Ah, this one reminds me of when Slivers were Standard-legal! This one’s pretty easy, actually. If you pair a Stern Mentor to something, both creatures gain the ability to tap to mill 2. So what happens when you pair two Mentors together? Well, not much.

A lot of people might think that the abilities ‘combine’ to mill for 4, or that they both fire off when you tap them [this was a common misconception with the Slivers especially, since very many of them granted multiple tap abilities]. The real answer is, you’ll still only be able to mill for 2 with each Mentor. The abilities don’t ‘combine’, and you can’t use both at once; they both gain two instances of the “{T}: Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.” ability, which is just as redundant as two instances of Flying from pairing two Wingcrafters, or two instances of Deathtouch from pairing two Nightshade Peddlers.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM