That's the thing. It seems like the wizard's fear of combo being too consistent has no true argument, i mean, there's no combo powerhouse in the format. Aggro decks are much more powerful than combo decks, i dont think that cantrips would brak the archetype
well every single one of the cantrips on the banned list are there because they speed combo up to much, and when ponder and preordain where legal Storm was a T1 deck.
Sorry, but this is is a perfect example of not understanding why storm is a bad deck at the moment.
Storm is not bad because of cantrips being bad. If you look at the decklists, you can see serum visions and sleight of hand (the bad ones) but at the same time, you see things like thought scour, which is basically an ancestral recall for the deck, or desperate ravigns, a very powerfull spell.
Storm is a bad deck cause good rituals are gone. If you keep serum visions and sleight, and give storm rite of flame and seething song, you will see why storm was banned from the format in the first place, even taking into account that the deck didnt do NOTHING on the entire history of modern, even with full force.
Like Amethyst007 said, i just dont understand why green has those almost broken cantrips while blue, the color supposed to have card selection has to play cards like serum visions
I understand perfectly why storm is weakened in modern and it was both gettiing rid of ponder/preordain and getting rid of the 2 best ramp spells because with seething song and none of the others it was still OP'ed. The fact that Storm was a consistent performer for all of 2012 doesn't do anything to show that preordain should come off the banned list but only proves that seething song certainly should be kept on it. thought scour and ravings only get played in Storm because ponder/preordain had been banned.
ponder and preordain are way better than any of those highly conditional green spells. The closest one is ancient stirrings and even that can wiff while preordain will never not give value, not to mention that you don't have to have some silly building restriction in order to even play it.
I play UR decks and if just finding answers was what the deck really needed more people would run Peer Through Depths but they don't. What U needs is better threats to compete with every other color.
Blue needs new cards in Modern. unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue, its simply building the illusion reactive blue is good while in reality it is instant win combo that is good and this is already a known reality.
"unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue"
what in tier 1 isnt warping? thats what top tier decks do dude. and as long as twin didnt take up too much meta% it would be fine.
Let alone Ponder, but Preordain in the banlist is the complete joke. While green has access to Ancient Stirrings, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Chord of Calling etc. - all blue can oppose in terms of card selection is relying on *****ty Serum Visions.
Jace is interesting, but he doesn't help against aggro at all. He also won't prevent big mana decks from smashing Ulamog or Valakut on the following turn. So, blue just needs ways to find answers! Preordain would really help Tempo and Control decks with that. Combo? What are you talking about lol? Splinter Twin is banned, rituals are banned, Gitaxian Probe is banned. Ad Nauseam and Cheeri0s are already mentioned above. Combo is probably in the same coffin as reactive decks.
your right. also if twin isnt unbanned, wed need more than 1 card to help us imo.
Ponder are preordain are better in theory, in the abstract, but the thing is that those green spells are really powerfull for modern standards. Blue cantrips were banned because of repetitive gameplay and consistency, and still, we have cards like chord of calling (with very efficient creatures to search and even to pay for the spell, like wall of roots) or traverse, which is a really powerful tutor too.
I consider tutors more powerfull than cantrips
Of course, i dont want bans (i want unbans actually), i want cosistency on the modern banned list's management
Blue by definition, is a reactive color. Even with that in mind, You have one of the better threats in the history of the game (delver of secrets) But the thing is, the tempo cards in modern are apparently bad, so a deck like delver, a strategy that could keep in check all those unfair and degenerate decks is not good enough to our format
Blue needs new cards in Modern. unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue, its simply building the illusion reactive blue is good while in reality it is instant win combo that is good and this is already a known reality.
"unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue"
what in tier 1 isnt warping? thats what top tier decks do dude. and as long as twin didnt take up too much meta% it would be fine.
