Vintage 101: The Blue Monastery Mentor?
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of Vintage 101! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be doing a bit of a deeper dive on a card from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, a card that definitely looked very interesting for Vintage in the form of Geralf, the Fleshwright. In addition to that we've got multiple Challenges to discuss from this past week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Is Geralf the Blue Monastery Mentor?
Outlaws of Thunder Junction is live now on Magic Online, and I'm a little surprised that we aren't seeing a bit more look at certain cards in Vintage. I think we have seen some good results so far for certain new cards from the set including Lavaspur Boots and High Noon, but I have seen only a little hubbub for our good friend Geralf.
Geralf strikes me as an interesting card because you do need to actually cast a spell immediately in order to get some value out of it, unlike Monastery Mentor where you can spell during your opponent's turn in order to generate a token and gain value out of it. Geralf only functions on your turn and only on your second spell starting. This does mean you can do some powerful stuff like play Geralf and them immediately deploy a Moxen and start getting a token right off the bat. For the most part, the play patterns of deploying a Geralf and then casting a bunch of spells to generate an army of tokens are pretty good.
The big factor of Geralf is that it is not only a blue card which can pitch for Force, but also you can play multiples despite the fact that it's Legendary for the purposes of being able to deploy another if the first one is dealt with.
We've seen a few lists here and there on this card, as well as a great video from our good friend Justin Gennari about the card.
The two lists so far look pretty interesting. I'm more intrigued by the one also playing Satoru, the Infiltrator because of the zero drops which can trigger Geralf easily. I'll be very interested if we can see more on this card going forward because it seems like an incredibly sweet card. I'll end on a note from the video from Justin showing the card in action.
Vintage Challenge 32 4/18
The first Challenge event to speak of is last week's Thursday event. This event had 47 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Lurrus Saga was exceptionally popular here, with a slightly over 50% win rate. Jewel was also popular but it's win rate was not as good. Breach did exceedingly well here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Breach | 1st | handsomePPZ |
| Doomsday | 2nd | Jujkata |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | duke12 |
| Lurrus Saga | 4th | slaxx |
| Oath of Druids | 5th | Sharkym02 |
| Lurrus Saga | 6th | MestariMatt |
| Doomsday | 7th | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Lurrus DRS | 8th | McWinsSauce |
Quite a bit of Lurrus in general in this Top 8. At the end it was a split finals with the recorded winner being Breach.
Very interesting list here. Kind of a mixture of PO/Breach in a sense. Seems really cool.
The recorded second-place finalist was Doomsday.
Very solid stock list of this deck here. Seems what we've come to expect out of it. The Surveil land in the main is a nice touch though.
Also in this Top 8 we had Oath of Druids.
Atraxa singing the Long Goodbye out of the sideboard here. Seems like a really strong card for sure.
Vintage Challenge 32 4/19
The second Challenge to speak about was the Friday event. This event had 35 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Jewel Shops was the most popular deck here and despite a top finish it's win rate was less than nominal. Lurrus Saga did very well as did Doomsday.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Saga | 1st | handsomePPZ |
| Doomsday | 2nd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | MestariMatt |
| Jewel Shops | 4th | Nammersquats |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | Ale_Mtg |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | thepowernine |
| Dredge | 7th | karatedom |
| Dredge | 8th | Lord_Beerus |
A mix of Lurrus and some Jewel, as well as Dredge. At the end of the event it was Lurrus Saga that won.
Fairly stock of what we've seen out of these Dimir Lurrus variants of this deck. If anything the primary difference is only 3 Baubles vs 4 typical.
In Second Place we had Doomsday.
Very similar list to the Second Place list from the 4/18 event. Not a ton of frills here, just lots of Doomsday goodness.
As noted, while Jewel didn't have a good overall win rate it did put two copies in the Top 8 here, so let's look at the higher placing one.
Pretty solidly stock-looking list here for the most part. Not an insane amount of stuff going on in this.
Vintage Challenge 32 4/20
The third Challenge was the mid-afternoon Saturday event. This event had 55 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Jewel Shops was very popular and it had a strong looking win rate. Lurrus Saga also did very well as did Turbo Vault Key. BUG, Doomsday, and Shops did poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Saga | 1st | wiky |
| Dredge | 2nd | 416FrowningTable |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | CapTenPlanIt |
| Dredge | 4th | minitaste |
| Turbo Vault Key | 5th | Shadaro |
| Jewel Shops | 6th | _J0SE_ |
| Lurrus Saga | 7th | IamActuallyLvl1 |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | thepowernine |
Pretty interesting Top 8 here. At the end, it was another split finals with the recorded winner being Lurrus Saga.
Not much change from the winner of the Challenge the day before really. Very much a similar list. It seems the experimentation of Esper vs UW vs UB has really stopped at this juncture.
In Second Place the recorded entry was Dredge.
Very straightforward list here. It's interesting to see a slight return to Bridge/Therapy, but no Poxwalkers which goes very well with those cards.
Further down the Top 8 we had a sweet take on Lurrus Saga.
Bit more of a Breach-looking list here, but we've also got new cards like High Noon that seem pretty cool. In addition, the newer Saga target Lavaspur Boots seems quite good at upsetting Saga math for opponents.
Vintage Challenge 32 4/21
The final Challenge of the weekend was the early morning Sunday event. This event had 43 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Vintage Streamer's Discord.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Jewel Shops was popular here with a slightly better than 50% win rate. Lurrus Saga also did very well. Doomsday did poorly as did Initiative.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jewel Shops | 1st | oosunq |
| Lurrus Saga | 2nd | Killah_SUV |
| Lurrus Saga | 3rd | John1111 |
| Lurrus Saga | 4th | MestariMatt |
| Lurrus Saga | 5th | ElfKid |
| Dredge | 6th | Nm85 |
| Jeskai Lurrus | 7th | Kenzaburo |
| Jewel Shops | 8th | MarcusMPV |
Quite a lot of Lurrus here. At the end of the event though it was Jewel Shops that won.
Very much our stock Jewel list. No frills, but there doesn't need to be.
In Second Place we had Lurrus Saga.
This is the same list that Justin Gennari made Top 8 with the event before. It's a really slick looking list overall and seems like a lot of fun.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Jeskai Lurrus.
This is a cool looking list. The black splash for Bowmasters and Demonic Tutor is pretty neat.
Around the Web
- Bryant Cook has a video on Beseech Storm. Check it out here.
- The 1000% Serious Podcast posted an episode about recent Team Serious events. Check it out here.
- Justin Gennari has a video on his Challenge Top 8. Yee-haw, it's HIGH NOON!
The Spice Corner
Now that the Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's find some spice!
Brian Kelly, never change.
Jund Initiative?!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for your continued support of the column and join me next week as we continue our journey into Vintage!
As always you can reach me at my Link Tree! In addition, you can always reach me on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the Vintage Streamers Discord.
Until next time!
