Should stifle be used in Gush/Mentor? Brainstorming ideas here, I suspect that with most Mentor builds settling on the Mentor himself, Snapcaster, and now Erayo, I'm reminded of Sullivan's famous solution and it's use of Stifle. With Mentor on the table, a Stifle must be the rough damage equivalent of a Lightning Bolt. Without it, the Stifle sees any number of uses for a tempo trade, or trading for a card (Fetches, Wastes, Strip, Library, Bazaar, Dack... as well as any number of random abilities I see in games... Kuldotha and stuff in shops, Oath going off, Dredge... everyone runs stuff that makes Stifle a blue card that can turn into everything from a weak Healing Salve, to a Time Walk or better. (I stifled Kari's Kuldotha activation today, which included the Kuldotha eating itself... that was pretty sweet.)

Now with the extra task of flipping Erayo... well, you see where I'm going. What do people think?

I've actually used a one of stifle in a build of mentor I was running and I found it to do some decent work. I've hit a Forgemaster, I've won through an Oath activation, among other things. I'm not sure about running too many of them, but I liked it as a 1 of. Almost wanted to try 2.

I think the benefit of having one stifle in your deck is pretty big for blue decks these days. I have wrecked people with a singleton on a number of occasions, partly because for the rest of the match they try to play around it which hurts them. However I will not play more than one since it is also dead so much of the time in my experience and having one in your hand can make you play suboptimally, as you wait for the chance at a blowout.

Stifle also might be a mirror breaker when, mana is so important in those match ups, of course it might have a better home in something like delver that runs stony silence?

stifle is one of those cards that are either amazing or completely terrible. as for how good they are in vintage i cant say though, but it has its uses, such as storm, mentor triggers, oath, forgemaster, and there are plenty of other things it can hit.

I feel like stifle is way better in legacy because mental misstep is banned in that format

@Islandswamp For sure. In legacy, no moxes either, no nailing a fetch has a much more absolute effect on a mana base... doesn't mean it's bad in Vintage Mentor/Gush though.

@Topical_Island I'm not saying it's definitely bad, but mg gut tells me you'll be disappointed playing it (especially more than one).
On the flip side nobody will expect Stifle so they won't play around it, making blow outs easier.

@Islandswamp I agree. I don't think I'd ever play with more than one... I'm kinda just mulling it. The game is such a resource grind right now...