Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Greetings Modern Nexites! I have seen most of you before, but unless you pay attention to the comments you have no idea who I am. I am David Ernenwein and for the past several months I have been the content editor of this illustrious site. Normally I stay behind the scenes but today I have been awkwardly shoved onstage to buy time am giving Sheridan a well-deserved break to finish testing for his upcoming series on the Modern banned list. To that end, let's talk about brewing. Specifically, how I failed to find the right brew.
Before we begin, are there any current or former academics in the audience? (I can't see you so I'm going to act like there are) Have you ever dedicated months to a project, expended vast amounts of resources and brainpower, proposed and disproved dozens of hypotheses only to realize what you have discovered is the actual question and you have no solution? This is one of those stories.
[wp_ad_camp_1]
It All Began So Innocently
This story begins with the spoiling of Monastery Mentor. I was intrigued from the start. It looks like Young Pyromancer, but it costs more. But Mentor and its tokens are more powerful. This cannot be good in Modern. It is insane in Vintage, it is really expensive for how little play it is seeing right now, and I should be trying this card out!
Naturally, I spent the weeks leading up to GP Denver, and about a month after, trying to fit Mentor into the Standard Jeskai Tokens list I used to money at the Grand Prix. It didn't work because the three-drop slot was too clogged and it was weaker than the other options. I was glad I didn't play it. I promptly put the Mentor down and forgot about it.
Then SCG States rolled around. I was knocked out of mine early thanks to an unexpected glut of Storm decks. Irritated, I waited until decklists began to be posted to see if this was an actual trend or if I'd just been unlucky (the answer was "yes", by the way). That is when I began to notice that there were a number of Mentor lists. I was intrigued.
My First Attempt
I had to try out an Esper Mentor list. I had to. So I began looking at, aggregating, and making lists until I arrived at a deck I was willing to start testing and running at my local game store.
Untitled Deck
I ended up with this deck since it had the critical mass of cheap non-creature spells to fuel Mentor along with the disruption and protection I needed to actually make it stick. And it did. This list was exceptional at disrupting the opponent to let me cast my Mentors. Inquisition of Kozilek, Mana Leak, and Thoughtseize made it difficult for opponents to accomplish anything during the early game. Lingering Souls was, and still is, the best way in Modern to gum up the board and provide pressure. Tasigur was simply outstanding at being a late-game card advantage engine and Tarmogoyf impersonator, and Sorin, Solemn Visitor was also surprisingly powerful and easy to ultimate. Twin in particular has a difficult time beating the Visitor's emblem. In the (at the time) Twin and Burn heavy metagame I was hitting, this Mentor list did very well.
For a time.
Trouble Brewing
As I kept playing and tuning the list, I kept having two problems. The first was that I was expending all my resources just to prevent my opponents from winning. This might seem fine, but it meant once I was able to drop my Mentors it was far too often just a Gray Ogre. Snapcaster and Souls helped a little, but making one token was not good when it could only attack as a 1/1. Not losing was all well and good, but you need to turn that "not losing" into "winning" and this was not happening.
The second problem built off the first: Esper Mentor failed to close out games even when I was the last one standing after an attrition fight.
As I mentioned, the deck was exceptional at disrupting the opponent. I then usually spent far too much time just staring at my opponent, unable to attack for more than two at a time thanks to Spirits that had survived the attrition war. That was too slow. With no reach and no surprise combo, I just had to slowly plink away during the mid to late game, and that wasn't good enough. Opponents could weather my anemic beats until they found a more impactful threat and then I was doomed. This also exposed a weakness of the deck, where resolved threats where extremely dangerous. I only had five removal spells in my main 60, so Jund and non-burn aggro were extremely dangerous (Jund is built to play a long removal game and stick a single threat to win, just like Mentor, and if I can't trade for Souls tokens then those drops are lethal). It also couldn't beat Tron. Once my opponents adjusted to the Mentor game plan and I couldn't get free wins from surprise anymore, I struggled to break even at events.
Stubborn Denial
But I wasn't about to give up. I knew I could overcome the flaws and make this deck viable. The mana base was excellent, the discard was powerful, Mentor was as powerful as I thought (when I got it to work), and I am stubborn. In games where the first problem didn't come up, Mentor often won the game in one attack. So I set out to close the holes and improve my brew.I didn't.