Jund/Junk do not force players to not cast spells drawn from turn 3-5
Splinter Twin warped the format in ways that no other Tier 1 deck does, what other deck forces you to not play magic until you have mana to cast your spell plus cast your answer. People keep saying that Twin promoted interactive games but in reality it didn't it shut off the game for the opponent until they hit 2-3 more land drops and then could continue p.aying assuming the Twin player didn't bounce a land back to your hand or tap down your mana etc.... if that is healthy then nothing is bad
Ponder are preordain are better in theory, in the abstract, but the thing is that those green spells are really powerfull for modern standards. Blue cantrips were banned because of repetitive gameplay and consistency, and still, we have cards like chord of calling (with very efficient creatures to search and even to pay for the spell, like wall of roots) or traverse, which is a really powerful tutor too.
I consider tutors more powerfull than cantrips
Of course, i dont want bans (i want unbans actually), i want cosistency on the modern banned list's management
Blue by definition, is a reactive color. Even with that in mind, You have one of the better threats in the history of the game (delver of secrets) But the thing is, the tempo cards in modern are apparently bad, so a deck like delver, a strategy that could keep in check all those unfair and degenerate decks is not good enough to our format
your honestly trying to compare a GGGx spell to preordain? even with convoke you are never casting it before turn 2. Traverse again is a terrible land cycle card until you have jumped through the needed hoops.
Blue needs new cards in Modern. unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue, its simply building the illusion reactive blue is good while in reality it is instant win combo that is good and this is already a known reality.
"unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue"
what in tier 1 isnt warping? thats what top tier decks do dude. and as long as twin didnt take up too much meta% it would be fine.
Jund/Junk do not force players to not cast spells drawn from turn 3-5
Splinter Twin warped the format in ways that no other Tier 1 deck does, what other deck forces you to not play magic until you have mana to cast your spell plus cast your answer. People keep saying that Twin promoted interactive games but in reality it didn't it shut off the game for the opponent until they hit 2-3 more land drops and then could continue p.aying assuming the Twin player didn't bounce a land back to your hand or tap down your mana etc.... if that is healthy then nothing is bad
I agree. Twin made you hold up mana because of the possibity of a blowout win. That's kind of toxic. The problem is that without a deck that sees top tier play that forces you to interact, then you can't lower the amount of decks trying to goldfish as fast as you can. Quite the opposite, they increase in meta % and become super populated.
Where do you prefer to live on? Wild wild west or Twin-checked?.
Blue needs new cards in Modern. unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue, its simply building the illusion reactive blue is good while in reality it is instant win combo that is good and this is already a known reality.
"unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue"
what in tier 1 isnt warping? thats what top tier decks do dude. and as long as twin didnt take up too much meta% it would be fine.
Jund/Junk do not force players to not cast spells drawn from turn 3-5
Splinter Twin warped the format in ways that no other Tier 1 deck does, what other deck forces you to not play magic until you have mana to cast your spell plus cast your answer. People keep saying that Twin promoted interactive games but in reality it didn't it shut off the game for the opponent until they hit 2-3 more land drops and then could continue p.aying assuming the Twin player didn't bounce a land back to your hand or tap down your mana etc.... if that is healthy then nothing is bad
this is what a blue control/combo deck does. can you tap out against gifts storm on turn 3+?
twin required decks run more disruption and interaction or lose to it. its no wonder bgx does fine vs it and other linear non interactive decks dont. you could argue how any decks are stifling other decks because that what tier 1 does. also this is a turn 4 format, anything after turn 4 is a challenge to survive, and should be. this is why blue isnt great because it needs a way to keep up with the pace of the format.
*Aaron Forscythe walks into the board meeting room*
Aaron: Are we unbanning Jace?
Board: No
Aaron: We talked about it hard, guys, we decided no
I think SFM gets a better shot, as it helps white and blue at the same time--but that doesn't help against ramp and all this eldrazi nonsense, does it?
Does Jace? Do I want to bounce a thought-knot into my opponents hand?
