filter mentor/land to the bottom? Yes, we've lost a card, but was the alternative (replacing with a land) really worth counting as a card? I'd rather set up to go deeper, than have an almost card. There are lots of these. Sleight finds (grapeshot, land) and you're just looking to start the combo? Speculation would have thrown them both to the bottom, increasing the change to go off and grab the grapeshot later.
Active mentor and 4 mana because it's game two and the opponent is being careful around paladin? Buyback a speculation, set up the next 2 turns, and make a dude. For 3 mana, make 2 dudes, swing for 4, potentially dig 6 dead cards out of the way.
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I'm on board looking for an alternative for fast decks. My god is burn painful. The angel's grace sideboard help but I think we can have a stronger g1 against them with a different angle than Mentor.
Edit 2: And from there, Ensoul Artifact looks most promising. Maaayybe Myth Realized instead of Mentor, but I really dislike the weaknesses of the card. Abrupt Decay, and enchantment hate, and Wear/Tear is rampant.
Mystic Speculation is unplayable simply because it doesn't replace itself (unless you buy it back, but even then, it has 0% chance of replacing itself with an equipment/Retract, whereas SV and Sleight are nonzero).
It digs exactly the same amount as SV for a second land. If the land is in the top 4 cards, you will get it regardless of which you're playing. The difference is that you're down 1 card if you use Speculation, and if the very first card turns out to be a land, you're free to use the scry on SV however you like.
Taking one card out of two and putting it in your hand is strictly better than bottom-decking both. Keep in mind this deck is only 1/4 lands, so seeing double land off Sleight is actually quite rare.
I know the card is unplayable in almost every other deck, but I'm not convinced. The EV of a cheerio is a bit above 1 draw - retract doubles, an extra paladin doubles, it's a prowess body and then some with a mentor.
I'm not saying it's better than SV, I think I misrepresented the position. Both cards get you three deep, and SV lets you keep one. My argument is that in a lot of cases, we don't care about having the top card, and it being in hand or on bottom is effectively equivalent. In those cases, I'd love to have more copies of Serum Visions.
Let's say we're going for the combo with an active paladin, already played a land, 2 cheerios in hand, tapping our last mana for SV or MS to set up the draws off our hand.
Let's compare a few hypothetical top-of-deck scenarios:
Top | Land | Cheerio | Mentor
SV and MS are equivalent here, right? Draw or bottom the land (can't use it this combo turn) and bottom the Mentor.
Top | Cheerio | Land | Mentor
SV is better here, since we get the cheerio. Both cards bottom the next two.
Ok, let's say we want to start the combo off, but don't have much to go off. On board 3 mana, in hand (paladin, 2 cheerios, retract, SV or MS). We have some time and want to maximize the cheerios, so we cast SV or MS first.
1. Top | Land | Cheerio | Mentor
2. Top | Cheerio | Land | Mentor
In the first case, SV doesn't get us anything. That extra land is slightly better in play next turn vs bottom of the deck. In the second, it gets us one cheerio (effectively +1 next turn because of retract).
But what about next turn? In case 1 SV leaves the cheerio on top, and we're 2 deeper next turn. MS is the same, bottoming two cards and leaving cheerio on top. In case 2 SV is 3 deep, and MS is 2 deep. We untap with 3 mana, and MS gets to look 3 deeper, and SV doesn't. Even if we don't buy it back this time, we've seen 3 deeper for the 3 cheerios now in hand.
My point here is that MS is rarely worse than SV by _much_ because of how often we'll want to chain cheerios and skip anything in between. SV gets us 1 deeper when we can't buyback MS and there's a cheerio on top. If the cheerio is card 2 or 3, both will leave it on top to draw. Both filter non-cheerios below the top card to the bottom.
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Now let's consider Sleight of Hand. Always two deep, always picking up one. In all of the scenarios above, it ONLY comes out the same as SV when there's a cheerio in the top two to draw, and a non-cheerio to bottom. If we bottom a cheerio, ouch. Except when you need a cheerio and it's in the top 2 and you can't immediately draw into the top card, sleight of hand doesn't set up as well as MS. The set up is more important than risking a dead card in hand. Again, when we factor in retract and more than one creature, drawing into cheerios is even more important than replacing a card.
I don't think MS replaces SV, I think it's slightly worse SV #5-7.