I decided the problem with Monastery Mentor was that since it really wanted you to have cards in your hand you should always have more cards in your hand. Because I rarely got above five lands, I knew Sphinx's Revelation was not a great option. This was fortunate because I really wanted to use Esper Charm again (it was a Standard favorite of mine). On paper, Charm was perfect, a versatile instant that drew cards in my colors. In practice...let's not speak of how it was in practice but calling it clunky would be charitable.
Card draw in Modern is very weak and there's no getting around it. Of the options available, I could never come up with one that fixed the problem and played well with Mentor. Charms were bad, Revelation was bad, the sorcery speed options were too slow. This left me playing more cantrips, but Thought Scour and Sleight of Hand didn't help very much. Remand showed promise, but didn't play well in a control shell. When I played an answer, I wanted it to permanently answer something. Then I remembered Remand plays well with another old friend, Delver of Secrets! Now, playing these together wouldn't solve my first problem, but maybe it would solve the second problem and thereby eliminate the need for the first problem. And with that, I was brewing again.
Second Verse...
Again, a question for academics. Have you ever spent an inordinate amount of research time to end up back where you started with only minor modifications to the original protocol to show for it? Yeah, that's how I ended up with this list.
Untitled Deck
Over a week of evening testing sessions to just shave a land and move some spells around. Oh well, take it to the weekly Modern events anyway, see how it goes.
...Not Quite Like the First
It didn't do badly. In fact, Esper Delver played quite well. Delver is incredibly powerful and this deck and had more than the minimum spells to flip it. Adding in Remand meant that I could protect my Delver's without running out of cards for the mid-game when I got my Mentor's online. The addition of Disfigure improved my matchups against other Delver lists and Elves considerably. Taking out Thoughtseize didn't hurt much (pun realized after addition) since combo was not a significant enough a presence to worry about and Inquisition was excellent across the board.
I didn't need as many answers as before since the pressure of Delver was usually enough.
I was right about closing out games making up for lack of resources for Mentor. Being able to apply solid pressure early improved many matchups just by being able to actually take advantage of stumbles. My default has always been aggression and I am a long-time tempo enthusiast in Modern, so going back to my tempo roots felt good. I know that in traditional slow matchups whoever has the mana advantage is presumed to win but I've found that if you cannot take advantage and close out a game then mana advantage doesn't count for much. I'll take a damage advantage if that's alright. Delver is sometimes a free win and that's what I was getting again, even after my deck became known. I was doing reasonably well in local events and even at IQ's with Esper Delver.
And Then Kolaghan's Command Happened
And then Kolaghan's Command happened. Yes, that is so important I said it twice. Command was the death knell for Esper Delver.
It wasn't necessarily that it was a great answer for the threats, it was how Command affected the format. Grixis became the default blue deck, and my list suffered against opposing discard and counters. Also, Lightning Bolt. The proliferation of Command meant more Bolts and Bolt is a great answer to all of my threats except Colonnade. More removal heavy decks was bad enough, but Command proved to be such an amazing value engine that it meant that the first problem of running out of resources came back with a vengeance. Souls just wasn't enough to make up for it. I was getting my early game stuffed more often and this made the lack of card advantage, especially compared to Grixis decks, more glaring.
That said, what really made me give up on Esper Delver was the realization of how much the deck needed Lighting Bolt.
I found that a lot of my losses now happened with the opponent in burn range, but I had no reach. I wanted burn, and I knew that burn played well with Pyromancer, so it should also be good with Mentor. So I ditched the black for red, and then for several months ditched Mentor entirely in favor of a Jeskai control list because I wanted to see if the Temples are Modern playable (they were, mostly).
And Here We Are
After a few months getting to know my controlish side, I once again failed to resist the call of Monastery Mentor and decided to try again. This time I would take everything I'd previously learned and put it together and THIS time it would work. In a sense I guess it did, I finally know what my real problem was.
