Hey all, was just wondering what your thoughts on Jace, Memory Adept were for the Cube. Obviously his 0 ability to mill for ten is broken in a 40 card limited format such as m12 but is it slow enough for Cube? Even if you only activated his mill ability once that might swing the game. For note, I do play a powered Cube. Was considering cutting him for a bit and see if he'll be missed.
Nothing in this game is degenerate or completely dominant. They haven't banned anything in standard in a long, long time. Hell they should have banned affinity right away, but they didn't until boxed sales collapsed too. Hasbro had to come in and fire people.
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I can't justify playing him. I don't like the idea of a threat that kills the opponent in two turns. Its not a planes walker in the conventional sense. It made lots of people unhappy so I switched it with the moonfolk Walker .
We cut him recently. Not for being too good, not for being too bad, but for being too inconsistent. Sometimes he just wins the game. Other times, he basically does nothing. He won about 2/3s of the games he was cast in. Which is fine for power-level. But all of blue's other finishers have about the same finishing percentage, but for different reasons. If Jace falls short and is killed after 1 or 2 activations, he didn't really do anything for me. But if one of my creature finishers barely falls short of killing them, the next creature can pick up the slack and do it. Jace pulled in a different direction than the rest of the deck. Which is fine if you're okay with that; the tradeoff is well worth it -- it's one of the fastest win-cons in the cube. But it did have that drawback. We ultimately decided to cut it for another archetype supporting planeswalker and let him sit in the Parole Board for a while.
That's why there is cards to deals with planeswalker, creatures to attack them.
At best, it's just a Glimpse of the Unthinkable for 3UU instead of UB.
If you manage to cast and protect your Jace, you deserve to win in 2-3 turns.
If you drafted so badly that you have nothing at all to deal with ennemy planeswalker, you deserve to lose in 2/3 turn.
Plus, you got: Timetwister, Time Spiral, Living Death, Platinum Angel, Scroll Rack ...
And again, antimilling cards exists too ...
There is a lot of cards that are not created to destroy planeswalker that can postpone your defeat against Jace.
The more planeswalkers you have the less chance their is to have the right answer to deal with them. As the number of PWs increase, it gets harder and harder to deal with them.
I'll try to be concise, but I'm a wordy dude uusally.
-If you build a good blue deck and can resolve and protect your 5 drop finisher for 2-3 turns, you deserve to win. Different wincons are vulnerable to different things. Meloku is vulnerable to Terminate, Jace is vulnerable to Keldon Champion. You still have to protect your guy. I'd argue that Jace's single mindedness is both an asset and a virtue. If he gets killed after one two activations, he might have done actually nothing. If Meloku gets killed a turn later, you probably have several 1/1s, and have dealt some damage. So in essence you're trading power level for consistency and synergy with the rest of your deck.
-If you build an aggro deck, and your opponent lands a 5 mana planeswalker and activates it 3 times against you, you deserve to lose that game. This is why I play Oblivion Ring and/or Faith's Fetters in a lot of my aggro decks. Also, since Jace does absolutely nothing to stop you from winning, you should also be able to attack right past him for the win. I mean, he costs 5, and in an unpowered cube that means he's unlikely to come down earlier than turn 4. If he has to activate 3 times to win, then that means you had at least 6 turns (if you're on the play) to deal 20 damage, at least some of it your opponent tapped out to play a 5 mana dude that didn't affect your ability to kill them.
Your aggro decks should be able to play things like Molten Rain, Ankh of Mishra, Winter Orb, Mana Tithe, Smallpox, Thoughtseize, and Oblivion Ring to stop Jace from killing them. There's really no reason to consider him "unfun" or "overpowered", if he's dominating every game he resolves in, your cube simply doesn't have enough answers to powerful cards.
So in essence you're trading power level for consistency and synergy with the rest of your deck.
This says in one sentence what I was trying to convey in that entire paragraph of mine above.
I cut it for another finisher that pulls in the same direction as the rest of my deck. But I certainly don't fault anyone for using it because it's one hell of a powerful card.