Any cantrip is better than Speculation. If you're not comboing off this turn, then even if you draw a land, it's not dead since you can use it next turn. If you are comboing off this turn, Speculation sucks because it doesn't replace itself. You need another eq/cantrip in hand for it to do anything at all, and when it does something it's still worse than Sleight/SV.
If your last eq draws into a Speculation you're stuck; if it draws into a Sleight/SV you can still continue. If you play Mentor on turn 3 and dump all the eqs in your hand, Sleight/SV as the last card gives you a better chance of pumping Mentor 2+ times next turn than Speculation.
An eq is worth 1 card when you have Paladin. So Sleight drawing into an eq digs exactly the same amount as Speculation bottoming 2 non-eqs. The difference, again, is that Speculation does not replace itself.
Using your example of land, eq, Mentor, card 4; casting Paladin next turn (I don't agree with this play when you already have 3 lands, but I'll just stick with it):
Sleight: take eq, bottom-deck land. Next turn, you draw Mentor, cast Paladin, cast eq, draw card 4.
Speculation: bottom-deck land, Mentor. Next turn, you draw eq, cast Paladin, cast eq, draw card 4.
Sleight leads by +1 Mentor in hand.
Although you are correct, I think numberoverzero is hung up on all the strange corner cases where Speculation will be better than Sleight. The big example of this would be turn 1 when you don't have a land in the top 3 cards of your library and you need a 2nd land to cast Paladin. If you turn 1 Sleight, you dig two cards deep and now have one more turn without a 2nd land. If you turn 1 Speculation, you pitch all three cards and then maybe draw the 2nd land on that 4th card. There are lots of exceptions and corner cases we can construct like this. But I think the important point is that for every scenario we can draw up where Spec is better than Sleight, we would find dozens where Sleight would be better than Spec. That's for all the reasons IM has listed on this page.
Looking to win conditions, I've had a good degree of success with Myth Realized against Abzan, but it's still bad against Burn. Although it is definitely fast enough to race Burn in game 1 (it's basically a 3/3 or 4/4 on turn 2 and then a 5/5 or 6/6 on turn 3), it plays right into their sideboard hate in games 2/3. Revelry is just too strong here, and we don't want all of our win conditions to fall apart to their default anti-enchantment/artifact spell. So although I think MR could be maindeck material, it won't cut it in games 2/3 against Burn. That's why I'm back to Firewalker in the board.
Hi all, new user here- I have been following this thread for some time since I've been trying to make a puresteel paladin deck, and this seems like the most viable option. I haven't had a chance to playtest this other than kitchen table, since I don't have enough moxes (waiting for MM2 to see if the $ will change...) but I thought I would raise some queries for thought-
With the introduction of Monastery Mentor, what do people think of Signal the Clans as an alternative (semi-reliable) tutor (though probably not a 4-of since it can be dead late game)? I'm not convinced by Muddle's CMC3 sorcery-speed transmute- as has previously been said, speed is this deck's asset, and a t2 tutor seems so much better than a t3.
As for the randomness, getting Pally or Mentor will be good, but the third...? Maybe run a one-of: Dimir Infiltrator for the Transmute to Paladin? Other options might be Erayo (but this doesn't win us the game, only slows the opponent down) or Riddlesmith (digs well but eats up our Cheeri0s)- perhaps one of both? At a stretch, Witch-Maw Nephilim, but that really seems too slow.
As for cantrips, my personal preference is 4x Serum Visions, 2x Thoughtcast, but I haven't tested Repeal, that seems solid. The only other cantrip I am thinking of is Commune with Nature, but the odds of it being a dead draw mid-combo (unlike SV or others) give me doubt.
Finally, what do people think of Collected Company as, say, a 1-of? Sure, at CMC4 it is a dead draw most of the time, but if we are sitting on t4 with a bunch of cereal and our pally ate a bolt, this might be a gambler's way to clutch victory? After all, 2 creatures should be GG.
Post-script: I've also tried to build the red-version with galvanic and shrapnel's, but those cards simply eat too many slots for this deck- I think they are better in an actual equipment deck (cf Pallly, Goblin Gaveleer, Kor Duelist, Bonesaw/splitter, golem-skin Gauntlets/plating, dispatch, etc.) rather than this combo-oriented version, though that can be made into a combo-ish-version with could key/semblance anvil, Etherium Sculptor, but that version simply requires more hoops to jump through than this 0-cost version.
