Hi all! So I also managed to top 4 with a list very similar to this months back, but I put the deck on the shelf cause I didn't think it could beat the eldrazi menace that was showing up all over the place. I think that may have been a false assumption and I think this deck is perfectly well poised in its current iteration in the metagame. So below I'll post the list with an explanation of some card choices and then a brief tournament report.

5-C Humans

Land (20):
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mana Confluence
4 City of Brass
2 Ancient Ziggurat
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland

Artifacts (6):
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

Enchantments (2):
2 Stony Silence

Creatures (27):
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
3 Reflector Mage
3 Mantis Rider

Instants (4):
3 Path to Exile
1 Ancestral Recall

Sorceries (1):
1 Time Walk

Sideboard
4 Containment Priest
2 Stony Silence
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Rest in Peace
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wasteland
1 Chalice of the Void

This list has a lot of similarities to my 5-C lists from the spring but with some key improvements.

1. The manabase. I can now easily run 2 Horizon Canopy and 1 Karakas as well as 2 Ancient Ziggurat because I am no longer on the Abrupt Decay plan. Cards like Thought-Knot Seer are now a thing so Decay is no longer the card I want to be seeing in this deck all the time. Karakas was great for me all day long and being able to bounce my own Thalia or Kambal definitely came up once. The deck is predominantly GW so the 2 Canopies were fine and a big reason I didn’t run 4 Ziggurat is because Ziggurat can’t cast a Stony Silence and Stony Silence was HUUGE all day long.
2. 6 Plow Effects. This didn’t come up much on the day cause I didn’t really face Eldrazi, but the maindeck Paths were actually decent at nabbing a Deathrite Shaman and a Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
3. Kambal. This guy was an easy swap for Scan-Clan Berserker and is a main reason the manabase feels a lot tighter as well. 1WB is far easier to cast in this deck than 1RR. Amazing card.
4. Up to 4 Pridemage. Another All-Star on the day. This card kept me safe under the threat of Time Vault on more than one occasion and I’m pretty sure I’d have lost multiple games if I hadn't stuck one of these guys.
5. SB ESG. Guides were amazing a couple key times during the day. I wish I could have made room for a 3rd one and perhaps I will down the road.

So a quick summary of my matches:

Round 1 vs. Jeskai Delver (2-0):

Game 1: This guy was a really nice guy who didn’t have a ton of experience playing Vintage so I think my deck came as a bit of a shock to him. Game 1 was a bit of a grind with Mayor and me Reflecting his Delver early. Can’t remember exactly how I got there.

Game 2: In this game I had Karakas early with both Thalia 1.0 and Kambal. It was pretty much impossible for him to break out of that lock.

Round 2 vs. Leovold Gush (0-2):

Game 1: I kept an iffy opener without much in the way of anti-blue tech expecting to lose game 1 anyway cause I thought Kevin would be on Dredge. I was mistaken and sadly my Mayor/Pridemage couldn’t out Aggro a Leovold with Pyromancer tokens.

Game 2: A near carbon copy of game 1. My opener involved a double mayor this time and a Thalia 2.0 so I figured it was a sketchy keep but a keep. I had a Noble for turn 2 Thalia and then used a path to nuke a DRS. Sadly, I drew no Thalia 1.0 or Kambal the whole game and he just did what gush does after removing Thalia 2.0 with a Dismember I believe. In hind sight I probably should have mulled into a hand that DOES something in this matchup and doesn’t just have big dorks, but I was worried about going to 6 or 5 vs. a value deck like Leovold Gush. That deck is utterly gross.

Round 3 vs. Ravager Shops (2-0):

Game 1: On the play I keep an opener with a Mox Sapphire, 3 Rainbow Lands, Noble, and Wasteland and a Mayor of Avabruck. I think this was mainly cause I knew my opponent likes to play shops, but that is part of the game. Game 1 is pretty much a breeze from there as my shop opponent locks herself under spheres and only seems to be able to draw tombs for mana.

Game 2: Here it’s a little more uncertain whether I’ll turn the corner early because she lands an early TKS that steals my Ancestral in hand. Thankfully I’m able to ride some wastes and a Mayor to Victory while stabilizing at 4 life. This one was more of a nail biter but I got there.

Round 4 vs. Grixis Outcome (2-0):

Game 1: I don’t remember all the details of this game, but I do recall having Thalia 1.0 in play and a Mantis Rider sealing the deal just a tiny bit faster than he could try to assemble Time Vault.

