I can't tell if the people saying "Ban Preordain" are being sarcastic. The card is really, really good. If the numbers show that it is warping the format, it should go. But it's not likely that Preordain would be a problem without Jace. If Jace were banned and Preordain decks still dominated, that would be a problem. But I don't expect Preordain and Mana Leak alone to be better than Goblin Guide, Bolt, Geopede, and Koth, as far as Caw decks go.
Luis Scott-Vargas: From a pure gameplay standpoint, I believe it should get banned, but wizards has way more considerations than just that to worry about.
From Patrick Chapin's twitter: For the record, while I am pro- #banjace, I neither think they NEED to or are 51%+ likely to.
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Jace the Mind Sculptor is better than all, and this includes Bloodbraid, Bitterblossom, Cryptic, Jitte, Mind's Desire & Skullclamp.
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One issue to remember is valakut will be a serious issue if Jace was banned. I would like it best if Valakut & Jace were banned!
Of course there's another side to it
GerryT: All this talk of banning Jace is ridiculous. How about ya'll work on solutions to your problems instead of hoping they go away?
What I love about these quotes from the Pros:
LSV and Chapin, two of the most respected players in the Magic community, understand, and agree, that Jace should be banned. LSV being one of the most well-known blue players in the history of Magic.
On the other hand, there is GerryT, who is anti-ban. What decks has he been piloting lately, to very good success in the Star City Opens? Dark-Blade. Oh, and what deck has he been using in Legacy? Team America. What do both of those decks have in common? They play Jace.
Coincidence?
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
But, I believe Wizards are afraid to ban a card like Jace. As hypocritical as it may be, they are afraid of what might happen when they lay the ban hammer down on a card so many people had invested into.
Survival was a little different, in that it was in an Eternal Format. Even though Legacy is growing in popularity, it's still not in the same universe in popularity as Standard is. And how many Standard players do you believe have invested in a playset of Jaces?
Wizards has proven time and again that they will ban cards regardless of the 3rd party price tag on those cards. because as many people as they may lose because of their investment they will lose more if players all decide to quit because standard is unfun.
If anything wizards is afraid that due to power creep that as soon as jace is banned some other card will jump to fill the void and require banning as well. (primeval titan, vengevine, tezzeret. koth, Venser, stoneforge mystic to name a few prime candidates) jace just happens to be the top dog by a wide margin.
The evidence speaks for itself: Jace, the Mind Sculptor is dominant in this meta.
We're not getting 4 Valakut lists and 4 blue control. We're not getting 4 RDW and 4 blue control. We're not even getting 4 non-Jace lists of any type and 4 blue control. We're getting 5 to 8 lists with at least 3 Jace in 90% of the top 8's and recently it has been more like 25-28 Jace, the Mind Sculptor in the top 8.
That's a broken meta.
If it was Caw-Blade that was broken we'd be getting 25-28 Stoneforge Mystics in the top 8's and we'd see as much Boros and GW as we do blue blade. We're not. We're seeing a ton of JtMS and then alongside him often Caw-Blade.
I was at Dallas. Jace was everywhere, including my own deck, and I don't believe he should be banned. Why? It takes a lot of skill to play Jace correctly. A correctly played Jace is absolutely the most dominant card standard has seen in a long time. However, Caw Blade players who were blindly brainstorming every turn were sent home early. Skilled players using a card to it's maximum potential should not be punished.
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Yes, it's easier for them to deal with prime time (doom blade) than to know how to fight planeswalkers.
It's not even close, Doom blade doesn't stop those Valakuts from coming into play. It doesn't stop aliens from hitting play, it doesn't stop extremely fast Inferno Titans either. Mid-range decks can beat Jace, not Titans. Try an FNM where it's all Titans and see how healthy that is.
Wizards has proven time and again that they will ban cards regardless of the 3rd party price tag on those cards. because as many people as they may lose because of their investment they will lose more if players all decide to quit because standard is unfun.
If anything wizards is afraid that due to power creep that as soon as jace is banned some other card will jump to fill the void and require banning as well. (primeval titan, vengevine, tezzeret. koth, Venser, stoneforge mystic to name a few prime candidates) jace just happens to be the top dog by a wide margin.
