Since Mentor is now restricted and it is setting in that a single Mentor is difficult to build a deck around I looked back at decks that I played before Mentor was "the deck". I played StoneBlade for about a year and I did very well in local tournaments. The deck is very similar to Mentor is play style, the exceptions are a bit obvious, that Mentor only needs 4 creatures where StoneBlade usually needs 8 to 10. There are a few other very obvious issues with meta-game of today but overall the deck appears to be solid against most of the field. I see combo or dredge decks as the one arch-type(s) that this deck will need heavy support for outside of the main deck. The reason I say combo or dredge is that there are 2 ways to construct this deck. You can go heavy control similar to Mentor and sideboard heavy against the Dredge deck hoping to win games 2 and 3 or you can balance it out with main deck wastelands and Containment Priest making it weaker against Combo since you will need to cut some counterspells and/or artifact hate.

Here is my first draft at a list:
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
4 Preordain
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Batterskull
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 (Pick a creature) - True Name Nemesis or Vendellion Clique or Nimble Obstructionist

Restricted Stuff
Monastery Mentor ?
Ancestral Recall
Time Walk
Brainstorm
Ponder
Treasure Cruise
Dig Through Time
Gush
Moxes + Lotus

Lands
8 Fetch lands
4 Tundra
3 Island
2 Plains

I have played around with some slots going from 8 counters to 10 to 12 adding Flusterstorm, Mana drain, or Mindbreak Trap. I have looked at cutting some fetch lands and adding Wastelands + Stripmine and looking at card like Council's Judgement and Back to Basics. I think this deck is worth discussing seeing that this deck never died in Legacy and is now looking very strong in this meta-game but it is hard to figure out what the meta-game version looks like now. Since, I do not play MTGO I usually proxy it up and shuffle different versions until I find one that feels right, then I play it locally until it either works or dies.

I have a fondness for SFM decks and would love to see one consistent enough in Vintage. There was a deck recently that performed well in an MTGO league:

Creature (12)
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Spell Queller
4 Stoneforge Mystic
Sorcery (3)
1 Ponder
1 Time Walk
1 Treasure Cruise
Instant (22)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Spell Pierce
3 Swords to Plowshares
Artifact (8)
1 Batterskull
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
Land (15)
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Plains
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
4 Tundra
60 Cards
Sideboard (15)
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Containment Priest
1 Disenchant
1 Flusterstorm
2 Fragmentize
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Path to Exile
1 Pithing Needle
2 Rest in Peace

I do believe that such a deck can't be wrong to include a single Mentor. It really is the "White-Tinker" now that it is restricted. If nothing else, it will eat removal that would be targeted for your other creatures. I also like TNN, since it is a card that no one can get rid of right now. There is no common removal being played that can deal with TNN.

As for the equipment package, I think a Jitte/Batterskull mix is better as you can find the card you need for the specific flow of the game.

To make the deck work, you really need to make the deck a hard control deck. Other decks will bury you in card advantage, speed, or power if you let them, and this deck is not able to really recover well from being behind. In a way, I think it needs to be like Standstill, but with creatures.

@enderfall
This list kind of proves my point that you can either go heavy on counter or heavy on removal. I cannot decide if the meta-games is more anti-counter or if you just need counters to slow down decks that race you. I could easily tweak this list to add 4 wastelands or leave it as is and see how it does against an Eldrazi or Delver. I think you do OK against Team Leovold but I worry about a fast Shop deck taking over the game without wastelands or an Oath deck just racing you. Where I play, there are a lot of 2 Card Monte combo decks and Dredge is always played so I want the removal main deck over the counters usually.

If I am going to play stoneforge mystic I want to find skullclamp.

I love skullclamp.

Think of all the things you can feed to it.

Think of all the cards you can draw.

Is any equipment really even close to as good as skullclamp?

I understand it does not fit this deck, but that does not mean there is not a deck for it.

@shaman-ben
That is hilarious because I had the same thought. I was trying to convince Marcel to put Skullclamp in Eldrazi just so I can see the card played. I'll see you Sunday and I will not be playing this deck.

@moorebrother1 Or will you? bwhahahaha

@shaman-ben said in StoneBlade:

If I am going to play stoneforge mystic I want to find skullclamp.

I love skullclamp.

Think of all the things you can feed to it.

Think of all the cards you can draw.

Is any equipment really even close to as good as skullclamp?

I understand it does not fit this deck, but that does not mean there is not a deck for it.

Plus you can get it onto the battlefield without getting it Derpstepped.