Game 2: Stony happened on turn 1 off ESG (loooove ESG). He had cast a Key, Mox and Lotus on turn 1 and later told me he was threatening turn 2 Desire for 4-5. I then had a waste for his Academy and it was over. Phew.

Round 5 vs. Academy Combo (2-0):

This was against my good buddy Danny Batterman and his list looked absolutely sweet.

Game 1: He makes a tough judgement call to hardcast Sphinx by popping a Lotus and basically leaving himself open to Reflector Mage. He had forgotten that was a card I run and had the Force for my Paths main. Luckily I had the Reflector Mage and Cavern up. Reflector really showed it’s power there.

Game 2: Stony hit the table pretty early and Danny was eventually able to find his echoing truth for it. fortunately I had set up pridemage and kambal and containment priest and gotten him to 5 life so I just pridemaged his mana vault in response to him attempting to untap it. He said afterwards that that was the right call because he would have played time spiral and had a chance to find an out to my board.

Overall, I had an amazing time playing 5-C Humans and would certainly bring it to another event or to champs. I highly recommend giving the deck a try at champs this year for any one bold enough to do so. I sadly won’t be able to attend so it would be great to have some brave player carry the torch of the little men. Whatever you do thought DOOOON’T cut MANTIS RIDER. That card is bonkers.

-Storm

Is it possible for there to be a resource for finding card images that could just be available on TMD itself? I'm thinking it would be awesome to have a tool for finding card images that would make starting a new thread about a deck easy and elegant looking. Just a thought.

-Storm

So I plan on making a full an in-depth primer on this deck after more extensive testing and tweaking, but if you're looking for something hella fun to play for Eternal Weekend and are feeling kinda "meh" about your current deck choice anddddd wanna audible into something super spicy and actually quite powerful. . . HERE. . . IS. . . THE. . . DECK. . . FOR. . . YOU!

I give you:

5-Color Human Stompy

Lands (20):
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Mana Confluence
4 Windswept Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Savannah
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland

Artifacts (7):
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Chalice of the Void

Enchantments (2):
2 Stony Silence

Creatures (26):
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Deathrite Shaman
2 Dark Confidant
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
3 Mantis Rider
2 Palace Jailer

Instants (5):
3 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay

Sideboard
4 Containment Priest
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
2 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Ramunap Excavator
1 Path to Exile
2 Wasteland
1 Abrupt Decay

Ok, basics to know about this deck:

1. The manabase looks like hot garbage but it works when you realize that the only spell that requires R or U is Mantis Rider. The rest of the deck is Abzan colors.

2. Mantis Rider is worth it. Without Mantis Rider a purely Abzan Approach tends to lack the velocity to finish the job. Think of Mantis Rider as this deck's Reality Smasher or Walking Ballista. It is often the way you deal those final points of damage in critical moments. The impact on the manabase is often negligible and you can have it stuck in hand early as most of your initial plays will be lock pieces or disruption.

3. Kitesail Freebooter is an effective card vs. most all blue but gets sided out vs. shops. This card has a very important role to play vs. combo as it can swipe most everything you care about. It also gives the deck a critical extra turn 1 play off a mox.

4. Kambal is a house vs. anything that isn't shops.

5. The deck has a bit of a transformational board into a mini-Knight of the Reliquary engine for Shops + Ramunap + Kataki. I think, that the way shops is currently configured you need to, if you are a fair creatures deck:

a. Have an answer to turn 1 Inspector (Path in our case)
b. Have a way to mess with the engine (2 Stony in our case)
c. Have some basic lands/fetchlands to protect YOUR early mana cause they could give two shits about wasting a land drop on a waste effect.
d. Have some cards that outclass what they are doing (Mayor in our case primarily but also Mantis to a lesser extent cause of evasion).
e. Attack their life total to make their tombs a problem for them.
f. Attempt to Waste their Shops/Academy to tactically slow them down a bit.

I think this deck employs the right "stew" of all these things and thus I think it has a fairly decent shop matchup.

6. This is an aggro deck with tempo elements. Don't be afraid to be aggressive but also know when you need to sit back and play control (ie going for the hatebear instead of the Mantis even if the Mantis gives you more damage faster).

7. Hands with many lands are pretty decent in some matchups.

8. The deck is a work in progress and is always able to be tweaked but UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE TWEAKING IT. I think my list here is a good template for what to do and I'm open to suggestions (ie I've considered cutting the jailers and going up on bobs, or I've considered some mental missteps in the sb), but please keep the discourse civl.

all right, I'm open to feedback and would love to see someone take a deck like this to champs and do well with it as I won't be able to make it this year. If you have any questions feel free to post them here or PM me for a deeper discussion.

Thanks for reading!

-Storm

@Smmenen
On the restriction debate: I think you guys failed to take a very important factor into account. You failed to talk about the stubbornness of blue pilots in running sufficient shop hate and effective shop hate. Instead of adapting (something blue decks had YEARS to do) blue decided to throw in a handful of ingot chewers from their sideboard and call it a day. Instead of adapting their main deck blue pilots insisted on running 4 missteps, 1-2 flusters, 1-2 pyroblasts and other semi-dead cards as well as mana bases consisting of 14-15 lands.

I think shop results would have been significantly lower over the past 2-3 years if blue players had opted for more lands in their main decks as well as cards that swing the matchup in their favor like:

Wasteland
Ancient Grudge
Snuff Out
Hurky's Recall (x more than 1)
Energy Flux
Kataki + Null Rod or Stony
Serenity
Trygon Predator

While some of these cards were tried, almost none were more than a 1x main deck and that basically means that game 1's vs. shops are often going to go to the shop player putting them on the play game 3. It's no surprise to me, then, that blue struggled with the matchup. This aspect of the warping of the metagame was not talked about at all. The elitism of many blue players who just expect to be able to devote 7 + slots to the mirror baffles me to no end. 7 cards main deck for the mirror is ok but running more than 2 cards for shops main deck is not? Seriously, wtf?

-Storm

@peterflugzeug said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Dumpsterac1d thank you very much.

while playing magic.

This is the key part of the quote. Hate for the engine being coupled with Mentor is virtually irrelevant unless you are also planning to combo your opponent out in due order. Why? Because Mentor decks can be totally neutralized by cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Kambal, Spheres, you name it, and STILL win because all they need to often do is throw down a couple moxen and play a preordain misstepping their own preordain to win on the spot. I have had Mentor decks completely locked off their engine multiple times with Humans and still lost to that kind of garbage. You want to know why BUG is mostly irrelevant in the Meta? This. Do you want to know why any "sort of fair" deck is invalidated in the meta? This.
This, this, this, this, this. Ugh, Mentor is the most braindead win con ever printed that rewards players whose "deck" has been cleanly beaten. Free (or 1 mana) Seeker of the Ways (let's be honest, that's basically what you're getting every time to do any derpy f-ing thing) is just ludicrous no matter how you slice it. Mentor really needs to freaking go.

-Storm

@chubbyrain

Yes, but this entire line of play could have been avoided if your opponent had just freaking forced the Inspector. Players NEVER seem to make that judgement call and it costs them. I blame blue pilot’s incompetence for shops dominance more than any sort of structural defects from blue decks.

-Storm

@MSolymossy said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Griselbrother 8 Lands, Sol Ring, Crypt, Vault, Lotus, Moxes, and Academy with any combination of the cards I just listed outside the 8 lands. If you want to get froggy, you can even play City of Traitors too.

What's hilarious is workshop players ALL say "Soly Land. Legendary Land: Tap: add 2 mana of any combination of colors to your mana pool .Use this only for Sorceries, Instants, or Planeswalkers" would be WAY TOO BUSTED.

Yet 3 mana for artifacts isn't too busted.

This comment illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Wizards has printed cards for the past. . . well ever. Workshop decks have no way to filter cards the way blue does so the way the restricted list interacts with the Workshop archetype is extremely divergent from how it interacts with the blue force of will-based archetypes.

Workshop decks sit in a fair and equitable place in Vintage for a couple very important reasons. Instead of going on your own internal monologue about how much of a "Clown" I am, maybe read what I have to say and understand that I have indeed played a lot of Vintage (even in paper at my local store in Los Angeles to plenty of wins/top 4 finishes I might add), and that I'm saying these things from a place of experience.

Complaint about Workshops #1: Workshop decks, when they curve out, force little interaction and "sphere people out.

Rebuttal: Blue decks do the exact same thing on the back of Force of Will when they "curve out." Blue decks achieve Time Walks (and access to the card "Time Walk") and non-interactive games as well, they just do it in a different way. They do it through having cards like Preordain that find them one of the following: Ancestral, Brainstorm, Dig, Treasure Cruise, Time Walk, Gush and then other 3 and 4-ofs like Mentor or Force of Will. These cards are good across so many match-ups and so many game states that they might as well be as all encompassing as the card "Sphere of Resistance." Blue decks force game states where opponents don't really get a meaningful turn because they dominated early on card advantage and started chaining force of wills and other counters.

Assertion that Blue decks could get a conditional tap for 2 mana land:

I am not going to pass final judgement and say that would be ludicrous, but it probably would be. The way Workshop decks are FORCED to be designed is one where they have access to and aggressively utilize the 10 sphere effects they have. Why are they forced to do this? Well Ask Richard Garfield and the R & D team since the inception of the game why they thought it was appropriate to print:

Tolarian Academy
Black Lotus
Time Walk
Ancestral Recall
Dark Ritual
Moxen
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Yawg Will
Mind's Desire

There are a couple other major offenders but I think I get my point across. I point to cards that allow for extremely degenerate and almost deterministic avenues to victory ON TURN 1 OR 2. Without running spheres, a colorless deck like workshops would be a sitting duck to any deck wanting to do anything broken. So why do I say this in response to your proposed 2 mana land for blue? Because Workshop decks absolutely need to pump out over costed artifacts early to even have a shot vs. blue decks that do broken things and in order to continue curving out they need the card Workshop to do this. You said I was living in 2013 with my comment that Workshop threats cost 4, 5, and 6 mana? Well I would say that you missed a key implication of my comment. I am implying that you are casting spheres on turn 1 and possibly turn 2. Would you claim that Fleetwheel Cruiser DOESN'T cost 5 underneath a sphere? or 6 underneath 2 spheres? And, when folks were running Tangle Wire and Crucible (which wasn't that long ago mind you) would you argue that those cards wouldn't cost 4 or 5 under spheres? Read between the lines a bit on my comments. So if I can establish for you that Workshop decks NEED to play spheres to compete, and that they need to play those cards on turn 1-2 or risk losing outright to broken decks then is it fair to up the mana cost of many of their threats by 1 or even 2 (depending on whether it is taxed by Thorn or not)? And that isn't even including some of the threats that the deck STILL runs that are 5 or 6 mana (yes, I know it's less but it is still some). And if we agree on this point is it not safe to assume that Workshop is a major reason the deck is able to execute this game plan with any sort of regularity?

Blue decks do not need to be able to skip the curve on turn 1 like that because they already have a major leg up due to the filter and combo-rific cards that are set up for via Force of Will and other protection. It just so happens that the Workshop archetype is particularly well suited to beat up on the blue engine of choice right now, which I would boil down to a certain set of cards that players have not-so-lovingly called "the blue stew:"

3-4 Prerordain
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral
1 Dig
1 Cruise
1 Time Walk
3-4 Misstep
4 Force of Will

Shops decks beat up naturally on this "stew" because it often has to fight itself in the face of sphere effects. Like, often the blue player is faced with the following conundrum vs. shops on turn 3, 4 or 5 after the bloodbath of the first 2 turns that usually involves a force or 2, and/or a removal spell: Do I tap out to cast my Preordain under that sphere or do I leave mana up for Force of Will knowing I'll be down another card and wishing I'd cast the Preordain anyway to set up getting some actual business cards? This is the struggle for the Mentor decks right now vs. Shops. I'd be willing to postulate that the dynamic would alter considerably if blue decks were allowed, through restrictions/unrestrictions or otherwise, to play a draw-go game vs. the field, because I think Workshops has a lot harder time dealing with that approach to tempo coming from a blue deck. If Mana Drain was a card with text again you better believe that Workshop decks would struggle to answer it more than they struggle to answer a card that usually reads "1U: Tap out to scry 2 and draw 1."

I am thinking of writing an article about game balance at some point in the future and how balancing a game is challenging, but that I think it has to be done from an informed unbiased place. I think the biggest problem Vintage faces going forward is vocal fans thinking they know how their game works and being utterly ignorant to the mechanics and inner tensions of the game itself. I would really hate a player base ignorant of what is best for them force action from R & D that kills Vintage. Wait where have I seen this before? I seem to recall a base of disgruntled voters voting for a candidate that they were sure "wasn't" part of the elites only to find out they were wrong and that he doesn't serve their interests at all on virtually every important issue. Please don't let Vintage go this route.

@protoaddct

Have you been following results of late? Workshop decks are under control so restricting any piece from that deck is utter nonsense. Folks have adjusted, get over it.

