MTG Salvation

Yeah Obsession could be OK, but I think the opportunity cost of running it doesn't merit the upside of having it in the deck. CA isn't a priority for us except against grindy match-ups where Obsession is not at its best.

Evaluating Jace CC doesn't reduce down to "looting engine". He can offer immediate impact if needed by producing the token, with the promise of future looting, another token, or simply damage prevention for a turn (by being swung at instead of you). He can also put immediate pressure on your opponent by going to 4 loyalty and threatening an ultimate. He can take take over the board if left unchecked. None of the other suggestions are able to do all that. They are good at filtering but that doesn't fill the same role as Jace. I think an evaluation based purely on looting ability is an oversimplification of the card's value. Versatility is extremely potent in Magic, which is why Kolaghan's Command is a premier card and Blightning isn't. Having said that I'm still on the fence about Jace and want to play some games when I can to see how he goes.

Beleren is a pretty decent card, and is surely better than Chart, which I think is poor for reasons I already mentioned. You can be happy to plus him in most circumstances, as it's actually card parity. There are decks that run Howling Mine and Temple Bell which are far worse. And then for the next four turns (even 5 if you're happy for him to die) he draws you a card every turn. If you don't mind plusing him every now and then he draws you cards indefinitely. My suggestion was to board him in against control so protecting him shouldn't be necessary, and even if you do have to he is likely going to be providing you with creatures and cards to do so. I wouldn't want him main board but if the meta was very control oriented and that was a problem I'd definitely consider him.

Sadly the meta is actually very aggro oriented which is bad for us as we are in the "aggro-control" position on the metagame clock. Which brings me to my next topic of discussion! Amicdeep said:

I think you missed one on the smugglers scooter front, as this is a tribal deck and the creature type matters it doesn't just provide haste and pump, it also essential provides totem armour, as people will always want to remove the scooter first and they don't bother with the fairy (making spellskutter sprite and mistbind more consistent and less delecate)
Lastly it survives boardwipes which are common in w/X control decks meaning if they don't remove it we really do get some explosive turns were our opponent is tapped out.

I actually think this is pretty good thinking. It is worth noting that it's not quite totem armour though because your opponent does get to choose. I've been thinking of how to try to survive against the aggro decks. Because it's a turn four format I want to my board options to come in on turn three. I thought of lots of different options which were all not quite there. There wasn't any good mass bounce, and anyway a lot of the aggro decks will be able to cast their hands again the next turn so you've bought yourself at best one turn cycle most of the time. Stuff like Ensnaring Bridge doesn't help us and sadly Propaganda isn't legal in modern. So I decided the best thing to do was to find a creature that would blank our opponent's creatures by out sizing them, generating tempo advantage this way. After a lot of searching I ended up with Aethersphere Harvester which I saw Saffron Olive playing in budget magic.

Aethersphere Harvester has a decent number of benefits. It cost three, so it comes down on turn three. The aggro decks of the meta have little removal making the issue of being two-for-oned negligible. It gains life which is handy when you're trying to stay alive long enough to deal lethal yourself. It's a good offensive and defensive card. It has 5 toughness which is good against Hollow One, and it beats Mantis Rider. It has cool synergies with bounce (you get the energy counters so you can get maximum lifelink), Pestermite and manlands. It also has all of the benefits that Amicdeep said that Copter had. I've been goldfishing it and it's been really good. I'm going to take it for a spin on Cockatrice soon


You're right about Snapcaster, you'd probably need to build the deck around him if you ran him. Obstructionist seems like a solid choice.

Wow, that was a quick response! Thanks for your thoughts. I have a few responses BTW I'm FlabcasterMage, after the Twitch merger thing I didn't get to keep my name

I still think that Smuggler's Copter does pretty much the same job as Jace but better being 1-cmc less and increasing the clock.