Untitled Deck
To preempt questions I never once fetched for a basic Mountain so I just cut it for another Plains and changed the Scalding Tarn to Marsh Flats since there was a lot of Blood Moon when I made it and I really needed to fetch basics that weren't Mountain. Is it right? Don't know, it rarely came up and wasn't an actual problem for the deck.
This was an excellent Mentor/Delver list. It had more than enough spells to flip the Delvers and plenty of cheap cantrips to fuel Mentors.
It had raw power and value in Cryptic Command and the burn to finish off games. It powered through matchups and could race or win out of nowhere. And would fail to win many games. There were times that it just clunked along despite the game going to plan with a flipped Delver and cards in hand to power out a Mentor turn. Changing Mana Leak for Remand did nothing. Trying new cards like Soulfire Grand Master didn't help (though it did make Burn and other Delver decks into very, very good matchups). It's hard to describe the problem any other way than the deck felt like it was tearing during games. There would be Delver style games and control style games where you won via Mentor just like expected and then there were in between games when something...just felt wrong. Like the deck was doing what it wanted to be but didn't actually want to do it. Changing the boarding strategies didn't help, nor did moving around card numbers. Something was fundamentally wrong with my deck.
At Last, Clarity
It was during one of these games that looked fine but felt awkward that I had an epiphany. The Delver plan and the Mentor plan didn't gel together.
They looked like they should. Sometimes they played like they did. But often there was just this tension between the strategies that make Mentor/Delver lists a poor choice for now. The reason I think is Mentor's mana cost. Young Pyromancer plays so well with Delver of Secrets because Delver already wants to play with red spells while white is not nearly so compatible. Red just has more universally proactive non-creature spells than white and they complement aggressive strategies better. Also Pyromancer costs two which neatly fits into the Delver game. Turn one Delver, turn two Pyromancer, turn three start chucking burn is a very effective and proven strategy. The ideal with Mentor is turn one Delver, turn two Remand, turn three Mentor, turn four go nuts. That turn difference means that Mentor is just slightly off the beat with Delver, making Pyromancer a much better partner. Delver and Pyro sync well while Mentor and Delver step on each other's toes too much.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I remember thinking when Mentor was spoiled that it was a control card, and I guess I just really needed to prove it to myself. What Mentor really wants is for you to spend a lot of cards on the opponents turn to make tokens and then untap with some card draw, play more spells and win in a single attack. This suggests a control shell that intends to win like a combo deck. I have not found such a shell yet. It needs to be fairly draw spell heavy and yet full of early interaction. It also probably must find Mentor to win. I have no idea if this deck exists or is better than the Mentorless lists I've played in the past. This means for the foreseeable future (specifically SCG States) I'll be playing one of my proven standbys (UW Control or Merfolk). Will I try again with Mentor? Probably. The urge to brew is like an itch that only gets worse when your brew doesn't pan out. So I'm handing this brew off to you. If you have some ideas or your own tales of trying Mentor I would be happy to hear them in the comments. Maybe you can figure out what I missed or where to go from here.
What about teaming mentor with jeskai ascendancy? Or maybe some of the zero cc artifacts?
Well if my experiences in Standard are any indication then Ascendancy doesn’t want Mentor, it wants Goblin Rabblemaster. Ascendancy tokens wanted to be aggressive and Mentor was too slow, even if it was arguably more powerful. Even then Rabble was usually the first thing I trimmed in sideboard games, so it may not be good enough for Modern.
As for zero cost artifacts that deck already exists, it’s called Cheerios and we’ve covered it before on Modern Nexus. I’ve played against the deck and it seems way too swingy and inconsistent for my tastes, but it might just need some tuning, we’ll see.
When I look at mentor, the first thing that catches my eye is it’s mana cost. Three mana is much more than two. If legacy decks can get away with it by using all this priceless Force of Will to defend mentor and get tokens, modern decks can’t and restricted pretty much only to probes as priceless engine. On turn three opponent is more likely to have a fast answer than on second one.
Disrupting Shoal?
Not gonna lie I’ve tried doing UW day’s undoing mentor to no actual success. But the idea of using silence and quicken to enable both mentor tokens and feed your undoing value, while also pitching crap to shoal to protect mentor and keep opponent from gaining board presence leading into an undoing all seems valid. The problem of course was that mentor and undoing are both effectively 4 drops and if you want to curve one into the other you’re talking about a turn 5 “value play” that is going to be a lark vs anything aggressive.
Well as Jordan will happily talk your ear off Shoal is a tempo card and Mentor is not. I think the card advantage is going to be too severe most of the time, though there may be an actual tempo list that wants Mentor that I haven’t found yet.
Pyromancer is much better in these kinds of decks, and he’s great in them. Mentor is just too pricey. That one mana difference is a huge deal in Modern.
I really liked this article and seeing a walkthrough of brewing that so closely mirrors my own. I am thinking mardu mentor may be the place to turn next personally. Giving up the blue cantrips sucks, but pairing discard with top notch removal and burn should be valuable. It’s also very possible to protect mentor with cards like brave the elements or apostle’s blessing if you wish to. Deck may also be able to leverage myth realized XD
I also love the idea of using scout’s warning to drop in EoT mentors and confidants, and then worst case just cycle it for a monk/card
Not a bad idea. Mardu certainly has the cheap spells to fuel Mentor and Command to grind the game out. Night’s Whisper is also a pretty reasonable card draw spell, and I would like to try Confidant now that I’m not trying to run delve spells. I worry though that it might just be a bad Grixis or BW Tokens list. Definitely worth testing though.
I’d like to second the call for Mardu Mentor. I’ve been toying with a deck that uses Mentor and Young Pyromancer as token generators (along with cards such as Bitterblossom and Lingering Souls), along with a whole heck of a lot of disruption and removal (Kommand really takes the sting out of getting a Mentor Bolted early, for example). You could even throw Butcher of the Horde in there as a Aristocrats-style finisher if you feel that Mentor’s not getting you there fast enough, though probably not if you run Dark Confidant.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/blood-donors-of-the-horde/
I played against that deck on MTGO. It was really hard to deal with and a ton of insane value on the other side of the board. It’s been the most effective Mentor list I’ve seen, I think.
Well Butcher of the Horde seems cute and unnecessary but the rest seems reasonable. Though I wonder if this is actually better than straight BW.
Really enjoyed this piece. I played a little with Monastery Mentor back when Yuuki Ichikawa was playing it in February. Came to the same conclusions – that what it really wants is a control shell that can utilize it in a combo-esque finish. This is after all how it is used in Legacy, where high quality card draw alongside Sensei’s Divining Top in Miracles enables fast kills. I would love to see the right shell for it in Modern. I think a Jeskai Control build with Revelation and cantrips might be a reasonable home for it, and if I had the cards I’d be tempted to try that.
Your article is a very enlightening read on the brewing aspect of the game. As Darcy Hartwick, I could relate a lot to your deckbuilding experience.
Back to the cards. The ‘pure’ Esper Mentor list (that is really close to Ichikawa’s build btw) you started with seems the most promising shell. Liliane of the Veil and Baby Jace are possible additions that highlight the grindy nature of the deck. The Delver way seems to lead astry.
Maybe it is a metagame call at last. In a less aggro dominated metagame I could see the list thrive.
Stay at it!
A guy at my LGS played a Mentor deck with Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and a bunch of 0-mana Equipment and artifacts last Monday. Of course, any deck with spot removal crushed it, but when it worked it was glorious.
I tried to brew with an Esper Mentor list that had a Gift’s Ungiven package in the sideboard. Maybe a Gift’s controlish shell will work?
It would be on curve after Mentor, you can keep the mana open on your opponents turn and EoT you could make an extra token and decide to “value-gifts” or “combo-gifts”.
I have been working on an ongoing Jeskai control build that runs Mentors. its an interesting deck that I am not quite finished, with the land base seems like it needs one more hallowed Fountain for searching. Other then that I thought I would share this deck and see what people thought: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jeskai-mentor-control-2/
I have play tested it a bunch. Originally I tried to make mentor and undoing work together (it did not lol). Since then I have reworked Jeskai Delver with mentor into a deck like this. I would love to hear what you think.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/18-08-15-murica-tempo/
First thought: That is an AGGRESSIVELY light land count. How consistently are you hitting 3 for Mentor and Geist?
