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Monastery Mentor is my favorite spoiled card from Fate Reforged. It's immediately reminiscent of Young Pyromancer, a card with wildly successful Modern, Legacy, and even Vintage applications.
Monastery Mentor is even more powerful than Young Pyromancer. Monastery Mentor has prowess, so it's a threatening presence by itself, but the tokens it produces also have Prowess! Each spell cast will not only grow the ranks of token army, but it will also temporarily grow the size of each individual member. Monastery Mentor scales wide and it scales up, and it's exactly this sort of compounding growth that makes the card so appealing and worth building around.
I have to share two Modern brews that focus around Monastery Mentor.
Jeskai Monastery Mentor Delver
My first thought for using Monastery Mentor in Modern is putting it right into a Young Pyromancer shell. Young Pyromancer is an integral part to the Treasure Cruise-fueled Delver of Secrets decks that currently dominate the format, and these decks are well-suited to utilizing Monastery Mentor.
Yuuya Watanabe found success at the 2014 World Championship with a UR Delver deck splashing Green for Tarmogoyf. I adapted his decklist to incorporate white and add Monastery Mentor, which replaces Tarmogoyf as a powerful piece of board presence and adds redundancy to the Young Pyromancer plan.
Jeskai Monastery Mentor Delver
The move towards white opens up the sideboard to some of the best options in Modern. I have included the oppresive Stony Silence to combat Affinity and Urzatron strategies. Aven Mindcensor stops the namesake card in Birthing Pod strategies, while Hushwing Gryff is an interesting option for combatting their multiple come-into-play effect creatures, including Siege Rhino.
Other great white sideboard options include Path to Exile, which is especially good against Tarmogoyf, Rule of Law for hosing Storm and cascade Living End strategies, and the versatile Meddling Mage.
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For a completely different take on Monastery Mentor, how about applying it to a BW Tokens strategy?
BW Monastery Mentor Tokens
Monastery Mentor mentor produces creatures tokens, and these tokens are abusable just as is any other creature token. BW Tokens has been a fringe Modern players for as long as I can remember, and perhaps Monastery Mentor is just what it needs to be pushed over the top and into the spotlight. Monastery Mentor gives BW Tokens a powerful new tool that may allow it to compete with the heavy-hitters in the metgame.
BW Monastery Mentor Tokens
Unlike Young Pyromancer, Monastery Mentor and Prowess trigger from all noncreature spells and are not restrained to just instants and sorceries. This makes Monastery Mentor particularly excellent with the enchantment anthem-effects available to to the tokens strategy, because these enchantment will not only grow the token army but also trigger Monastery Mentor and the Prowess on all of the tokens.
BW Tokens has been an unfortunate victim of Treasure Cruise, but it's an archetype that has a ton to gain if there is a banning later this month.
What other applications are there for Monastery Mentor? Do you have your own Monastery Mentor brews, or have you seen any floating around the internet? Share your ideas in the comments!
-Adam
I like the BW tokens list, but I’m somewhat surprised Bitterblossom makes no showing. Too slow?
Thanks! Bitterblossom wouldn’t be bad, but it hasn’t actually caught on in the archetype in Modern yet, because it’s a bit too slow and painful. It also doesn’t interact well with Honor of the Pure.
I use Bitterblossoms with Auriok Champions in my BW token deck. Harsh Sustenance might be interesting in BW tokens too. Monastery mentor is going to be amazing…
thanks for the article I picked up two of these in a trade and am hoping they don’t boros reckoner on me in price. but here’s how i’m running it and it seems to stay on the table most times I play it. I’ve even played it with a gitaxian probe to get a prowess token knowing it’s gonna get bolted just to 141 someone’s last piece of removal. only to play swiftspear next turn ftw with the token. prowess can be explosive as F^@$
i’ll leave the amounts out as you can put your own together and see for yourself
I call this deck -the houn
“monastery mentor”
“monastery swiftspear”
“kiln fiend”
“snapcaster mage”
“emerge unscathed”
“boros charm”
“mutagenic growth”
“remand”
“mana leak” or “spell pierce”
“gitaxian probe”
“manmophose”
“brute force” or “titan’s strength” (for the scry and pro-bolt w/ prowess)
“lightning bolt”
“lightning helix”
“path to exile”
assorted fetches, shocks checklands and such
i’m still working on it, but it’s getting some surprised faces in my local meta. i’m using young pyro but he just isn’t as good as having those extra 4 prowess triggers and muta growth can’t put him over toughness 4 like everyone else. i’m thinking I need a bit more draw and a bit more tempo then unleash hell T4 or 5 with fiend or mentor. if I can’t get a ‘magical xmas’ win with fiend and boros charm on T3.
but main thing is. with an unscathed, brute force or muta growth I can confidently drop MM on T3/4 and if he survives, he goes bonkers real quick.
Love the BW Mentor tokens. Built it and designed some cool tokens I printed out…it’s so much fun!
What do you think about Orzov Basilica instead of Fetid Heath? Allows you to snatch back a Windbrisk Heights to recycle for more Hideaway! Maybe too mid-gamey?
I keep the Vault of the Archangel in there from most of the other BW Tokens list. It is just too good.
Could a one of Dark Confidant have some play here with the Vault?
Nice write up, Adam! Sorry for the necropost…