I think that they fill almost opposite roles. As I said I think Jace "the Body Sculptor" is a good matchup against grindy decks, which typically are removal heavy (Grixis, Jund and Mardu come to mind). The Looter Scooter is terrible against these matchups for two reasons. It eats every piece of removal in Modern (just about). More importantly, it really only serves as 0.5 permanents due to it needing to be activated, so it's easier to turn the scooter off simply by killing its driver. Jace on the other hand is only outright killed by Maelstrom Pulse, Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore. If they trade Maelstrom for Jace and you get a bear out if it you win. Abrupt sucks but it's usually only a two-of and it kills Scooter just as well as it does Jace. Dreadbore is usually only a one or two-of in Mardu. Jace can dodge burn the same way the Lilianas do by ticking up straight after coming into play. If they waste two burn spells on it then that's profit.

Given the Scooter's fragility and the potential to lose tempo by being driverless I think it needs to be a pretty strong clock to be worth running. Brendaxmodern made a good point when he said:

the reason scooter was so powerful in standard was it gave any 1/1 haste and flying, effectively. We don't need the flying and as we cast most creatures on the opponent's turn we don't need the haste.

This means that the best the scooter does is essentially give a creature +2/+2 and a loot trigger (the exception being Miscreant which also gets haste). Half of our creatures are 2 or more power which reduces this benefit even more. Jace also adds two power and toughness to the board, but does so unconditionally and is guaranteed card advantage to boot. The Looter Scooter is cheaper and has a better loot trigger but outside of this lacks sufficient merit. Jace for mine has a lot more potential upside than the Scooter.

Of course it's not fair to simply gloss over the fact that looter is cheaper than Jace. I am hesitant to tap out on turn three for him and that's why I'm testing rather than definitely running him. Having said that tapping out turn two is significant as well; it's the turn I want to be casting Remand, Leak or SSS. Turn three is certainly going to see more powerful cards cast and thus tapping out is potentially more dangerous, so often I think I'd be holding onto Jace until later turns. I think Jace is a good enough card to impact the late game so this isn't necessarily an issue, especially as I'm most likely boarding two copies of him in for two copies of Mistbind Clique (who's weak against removal heavy decks) so he's substituting for a card which isn't a turn three play anyway. This brings me to another reason why I think Jace is superior to Scooter - he's a much better top deck peel. In top deck mode you really don't want to be peeling Scooter most of the time. Mutavault makes Scooter better here but even so Jace has more of a chance of taking over the game on his own.

The Scooter is good against decks that lack interaction, but I think most of these are decks that are fast enough that they don't care about the Scooter as a clock. In such matchups I wouldn't be running Jace either though.

Another card I'd prefer to Jace for card advantage purposes is Chart a Course which either replaces itself or puts you up a card.

Chart doesn't impact the board, so it's almost always tempo negative which is very bad. Furthermore it is conditional - at best a cheap Divination, at worst a two mana sorcery speed cantrip. Straight up CA is control's game and is too slow for us. I really don't rate it (although I've never tested it to be fair).

Maybe with an extra land Big-Jace can be a viable option, at least it isn't lacking in power.

As I said before I think being a tempo deck Jace doesn't have to be a bomb to be a valuable addition. If you look at the deck there are very few cards that are bombs, but nearly the entire deck runs tempo positive cards. Running 24 lands would push the chance of hitting your fourth land on turn 4 to 63%, which is still a little low. Despite this I think running JTMS is not a bad idea because he's unlikely to be your turn four play anyway. He's not at his best in this shell due to the lack of fetchlands but is still no doubt a beast. I'm not tempted by him due to the fact I can buy 33 Jace the Body Sculptors for one JTMS, and because he changes the focus of the deck somewhat which detracts from my attraction to mono blue faeries in the first place. Not a bad choice though for sure.

Another card I am tempted by is Jace Beleren, who is both affordable in money and mana and is a genuine CA engine. I think he would be sweeeeeet against UWx control as well as handy in grindy games. He does lack a little as he can't protect himself and isn't a clock, so although he's surely a stronger choice against pure control than Jace the Body he's a little less versatile and isn't helping the tempo plan.

As regards your other ideas I think Retort is an interesting choice, although I think you'd really want to run four Snapcasters. Mistbind is a wizard but is a little expensive as an enabler for retort. Overall definitely worth a test and I'm interested to hear your experience with it.