Second thought: This looks like a Young Pyromancer deck rather than a Mentor deck. Pyromancer fits better into the curve and plays better with all the counters and low land count.
Third thought: This is really aggressive and reminds me of Standard Geist lists. Definitely worth a try, those decks were pretty good.
1) I am fine with making the 3 land almost every game. For whatever reason I love to draw land. I played a small tournament with RUG iGrow in which I shaved the land count down to 15. My opening hand I had 2 which worked great. Turns 3-8 straight land after fetching on 2 separate occasions.
2) I actually play pyromancers now in place of the mentors. I shelved the deck because it was just too tough/slow to account for the protection of mentor + the cost of playing him. At least geist give me a hexproof body that can finish with unblockable.
I don’t know for modern but I made a fun jeskai mentor deck in standard. It ran myth realized, and mentor as finshers, then I had soulfire grandmasters/seekers to life gain and survive mid game. Late game I could soulfire recast wild slash all day or dump mana into myth realized. (I understand there is a card called abrupt decay lol). And a one of jeskai charm with mentor was disgusting
Yo, Isochron Scepter. I’ve been running jeskai scepter with pyromancer and mentor for a while now, and it’s OODLES of fun. The ultimate combo/tempo/aggro/midrange deck. It can do anything. http://www.mtgvault.com/sam/decks/modern-isochron-scepter-3/ sideboard needs work, and delver may need to be snapcaster, but it’s close to perfection.
Have you checked out Jeff hooglands jeskai list that runs both YP and MM, it kinda sounds like what you want to do, less control more tempo
tl;dr My tight main deck and generic sideboard that should probably be the brewed up one at the end that I am planning on testing.
So I know this is belated, but I’ve been really busy and wanted to make sure I wrote up something good for everyone. Starting off, I think it’s clear from the amount of comments that people like mentor. I think mentor is a very powerful and more importantly very fun card. The way the card “combos” with cantrips, discard (because you can cast them unlike counters), and removal (both obviously for creatures and less obviously as letting you kill extra tokens with summoning sickness to get the combo kill), makes one shot kills incredibly fun in a way that young pyromancer does not.
That being said, it is still a “dies to removal” creature that is also (in my stern belief) not a 4 of. The discard and nonbo with counters leads naturally to liliana and jace. I think it’s a very fair deck, aside from the mentor combo, and would benefit from a sideboard that may include unfair/answers to unfair cards. The gifts package is something I had always liked the idea of but never tried. My unfair angle came from meddling mage, which I think is right to play in this deck. I could see mage as an answer to combo along with a gifts package of iona to seal the deal and elesh norn backed by sweepers and extra removal in the board as an ideal package against more creature heavy decks and may try to test that sideboard together at some point. One of the most important qualities of the deck is it’s ability to be aggressive against linear spell-based combo strategies and defensive control deck against creature heavier decks and I think meddling mage is a key player in the aggressive side of things.
I’m currently just running a generic answers sideboard to mainly get through kinks in the main deck, which has been a pain, but I do think is very close to right. I’ve playtested this deck consistently since shortly before you guys wrote your first article on mentor and can defend every card against many others, but would love to talk to anyone who has suggestions.
2 Monastery Mentor
4 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Lingering Souls
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Serum Visions
2 Thought Scour
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Path to Exile
2 Disfigure
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Shambling Vent
1 Celestial Colonnade
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
3 Marsh Flats
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Plains
2 Disenchant
3 Timely Reinforcements
2 Go for the Throat
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Stony Silence
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Thoughtseize
2 Supreme Verdict
Sideboard I’m gonna start testing:
1 Elesh Norn
1 Iona
1 Unburial Rites
2 Gifts Ungiven
2 Meddling Mage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Damnation
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
1 Stony Silence
1 Disenchant
2 Timely Reinforcements
As a rundown of the cards in the md, 2 Mentor allows you the time you need to setup while still making an appearance at the time you need him. I’ve waffled between 2 and 3 and the difference between the two quantities is absolutely startling. I’ve liked setting up my board state until I draw into a Mentor than actually having one in the opener/first few turns and is why I settled on 2.
