MTG Salvation

Brainstorm
Force of Will
Wasteland
Delver of Secrets
Stoneforge Mystic
Deathrite Shaman
Swords to Plowshares
Lion's Eye Diamond
Griselbrand
Sensei's Divining Top

Monastery Mentor is absurdly powerful, to the point where I could easily see straight UW Delver lists becoming a thing. A creature base of Mentors, Delvers, and Seeker of the Way and Snapcaster as 2-drops could make heavy use of Phyrexian mana free spells, and its clock would often become 1 turn the moment Mentor entered play.

In 8 pages only one person has discussed the impact of this card on Vintage. This card will be the most impactful card on the Vintage meta since Griselbrand, and it will render competing blue creature decks (BUG, RUG, Fish, Stoneblade) completely obsolete. Dedicated combo decks trying to Vault/Key, Oath, Storm, or Bomberman the opponent will still be viable, but any Vintage deck that is trying to win through a combination of combat and stack interaction is going to either play this card or lose to it.

I know, "nobody plays Vintage" ... but for the minority who pay attention, this card is a huge, huge deal.

And if you're doubting its raw power level, here's some math. If you can reasonably expect to cast a spell the same turn you cast it, and then cast a spell precombat each turn for the next 3 turns, it will have done 20 damage by its 3rd attack. That means that with the entirely reasonable expectation of one spell per turn, you're effectively getting an average 7 power for 3 mana. In vintage it's possible to put this guy in play on turn 1 and be attacking for lethal on turn 2.

In Modern, you can cast a turn 3 Mentor, then Mutagenic Growth in response to their Bolt. You untap and cast a cantrip, Bolt a blocker, attack for 7, and kill them the next turn with a single spell. This isn't Magical Christmasland, guys. This card is a trump against the entire midrange strategy if the cheap spells to support it exist in a given format. A mentor and 4-5 cheap spells beats almost any army that can be put on the battlefield for a comparable mana cost even if those spells are blank cards. Oh, and Treasure Cruise is still a thing.

In the same way that Seige Rhino is a better Bloodbraid Elf, Treasure Cruise is a better Ancestral Vision, and Jeskai Ascendency is a better Second Sunrise, this is a better Stoneforge Mystic. The Modern banlist is starting to look like an absolute joke.

It's definitely playable, but I think Cataclysm is marginally better in any list that wants it. Getting to hose swarm/tribal decks, Enchentress, and planeswalkers when Armageddon doesn't makes it more useful and they cost almost the same. The only situation when you want Armageddon instead is when you have multiple fliers and your opponent has a True-Name Nemesis with no equipment already attached. I wouldn't fault anyone for playing it because it's still game-breaking against Miracles and Lands (the decks that you need mass LD against the most) but I would basically always play Cataclysm instead. Sometimes you'll lose to Lands after a Cataclysm because you let them keep a Maze for your one creature, but usually this isn't the case.

The thing is, though, the format that Wizards is most interested in selling is Limited, because it is the most reliant on selling product. Introducing Cube as an officially supported paper format would probably develop the interest in drafting as a game mechanic among the casual crowd, and give access to a much wider range of people who generally don't spend money on Magic to develop their drafting skill and encourage them to explore the limited formats that wizards have been putting so much effort into building. I think it's an ideal way for Wizards to enable drafting as the default way to play Magic socially, and that's a net win for Wizards.

A gold-bordered, alternate-backed (non-tournament-legal) fully powered Cube box set for 150$. Complete with sleeves, an actual cube-shaped box, a guidebook to drafting different archetypes and descriptions of different draft formats from the standard 8-man, and maybe even supplemental randomized booster packs for customizing the card pool. It could be a standalone product that game stores keep a copy of for introducing new people to the game, and for casual EDH play groups who don't care about "proxies" it would be a godsend (a full set of gold border duals, fetches, shocks, and powerful cards like Snapcaster, Jace, Stoneforge, Force, Wasteland, etc., all for the price of a single Bayou, without impacting the supply of sanctioned copies of these cards).

It honestly shocks me that they haven't done this yet.

It's a small nitpick but with a mana base like that I would play the 1st Marsh Flats over the 4th Verdant Catacombs. Fetching basic Plains matters sometimes.

Here's my current Punishing list:



The hate for combo is pretty thin, but if I was worried about combo I would just be playing Death and Taxes instead. The point of using Maverick instead of the more reliably proven D&T is crushing the fair decks with a removal engine and giant Knights, and letting your prey (Delver and D&T) pick off the combo players for you. The board is most heavily skewed towards beating Miracles (the other deck you rely on to keep combo out of the picture) and Elves (the combo deck you can't rely on D&T/Delver to beat for you), with only token E-Tutor targets to fight graveyard decks, Show and Tell decks, and Storm. An effective 3 copies of COP Red are a concession to the burn matchup.

If it looks like the meta at GP NJ will be as fair as I suspect, this might be what I bring. I was rocking D&T all summer and with Nate Sturm putting Punishing Mav back on the map (it's clear that I used his list as square one in testing) I got worried that I might get leveled be people who followed his lead if I brought my Flickerwisps and Vials to battle, so I started testing this. I think the list is what I want, given my assumptions about the meta ... But there's still a couple weeks to go.

That's tough because Cruise has pulled the rug out from Bob's playability in eternal formats ... Decks that have the option of both are playing Cruise as a better option, and decks that can play Bob but not Cruise are severely disadvantaged against Cruise decks. But once Cruise gets banned in either Modern or Legacy, that trade starts looking a lot better.

Bottom line is, you gotta be willing to wait for those Bobs to do good work for you. The card just isn't good in Cruise formats. With the (safe) assumption that Cruise won't stay universally legal though, I like that trade a lot.

I think there might be enough incidental value in copying your opponent's things to warrant a slot or two in decks that are already casting Fireblast (this is the only card that Dualcaster interacts with favorably enough to be viable). Copying a Cruise or an Entreat is obviously absurd, and it does some work with suspended Rift Bolts if you need it to. It has the fringe upside of blanking (and sometimes totally hosing) a Zealous Persecution that would kill your Pyromancer tokens. I see it as similar to Notion Theif, in that there's a lot of variance involved in how good it is, but the upside is high enough that it's playable as a 1x.

It seems like a 1-2x in Burn, mainly for Fireblast. I don't think any other deck plays enough Mountains to cast it reliably.

So many people went to Eternal Weekend (where there were 18 Cruises in the top 8) that I think the most recent SCG was actually pretty soft. We will be right back into Cruise domination next week. There's a real argument over whether it's better than Brainstorm in an optimally built deck.

The actual perfect nut hand to take home the whole thing was a perfect moment. But g3 of the semis, in which his opponent mulled to 4 on the draw and still almost won, was incredible. And going down to 1 card on turn 1 and then getting Forced again turn 2 against a blind-flipping Delver, and then still pulling it out, was also insane. Both those matches were instant classics.

Infect wants the 4th Tropical, UR decks usually want all 4 Volcanics, Deadguy wants all 4 Scrubs, and sometimes UWR Delver needs 4 Tundras. Some BUG and Esper lists max out on Seas and Scapewish wants 4x Taiga and Badlands. But generally speaking you can build solid lists with no more than 3 of anything in particular.

Yeah I'm not jazzed about Jund's Burn matchup. PFire plus white sounds way better.