Esper Mentor, Based on the list played by Yuuki Ichikawa in February 2015.
Took out Remand for Painful Truths which has been sweet all but one times I've cast it (that time I had to cast it for one because I was on two and had nothing better to do with my mana) it makes the burn matchup worse but remand doesn't really help there either.
22 Lands initially felt like not enough but on the flip side I've lost surprisingly few games where I've been stuck on mana. The deck plays enough grindy cards and removal spells to get enough time to draw out of screw against all but the very fast aggro decks (and again, that matchup is pretty bad anyway). I messed around with the mana base a bit, as taking out remand seems to have weirded out my mana base a bit, I cut a marsh flats because I don't have one, and moved the shock/basic count to more BW oriented. Thus far it's never been an issue. 4 Creeping Tar Pit seems like a good number. I'm not sure I'd play more if I could but even when I draw multiples I rarely find it an issue, and activating them is good enough to want to do it in a decent portion of games. Three with unblockable is quite a lot, it turns out, and has won me its fair share of games.
Eight removal spells seems like a lot but I like playing removal spells, and I've never felt like I have too many, since I thrive on stalling the board out with mentor/souls. Path to Exile is pretty bog standard in white decks and is no surprise here. Murderous Cut is less so, but 1 mana removal is real good alongside mentor, and with fetches and
Though Scour
s cut is frequently that thing. Slaughter Pact is an odd one, but I've very little bad to say about it. I've lost two games to the trigger costing me too much at the wrong moment, and won several to using it to make combat maths with t3 mentor really, really interesting. It also lets me do fun stuff like bait twin into going for t4 combo after they tap my last land, or I tap out pretending like I'm some sort of chump with no removal spells.
Sorin is great and I love him, two is probably too many but the first is largely never bad, and is frequently game-winningly good.
Darkblast was originally disfigure, but I'm testing darkblast in its place. Thus far I haven't drawn the darkblast so I haven't really been able to compare. It makes the GBx matchup a bit worse as it can only really kill bob out of jund or souls tokens out of junk, but those matchups are pretty good, and disfigure was far from great either.
I kind of want to be playing 4 Serum Visions but I don't really want to cut 4 things to fit them in, and Thought Scour has felt really good, except when I'm trying to smooth out my lands on some occasions, as fueling delve is nice, and every Lingering Souls you flip is like drawing half a card, and instant triggering mentor is quite good.
I added 2x Leyline of Sanctity to the board because hot damn was the burn matchup bad. I lost games where I cast inquisition t1, then killed threats t2 and t3, and then tried to turn the corner with my cards. Basically this deck turns the corner very slowly, and burn takes the opportunity to murder you horribly. Even timely isn't a guaranteed recovery since they have Skullcracks and Atarka's Commands. The leylines should help with this since burn's only real reason to bring in Destructive Revelry is that it suspects leyline, which I haven't seen much of recently so fingers crossed they forget I might. It comes back out g3 if it wins me the game, because you can bet revelry comes in if it does, and nothing makes a matchup better like putting some dead cards in your opponent's deck. They replaced an Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, which was supposed to make my GBx matchup better, but my GBx matchup just seems absurdly good anyway, and Ashiok often comes down, mills three then eats the shit (not great), and a Celestial Purge, which I found was not coming in much, if at all. This may well be meta-dependent.
The rest of the board is fairly self explanatory (I think?), except Curse of Death's Hold, which I've been toying with. It's supposed to come in against elves, which I found surprisingly awkward to beat, zoo variants to make combat much more in my favor, and infect, which also felt like a pretty awkward matchup, despite working through multiple threats with removal, I still found myself getting horribly murdered, the curse is designed to lock them out of the game after their initial threats get removed, as it can't be stopped with pump spells/vines. Also does a decent amount of work vs. junk, makes finks much worse, makes tar pit trade with Stirring Wildwood and Treetop Village (which is semi relevant), blocks off lingering souls and makes Tasigur profitably block rhino. I had this brief moment where I was like "Why don't I just play Night of Souls' Betrayal, it does a similar thing against infect and elves for two less manas" and then I was all like "I'm a fucking idiot."
P.S. I love Monastery Mentor. That card is nuts. So is Lingering Souls.