No clue where all this is going, I don't feel like speculating on Jace, he's a 50 dollar card and probably rockets to 120ish to 150 on initial unban hype if it happens.
Traverse again is a terrible land cycle card until you have jumped through the needed hoops.
Terrible? Print sth like:
Sorcery, U (1)
Search your library for a blue instant card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
Delirium — If there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard, instead search your library for a sorcery or instant card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
and we'll see how it's terrible. I keep silent about one-mana cantrip which shows you 5(!) topdecks and gives one immediately.
...
I think SFM gets a better shot, as it helps white and blue at the same time--but that doesn't help against ramp and all this eldrazi nonsense, does it?
Does Jace? Do I want to bounce a thought-knot into my opponents hand?
...
If the seer is on the board and you have no ways to defend Jace you would surely not be playing Jace?
Anyway, re SFM, I always remember Junk on steroids and possibly modern's D&T'lite also bumping vertically. Would that be a bad thing? Not really, but it will make zilch for blue. The best shells already available for SfM have no blue in them. Besides, the best example (after cawblade) of SfM use are the Stoneblade variants, which are far from the reactive blue deck people seem to want (that is more miracles).
If the issue is blue's inability to close a game, its lack of good answers, and a series of bad matchups, the card that best addresses all these problems is Preordain. Preordain helps you find your existing KO threats to end the game: Nahiri, Gifts/Rite, Madcap, Copy Cat, Kiki-Jiki, etc. Preordain is itself not an answer, but gives you a three-card dig to find that answer as early as T1, with the first two draws not being random. Preordain does not specifically address any one matchup, but it does allow blue to find the required sideboard cards and maindeck answers to improve their worst matchups to something more manageable.
By contrast, JTMS only closes out a game while not providing good answers or improving bad matchups. Perhaps this is a good reason to unban JTMS (i.e. he does very little and therefore shouldn't be banned), but if the goal is to help blue and not just make the banlist shorter, then Preordain still seems like a much better unban target.
If Preordain breaks anything in a faster deck and the metagame can't adapt, I'd rather something from that faster deck take a banning than fairer decks never get access to Preordain. Currently, there are four decks which could use Preordain, none of which did particularly well over the weekend and only three of which could violate the T4 rule: Gifts Storm, Cheeri0s, Ad Nauseam, and Grixis Griselbrand. UR Prowess and UG Infect might also use the card. Then again, these decks did not perform over the weekend and a few blue decks were near misses in the T17-32. Preordain would unquestionably help those decks, and if history is any indication, it is often the better decks that disproportionately benefit from a new card.
as part of the new landscape of Modern, this new Shadow Jund deck is great! it's a "fair" deck that punishes decks with no interaction. i can get behind that.
potential downside: decks which rely on lightning bolt for their removal get worse.
overall i'm happy with a deck like this existing. I just hope it doesn't dominate too much, because nobody likes it when that happens.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
As Corey Burkhart says, don't unban Jace. It's a road only Jace lovers will like. It doens't solve any problem and far worse it makes other cards unplayable.
Now, an unban of Preordain/DTT AND Jace i can get behind if your goal is to make reactive blue a thing.
The conversation which involves pros like Sam Black and Burkhart can be found on Aaron Forsythes Twitter.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
The way I see it is there are 3 point of views on the Jace unban.
1. Jace is too powerful for modern and should never be unbanned because he takes control of the game like no other card does.
While he is a very powerful card no doubt, most aggro decks or even midrange decks can usually just ignore him and try and kill u faster or get rid of jace the turn after he comes down especially if you are tapping out to play him.
2. Jace doesn't do anything to help blue's issues vs fast linear decks and would not help modern or blue in any positive ways. Preordain is the better unban.
I would argue that preordain would not help control decks as much as it would linear combo decks and just let them win faster. Jace, despite him not coming down until turn 4, allows control decks to stabilize and create card advantage while also pulling you out of tight spots with his -1.
3. Jace could potentially be beneficial to control decks and blue in modern and Wizards should honestly give him a chance in the meta.
Let alone Ponder, but Preordain in the banlist is the complete joke. While green has access to Ancient Stirrings, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Chord of Calling etc. - all blue can oppose in terms of card selection is relying on *****ty Serum Visions.
Jace is interesting, but he doesn't help against aggro at all. He also won't prevent big mana decks from smashing Ulamog or Valakut on the following turn. So, blue just needs ways to find answers! Preordain would really help Tempo and Control decks with that. Combo? What are you talking about lol? Splinter Twin is banned, rituals are banned, Gitaxian Probe is banned. Ad Nauseam and Cheeri0s are already mentioned above. Combo is probably in the same coffin as reactive decks.
Serum Visions is so good. Sooooo goooood. It's no Ancient Stirrings, but then again, it doesn't force you to play a ton of colorless spells. Just some cards that produces blue mana. Modern players are spoiled by entering the game at times when great cantrips already existed. One-mana self-replacing card selection is ultra powerful. For the record, Serum Visionswas played alongsideBrainstorm in Legacy decks prior to P&P.
P&P are banned from Modern because they are much better than Serum Visions. While legal, they reduced card and archetype diversity among the top decks, and hyper-enabled format-rule-violating strategies. Ponder is restricted in Vintage and Preordain is a staple there. It's no coincidence that both (as well as Brainstorm, which is why Preordain sees less Legacy play) are legal in Legacy and blue is far and away the best color in that format. They are easily stronger than Jace.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
No clue where all this is going, I don't feel like speculating on Jace, he's a 50 dollar card and probably rockets to 120ish to 150 on initial unban hype if it happens.
I have one for Commander and picked up another yesterday "just in case." I think he is a terrible unban choice for a number of reasons, but I also don't want to be left out in the cold if he is unbanned. I had to pay out the rear to get my AVs... not going to let that happen again.
Serum Visions is literally only ever played when there is absolutely no possible better option. Calling it "sooooo goooood" is a nigh-insulting overstatement.
Initially having come from Legacy into Modern years and years ago, I felt downright dirty having to play Serum Visions in Twin when I had gotten so used to Brainstorm and Ponder (and back then, I never ever encountered anyone using Serum Visions or even Preordain. It was always JUST Brainstorm, and 1 or 2 Ponders).
In the light of R&D and Pros debating Jace, the Mind Sculptor as a potential unban, i'm going to test him in a few matches as a finisher and a way to keep resources flowing past T4.
The more i think about it the more i believe it could do right to the format more than Splinter Twin. It wouldn't be an instant win card but it is so powerful that it may ride you to victory in a clear board after trading resources with the opponent.
I think it is best in a UW build, but Grixis/Jeskai could be good too.
Does Jace make Sultai too good though?. Another BG/x top tier would be cancerous for the format to be honest.
Serum Visions is literally only ever played when there is absolutely no possible better option. Calling it "sooooo goooood" is a nigh-insulting overstatement.
The same assessment can be made for Preordain in other eternal formats. It only sees play after people are playing the maximum number of Brainstorms and Ponders. Preordain is just the next-least-worst cantrip left. I wouldn't call that "soooo good" either.
In the context of Modern, it's a huge upgrade to Sleight of Hand (a card with currently performs the duties of Serum Visions #5-8), but it's a rather minor upgrade to Serum itself. So the decks that would see the most benefit are the Sleight of Hand decks (not necessarily control decks or reactive decks). For example, Grixis isn't going to get rid of Thought Scour, so the benefit gain of swapping Serum for Preordain is minimal. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have it in Delver, but I don't think it's going to fix the woes of the color by any means.
I'd laugh if Jace is unbanned and Sultai is the one that benefits the most. Sultai just received Fatal Push and Jace could shuffle away late game AVs. Imagine a three way clash between Jund, Abzan and Sultai.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced Jace, the Mind Sculptor would be perfect for the meta. Not because it enables big, draw-go style control, but because it helps shore up Delver.
