I can honestly see a Jeskai deck that runs 4x of
this guy and no other creatures, as long as it
has either a tutor or some decent deck sifting
to get to see one reasonably early. Having
Monastery Mentor in your deck definitely allows
you devote more deck slots to noncreature
spells, which means your prowess army will be
more powerful on the attack. I've seen Prowess
tempo decks do some surprisingly disgusting
things, just by countering and burning
everything you try to do and then swinging for
some artificially-inflated number.
This is the sort of card that can get out of
hand very rapidly. Even leaving aside the
obvious combos with certain insane enchantments
from Ravnica and Innistrad whose names I will
not mention, a relatively "vanilla" white deck
is likely to have enough noncreature spells to
generate an army just from playing the game. The
only thing is that a deck built to take
advantage of him is probably going to have fewer
creatures than average, making him more of a
target, and that the typical creature-heavy
white decks will occasionally get hands that
have him but lack slightly in spells to trigger
him. But those are pretty minor compared to the
potential he offers.
Today's card of the day is Monastery Master
which is a three mana White
2/2 with Prowess that also puts a 1/1 White monk
with Prowess into play whenever you cast a
non-creature spell. This is an interesting
variation on swarm production that has both the
source and the tokens benefit from the same
support structure. In a deck with a large
number of auras or instants this will be a
popular addition to help build field presence
and will likely see quite a bit of play going
forward.
In Limited this is a fairly easy first pick in
Booster that is worth the three mana even if the
effect is only triggered once as it puts three
power and toughness into play and more with
temporary boosts factored in or additional
triggers. In Sealed this should always be
included when running White and can be easily
splashed or used when running three colors,
particularly if there is a high concentration of
non-creatures available in the primary or
secondary color.
Every now and then Wizards prints a card that
strikes me as almost too good. This is one of
those cases. With all the cheap non-creature
spells there are - especially once you get into
modern, legacy, and vintage - you can easily
create a horde of tokens that grow with each
additional non-creature spell you play.
Let's play out an example. You're playing a
modern Jeskai deck and play Monastery Mentor on
turn 3. Turn 4, you play one of the 317 red,
white, or blue non-creature spells in Gatherer
that cost 1 mana or less. Mentor is a 3/3, and
you have a 1/1 token. You play a second one-mana
spell. Mentor is a 4/4, and you have a 2/2 token
and a 1/1 token. A third spell? Mentor is a 4/4,
and you have a 3/3, 2/2, and a 1/1 token. Then
for your fourth spell, you play Mass Hysteria,
giving all creatures haste. You attack with a
5/5 Mentor, 4/4 token, 3/3 token, 2/2 token, and
a 1/1 token. That's 15 damage PLUS whatever the
other 1-mana spells did.
I fully expect this card to be all over the
place in competitive Magic, and quite possibly
end up in discussions of being banned. It's
without a doubt the most powerful card -
considering its cost - in the set.