Signal the Clans turns this into a four-color deck. Your mana base can't handle it, both because it'll eat up too much of your life, and now you need to be able to hit WW or RG on turn 2.
Commune with Nature is pretty bad but it's still better than Spoils of the Vault. If you flip 5 or more cards to Spoils you're going to lose anyway .
CC costs the same amount of mana as Vedalken Archmage. You might as well play Archmage instead. Keep in mind CC isn't guaranteed to hit 2 creatures (or even 1, given this deck's low creature count).
If you flip 5 or more cards to Spoils you're going to lose anyway
I hope this is facetious, because it's wildly inaccurate.
It's not that inaccurate. Spoils just makes our Burn matchup even worse than it already is. The EV of Spoils is something like 7 or 8 life if cast on turn 1, so between that and the shockland or fetchland we used, we are down AT LEAST 8-9 life by the time we untap on turn 2. If we were on the draw, we probably down at least 13-14 life and at 7 or 6. This means we better win on the spot or we just flat out lose next turn.
There's a reason no competitive decks use Spoils, and we aren't suddenly the magical deck to make the card good. All the problems Spoils encounters in other decks are just as present here. Probably moreso, because at least that weird Leyline/Death's Shadow deck had synergy with the lifeloss. Let's not take steps back and revisit old, bad cards. I like the deck's evolution towards additional win conditions, a serious discussion of cantrips, the Muddle toolbox, etc. We should keep it in that direction and not move backwards.
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In my testing against Abzan, I win the majority of games because of PP. Mentor is a great backup plan that increases the number of threats in your deck and gives you more keepable hands, but it's not as strong as Paladin. I agree that lists should use it, probably 2-3 copies. But from what I have seen of the cards in practice, it needs to remain a secondary win condition to the primary win condition of PP. As for PP being just a kind of "storm deck" enabler, that's only sort of accurate. One big difference is that Storm can't win on turn 2 barring the most insane and improbable draws. Paladin can. Cheeri0s also has a higher turn 3 win rate than does Storm, even if we compare hands where Storm has Electromancer and cheeri0s has PP. That added speed is a big difference between the decks.
I also am not sure where this notion that "PP + cheap equipment was out there for years but you can't win with it" comes from. The only problem was that the deck was stuck on 4 win conditions. Mentor just ups that count to 6-8. The deck was perfectly capable of winning before Mentor. It was just much more fragile.
That was Caleb Durward's Puresteel Paladin.dec back in standard 2012(?), post-rotation of ZEN block and attempting to resurrect Caw-blade.
@topic, I think mentor will be a bit clunky to re-attempt the combo, although Abzan will not always hold a Maelstrom Pulse. Trying to go off on another turn still requires you to have a back up PP in hand. Once the opponent knows how you badly need PP to combo-off, they wouldn't even attempt to remove Monastery Mentor.
BTW. Absolutely love the Forge tender tech. Stops bolts of different flavors, and I'll be damned if eidolon of the great revel isn't a good as target!
I'm very skeptical of this. You can't even draw Pureseteel in keepable hands in 70% of games by turn 2-3, even with mulligans. So I struggle to see how you can straight up combo out and win in 70% of games too. Do you have an updated list reflecting the changes you mentioned above?
Also, I'm pretty sure you can't keep ever keep a hand with only equipment, retract, mox, etc. You need that hand to have a threat (similar mulligan rules as Infect). This is one reason I like Muddle, because although slow, it's still a turn 4 Paladin undisrupted. That's better than casting SV on turn 1 or 2 and whiffing into no PP, because then you are probably in topdeck mode for at least another 1-2 turns just praying you draw that Paladin. Of course, it's worse than just having another win condition in that slot instead, so there's that to think about.
I'm very skeptical of this. You can't even draw Pureseteel in keepable hands in 70% of games by turn 2-3, even with mulligans. So I struggle to see how you can straight up combo out and win in 70% of games too. Do you have an updated list reflecting the changes you mentioned above?
Also, I'm pretty sure you can't keep ever keep a hand with only equipment, retract, mox, etc. You need that hand to have a threat (similar mulligan rules as Infect). This is one reason I like Muddle, because although slow, it's still a turn 4 Paladin undisrupted. That's better than casting SV on turn 1 or 2 and whiffing into no PP, because then you are probably in topdeck mode for at least another 1-2 turns just praying you draw that Paladin. Of course, it's worse than just having another win condition in that slot instead, so there's that to think about.