Powerful, but fine. I don't use him because I keep a close eye on how many Planeswalkers I'm running, and Jace 2 is good in a variety of decks while protecting himself; and baby Jace is just one of my all-time favorite Planeswalkers, and since it's my cube, I can play pet cards.
Fair points from both sides but I think I'm going to cut him. The more I think about, the more it seems that unless your opponent can deal with him in one turn of theirs it'll most likely wind up winning you the game for 3UU. I don't play any other mill cards and losing because of milling seems like a pretty boring way to win a game in Cube. Haven't put Tamiyo in the Cube yet so that'll probably be a direct swap.
Nothing in this game is degenerate or completely dominant. They haven't banned anything in standard in a long, long time. Hell they should have banned affinity right away, but they didn't until boxed sales collapsed too. Hasbro had to come in and fire people.
I'll enjoy watching all the whiners eat crow monday.
Fair points from both sides but I think I'm going to cut him. The more I think about, the more it seems that unless your opponent can deal with him in one turn of theirs it'll most likely wind up winning you the game for 3UU.
People keep saying stuff like you only get one chance to deal with him, and in my experience this simply is not the case. You start with 33 cards in your deck. If you're playing an aggro or midrange deck, you're hoping to win by turn 7 or 8, maybe turn 9 or 10 in a more midrange version. This means you'll have 25 or 26 cards in your deck at that point in the game. That means Jace has to actually mill you three times to kill you.
If you're playing a control deck, that's a much different situation, but essentially aggro decks get two full turns after jace lands to finish the game. You can either answer Jace by killing him, or just race him. I think people get too worried about being milled and start dumping damage into Jace when they really ought to just kill their opponent.
I don't play any other mill cards and losing because of milling seems like a pretty boring way to win a game in Cube. Haven't put Tamiyo in the Cube yet so that'll probably be a direct swap.
This is totally valid, and if you don't like milling, then it's fine, and I'm not trying to say you can't cut him or anything, I just think people get irrationally upset because they don't evaluate the board state well when Jace hits, and then they whine about how they never had a chance, when they really did, and I'm trying to make sure people are taking everything into account before choosing to cut him.
When he resolves, no matter the deck type playing it, he generally wins you the game, whether it's in a control deck dropping him post Wrath, or a midrange deck dropping it against control.
I love always hearing how "aggro is so good and no matter what u gon die turn 3/4 and LOLZ". No, it doesn't work like that..unless you get a nut aggro deck, you're not killing them before turn 5/6, assuming your opponent is doing absolutely nothing to stop you.
I had a whole group of people we were drafting with who were saying "Skullclamp over Jace, the Mind Sculptor every time, not even close.", as if aggro was that godlike..they got crushed immediately after by, well guess what, a control deck.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
When he resolves, no matter the deck type playing it, he generally wins you the game, whether it's in a control deck dropping him post Wrath, or a midrange deck dropping it against control.
Those are two pretty specific examples though. What about the control deck dropping him T5 against aggro and then the aggro deck follows up with Keldon Champion, Hellrider, Koth, Avalanche Riders, or Hero of Oxid Ridge? What about when the Midrange deck has an Oblivion Ring, Faith's Fetters, or Maelstrom Pulse? People always say he's amazing against control, and he is, when he's in play, but you can't just discount countermagic and only think about when he resolves if you're thinking about the control matchup. Or what about when the control deck has to rush him out against aggro and they have the Mana Tithe?
Every time I hear people say he wins every game he resolves, I just don't understand. Are your aggro and midrange decks built so poorly that they can't beat a 5 mana spell that causes the control deck to tap out and doesn't do anything to stop you from killing them?
I love always hearing how "aggro is so good and no matter what u gon die turn 3/4 and LOLZ". No, it doesn't work like that..unless you get a nut aggro deck, you're not killing them before turn 5/6, assuming your opponent is doing absolutely nothing to stop you.
That's the thing though, Jace gives you two more turns after he lands, so you actualyl get until turn 6 or 7 to kill him. If your aggro decks are killing around turn 5/6, like you say, then that's enough time.
Because it doesn't win every time it resolves, and the times it doesn't win you don't get anything from it. Another finisher might be a turn slower in killing your opponent, but if it fails to win the game for you, any other creature can pick up the slack. That's not the case with Jace. If he doesn't win the game, you're not any closer to winning.
Quote from Spicay »
When he resolves, no matter the deck type playing it, he generally wins you the game, whether it's in a control deck dropping him post Wrath, or a midrange deck dropping it against control.
But what if the game isn't already under your control before you resolve it? What if the board has any competition at all? He can be attacked and killed by a lot of cards around the 5cc range. So unless you're in complete control of the game when it comes down and there's no chance of him being attacked, you can't play it in win-con mode. Any other card that's in the finisher role has value when the board is congested and can give you board dominance simply by the presence it creates. Jace doesn't do this for you.
Quote from Spicay »
I love always hearing how "aggro is so good and no matter what u gon die turn 3/4 and LOLZ". No, it doesn't work like that..unless you get a nut aggro deck, you're not killing them before turn 5/6, assuming your opponent is doing absolutely nothing to stop you.
Well, Jace is an example of a card that doesn't stop them from killing you. It's a zero impact 5cc card. If you play this on T5 against aggro, that gives their deck 2-3 more turns to kill you. And a 6-8 turn kill plan isn't hard for even marginal aggressive decks to accomplish.
Quote from Spicay »
I had a whole group of people we were drafting with who were saying "Skullclamp over Jace, the Mind Sculptor every time, not even close.", as if aggro was that godlike..they got crushed immediately after by, well guess what, a control deck.
Skullclamp is pretty broken. And if aggro decks in your cube group are auto-losing to control... there's a problem with the health of aggro in that cube. Aggro has a favorable matchup against control. The best thing I can hope to see after my T1 Jackal Pup is Island, pass as their T1 play. And likewise, when I'm playing control, the last thing I want to see is a 2-power 1-drop from my opponent.
..........
Jace is good. He's one of the fastest win-cons in the cube. But he also has a narrow window of time to kill in. The board has to be empty or under complete control, and your opponent needs to fail to answer it and fail to rebuild. That's a lot of ifs. Saying "Jace is an auto-win when you're in complete control of the game" isn't saying much at all. Pretty much every win condition is good after a Wrath when your opponent doesn't put more threats to the board. This one just happens to be faster.
I have no doubt that it's an incredibly powerful card. My problem with it is that it's so uninteractive. I don't like cards like that, so I don't include it.
I have no doubt that it's an incredibly powerful card. My problem with it is that it's so uninteractive. I don't like cards like that, so I don't include it.
Planeswalkers, by their very nature, interact with every creature in the cube, and Jace3 doesn't even protect himself. Jace2 or Elspeth are for more "uninteractive" than Jace3 is, in my book. How exactly is "hey, you have to be able to deal 5 damage to me in the next few turns" wildly uninteractive?
It seems to me that there are way more ways to interact with Jace3 than with Sigarda, Host of Herons. Do you run her? How about Sphinx of Jwar Isle? He's pretty hard to interact with. Compared to planeswalkers, I find Jace3 a lot easier to interact with than Karn Liberated. Karn can start out at 10 loyalty, which is pretty difficult for almost anyone to deal with.
every time i win a game with him my opponent usually tilts about how the card is so non-interactive. lolwelcome to cube brah.
it's sweet. put him in for sure.
My players were complaining that the window to cast him was too small, and they preferred other finishers and more interesting effects. lolwelcome to cube brah.
I don't know how anyone can argue that he "does nothing". At worst you can +1 him and draw cards AND force them to answer him, meaning it was at least a 2-for-1, even more if it lives more than 1 turn (assuming you didn't let him to die creature damage, in which case you either beyond all hope as a player, or you were losing the game anyway). If you -0 him and he dies then you played it wrong, simple as that. The card wasn't bad, you played it badly. He wasn't safe and you should have been drawing to search for ways to protect him/to get value if he dies.