Like said in a post above, it's definitely easier to deal with a Vengevine, Titan, Stoneforge, Squadron Hawk, or any other creature, because there's definitely spot removal in the format right now. Things like Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, Go For The Throat, etc.,
But, I can definitely understand why they would be afraid that another Planeswalker would fill that role quickly. Although, you didn't even name the 2nd most powerful one in the format right now, Gideon. Mr. Jura is also a house in Caw-Blade right now.
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
Like said in a post above, it's definitely easier to deal with a Vengevine, Titan, Stoneforge, Squadron Hawk, or any other creature, because there's definitely spot removal in the format right now. Things like Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, Go For The Throat, etc.,
But, I can definitely understand why they would be afraid that another Planeswalker would fill that role quickly. Although, you didn't even name the 2nd most powerful one in the format right now, Gideon. Mr. Jura is also a house in Caw-Blade right now.
your actually exactly right i missed gideon. who is becoming another major factor in why Jace is such a powerhouse. if you have both on board your opp. is in a bad place.
I have even noticed lately that a properly played gideon is more game changing than a jace. Basically Gideon does for the aggro matchup what jace does for the control matchup. and i could easily see him replacing jace if he were to be banned.
I don't think cards need to be banned right now. (For a format like standard, I think something has to be far more degenerate than Jace to require a ban.)
I think that if you made all the caw blade decks remove Jace, they will still just run Little Jace, or Jace's Ingenuity, or Into the Roil, or something else that makes them all go down in power a notch, but still it's just relative to each other. They still drop swords and hawks and Gideons. They still beat aggro just as well, perhaps better when forced to replace Jace with WoO or something. The Valakut match up probably goes down some.
(I think Gideon might be the card really pushing U/W/x over the top, as he seals so many games when he hits. But would Venser be the same? Day?)
RUG would die, most likely.
So now Valakut is better, and ALSO pounding on aggro, which could just force them out even more, even with some of them having good Control MUs (like Red.)
I don't think Stoneforge being removed solves any problems. It would probably make RUG or U/B get played more, but those are still Jace decks, capable of beating aggro fairly well. And any hope decks like Naya, G/W, or Boros had of reclaiming some of the pie would be gone with Stoneforge, most likely.
Killing Valakut with a banning only lets control force the aggro out more.
I don't think there is a way there is a way to balance things with a single banning right now. And multiple bannings just to neuter every deck that sees play seems a bit silly.
I think the best bet right now is simply accepting that we're in a control meta. I like it. But I get why others don't. (I like any meta other than combo!)
Someone mentioned pithing needle's rotation, but I think a bigger force behind the dominance of Planeswalkers is the Vindicate abilities rotating. No Pulse. No O-ring.
I hope that was coherent. I certainly don't play at anything higher than a store level right now. And I've been giving my Jaces to my brother. Koth eats Jace all day long. (Again, Gideon might be the secret problem with Jace!)
15 out of the top 16 decks played 4 Jace at GP Dallas.
To those that are saying that Jace should not be banned, what more does a card have to do to get banned? Does a card literally have to be in every single deck physically possible before we even bat an eye towards banning the card?
Really, Jace isn't that bad.
Like some mentioned, there are players that just brainstorm and die.
It takes strategy to play correctly a jace.
I have had more troubles with Gideon than Jace.
Infact, it's the Letal combination of Jace-Gideon-SoFaF that scares more.
Bad in the old days Jtms was easily dead by baby jace or Hexmage.
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Its too late to ban jace, the revolt would be mind numbing. And as mentioned, its not even jace being the issue, its a combination of other planeswalkers/commons/mystic, that makes that CA so overwhelming.
Really, Jace isn't that bad.
Like some mentioned, there are players that just brainstorm and die.
It takes strategy to play correctly a jace.
I have had more troubles with Gideon than Jace.
Infact, it's the Letal combination of Jace-Gideon-SoFaF that scares more.
Bad in the old days Jtms was easily dead by baby jace or Hexmage.
There's a misconception on two fronts here: that Jace requires intense skill to play and that, if a card requires skill to play, its power level can be forgiven because it rewards skilled players.
First, it takes intense skill to fully maximize Jace's value. Yes. It rewards the best players more than the good players, etc. for their skill in wielding the card. Yet, let us not act as if casting Jace, grabbing two Brainstorms and dying is somehow 1) not problematic or 2) not creating a great advantage. If someone recklessly Brainstorms and gets two activations before losing Jace, then that player gained two free cards via a Brainstorm effect (more powerful than merely drawing the cards) and either altered his opponent's attack patterns (gaining life by avoiding attacks) or forced the expenditure of a card to kill Jace (generating further card advantage). At which point, Jace reads 2UU: Brainstorm twice, Fog once and/or force target opponent to discard Lightning Bolt.