Skullclamp could be played in a more Humans/Hatebears Stoneblade list (with Hierarchs, etc). But here it just sucks. I have no idea if Jitte is better that Fire and Ice in this deck. Being able to protect your Quellers from Bolts and Jaces with SoFaI is so cool...

If you aren't generating X/1's from a recurring source (Bitterblossom for example) Clamp loses its luster.

5-0'd a league with this.

@moorebrother1 I am probably just going to play 2 card monte on sunday, like always, but I have been proxying things up to loan out.

@nedleeds Skullclamp was fine with Genesis chamber, so I suppose it would be ok with young pyromancer. I enjoy that mentor is a terrible servant of skullclamp.

@neo_altoid said in StoneBlade:

1 yarn

Are you an itty bitty kitty?

@neo_altoid I got burned very badly by playing Spell Quellers at last years Vintage Champs. There were just too many Swords to Plowshare to make him worthwhile. I have been messing around with Nimble Obstructionist and it is a so-so card at best. I may just end up going back to the True-Name Nemesis because he deals with a lot of stuff and he can finish the game, especially when you put him on a Batterskull or Sword of Fire/Ice

5-0'd another league. Cut Sudden Shock and a Disenchant for a Fragmentize and EE out of the board. I think EE should be a Pithing Needle instead, but I'm not 100%.

@moorebrother1 Spell Queller is basically the worst card in the deck, but you have a hard time beating combo without it, and you do need a critical mass guys to wield weapons. If the default combo deck was Storm, I'd be all over V. Clique+Karakas, but the default is outcomes, and Clique doesn't really solve your problems. Nimble Obstructionist seems awful--we get no pressure if we cycle it, and no disruption if we cast it.

Really, what you have to realize about Spell Queller is that you need to just ram it at the first thing you can as a default (it took me an embarassingly long time to realize this). It's not a disaster if your Queller with Preordain under it dies, but it can be a disaster if we're relying on Spell Queller living to stop a Jace/Tinker/Will. I routinely cut 1 Queller in fair matchups.

@neo_altoid Hey, would you mind sharing some general tips on how to play this deck best? Mulliganing strategies, general approach to various match-ups etc.. Just embarrassed the deck in a league on my first try so I obviously did something very wrong : )

Where is StoneBlade now? I am making a deck and I checked the net-deck sites and I see 2 visions of the deck.

The first from Eternal Weekend 2017
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
1 Monastery Mentor
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Spell Queller
3 Stoneforge Mystic
2 True-Name Nemesis
1 Abrade
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
4 Force of Will
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Gush
1 Lightning Bolt
3 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
1 Ponder
1 Pyroblast
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Time Walk
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Batterskull
1 Black Lotus
1 Dack Fayden
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

The new list is from a MTGO vintage league
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Inkwell Leviathan
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Trinket Mage
1 Walking Ballista
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Balance
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fragmentize
4 Mental Misstep
2 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Batterskull
1 Black Lotus
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key

These lists show very different strategies and I am not sure which one I think is better. I would like to open some discussion here on which one is better in Vintage.

I purposely did not include sideboards because, sideboards are about the meta-game not the mission of the deck. I want to focus on the main board to understand how this deck wins, then sure up the weaknesses with the sideboard.

I took my previous build apart to play Legacy over Eternal Weekend and the deck in Legacy is just night and day compared to Vintage so I am a bit lost here. Opinions...

I played the former list. To be 100% honest, it's basically playable almost as-is is in the current format--though I would cut Bolt and Abrade for Fragmentize and Disenchant, due to the high amount of Oath of Druids that's out there online. You need to realize that the deck is 90% just a more aggro version of the Jeskai deck--that's all. It's good, but it's not a new or exciting deck.

The latter deck--to be 100% honest--looks like a trainwreck which can win games by just doing something busted and hoping. This can easily 5-0 a league (especially if you play well and actually execute busted things)--but Tezzeret, AoB had been not great before, and I find it hard to believe that he's become that much better now.

@neo_altoid Thanks for that. I like play straight Blue/White. I'll use this as a guide.

@moorebrother1 Straight UW is pretty garbage, TBH. 0 access to Dack Fayden and Pyroblast are the real killers--you run into the Landstill problem of "if they resolve a planeswalker, I've lost." Yes, technically you could have pressure, and render their walker irrelevant but really...you've lost.

I think you could try to justify UWG (Sylvan Library+Batterskull is a wombo combo), or UWB (Ditto Bob+Batterskull, Thoughtsieze is a very good card), but straight UW has felt like it simply doesn't have the bonus draw engine you really want. Maybe you could try Remora? But that card is just not very reliable or good.