People who just run him out and -0 him and then have him die next turn really have no business whatsoever commenting on this card's value. It's like arguing that ancestral recall sometimes does nothing because you run it out into your opponents two untapped islands and they snap counter it.
The card is incredible as a control finisher, meaning that once you have the game under control he wraps it up very quickly. You don't just run him out blind on turn 5 and hope, the same way you wouldn't do that with Morphling.
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I don't know how anyone can argue that he "does nothing". At worst you can +1 him and draw cards AND force them to answer him, meaning it was at least a 2-for-1, even more if it lives more than 1 turn (assuming you didn't let him to die creature damage, in which case you either beyond all hope as a player, or you were losing the game anyway). If you -0 him and he dies then you played it wrong, simple as that. The card wasn't bad, you played it badly. He wasn't safe and you should have been drawing to search for ways to protect him/to get value if he dies.
People who just run him out and -0 him and then have him die next turn really have no business whatsoever commenting on this card's value. It's like arguing that ancestral recall sometimes does nothing because you run it out into your opponents two untapped islands and they snap counter it.
The card is incredible as a control finisher, meaning that once you have the game under control he wraps it up very quickly. You don't just run him out blind on turn 5 and hope, the same way you wouldn't do that with Morphling.
This guy is a scholar.
Anyone who says Jace doesn't do enough because they just run him out there and "durrhurr 0" is doing something wrong, and probably shouldn't be playing him.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
I have other strong milling wincons, but they are all of easier-to-interact-with permanent types. Memory Adept is a card that I don't have in the Cube:Lineage cube because it is too good/obnoxious when it is good.
I do also agree with the critique that when it is bad it is *quite* bad. Another reason why there are better wincons to include in Cube -- not necessarily on power but on interest.
Something that I've found is that these 'single mode' planeswalkers where there is nearly always one correct mode to activate is that they just create boring/repetitive gamestates.
FWIW, Nemesis of Reason is on the watchlist for a similar reason. It is amazingly resilient as well. So far it is alive because it is still easier to interact with and kills one turn slower without trickery -- and because the trickery involved in speeding it up is totally sweet.
I don't know how anyone can argue that he "does nothing".
Sometimes the right play is to try and use him as a win con, immediately {0}-ing him and trying to win as fast as you can. And some times, he doesn't win the game for you, even on this plan. That's a perfect example of when you'd be playing him correctly and he would "do nothing". You don't have to misplay Jace to have him fail.
Quote from Ozryel »
At worst you can +1 him and draw cards AND force them to answer him, meaning it was at least a 2-for-1, even more if it lives more than 1 turn (assuming you didn't let him to die creature damage, in which case you either beyond all hope as a player, or you were losing the game anyway).
If I'm using his +1, I'm not forcing my opponent to answer him. If they're not capable of going into win-con mode with him, I can continue to attack his controller and ignore him, considering that he's not impacting the board at all.
Ya, if he dies you were losing anyways, right? Well what if using another card besides Jace would've put you in a spot where you could first stabilize and then win? Most other finishers aren't nearly as contingent upon the board being perfect before you resolve it. They can do things like block, and protect you/themselves before winning the game for you. It makes the window in which Jace can be a win-con for you more limited than any other finisher in the cube.
Quote from Ozryel »
If you -0 him and he dies then you played it wrong, simple as that. The card wasn't bad, you played it badly. He wasn't safe and you should have been drawing to search for ways to protect him/to get value if he dies.
This is an awful assumption to make. As I illustrated above, you can make the right decisions with him and still have him fail to win the game for you.
And playing it as a Honden of Seeing Winds because the board is so clogged up that you can't go into win-con mode with him is sometimes the right play, but it's not a good one.
Quote from Ozryel »
People who just run him out and -0 him and then have him die next turn really have no business whatsoever commenting on this card's value. It's like arguing that ancestral recall sometimes does nothing because you run it out into your opponents two untapped islands and they snap counter it.
No, it's not like arguing that at all. Saying that the card has limited applications because of a lack of board impact is a completely legitimate criticism.