I think the promising leads are in 1 cmc - chief among them is Mystic Speculation; I think our deck abuses Scry more than any other. Turn 1 it's a cheaper Anticipate, and later turns it's 50% deeper than visions, which is critical on the combo turn. Sleight of Hand has been discussed, but I don't think it's as good. Peek is bad, and Index is only good when we're heavy in fetches. At 7/15 I'm fetches I'm not writing it off, but I can't see it being much better than Speculation.
Ideas Unbound is great on the combo turn, or probably any turn. We have a reasonable amount of rotting hand at any time, and tossing 3 of them isn't really a drawback. The cost is the bigger problem, to be honest.
See Beyond and Vision Skeins are both card advantage without scry, which I'm still not convinced is right here. The drawback on See Beyond is basically not there, since we'll draw it when we combo anyway. The drawback on Skeins is not so terrible if it's EoT and sets off the combo.
Taigam's Scheming and Truth or Tale are low on the list to test -- 5 deep is great, and in particular scheming lets us toss those useless lands and other cards when we want to set up a combo. If I pull 3 lands/creatures out of the top 5 that means the cheerio in my hand will go 6 deep. Truth or Tale looks bad, but we have a pile of redundancy in Noxious Revival that setting up impossible choices shouldn't be hard. Might require upping the NR count to 4 again.
Anticipate and Telling Time are solid end of turn spells, setting up either the next turn or giving us the best card 3 deep. Easier to cast than Ideas Unbound, maybe on par with Vision Skeins? Different effect, but I think the EV is rougly the same.
My plan? +1 Serum Visions to 4, +3 Mystic Speculation. Setting up the top of the deck is critical, and I'd be fine scrying 3 on turn 1 to get that extra land, or set up a strong t2 paladin. on t2 I can speculation into serum visions, clearing a dead card, drawing a cheerio, and getting 1 deeper with visions. Counts towards Mentor, and can be re-cast at 3 mana when we've got plenty of mana and a mentor on board.
I actually don't identify any problems with the cantrips or search cards. SV is just the best in that department. Sleight is second. There really isn't any other way to cut it without these cards (except Muddle), and that's kind of where we have to be. A much bigger question for me is that of a secondary win condition. Storm has Electromancer and Ascension. Infect has Gelf, Agent, and Inkmoth. Amulet has Titan and Hive Mind. Unfortunately, we have been stuck on Paladin for a long time, and this is I think the biggest reason the deck isn't that successful. Mentor also doesn't solve any of the deck's problems. It's just a slightly worse Puresteel that requires more setup and more mana. That's fine against decks like Abzan or Jund, where you just want threat redundancy and Mentor's tokens are hard to remove, but totally useless against decks we need to race (Amulet, Burn, Twin, Infect). It's also not great against the more controlling decks that can drop threats and then tempo us into the ground (Grixis Delver, UWR Midrange), or decks that just control us out of the game (UW Control, UWR Control, Scapeshift, etc.).
Of course, we definitely don't need to find the panacea creature that solves ALL those problems. That would be impossible. But we need a win condition that fulfills at least some of those problems. And knowing Modern, the ones we want to fulfill are the "race" matchups. Because as we all know, it's good to proactive in Modern, so we want some other proactive threat that can win us the game if Paladin isn't around but with similar speed. Preferably without the same vulnerabilities as PP (he's WAY too easy to remove).
Mentor can go in the sideboard. I'm totally fine with that because he's pretty good against sweeper-less fair decks. But we need something faster in the maindeck to have a noninteractive game 1. I'm still thinking through options but I wanted to put this on people's radar as a possible place for the deck's improvement.
Sleight will potentially see (land, land) when you've got an active paladin and two mana. Would you rather that, or speculation's (cheerio, land, land) and filter mentor/land to the bottom? Yes, we've lost a card, but was the alternative (replacing with a land) really worth counting as a card? I'd rather set up to go deeper, than have an almost card. There are lots of these. Sleight finds (grapeshot, land) and you're just looking to start the combo? Speculation would have thrown them both to the bottom, increasing the change to go off and grab the grapeshot later.