I'm a little more wary of Curious obsession though - it really runs the risk of card disadvantage for no gain. Being an aura in a deck full of unprotected creatures makes it a liability, it's a nonbo with Scion, Quickling and even Mistbind and if you have to hold back blockers it is sacrificed. Having said that as long as you connect with it once it at least replaces itself. I'm glad you mentioned favorable Winds though, I've been wracking my brains for a solution to Lingering Souls and I reckon this is about the best.

Happy testing, and may you always go 4-0

Howdy, it's been a while.


So I've decided to have a play around with the widely derided Jace, Cunning Castaway. I think folks are largely correct that he sucks because they are judging him as a control PW - by his capacity to be a game winning bomb and control the board. He isn't super great at that and so he's less than $5.


I think that might be good news for us. Because of the nature of our deck we don't need any particular card to win the game for us. All they really have to do is be tempo positive. Typically this is by having an immediate impact on the board. We also need our spells to be fairly cheap because we run reasonably light on lands. My 23 land deck only has a 58% chance of hitting its fourth land on turn four and that's not considering that it has two tapped lands. I'm guessing you're about the same in whatever build you have.

This means we need most of our spells to be 3 cmc or less. 3 cmc walkers tend to be pretty good, Jace being the exception because he needs a specific shell. I reckon our deck might just be that shell. I'll go through his abilities and tell you why.

+1: This ability is admittedly weak. It requires a deck with lots of cheap evasive creatures to work well. That's us. Being a tempo deck we care less about card advantage than we do about card quality - we need the right card at the right time because we run very few hard answers. Because his ultimate is very attainable +1ing him is a pressure play - it forces our opponent to try to do something about it immediately. Having our opponent focus on Jace helps buy us the time we need to win the race to 0 life. It can be a liability against Tarmogoyf but in that case you can +1 him in your second main phase and not loot while still getting closer to the ult. If you're super clever you can discard cards with types already in the bin and keep Goyf the same while digging for that Relic of Progenitus. Liliana, the Last Hope often just +1s with no weenies on the board to kill just to hit her ult and she's a house.

-2: Most of our creatures are abilities stapled to weak creatures. In a sense Jace can be considered the same. We are guaranteed to get a 2/2 out of him, and a PW to boot. Sometimes the PW will be killed and so instead we get either a spell out of our opponent's hand or a creature that's swinging at Jace and not us. That's tempo. This is his floor and it's not dissimilar to the spells that we already run, except that it isn't at instant speed, which is probably the biggest thing going against him.

Also the token's triggered ability isn't really bad. It is ONLY spell (not ability), so they have to spend a card to kill it which I'm most happy for them to do. In fact in some ways it's better than a vanilla bear, because the trigger resolves before the spell that triggered it, meaning that the spell gets countered. In other words if they target the token with Lightning Helix they won't get three life because the token is already sacrificed when the spell tries to resolve. Also most of our creatures only have one toughness so by our standards the token has a big butt.

-5: This is a pretty attainable ultimate which is great. It's not hugely powerful but certainly has the capacity to take over games. Getting it off guarantees four permanents - 2 jace tokens that you -2 for two bears. That's not bad. With the number of creatures we run and manlands (if you run them) you can really turn the corner in a grind. Having the benefit spread over so many permanents is excellent against removal heavy decks.

This Jace works pretty well in our curve too. Turn one we usually drop Miscreant, Conclave or perhaps bounce a dork. Turn two is almost always Remand or Mana Leak. Turn three is Jace, and they likely haven't got much on the board (with a few exceptions obviously) so Jace hits a board with no immediate threat. +1 him and all of a sudden your opponent has a problem. If they do have threats then you can -2 him, let them swing and soak up damage. Drawing him late game doesn't feel bad because you can work to take over the board with his ult.

So overall I think he's a pretty solid card for our deck. I think he's especially solid in grindy matchups, and possibly even against control. I'm goldfishing him at the moment and it's pretty good, so soon I'll take him for a spin and see how he does in the heat of battle. Let me know what you guys think!