Quote from Ozryel »
The card is incredible as a control finisher, meaning that once you have the game under control he wraps it up very quickly. You don't just run him out blind on turn 5 and hope, the same way you wouldn't do that with Morphling.
It's a good finisher, sure. But there are legitimate criticisms about the card. Namely, the lack of board impact, the small window in which it can resolve and the opposite direction it pulls from the rest of your finishing suite.
It's a good card, but it's not without flaws. And saying: "If this card doesn't auto-win for you, you're playing it wrong" is a false assumption and is really just being obtuse.
Very good points made on both sides in this thread. FWIW, I like Jace more for the fact that he creates a sub-game - deal with him or lose. In this respect, he works in a different manner to most finishers. He's a faster clock than most, but as everyone has pointed out, he can pull in a different direction from the rest of your deck by running a different kill method, and if disrupted, you may not win that way at all unless you can stall the game. Despite these shortcomings, his record is comfortably good enough for me to consider him my top blue finisher at the moment (FWIW, at 400 cards the second and only other one I run is Keiga).
Ozryel, you are wrong about Jace - it is entirely possible to drop him, play his abilities correctly, and have him meet a sticky end. It's rare, but possible. Even something like a burn spell, kill spell or hasty beater can stick it to whatever you had planned. He's immensely powerful but not watertight.
If the timing is right to play Jace, there's almost no better card available. But if the timing is anything less than perfect, he compares unfavorably to other options.
If the timing is right to play Jace, there's almost no better card available. But if the timing is anything less than perfect, he compares unfavorably to other options.
This is a perfect summary. His disadvantage is that a deck running him has to engineer an advantage before he can be dropped. He doesn't help you stabilise like a 5 drop creature, but gets the job done like no other.
I personally would not play this card if I had a rare cube. There isn't a shortage of blue finishers, and the reason cube is the best format in magic is that it leads to rich, interactive games. This card does absolutely nothing to promote interactivity. Now the same could be said for natural order or tinker, but the fact that these are two card combos you have to draft for is the defining factor for me. The plop jace and mill away games are the types of games I think are largely avoided by cube. So I will avoid them in cube as well.
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The more planeswalkers you have the less chance their is to have the right answer to deal with them. As the number of PWs increase, it gets harder and harder to deal with them.
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-If you build a good blue deck and can resolve and protect your 5 drop finisher for 2-3 turns, you deserve to win. Different wincons are vulnerable to different things. Meloku is vulnerable to Terminate, Jace is vulnerable to Keldon Champion. You still have to protect your guy. I'd argue that Jace's single mindedness is both an asset and a virtue. If he gets killed after one two activations, he might have done actually nothing. If Meloku gets killed a turn later, you probably have several 1/1s, and have dealt some damage. So in essence you're trading power level for consistency and synergy with the rest of your deck.
-If you build an aggro deck, and your opponent lands a 5 mana planeswalker and activates it 3 times against you, you deserve to lose that game. This is why I play Oblivion Ring and/or Faith's Fetters in a lot of my aggro decks. Also, since Jace does absolutely nothing to stop you from winning, you should also be able to attack right past him for the win. I mean, he costs 5, and in an unpowered cube that means he's unlikely to come down earlier than turn 4. If he has to activate 3 times to win, then that means you had at least 6 turns (if you're on the play) to deal 20 damage, at least some of it your opponent tapped out to play a 5 mana dude that didn't affect your ability to kill them.
Your aggro decks should be able to play things like Molten Rain, Ankh of Mishra, Winter Orb, Mana Tithe, Smallpox, Thoughtseize, and Oblivion Ring to stop Jace from killing them. There's really no reason to consider him "unfun" or "overpowered", if he's dominating every game he resolves in, your cube simply doesn't have enough answers to powerful cards.
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This says in one sentence what I was trying to convey in that entire paragraph of mine above.
I cut it for another finisher that pulls in the same direction as the rest of my deck. But I certainly don't fault anyone for using it because it's one hell of a powerful card.
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People keep saying stuff like you only get one chance to deal with him, and in my experience this simply is not the case. You start with 33 cards in your deck. If you're playing an aggro or midrange deck, you're hoping to win by turn 7 or 8, maybe turn 9 or 10 in a more midrange version. This means you'll have 25 or 26 cards in your deck at that point in the game. That means Jace has to actually mill you three times to kill you.
If you're playing a control deck, that's a much different situation, but essentially aggro decks get two full turns after jace lands to finish the game. You can either answer Jace by killing him, or just race him. I think people get too worried about being milled and start dumping damage into Jace when they really ought to just kill their opponent.
This is totally valid, and if you don't like milling, then it's fine, and I'm not trying to say you can't cut him or anything, I just think people get irrationally upset because they don't evaluate the board state well when Jace hits, and then they whine about how they never had a chance, when they really did, and I'm trying to make sure people are taking everything into account before choosing to cut him.
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When he resolves, no matter the deck type playing it, he generally wins you the game, whether it's in a control deck dropping him post Wrath, or a midrange deck dropping it against control.
I love always hearing how "aggro is so good and no matter what u gon die turn 3/4 and LOLZ". No, it doesn't work like that..unless you get a nut aggro deck, you're not killing them before turn 5/6, assuming your opponent is doing absolutely nothing to stop you.
I had a whole group of people we were drafting with who were saying "Skullclamp over Jace, the Mind Sculptor every time, not even close.", as if aggro was that godlike..they got crushed immediately after by, well guess what, a control deck.
Those are two pretty specific examples though. What about the control deck dropping him T5 against aggro and then the aggro deck follows up with Keldon Champion, Hellrider, Koth, Avalanche Riders, or Hero of Oxid Ridge? What about when the Midrange deck has an Oblivion Ring, Faith's Fetters, or Maelstrom Pulse? People always say he's amazing against control, and he is, when he's in play, but you can't just discount countermagic and only think about when he resolves if you're thinking about the control matchup. Or what about when the control deck has to rush him out against aggro and they have the Mana Tithe?
Every time I hear people say he wins every game he resolves, I just don't understand. Are your aggro and midrange decks built so poorly that they can't beat a 5 mana spell that causes the control deck to tap out and doesn't do anything to stop you from killing them?
That's the thing though, Jace gives you two more turns after he lands, so you actualyl get until turn 6 or 7 to kill him. If your aggro decks are killing around turn 5/6, like you say, then that's enough time.
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Because it doesn't win every time it resolves, and the times it doesn't win you don't get anything from it. Another finisher might be a turn slower in killing your opponent, but if it fails to win the game for you, any other creature can pick up the slack. That's not the case with Jace. If he doesn't win the game, you're not any closer to winning.
But what if the game isn't already under your control before you resolve it? What if the board has any competition at all? He can be attacked and killed by a lot of cards around the 5cc range. So unless you're in complete control of the game when it comes down and there's no chance of him being attacked, you can't play it in win-con mode. Any other card that's in the finisher role has value when the board is congested and can give you board dominance simply by the presence it creates. Jace doesn't do this for you.
Well, Jace is an example of a card that doesn't stop them from killing you. It's a zero impact 5cc card. If you play this on T5 against aggro, that gives their deck 2-3 more turns to kill you. And a 6-8 turn kill plan isn't hard for even marginal aggressive decks to accomplish.
Skullclamp is pretty broken. And if aggro decks in your cube group are auto-losing to control... there's a problem with the health of aggro in that cube. Aggro has a favorable matchup against control. The best thing I can hope to see after my T1 Jackal Pup is Island, pass as their T1 play. And likewise, when I'm playing control, the last thing I want to see is a 2-power 1-drop from my opponent.
..........
Jace is good. He's one of the fastest win-cons in the cube. But he also has a narrow window of time to kill in. The board has to be empty or under complete control, and your opponent needs to fail to answer it and fail to rebuild. That's a lot of ifs. Saying "Jace is an auto-win when you're in complete control of the game" isn't saying much at all. Pretty much every win condition is good after a Wrath when your opponent doesn't put more threats to the board. This one just happens to be faster.