@khahan My own bias as a hatebear pilot would LOVE this. My logical self hates this though. I don't think you should really EVER restrict Mishra's Workshop any more than you should restrict Force of Will or Dual Lands, or Bazaar of Baghdad or Cavern of Souls. Mishra's Workshop is a fundamental "glue" card of the format and allows for an entire archetype to exist and thrive. I'm sorry, but the competition is capable of much more broken things in Vintage than in Legacy and you're basically proposing to make the "Workshop" MUD archetype relegated to the power level of Legacy MUD, but with the same Vintage competitors that we currently have. That just won't work. Try it sometime. Try 100 games with your restricted Workshop MUD garbage and tell me how often you beat: Mentor, PO, Oath, Eldrazi, Dredge, etc etc etc. It isn't a deck in Vintage without Mishra's Workshop no matter how you slice it. City of Traitors in Vintage is a garbage land that just makes your deck incredibly weak to Wasteland: "Oops you were forced to sac your one-shot land to get more mana? I'll just waste your new land and leave you with nothing!" Please don't try to run the narrative that MUD would even remotely be a thing without 4 Workshops to hold it together.

@Brass-Man

Amen to that. Vintage is too often the "spin zone" where no ones opinions come without a metric ton of baggage. That said, I do think that results are starting shown a homogenized set of cards that Mentor decks run that just win games. My one counter to your point that sudden shock is readily awesome vs. Mentor is this: it isn't the "Swiss army knife" that blue players have been spoiled by in swords to plowshares. STP answers a Mentor while simultaneously answering:

Any shop dude no matter how many times it gets pumped by a ravager.

Blightsteel or really any robot not named inkwell leviathan.

Random hatebears (including x/3 or bigger ones)

TKS and Reality Smasher as well as Eldrazi Displacer

Those are just the key ones. Plow's utility is in saving you design space and in a world where blue decks are stretched thinner and thinner that diverse applicability is at a premium.

Also, to your point about mana tempo.

I don't think 2 mana for a 3 mana threat is enough tempo value when you are also trying to make up for the 1-3 tokens they've likely generated by that point.

I fundamentally think the tempo race has changed in Vintage to the point where you need to run crazy tempo swing plays just to keep up these days. I hope that clarifies some of my thoughts.

-Storm

@moorebrother1 Aren't most Xerox decks already glutted on the best cantrips imaginable? I feel like a lot of decks have moved AWAY from mass cantrips in favor of more critters these days.

@chubbyrain1 I guess the question is: Is this card good enough even when coven isn't active?

@stormanimagus wow. 117 views but no thoughts?

I'm surprised no one is discussing this card. This seems like it could find a home in GW Humans as a much needed draw engine that permits the deck to avoid black (Dark Confidant) or Blue (Ancestral + Selkie or some other draw engine in blue). This card filters through a land on top AND then a creature if you can meet the Coven requirement (this seems rather trivial with access to Noble Hierarch at 0 power, and then a million other possibilities at 1 power OR 3+ Power with things like Luminarch Aspirant helping control powers on board even further. I really like this card and definitely plan on testing it in my humans builds. Has anyone else thought about it?

I think this card is great for true human lists like my mono-white rick lists. Definite positive add-on

@botvinik How so? The two cards have nothing in common other than being red spells?

I'd say use it in Oath but if your opponent pyroblasts it you can't counter their blast. Darn.

@ian-mars I am seeing a lot of lists with Tinker for Bolas's Citadel and almost Zero with Tinker for Robot. How is Jund poor against this again?

@moorebrother1 I am a fish specialist. Granted my real wheelhouse is Thalia Hatebears variants, but I've also played and invented 5-C Humans for Vintage. I think Jund might be more in that vein. Maddening Hex can deliver a lot of damage (I know people will question it because you are rolling a die so there isn't determinism with the results but the average roll will be between 3 and 4) and you get Ouphe for dumb artifact things and Dauthi for yards + Deathrite Shaman + Wastelands. I've thought this through quite and a bit and I think a color combination like Jund is largely untested and thus could fill an interesting niche. The only thing I'm unsure about with the list is an ability to provide a beefy threat in a pinch. My general go-to in green is Hexdrinker for this and that is probably the direction I'd go.

I personally like to ignore most of the hype about the "best" strategy to play and prefer to smash face with something people don't expect out of left field. I think there is always a tendency towards greed in some aspect of deck-building that spreads like a freaking plague amongst the sheeple. Thus, if I were to design a list for the meta I'd probably be on some CARDS (not necessarily decks) that own the meta. I suspect that some form of awesome graveyard deck will be at champs so I think dauthi voidwalker is a great choice. I also think that saga will be played a lot so I agree that collector ouphe could be huge. I also have a pet card I'm testing called "Maddening Hex" that I think could stomp some unsuspecting xerox decks. Thus, I'd go the route of some sort of Jund Fish deck for champs just because it satisfies the colors I'm going for.