Active mentor and 4 mana because it's game two and the opponent is being careful around paladin? Buyback a speculation, set up the next 2 turns, and make a dude. For 3 mana, make 2 dudes, swing for 4, potentially dig 6 dead cards out of the way.
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I'm on board looking for an alternative for fast decks. My god is burn painful. The angel's grace sideboard help but I think we can have a stronger g1 against them with a different angle than Mentor.
Edit: First pass at a search for alternative, interesting cards. cmc less than or 2 in UW, non-creature permanent.
Edit 2: And from there, Ensoul Artifact looks most promising. Maaayybe Myth Realized instead of Mentor, but I really dislike the weaknesses of the card. Abrupt Decay, and enchantment hate, and Wear/Tear is rampant.
It digs exactly the same amount as SV for a second land. If the land is in the top 4 cards, you will get it regardless of which you're playing. The difference is that you're down 1 card if you use Speculation, and if the very first card turns out to be a land, you're free to use the scry on SV however you like.
Taking one card out of two and putting it in your hand is strictly better than bottom-decking both. Keep in mind this deck is only 1/4 lands, so seeing double land off Sleight is actually quite rare.
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Big Johnny.
I'm not saying it's better than SV, I think I misrepresented the position. Both cards get you three deep, and SV lets you keep one. My argument is that in a lot of cases, we don't care about having the top card, and it being in hand or on bottom is effectively equivalent. In those cases, I'd love to have more copies of Serum Visions.
Let's say we're going for the combo with an active paladin, already played a land, 2 cheerios in hand, tapping our last mana for SV or MS to set up the draws off our hand.
Let's compare a few hypothetical top-of-deck scenarios:
Top | Land | Cheerio | Mentor
SV and MS are equivalent here, right? Draw or bottom the land (can't use it this combo turn) and bottom the Mentor.
Top | Cheerio | Land | Mentor
SV is better here, since we get the cheerio. Both cards bottom the next two.
Ok, let's say we want to start the combo off, but don't have much to go off. On board 3 mana, in hand (paladin, 2 cheerios, retract, SV or MS). We have some time and want to maximize the cheerios, so we cast SV or MS first.
1. Top | Land | Cheerio | Mentor
2. Top | Cheerio | Land | Mentor
In the first case, SV doesn't get us anything. That extra land is slightly better in play next turn vs bottom of the deck. In the second, it gets us one cheerio (effectively +1 next turn because of retract).
But what about next turn? In case 1 SV leaves the cheerio on top, and we're 2 deeper next turn. MS is the same, bottoming two cards and leaving cheerio on top. In case 2 SV is 3 deep, and MS is 2 deep. We untap with 3 mana, and MS gets to look 3 deeper, and SV doesn't. Even if we don't buy it back this time, we've seen 3 deeper for the 3 cheerios now in hand.
My point here is that MS is rarely worse than SV by _much_ because of how often we'll want to chain cheerios and skip anything in between. SV gets us 1 deeper when we can't buyback MS and there's a cheerio on top. If the cheerio is card 2 or 3, both will leave it on top to draw. Both filter non-cheerios below the top card to the bottom.
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Now let's consider Sleight of Hand. Always two deep, always picking up one. In all of the scenarios above, it ONLY comes out the same as SV when there's a cheerio in the top two to draw, and a non-cheerio to bottom. If we bottom a cheerio, ouch. Except when you need a cheerio and it's in the top 2 and you can't immediately draw into the top card, sleight of hand doesn't set up as well as MS. The set up is more important than risking a dead card in hand. Again, when we factor in retract and more than one creature, drawing into cheerios is even more important than replacing a card.
I don't think MS replaces SV, I think it's slightly worse SV #5-7.
If your last eq draws into a Speculation you're stuck; if it draws into a Sleight/SV you can still continue. If you play Mentor on turn 3 and dump all the eqs in your hand, Sleight/SV as the last card gives you a better chance of pumping Mentor 2+ times next turn than Speculation.
An eq is worth 1 card when you have Paladin. So Sleight drawing into an eq digs exactly the same amount as Speculation bottoming 2 non-eqs. The difference, again, is that Speculation does not replace itself.
Using your example of land, eq, Mentor, card 4; casting Paladin next turn (I don't agree with this play when you already have 3 lands, but I'll just stick with it):
Sleight: take eq, bottom-deck land. Next turn, you draw Mentor, cast Paladin, cast eq, draw card 4.