Jace, Liliana and Souls are a three card package that makes up the engine of the deck. 4 jace is necessary because of removal and because he’s great. 3 liliana is acceptable since I really don’t want to flood on her. It’s just a bonus that she triggers mentor. 4 souls rather than 3 mostly because running less just feels wrong. having jace and liliana synergize so well with them makes them essentially flood-proof. Also, thoughtscour into flashback souls from said thoughtscour is just dirty. The cherry is that they all synergize so well with mentor.
Tasigur because 2nd turn Tasigur off fetches and thoughtscour is great against any deck and 1st turn cantrip/discard/fetchland into 2nd turn fetch/jace into 3rd turn cantrip/discard/removal into flipped jace flashback into one mana tasigur is also insane.
Snapcaster mage is a star in this deck. nuff said
Elspeth because it’s one of the only reach the colors have. The deck ends up in gamestates with random tokens as the sole survivors of an attrition battle and the singleton is a gamechanger. Of important note is the fact that it also perfectly complements the manland army.
4 serum visions/2 thoughtscour is a result of months of testing and a very difficult and still-nagging ocd battle. 4/4 just seems so clean. If you want scour’s effect, don’t you want the full 4? amazingly, those extra 2 scours changes the game from drawing too much air to drawing just what you need when you need it. The fact that it’s not essential to casting tasigur or flipping jace (because the deck tends to fill it’s graveyard anyway) was the tipping point as I was often casting my third scour with a giant graveyard and nothing to show for it.
4 inquisition/2 thoughtseize also as a result of a lot of testing. I ran 3 inquisition/2 thoughtseize/1 duress for a long time, but just thought duress was too cute. 3/3 proved too painful so I went with the full 4. The sideboard I currently run reflects the need for one more discard effect that can snag those higher casting costs. The lack of it in the brew reflects my belief that meddling mage and iona cover that loss.
4 path/2 disfigure is really just to talk about the 2 disfigure because 4 path is elementary. I’ve found that disfigure provides the consistent 1 mana removal necessary to compete in modern. Murderous cut is not available 1st/2nd turn, and more importantly is a complete nonbo with tasigur, which is your best play against the decks you want that removal for. Go for the throat is a great card, but it being a complete blank against affinity is a huge strike against main deck inclusion. The 2 mana cost is also a big strike. Dismember is just way too painful against the decks you need this effect for, and the thought of 2 is just unbearable. Most importantly, Disfigure is really the perfect complement to path. Having a path and disfigure in your starting hand against a deck like zoo, elves, mono-white anything is really good and allows you to delay ramping your opponent. This synergy with path is the biggest reason to run 2 disfigure.
As for the manabase, 22 lands is just enough with 6 cantrips to get the job done. The single ghost quarter is just great tech for something that is missing from the deck. With no quarter, there is no LD anywhere. The nihil spellbomb mise in the board also reflects this desire to have something to play into instead of nothing. The big one, however, is the presence of 6 manlands. This is by far the most important revelation in my testing. In playing the deck, the biggest problem I had was the tension between having enough threats to present, mana to cast them on time, and spells (cantrips especially) to support them. Allowing to combing the threat and mana really let the deck walk that tight line this extremely fair and grindy deck needs. The shambling vents has been amazing as it also checks the lifegain box that the deck needs. Mana is rounded out with 1 each basic and dual and rest fetches.
Thanks for reading. I really love this deck and it is just very fun to play. Jordan included a deck I brewed up (Grixis Delver) in one of his articles, but I have since come back to Esper as my favorite deck. Just can’t get off it.
I’m really really curious as the only 1 thing I expected to see in this post (and didn’t) is why you didn’t replace Delver with Young Pyromancer? I mean Mentor is great! but its 4 cards in your deck and your win condition, why not double it? 4 Young Pyromancer 4 Monastery Mentor 4 Snapcaster Mage… and then go nuts with burn and counters and removal. It has twice the possibilities to stick and to draw extras and does not have the awkward problem of not playing like a Delver deck. With Dispel and Spell Snare MB you can do wonders with this guys in very little time. I dunno if it is plausible, but I did expected you to try it out. Thoughts?