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Planeswalkers, by their very nature, interact with every creature in the cube, and Jace3 doesn't even protect himself. Jace2 or Elspeth are for more "uninteractive" than Jace3 is, in my book. How exactly is "hey, you have to be able to deal 5 damage to me in the next few turns" wildly uninteractive?
It seems to me that there are way more ways to interact with Jace3 than with Sigarda, Host of Herons. Do you run her? How about Sphinx of Jwar Isle? He's pretty hard to interact with. Compared to planeswalkers, I find Jace3 a lot easier to interact with than Karn Liberated. Karn can start out at 10 loyalty, which is pretty difficult for almost anyone to deal with.
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it's sweet. put him in for sure.
My players were complaining that the window to cast him was too small, and they preferred other finishers and more interesting effects. lolwelcome to cube brah.
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People who just run him out and -0 him and then have him die next turn really have no business whatsoever commenting on this card's value. It's like arguing that ancestral recall sometimes does nothing because you run it out into your opponents two untapped islands and they snap counter it.
The card is incredible as a control finisher, meaning that once you have the game under control he wraps it up very quickly. You don't just run him out blind on turn 5 and hope, the same way you wouldn't do that with Morphling.
This guy is a scholar.
Anyone who says Jace doesn't do enough because they just run him out there and "durrhurr 0" is doing something wrong, and probably shouldn't be playing him.
I do also agree with the critique that when it is bad it is *quite* bad. Another reason why there are better wincons to include in Cube -- not necessarily on power but on interest.
Something that I've found is that these 'single mode' planeswalkers where there is nearly always one correct mode to activate is that they just create boring/repetitive gamestates.
FWIW, Nemesis of Reason is on the watchlist for a similar reason. It is amazingly resilient as well. So far it is alive because it is still easier to interact with and kills one turn slower without trickery -- and because the trickery involved in speeding it up is totally sweet.
Sometimes the right play is to try and use him as a win con, immediately {0}-ing him and trying to win as fast as you can. And some times, he doesn't win the game for you, even on this plan. That's a perfect example of when you'd be playing him correctly and he would "do nothing". You don't have to misplay Jace to have him fail.
If I'm using his +1, I'm not forcing my opponent to answer him. If they're not capable of going into win-con mode with him, I can continue to attack his controller and ignore him, considering that he's not impacting the board at all.
Ya, if he dies you were losing anyways, right? Well what if using another card besides Jace would've put you in a spot where you could first stabilize and then win? Most other finishers aren't nearly as contingent upon the board being perfect before you resolve it. They can do things like block, and protect you/themselves before winning the game for you. It makes the window in which Jace can be a win-con for you more limited than any other finisher in the cube.
This is an awful assumption to make. As I illustrated above, you can make the right decisions with him and still have him fail to win the game for you.
And playing it as a Honden of Seeing Winds because the board is so clogged up that you can't go into win-con mode with him is sometimes the right play, but it's not a good one.
No, it's not like arguing that at all. Saying that the card has limited applications because of a lack of board impact is a completely legitimate criticism.
It's a good finisher, sure. But there are legitimate criticisms about the card. Namely, the lack of board impact, the small window in which it can resolve and the opposite direction it pulls from the rest of your finishing suite.
It's a good card, but it's not without flaws. And saying: "If this card doesn't auto-win for you, you're playing it wrong" is a false assumption and is really just being obtuse.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Ozryel, you are wrong about Jace - it is entirely possible to drop him, play his abilities correctly, and have him meet a sticky end. It's rare, but possible. Even something like a burn spell, kill spell or hasty beater can stick it to whatever you had planned. He's immensely powerful but not watertight.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
If the timing is right to play Jace, there's almost no better card available. But if the timing is anything less than perfect, he compares unfavorably to other options.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
This is a perfect summary. His disadvantage is that a deck running him has to engineer an advantage before he can be dropped. He doesn't help you stabilise like a 5 drop creature, but gets the job done like no other.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms: