Against the Odds: Teaching Arena Zoomers About...Teaching? (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard to teach some Arena Zoomers about Mystical Teachings! Mystical Teachings used to be a control staple in formats like Modern and Pauper but has fallen out of favor as the formats increased rapidly in power. But thanks to Foundations, the instant is back in Standard for the first time in nearly two decades! The goal of our deck today is simple: outside of two wraths, every card in our deck is either an instant or a card with flash, which means that Mystical Teachings can tutor them up. In the early game, we play the control role while we develop our mana. In the late game, Mystical Teachings becomes absurd since once we get enough mana, we can cast Mystical Teachings to tutor up whatever instant we need in a given situation and then immediately cast that instant too! If we've got nothing better to do, we can use the classic trick of Teachings for more Teachings since we can always flashback the copies in our graveyard for even more tutoring power! How good is Mystical Teachings in Standard? What are the best instants or flash cards to tutor up? Can our five-color mana base work? Let's get to the video, teach some Arena Zoomers about Teachings, and find out!
Against the Odds: Teaching Arena Zoomers About Teachings
The Deck
The core of our deck today is Mystical Teachings. For four mana, the instant can tutor up an instant or a card with flash, and then we can even flash it back from our graveyard for six mana! Teachings doesn't do much of anything in the early game, but once we develop our mana, it becomes absurdly powerful thanks to our flexibility.
The only two nonlands in our main deck that we can't tutor up with Mystical Teachings are a single copy of Day of Judgment and a single Sunfall, which are necessary to help slow down aggro creature decks. Otherwise, Mystical Teachings can snag whatever we need whenever we need it, once we get enough mana.
The primary plan of our deck is to play a true draw-go game plan and use Mystical Teachings to find whatever we need to answer whatever our opponent does during their turn. If a creature is a problem, we can find Elspeth's Smite, Get Lost, Lightning Helix, or Inevitable Defeat. If we need to counter something, we can snag Three Steps Ahead. If our opponent manages to build a big board, we can even tutor up Final Showdown as an instant-speed wrath! And as I mentioned before, if we ever don't need to tutor up a specific card with Mystical Teachings, we can always just tutor up another copy of Mystical Teachings to store up more tutors for the future.
Now, we get to the fun part. The real reason I wanted to build this deck was to get people with New Way Forward, our new Deflecting Palm instant that also draws a ton of cards. Since New Way Forward is an instant, we can wait until our opponent attacks and, if they have a good target for New Way Forward, tutor it up, prevent all the damage the threat would deal, smack our opponent for a bunch of damage, and draw a bunch of cards! Oh yeah, we can do the same thing the next turn thanks to flashback, which should make it super scary for our opponents to attack us in the late game!
If our opponent wises up to the New Way Forward plan, we can kill them with Jeskai Revelation, which also happens to be an instant, so we can find it with Mystical Teachings. Jeskai Revelation is way, way better than I expected. Its huge wall of text does pretty much everything we want, answering two things (one with the bounce and one with the damage), drawing us cards, gaining some life, and making two prowess Monks. The prowess Monks really make the card. It's pretty easy to cast a Jeskai Revelation on our opponent's end step, untap, and cast a bunch of spells to hit our opponent for eight or 10 damage with the Monks thanks to prowess.
We've also got Songcrafter Mage, which has flash, so we can tutor it up with Mystical Teachings. The Temur Snapcaster Mage works especially well with Jeskai Revelation thanks to harmonize. We can cast a Jeskai Revelation and then, on the next turn, use Songcrafter Mage to flash it back. And if we tap Songcrafter Mage to harmonize, the total cost of our second Jeskai Revelation will still just be seven mana (versus nine mana if we had literal Snapcaster Mage). Alongside letting us win the game by chaining together Jeskai Revelations, Songcrafter Mage is also hilarious with New Way Forward as another way to punish our opponent for risking attacking us.
Finally, if all else fails, we have Horned Loch-Whale as our backup finisher. Thanks to flash, we can find it with Mystical Teachings. We can use it as removal in the early game, and later, it gives us a 6/6 body we can use to beat our opponent down once we've gained control of the game!
Wrap-Up
Record wise, Teachings was a bit rough overall, although really, it's pretty matchup-dependent. Overall, we won 27% of the time with the deck, although the final version of the deck did a bit better, giving us a 3-2 record. (It took a lot of tuning to get things right with this deck, or at least as right as possible.) Red aggro is a super-tough matchup. They are mostly just too fast for us to keep up, although we did manage to get a Mice player with New Way Forward, which was hilarious and super satisfying. But in general, we don't want to play red-based aggro. On the other hand, against midrange and control, where we have a bit more time to set up, the deck performed well and can do some really cool things thanks to Mystical Teachings' tutoring power! While full-on five-color New Way Forward Teachings might not be super competitive, Mystical Teachings itself felt strong, and I have to think that it will find its way into Standard sooner or later, considering how long it will be until Foundations rotates, if it ever does! If you like getting people by surprise and playing exclusively at instant speed, don't forget about Mystical Teachings. The card can still be very powerful!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
