Esper Mentor (by Dylan Brown) (Modern)

Dylan Brown Primer:

Yeah that's right Esper Mentor. For those of you who don’t know me I’m an Australian player most famous for top 4ing a GP playing Seance, popularising Liliana of the Veil in Esper Transcendent to a 21st place finish at GP Brisbane, and always forcing Esper, even when its bad.

Newsflash: right now, it isn't.

Let’s go back 20 months.... I got my tax return, and decided to invest in modern, but wanted to jam as much Monastery Mentor as I could. The deck gave me some good results, but I was playing something close to Yuuki Ichikawa’s list and wasn’t closing out the top 8's I was playing in. I’d been testing with Tom Dowling my co-worker and brew buddy, an avid GBx player, and was always thrilled with such a positive matchup to playtest but when push came to shove, it felt like it was missing a few pieces.

Then we got fatal push and opt, and we brewed up another list. This time low to the ground. MUCH Lower. 24 one drops kind of low. The kind of low to the ground you want from legacy delver or that cutie at the club to drop it you know?

A recent trend in modern spurred by Deaths shadow is that the format needs to react early, react often, or go way bigger like Tron or Valakut.

Being a fan of fair magic, I decided to work on winning midrange matchups, and letting my sideboard and obscure deck choices beat the rougher matchups.

Playing something off the wall makes it harder for your opponent to accurately surmise the pros and cons of your deck. You will get plenty of percentage points from people due to inexperience playing against the list, and not to mention watching someone try to navigate combat while a mentor and untapped mana is in play.

Card Choices:
4 Monastery Mentor : Card is so so strong when your deck is nothing but air and interactivity. Games will be closed out very very quickly if left unimpeded, so never play him blind on turn 3, turn 4 with a spell backup is best.
This guy is a truck filled with slightly smaller trucks, and spitting out monastery swiftspears is no joke.

2 Tasigur, the golden fang: You are gonna want a big body sometimes, and this one can draw your multiple cards, is hard to kill by the more prevalent decks, and synergises with lingering souls, Jace, snap and mentor. Any spell is still a spell.

JVP/Snapcaster split: SOOOOO MANY 3'S. Jace is an underrated game changer, and being lower on the curve it can come down before a mentor, act as a lightning rod for removal, or even better just become a wincon/double Snapcaster mage as early as t3. Snapcaster is more important in your reactive matchups, and Jace in your proactive. Play accordingly

4 Thoughtseize/2 Inquisition: Look you aren’t losing to smaller cards, or 2 life, so play 4 Thoughtseize because scapeshift, Tron threats and coco will hurt more than 2 life any day

10 cantrips: You want your prowess triggers to turn into more prowess triggers. I will favour serum visions t1, and then from t5 onwards, scour on turns 2-3 and opt when I know what i need, as it’s the most likely to give you what you are after

Removal: We play 6 one mana spells and its really down to personal preference. Sometimes the math will work out and you will kill your own token for lethal prowess too.

1 zealous persecution: This is half a sweeper, half a combat trick nightmare.
It’s essentially 3 prowess triggers, and can easily OTK bigger combo decks.

1 Rise//Fall: The red splash.
This card used to be so damn powerful and honestly, I don’t know why it isn’t seeing play anymore. You can unsummon a delve threat, while returning your own haymaker, or simply use it to bounce Snapcaster mage from play, and return another creature.
Fall also gives you the option of hymn to tourach against your more difficult matchups, allowing for you to close out games while depleting resources. Originally, we wanted this to be our only splashed card, after realising its potential, but the red isn’t hard to come by and its opened up more options.
Lots of elves and other weenie decks? Staticaster
Lots of big mana? Crumble to dust
The list is long guys play 2-3 splashes in the board, whatever your meta desires

The Sideboard:

Its lengthy why I have each card in here, mostly I wanted a board with an option to beat anything, to be the control deck when I want to be, to be the aggro deck when it calls for it, or to out grind the other control decks of the format.

Usually it’s pretty simple to board with the deck, and I’ll write a list of sideboarding guides foe common matchups you may face and go into how you should approach each one.

The best advice I can give you is to just try the base list first before making changes. What started off as an office "Have you tried chart a course?" Question has now been worked on by a plethora of great players, and currently sits at its strongest form. From there make changes for your meta, but please I beg you try the base list first.