Pretty powerful, eh? The fact you can badly misplay Jace and still get these sorts of advantages? Come on. Further, any moderately decent player will squeeze a good deal more potential value, and we've seen -- repeatedly -- what the most skilled players can do.
Lastly, if a card requires skill to use, but warps an entire format when skillfully used... how does that possibly matter re: the health of the format? Sure, a mindlessly dominant card is more aggravating, but dominant is dominant.
Last time something like that happened, WotC banned not one, but 6 cards.
Did you play Standard during Mirrodin/Kamigawa? If you did, you would understand why 8 cards had to be banned simultaneously. Granted, Jace is closer to Skullclamp than the nightmare that was Ravager Affinity, so it's more of an apples to oranges comparison.
Did you play Standard during Mirrodin/Kamigawa? If you did, you would understand why 8 cards had to be banned simultaneously. Granted, Jace is closer to Skullclamp than the nightmare that was Ravager Affinity, so it's more of an apples to oranges comparison.
I think that's where we're getting. I think that we're getting closer and closer to the metagame being that of the Mirrodin era, where it was either a) play Affinty, b) play Goblins and probably lose, or c) lose.
And now, we're reaching a metagame that consists of a) play a version of Caw-Blade, b) play RUG and probably lose (unless you're insanely good at the deck), or c) lose.
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
While I definitely agree with the "ban all planeswalkers" sentiment, I'll provide a different viewpoint than other people.
I don't hate Jace2 as much as most, it's Gideon that does it for me. Yeah, Jace makes lots of card advantage and has some very strong powers. But, bolt can kill him, his loyalty starts fairly low, Jace1 gets him, and all in all, if you're an aggro player at least, he's usually off the table within the next turn or two. That is not so warping, not anymore than other "answer me" cards, like Baneslayer used to be. Gideon on the other hand has way too high a loyalty, and is an absolute beast in Caw-Go. Have you ever been attacked by a SoFaF Gideon? Because I have, and it was one of the most single depressing moments of my Magic experience. It just felt so brutal. Gideon is nigh unanswerable unless you have a Hexmage or Revoker.
While I definitely agree with the "ban all planeswalkers" sentiment, I'll provide a different viewpoint than other people.
I don't hate Jace2 as much as most, it's Gideon that does it for me. Yeah, Jace makes lots of card advantage and has some very strong powers. But, bolt can kill him, his loyalty starts fairly low, Jace1 gets him, and all in all, if you're an aggro player at least, he's usually off the table within the next turn or two. That is not so warping, not anymore than other "answer me" cards, like Baneslayer used to be. Gideon on the other hand has way too high a loyalty, and is an absolute beast in Caw-Go. Have you ever been attacked by a SoFaF Gideon? Because I have, and it was one of the most single depressing moments of my Magic experience. It just felt so brutal. Gideon is nigh unanswerable unless you have a Hexmage or Revoker.
I'm even more depressed when I realize that the 8/8 pro black and green Gideon will be reprinted in M12.
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
Banning cards would do absolutely nothing in the current format but worsen it.
Ban SoFaF or Stoneforge, and decks revolving around Jace still take over the format.
You ban Jace, Valakut becomes the best deck again and people start hating Primeval Titan.
Ban Primeval, and Goblin Guide and aggressive decks take over the format.
This Standard format is probably one of the best and most balanced in the last decade. Anyone who played through Standard in any of the last 4 blocks should easily recognize that.
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Magic is a game full of bright people — and all too often bright young men who are used to always being the smartest guy in the room find themselves surrounded by a room full of intelligence and lose their cool.
I'm expecting stoneforge mystic to see a more likely ban hammer than Jace, despite jaces showing. Stoneforges ability to break both standard and extended and hell even legacy at this point shows its strength. with the last sword coming, and caw-blade being what it is. because jace decks weren't nearly as dominant until the swords showed up.
that said, jace is still overpowered, and i could stand to see it gone. it just simple does too many things. no single card should ever be able to, brainstorm, fateseal, unsummon, and then literally read "you win the game" as its last ability. Jace single handedly does what an entire deck is usually devoted to doing.