Right now, Delver runs some combination of Truths, AV, and Pia & Kiran for grindy matches. If you replace those with 2-3 Mind Sculptors, you get a better CA/board advantage engine that also presents an alternate wincon, and also also shuffling away dead cards line Mana Leak. Delver could easily gain a few % points in fair matchups off of that. Ux Midrange decks like Esper Transcendent (or just any old Liliana/Jace deck) and Grixis Control would likely gain too, but I'll leave that aside for now.
Jace seems pretty bad in Delver. He's not an Instant or Sorcery so he lacks that synergy (doesn't transform Delver, doesn't fill up the graveyard, doesn't make Pyromancer tokens if you're on that plan) and his mana cost is rather high for Delver decks. You may point to Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but that's a sideboard card and not all that common of one either; also, it can be used for direct damage and aggressive purposes (same thing with the sometimes played Huntmaster of the Fells out of the sideboard), whereas Jace's abilities don't really gel with the deck's strategy. He might be an okay sideboard card, but I don't think that would really help out the deck much.
Right; the idea was using Jace helping as a sideboard card to improve matchups vs. grindy decks. I meant to say "Delver runs XYZ in the sideboard vs. grindy matches," but somehow skipped over it. My apologies.
To restate and elaborate, generally Delver lists run between 2 and 5 cards in the sideboard for grinding out long games vs. BGx and various Control decks, where sticking Delver/Pyromancer/Clique is a nightmare and you need to gear up for the long game. As of now, it' usually 3-4 Ancestral Vision, or some number of one-ofs including Painful Truths, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and rarely a Jace, Architect of Thought. (I'm personally trying a 1-of Chandra, Torch of Defiance plus 3 Ancestrals.) In that kind of situation, the value you get out of sticking a Jace is pretty insane. I'd love jamming 2-3 in my board, freeing up a few more slots for other matchups while having a consistent source of card and/or board advantage that can also shuffle away my dead cards in the lategame.
While I don't think you'd usually bring him in for matches where you keep Delver, Jace absolutely does help flip Delver. Topdeck manipulation of top 3 + whatever is in your hand does way more to flip Delver than you'd get from running 2-3 more instants and/or sorceries.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
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I understand perfectly why storm is weakened in modern and it was both gettiing rid of ponder/preordain and getting rid of the 2 best ramp spells because with seething song and none of the others it was still OP'ed. The fact that Storm was a consistent performer for all of 2012 doesn't do anything to show that preordain should come off the banned list but only proves that seething song certainly should be kept on it. thought scour and ravings only get played in Storm because ponder/preordain had been banned.
ponder and preordain are way better than any of those highly conditional green spells. The closest one is ancient stirrings and even that can wiff while preordain will never not give value, not to mention that you don't have to have some silly building restriction in order to even play it.
I play UR decks and if just finding answers was what the deck really needed more people would run Peer Through Depths but they don't. What U needs is better threats to compete with every other color.
"unbanning a format warping instant win combo isn't helping blue"
what in tier 1 isnt warping? thats what top tier decks do dude. and as long as twin didnt take up too much meta% it would be fine.
decks playing:
none
your right. also if twin isnt unbanned, wed need more than 1 card to help us imo.
preordain for sure, along side jace, and sfm.
all 3 of these should come off at once.
decks playing:
none
I consider tutors more powerfull than cantrips
Of course, i dont want bans (i want unbans actually), i want cosistency on the modern banned list's management
Blue by definition, is a reactive color. Even with that in mind, You have one of the better threats in the history of the game (delver of secrets) But the thing is, the tempo cards in modern are apparently bad, so a deck like delver, a strategy that could keep in check all those unfair and degenerate decks is not good enough to our format
Jund/Junk do not force players to not cast spells drawn from turn 3-5
Splinter Twin warped the format in ways that no other Tier 1 deck does, what other deck forces you to not play magic until you have mana to cast your spell plus cast your answer. People keep saying that Twin promoted interactive games but in reality it didn't it shut off the game for the opponent until they hit 2-3 more land drops and then could continue p.aying assuming the Twin player didn't bounce a land back to your hand or tap down your mana etc.... if that is healthy then nothing is bad
your honestly trying to compare a GGGx spell to preordain? even with convoke you are never casting it before turn 2. Traverse again is a terrible land cycle card until you have jumped through the needed hoops.
I agree. Twin made you hold up mana because of the possibity of a blowout win. That's kind of toxic. The problem is that without a deck that sees top tier play that forces you to interact, then you can't lower the amount of decks trying to goldfish as fast as you can. Quite the opposite, they increase in meta % and become super populated.
Where do you prefer to live on? Wild wild west or Twin-checked?.
this is what a blue control/combo deck does. can you tap out against gifts storm on turn 3+?
twin required decks run more disruption and interaction or lose to it. its no wonder bgx does fine vs it and other linear non interactive decks dont. you could argue how any decks are stifling other decks because that what tier 1 does. also this is a turn 4 format, anything after turn 4 is a challenge to survive, and should be. this is why blue isnt great because it needs a way to keep up with the pace of the format.
decks playing:
none
Aaron: Are we unbanning Jace?
Board: No
Aaron: We talked about it hard, guys, we decided no
I think SFM gets a better shot, as it helps white and blue at the same time--but that doesn't help against ramp and all this eldrazi nonsense, does it?
Does Jace? Do I want to bounce a thought-knot into my opponents hand?
No clue where all this is going, I don't feel like speculating on Jace, he's a 50 dollar card and probably rockets to 120ish to 150 on initial unban hype if it happens.
Terrible? Print sth like:
and we'll see how it's terrible. I keep silent about one-mana cantrip which shows you 5(!) topdecks and gives one immediately.
If the seer is on the board and you have no ways to defend Jace you would surely not be playing Jace?
Anyway, re SFM, I always remember Junk on steroids and possibly modern's D&T'lite also bumping vertically. Would that be a bad thing? Not really, but it will make zilch for blue. The best shells already available for SfM have no blue in them. Besides, the best example (after cawblade) of SfM use are the Stoneblade variants, which are far from the reactive blue deck people seem to want (that is more miracles).
By contrast, JTMS only closes out a game while not providing good answers or improving bad matchups. Perhaps this is a good reason to unban JTMS (i.e. he does very little and therefore shouldn't be banned), but if the goal is to help blue and not just make the banlist shorter, then Preordain still seems like a much better unban target.
If Preordain breaks anything in a faster deck and the metagame can't adapt, I'd rather something from that faster deck take a banning than fairer decks never get access to Preordain. Currently, there are four decks which could use Preordain, none of which did particularly well over the weekend and only three of which could violate the T4 rule: Gifts Storm, Cheeri0s, Ad Nauseam, and Grixis Griselbrand. UR Prowess and UG Infect might also use the card. Then again, these decks did not perform over the weekend and a few blue decks were near misses in the T17-32. Preordain would unquestionably help those decks, and if history is any indication, it is often the better decks that disproportionately benefit from a new card.
potential downside: decks which rely on lightning bolt for their removal get worse.
overall i'm happy with a deck like this existing. I just hope it doesn't dominate too much, because nobody likes it when that happens.
Now, an unban of Preordain/DTT AND Jace i can get behind if your goal is to make reactive blue a thing.
The conversation which involves pros like Sam Black and Burkhart can be found on Aaron Forsythes Twitter.
Reid Duke agrees.
Hoogland says it might be ok to take risks since there are more ban list updates so errors can be rectified.
Caleb Durward somewhat agrees with Hoogland but states that possibly having to re-ban chase mythics is a big deal.
1. Jace is too powerful for modern and should never be unbanned because he takes control of the game like no other card does.
While he is a very powerful card no doubt, most aggro decks or even midrange decks can usually just ignore him and try and kill u faster or get rid of jace the turn after he comes down especially if you are tapping out to play him.
2. Jace doesn't do anything to help blue's issues vs fast linear decks and would not help modern or blue in any positive ways. Preordain is the better unban.
I would argue that preordain would not help control decks as much as it would linear combo decks and just let them win faster. Jace, despite him not coming down until turn 4, allows control decks to stabilize and create card advantage while also pulling you out of tight spots with his -1.
3. Jace could potentially be beneficial to control decks and blue in modern and Wizards should honestly give him a chance in the meta.
UB Faeries
U Taking Turns
BGW Abzan Midrange
EDH Decks
MonoU Sakashima the Impostor and the Clone Army
UG Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Dralnu, Lich LordUBR Kess, Dissident MageP&P are banned from Modern because they are much better than Serum Visions. While legal, they reduced card and archetype diversity among the top decks, and hyper-enabled format-rule-violating strategies. Ponder is restricted in Vintage and Preordain is a staple there. It's no coincidence that both (as well as Brainstorm, which is why Preordain sees less Legacy play) are legal in Legacy and blue is far and away the best color in that format. They are easily stronger than Jace.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
I have one for Commander and picked up another yesterday "just in case." I think he is a terrible unban choice for a number of reasons, but I also don't want to be left out in the cold if he is unbanned. I had to pay out the rear to get my AVs... not going to let that happen again.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Initially having come from Legacy into Modern years and years ago, I felt downright dirty having to play Serum Visions in Twin when I had gotten so used to Brainstorm and Ponder (and back then, I never ever encountered anyone using Serum Visions or even Preordain. It was always JUST Brainstorm, and 1 or 2 Ponders).
The more i think about it the more i believe it could do right to the format more than Splinter Twin. It wouldn't be an instant win card but it is so powerful that it may ride you to victory in a clear board after trading resources with the opponent.
I think it is best in a UW build, but Grixis/Jeskai could be good too.
Does Jace make Sultai too good though?. Another BG/x top tier would be cancerous for the format to be honest.
The same assessment can be made for Preordain in other eternal formats. It only sees play after people are playing the maximum number of Brainstorms and Ponders. Preordain is just the next-least-worst cantrip left. I wouldn't call that "soooo good" either.
In the context of Modern, it's a huge upgrade to Sleight of Hand (a card with currently performs the duties of Serum Visions #5-8), but it's a rather minor upgrade to Serum itself. So the decks that would see the most benefit are the Sleight of Hand decks (not necessarily control decks or reactive decks). For example, Grixis isn't going to get rid of Thought Scour, so the benefit gain of swapping Serum for Preordain is minimal. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have it in Delver, but I don't think it's going to fix the woes of the color by any means.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Right; the idea was using Jace helping as a sideboard card to improve matchups vs. grindy decks. I meant to say "Delver runs XYZ in the sideboard vs. grindy matches," but somehow skipped over it. My apologies.
To restate and elaborate, generally Delver lists run between 2 and 5 cards in the sideboard for grinding out long games vs. BGx and various Control decks, where sticking Delver/Pyromancer/Clique is a nightmare and you need to gear up for the long game. As of now, it' usually 3-4 Ancestral Vision, or some number of one-ofs including Painful Truths, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and rarely a Jace, Architect of Thought. (I'm personally trying a 1-of Chandra, Torch of Defiance plus 3 Ancestrals.) In that kind of situation, the value you get out of sticking a Jace is pretty insane. I'd love jamming 2-3 in my board, freeing up a few more slots for other matchups while having a consistent source of card and/or board advantage that can also shuffle away my dead cards in the lategame.
While I don't think you'd usually bring him in for matches where you keep Delver, Jace absolutely does help flip Delver. Topdeck manipulation of top 3 + whatever is in your hand does way more to flip Delver than you'd get from running 2-3 more instants and/or sorceries.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon