So I have a couple things to play, first Leonin Arbiter is hard to build around. Remember that means no fetches, which really hurts your mana base and makes having good consistent mana harder. You also are in two colors which don't have spirit guides, now I am a firm believer that being on the Arbiter/Thalia plan means you probably want wastelands, strip mine, and stony silence, which means moxen aren't going to be consistent acceleration, and you want to play 2 drops on turn 1 as often as possible.
If combo is big in your meta consider aegis of the gods, it is quite good especially if you can protect it in anyway since DPS can often not win with that guy in play, and usually doesn't have a lot of ways to interact with it. I also think Phyrexian Revoker is a must include, it can answer a lot of random things, but it also can serve as a pseudo Thalia for opponents' moxen. I have been having some luck against mentor with additional sphere effect creatures, but Mentor is tough, I have gone as far as running Goblin Sharpshooter as a way to deal with tokens, but it is a very hard because a resolved Mentor is so tough for these decks to deal with, and always amount to X for 1s against us which is tough.
@garbageaggro so hatebears may not be the way to go against all of the mentor decks?
Here's a serviceable maindeck that should start you on your way, but it's possible you might want to go more Deadguy Ale with it. Illness in the Ranks is an available anti-Mentor card that also helps against Oath, so look into that. There's a lot of options for disruptive creatures in black and white, so feel free to play around with cards like Aegis of the Gods, Stoneforge Mystic, Hymn to Tourach, etc.
4 Dark Confidant
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Vryn Wingmare
1 Black Lotus
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Thoughtseize
2 Stony Silence
2 Vindicate
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Caves of Koilos
4 Godless Shrine
4 Scrubland
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
Just a note, I don't like illness in the ranks for 2 reasons, one Mental Misstep is a card in every mentor deck, and 2 the actual card monastery mentor is still hard to beat even when illness in the ranks resolves. As for Oath, you will have a lot more luck with Aegis of the Gods and Containment Priest fighting most oath decks. I like Containment Priest a lot as a card anyway since it neuters tinker, which is still a house against us.
I think there are reasonable hatebear decks in this meta, just be ready to be like very close to even with mentor decks, when playing perfectly.
Also as a side note if you are playing hatebears + confidant, Spirit of the Lab is probably a strong consideration, and bonus it is good against the Mentor decks!
@garbageaggro said:
Also as a side note if you are playing hatebears + confidant, Spirit of the Lab is probably a strong consideration, and bonus it is good against the Mentor decks!
Quoted for truth. Remember, Mentor's real power comes in it's ability to dig, dig, and dig some more. Between Gush, Preodrain, Ponder, Ancestral, Cruise, Brainstorm, and Probe, the deck has tons of ways to churn through its hand while generating value off of Mentor. It's like Storm only you don't need to do it all in the same turn. If you stop the card draw engine, Mentor loses much of its explosiveness.
Now, Chains of Meph is probably a better card to do this with, but it's really expensive. A protected Spirit is probably the budget way to go.
I mean the effect of spirit is better than the effect of chains right? It is only in multiples that the effect of chains is better. I agree that it is easier to remove spirit, but you can also protect it with mother and some other stuff. In addition, caverns can help resolve Spirit, but not chains.
@garbageaggro I'd say you hit the nail on the head. Spirit's effect is better, but more vulnerable to removal. Spirit is also better in that it can attack too.
Against the current Gush lists, I wouldn't count on Spirit sticking around more than one or two turns, since Swords is very common. (It's common because a lot of Gush/Mentor decks are thinking about the mirror match... so swords is there for enemy Mentors.) Chains can stay around a lot longer. You can scan some mentor lists and just see how many cards they have that can remove Chains. It's not many most times.
For me I am not excited about running black in most hatebears lists, so I haven't really considered chains before. I like running Spirit Guides rather than off color moxen, and I like to stick at two colors.
I am not super excited about thoughtseize effects in non-combo contexts and I besides bob the only card I have wanted to run before was Deathrite Shaman, which has gotten much worse since Shops has taken a big dip.
Chains is interesting, but have you considered running Mother as a means of protection. Against a lot of decks the right hatebear + mother of runes is literally game over. This is true against a lot of builds of DPS for example. I don't know if this is as true vs mentor, but I don't know that they are running enough removal spells to be able to find multiples while spirit is in play.
@garbageaggro This might just be nomenclature, but I think 3 or 4 color humans is a much better home for Chains than a White Trash sort of build. I totally agree with you. I don't think I'd splash black into white just for Chains. I'd just use Spirit.
Rules for Hatebears in Vintage
- Don't play cards that don't do anything
- Don't play cards maindeck that do nothing against 75% of your opponents
- Don't play cards maindeck that can be Misstepped
- Don't play cards (other than Thalia) maindeck where the second copy is less than half as impactful as the first.
These are tremendously difficult decks to build. The archetype functions dramatically differently in Vintage than in any other format. Play 20 games with 5c Humans before building your own take on the archetype. Even if you disagree with the deck's design, you will learn a lot.
@wappla Good rules.... I also like to start by asking, what does the most likely deck that I might play, really really not want to see. What cards. If you can find two cards that really hurt the other deck (Gush... I'm looking at you) then you might have the makings of a winner. Now toss in Containment priest for Oath and Dredge... and, well, they call it Hatebear for a reason.
I'll add, and this is totally my personal preference. I don't mind adding a few singletons of things where a second copy is nothing, but one copy is very impactful. (I think 1 Spirit is good in a lot of these builds for example... whereas running a full playset seems bad).
I don't really know where else to put this thought, but catching up on last week's VSL, Kai Budde mentioned during commentary that Shops was hurt by Lodestone restriction, not just because of the body it gave, but because it reduced the number of playable spheres in the deck... His deck seems a little weird, like it doesn't have a goal or a finisher, really, and it seems like the strategy gets a little lost in the process.
My initial thought was, "Is Hatebears going to be the new place for Spheres and prison?" Hatebears has 3 spheres on legs, and can easily play Thorn (and maybe 3 sphere, or Sphere itself depending on the meta). 4 Glowrider, 4 Wingmare, 2-3 Thalia, 4 Thorn, and an array of other conditionally important and effective hatebears... it also has access to Ghostly Prison which can hose Mentor. None of these are particularly efficient to cast, many of them at 3 CMC or more, but it seems like Hatebears is the sole home for effective prison/sphere/lock strategy at this point....
What do you think?
@Dumpsterac1d said:
My initial thought was, "Is Hatebears going to be the new place for Spheres and prison?" Hatebears has 3 spheres on legs, and can easily play Thorn (and maybe 3 sphere, or Sphere itself depending on the meta). 4 Glowrider, 4 Wingmare, 2-3 Thalia, 4 Thorn, and an array of other conditionally important and effective hatebears... it also has access to Ghostly Prison which can hose Mentor. None of these are particularly efficient to cast, many of them at 3 CMC or more, but it seems like Hatebears is the sole home for effective prison/sphere/lock strategy at this point....
What do you think?
I completely agree. I have a build with Glowrider and Thorn of Amethyst in the Human Stompy thread if you're interested: http://45.79.178.131:4567/topic/129/human-stompy/35
@Dumpsterac1d If you really want to fill the void left by Lodestone, I think you'll need to find a way to more consistently play those lock pieces on turn 1. If you can't play lock pieces with the same early regularity as shops, you end up needing to dedicate more cards to answering things that slip through the disruption wall (e.g, you see more Swords to Plowshares in hatebears decks than you see Dismembers in shops).
This is sort of a cascading effect - to survive in games where you don't draw lock pieces, you have to make room in your deck, usually by cutting lock pieces, which requires you to run more cards to win games where you don't draw lock pieces. This doesn't mean that cards like Thalia are bad - not at all. Thalia is very strong. It just means that you can't necessarily take shops-based strategies and tactics and apply them to a nonartifact aggro deck.
@Brass-Man I totally agree, I'm not insinuating that there'd be a 1-to-1 strategy mirror with Shops, just that if you're into playing prison and need more tech post-Lodestone restrict, it seems like the Hatebears strategy can easily incorporate some artifact spheres and go above and beyond. Speed is definitely an issue with no way to really drop a sphere on turn 1 reliably (or turn 2 even), so I've been goldfishing with Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and keeping the higher CMC "bears" to sphere bears to see how viable it is. Just an interesting observation. The meta just seems great for Hatebears right now.
@Brass-Man what about a white shops list with thalia? it does a good lodestone impression and can easily be played turn one
@mickey.nobilis
Why play Thorn or Glowrider over Vryn Wingmare? Doesn't make any sense.
@JuzamJim said:
@mickey.nobilis
Why play Thorn or Glowrider over Vryn Wingmare? Doesn't make any sense.
Vryn Wingmare's casting cost and creature type, in that order.
@mickey.nobilis
I just think that Vryn Wingmare is superior regardless, though I'll admit that creature type does matter. Remeber though, that Vryn doesn't cost 1 more than Thorn.