Speculation: bottom-deck land, Mentor. Next turn, you draw eq, cast Paladin, cast eq, draw card 4.
Sleight leads by +1 Mentor in hand.
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Big Johnny.
Although you are correct, I think numberoverzero is hung up on all the strange corner cases where Speculation will be better than Sleight. The big example of this would be turn 1 when you don't have a land in the top 3 cards of your library and you need a 2nd land to cast Paladin. If you turn 1 Sleight, you dig two cards deep and now have one more turn without a 2nd land. If you turn 1 Speculation, you pitch all three cards and then maybe draw the 2nd land on that 4th card. There are lots of exceptions and corner cases we can construct like this. But I think the important point is that for every scenario we can draw up where Spec is better than Sleight, we would find dozens where Sleight would be better than Spec. That's for all the reasons IM has listed on this page.
Looking to win conditions, I've had a good degree of success with Myth Realized against Abzan, but it's still bad against Burn. Although it is definitely fast enough to race Burn in game 1 (it's basically a 3/3 or 4/4 on turn 2 and then a 5/5 or 6/6 on turn 3), it plays right into their sideboard hate in games 2/3. Revelry is just too strong here, and we don't want all of our win conditions to fall apart to their default anti-enchantment/artifact spell. So although I think MR could be maindeck material, it won't cut it in games 2/3 against Burn. That's why I'm back to Firewalker in the board.
With the introduction of Monastery Mentor, what do people think of Signal the Clans as an alternative (semi-reliable) tutor (though probably not a 4-of since it can be dead late game)? I'm not convinced by Muddle's CMC3 sorcery-speed transmute- as has previously been said, speed is this deck's asset, and a t2 tutor seems so much better than a t3.
As for the randomness, getting Pally or Mentor will be good, but the third...? Maybe run a one-of: Dimir Infiltrator for the Transmute to Paladin? Other options might be Erayo (but this doesn't win us the game, only slows the opponent down) or Riddlesmith (digs well but eats up our Cheeri0s)- perhaps one of both? At a stretch, Witch-Maw Nephilim, but that really seems too slow.
As for cantrips, my personal preference is 4x Serum Visions, 2x Thoughtcast, but I haven't tested Repeal, that seems solid. The only other cantrip I am thinking of is Commune with Nature, but the odds of it being a dead draw mid-combo (unlike SV or others) give me doubt.
Finally, what do people think of Collected Company as, say, a 1-of? Sure, at CMC4 it is a dead draw most of the time, but if we are sitting on t4 with a bunch of cereal and our pally ate a bolt, this might be a gambler's way to clutch victory? After all, 2 creatures should be GG.
Post-script: I've also tried to build the red-version with galvanic and shrapnel's, but those cards simply eat too many slots for this deck- I think they are better in an actual equipment deck (cf Pallly, Goblin Gaveleer, Kor Duelist, Bonesaw/splitter, golem-skin Gauntlets/plating, dispatch, etc.) rather than this combo-oriented version, though that can be made into a combo-ish-version with could key/semblance anvil, Etherium Sculptor, but that version simply requires more hoops to jump through than this 0-cost version.
Commune with Nature is pretty bad but it's still better than Spoils of the Vault. If you flip 5 or more cards to Spoils you're going to lose anyway
CC costs the same amount of mana as Vedalken Archmage. You might as well play Archmage instead. Keep in mind CC isn't guaranteed to hit 2 creatures (or even 1, given this deck's low creature count).
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Big Johnny.
I hope this is facetious, because it's wildly inaccurate.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
It's not that inaccurate. Spoils just makes our Burn matchup even worse than it already is. The EV of Spoils is something like 7 or 8 life if cast on turn 1, so between that and the shockland or fetchland we used, we are down AT LEAST 8-9 life by the time we untap on turn 2. If we were on the draw, we probably down at least 13-14 life and at 7 or 6. This means we better win on the spot or we just flat out lose next turn.
There's a reason no competitive decks use Spoils, and we aren't suddenly the magical deck to make the card good. All the problems Spoils encounters in other decks are just as present here. Probably moreso, because at least that weird Leyline/Death's Shadow deck had synergy with the lifeloss. Let's not take steps back and revisit old, bad cards. I like the deck's evolution towards additional win conditions, a serious discussion of cantrips, the Muddle toolbox, etc. We should keep it in that direction and not move backwards.