What I love about these quotes from the Pros:
LSV and Chapin, two of the most respected players in the Magic community, understand, and agree, that Jace should be banned. LSV being one of the most well-known blue players in the history of Magic.
On the other hand, there is GerryT, who is anti-ban. What decks has he been piloting lately, to very good success in the Star City Opens? Dark-Blade. Oh, and what deck has he been using in Legacy? Team America. What do both of those decks have in common? They play Jace.
Coincidence?
Yes, it's easier for them to deal with prime time (doom blade) than to know how to fight planeswalkers.
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Wizards has proven time and again that they will ban cards regardless of the 3rd party price tag on those cards. because as many people as they may lose because of their investment they will lose more if players all decide to quit because standard is unfun.
If anything wizards is afraid that due to power creep that as soon as jace is banned some other card will jump to fill the void and require banning as well. (primeval titan, vengevine, tezzeret. koth, Venser, stoneforge mystic to name a few prime candidates) jace just happens to be the top dog by a wide margin.
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We're not getting 4 Valakut lists and 4 blue control. We're not getting 4 RDW and 4 blue control. We're not even getting 4 non-Jace lists of any type and 4 blue control. We're getting 5 to 8 lists with at least 3 Jace in 90% of the top 8's and recently it has been more like 25-28 Jace, the Mind Sculptor in the top 8.
That's a broken meta.
If it was Caw-Blade that was broken we'd be getting 25-28 Stoneforge Mystics in the top 8's and we'd see as much Boros and GW as we do blue blade. We're not. We're seeing a ton of JtMS and then alongside him often Caw-Blade.
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It's not even close, Doom blade doesn't stop those Valakuts from coming into play. It doesn't stop aliens from hitting play, it doesn't stop extremely fast Inferno Titans either. Mid-range decks can beat Jace, not Titans. Try an FNM where it's all Titans and see how healthy that is.
Like said in a post above, it's definitely easier to deal with a Vengevine, Titan, Stoneforge, Squadron Hawk, or any other creature, because there's definitely spot removal in the format right now. Things like Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, Go For The Throat, etc.,
But, I can definitely understand why they would be afraid that another Planeswalker would fill that role quickly. Although, you didn't even name the 2nd most powerful one in the format right now, Gideon. Mr. Jura is also a house in Caw-Blade right now.
your actually exactly right i missed gideon. who is becoming another major factor in why Jace is such a powerhouse. if you have both on board your opp. is in a bad place.
I have even noticed lately that a properly played gideon is more game changing than a jace. Basically Gideon does for the aggro matchup what jace does for the control matchup. and i could easily see him replacing jace if he were to be banned.
Gfast animals slow shildrenG
51-18-4 (retired as of 6-4-11)
We're like Jace's battered housewife -- in the end you know you're going to go crawling back.
I think that if you made all the caw blade decks remove Jace, they will still just run Little Jace, or Jace's Ingenuity, or Into the Roil, or something else that makes them all go down in power a notch, but still it's just relative to each other. They still drop swords and hawks and Gideons. They still beat aggro just as well, perhaps better when forced to replace Jace with WoO or something. The Valakut match up probably goes down some.
(I think Gideon might be the card really pushing U/W/x over the top, as he seals so many games when he hits. But would Venser be the same? Day?)
RUG would die, most likely.
So now Valakut is better, and ALSO pounding on aggro, which could just force them out even more, even with some of them having good Control MUs (like Red.)
I don't think Stoneforge being removed solves any problems. It would probably make RUG or U/B get played more, but those are still Jace decks, capable of beating aggro fairly well. And any hope decks like Naya, G/W, or Boros had of reclaiming some of the pie would be gone with Stoneforge, most likely.
Killing Valakut with a banning only lets control force the aggro out more.
I don't think there is a way there is a way to balance things with a single banning right now. And multiple bannings just to neuter every deck that sees play seems a bit silly.
I think the best bet right now is simply accepting that we're in a control meta. I like it. But I get why others don't. (I like any meta other than combo!)
Someone mentioned pithing needle's rotation, but I think a bigger force behind the dominance of Planeswalkers is the Vindicate abilities rotating. No Pulse. No O-ring.
I hope that was coherent. I certainly don't play at anything higher than a store level right now. And I've been giving my Jaces to my brother. Koth eats Jace all day long. (Again, Gideon might be the secret problem with Jace!)
To those that are saying that Jace should not be banned, what more does a card have to do to get banned? Does a card literally have to be in every single deck physically possible before we even bat an eye towards banning the card?
Like some mentioned, there are players that just brainstorm and die.
It takes strategy to play correctly a jace.
I have had more troubles with Gideon than Jace.
Infact, it's the Letal combination of Jace-Gideon-SoFaF that scares more.
Bad in the old days Jtms was easily dead by baby jace or Hexmage.
:symw::symb:Steel Wb Weenie
I would LIKE to see Jace 2.0 gone, but it wont suddenly fix the meta game. If anything, we'll see a resurgence of Valakut and RDW.
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Jace lets you Brainstorm at sorcery speed*, as long as he lives.
I think that alone shows the sheer power that Jace has, especially in a format with Fetchlands.
EDIT - * I edited that part in, the unedited version was too confusing.
There's a misconception on two fronts here: that Jace requires intense skill to play and that, if a card requires skill to play, its power level can be forgiven because it rewards skilled players.
First, it takes intense skill to fully maximize Jace's value. Yes. It rewards the best players more than the good players, etc. for their skill in wielding the card. Yet, let us not act as if casting Jace, grabbing two Brainstorms and dying is somehow 1) not problematic or 2) not creating a great advantage. If someone recklessly Brainstorms and gets two activations before losing Jace, then that player gained two free cards via a Brainstorm effect (more powerful than merely drawing the cards) and either altered his opponent's attack patterns (gaining life by avoiding attacks) or forced the expenditure of a card to kill Jace (generating further card advantage). At which point, Jace reads 2UU: Brainstorm twice, Fog once and/or force target opponent to discard Lightning Bolt.
Pretty powerful, eh? The fact you can badly misplay Jace and still get these sorts of advantages? Come on. Further, any moderately decent player will squeeze a good deal more potential value, and we've seen -- repeatedly -- what the most skilled players can do.
Lastly, if a card requires skill to use, but warps an entire format when skillfully used... how does that possibly matter re: the health of the format? Sure, a mindlessly dominant card is more aggravating, but dominant is dominant.
Including Karn.
EDIT: To those who say Jace isn't that bad, learn how to play magic. It's not too late to ban him.
Akuma will wreck you.
Did you play Standard during Mirrodin/Kamigawa? If you did, you would understand why 8 cards had to be banned simultaneously. Granted, Jace is closer to Skullclamp than the nightmare that was Ravager Affinity, so it's more of an apples to oranges comparison.
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I think that's where we're getting. I think that we're getting closer and closer to the metagame being that of the Mirrodin era, where it was either a) play Affinty, b) play Goblins and probably lose, or c) lose.
And now, we're reaching a metagame that consists of a) play a version of Caw-Blade, b) play RUG and probably lose (unless you're insanely good at the deck), or c) lose.
I don't hate Jace2 as much as most, it's Gideon that does it for me. Yeah, Jace makes lots of card advantage and has some very strong powers. But, bolt can kill him, his loyalty starts fairly low, Jace1 gets him, and all in all, if you're an aggro player at least, he's usually off the table within the next turn or two. That is not so warping, not anymore than other "answer me" cards, like Baneslayer used to be. Gideon on the other hand has way too high a loyalty, and is an absolute beast in Caw-Go. Have you ever been attacked by a SoFaF Gideon? Because I have, and it was one of the most single depressing moments of my Magic experience. It just felt so brutal. Gideon is nigh unanswerable unless you have a Hexmage or Revoker.
I'm even more depressed when I realize that the 8/8 pro black and green Gideon will be reprinted in M12.
Ban SoFaF or Stoneforge, and decks revolving around Jace still take over the format.
You ban Jace, Valakut becomes the best deck again and people start hating Primeval Titan.
Ban Primeval, and Goblin Guide and aggressive decks take over the format.
This Standard format is probably one of the best and most balanced in the last decade. Anyone who played through Standard in any of the last 4 blocks should easily recognize that.
that said, jace is still overpowered, and i could stand to see it gone. it just simple does too many things. no single card should ever be able to, brainstorm, fateseal, unsummon, and then literally read "you win the game" as its last ability. Jace single handedly does what an entire deck is usually devoted to doing.
Gfast animals slow shildrenG
51-18-4 (retired as of 6-4-11)