Halimar Depths is more than "Playable". It's an auto-include and a very solid pick, and you pump your fist when you get one in a mid/latepick situation. Becomes an absolute bomb with a card like Living Tsunami or Vapor Snare. Play around with this card a bit and it will make your day so much easier.
But since this card is a land, and you know, kinda need lands to play stuff, it's sort of like playing an Island turn 1, then Ponder. Instead you use this land and get the same effect, sorta. But yeah, it's true that it doesn't shuffle
Ponder is a much better card and does a lot more than you give it credit for. I cannot imagine why you would be looking for reasons to remove Ponder from your decks - I would much rather look for reasons to include Ponder, since that means your deck is a fairly smooth engine that can clinch games and Ponder is a better card that almost any "random" draw in most decks it can be run in.
I like Quicksand in the Baneslayer Junk archtype. Pretty nice when you're doing a fetch sequence with Knight of the Reliquary and finish off by searching up a quicksand and gibbing something.
Think of it as removal that triggers landfall and quicksand starts to look pretty good.
Wonderfully written, as always Dom I too long for the days of Ravnica draft, I'm bored with triple Zendikar already.
That's because Zendikar is so very, very awful to draft Happy to see an article that touches on what a failure it has been. Seeing every game decided by turn three-four and largely determined by who wins the "go first" coinflip is getting really, really old. If you're going second and the opening hand isn't perfect you can basically just prep a scoop.
C'mon, people. Imagine if the original Jace had "0: draw a card." The new one's 0 is strictly (for a loose definition of "strictly") better than that. His +2 is quite nicely playable, particularly later on: you brainstorm, see good stuff, and fateseal for the next couple turns. Or you have a hand, your opponent doesn't, and you use fateseal to help keep it that way. He has all the weaknesses of being a planeswalker, but this is by far the best source of card advantage blue has had for a while. Having 3 abilities you can use off the bat, at least 2 of which will always be relevant, gives an amazing array of options. This guy has utility, and if WW delivers, he's going to back control strategies for a long time to come. I don't foresee myself playing Jace 1.0 in the near future. Can't wait to hear Pat and LSV and the rest comment on him.
You will never fateseal beyond getting him out of bolt range you will never fateseal beyond getting him out of bolt range you will never....
I still don't really see a reason for it, it would be a fun combo but really if you're having luck keeping jace out it won't matter too much what else is being played with him. I'd expect more to see just standard control and manlands.
A friend of mine had a very good point: the new jace let's blue play the bloodbraid elf without cascading into a counter. That sounds pretty relevant (if we somehow overcome the problem of a deck providing RG and UU)
Bloodbraid elf's power isn't letting you cascade into cards that would have been in your hand anyway and it's certainly not something you play with counterspells that you could very rarely and very situationally stack a few cards of your deck to avoid cascading into.
this jace is better then the old hace for jacerator. basically just fog till you get him to ult. then tomescour the rest. or fog till they die. easilly the old jace is worse and will drop in value( which is awesome because i dont have any )
basically what we are looking at here is that UGX(damn, just got reminded of a bad show) would be nice to play, but UGR can bounce a bloodbraid on later turns if you know you dont want the card that is on top cause of your brainstorm last turn
But by brainstorming again, you can once more shuck this card off to a later draw (essentially bypassing it entirely) and seeing 2 completely new cards with which to select your new hand.
It's almost always better to brainstorm barring a few very specific plays, which is why this ability is so amazingly powerful to have going off every turn.
Granted, a BB would also get ride of the card, but paying 4 mana to get rid of a card (and -1 loyalty) versus 0 mana and 0 loyalty to gain the same card advantage replaying BBE would give you (in addition to fixing your next turn again) is still generally a much stronger play.
Has anyone considered the implications of this + Lorescale Coatl? People have always said Brainstorm is a boon for the U/G snake, and that if it was in standard it'd be phenomenal. Now we have the ability to use a pseudo-Brainstorm in standard EVERY TURN. I can see some shenanigans afoot. To the drawing board! Away!
It won't be as good because you can't respond at instant speed by giving the Coatl +3/+3 the way brainstorm could. Yes it would make for a huge beat but right now I think Knight of the Reliquary is better for this since he hits the board as a monster.
It is very relevent. Also in a control deck. *you will have more then one of these* I advocate for playing jace turn four. scry 5 turns and on turn 9 play the ult *leaving jace at 1 or dead based on reactions from opponent* leaving them with at 7 turn time table with no cards in hand. In a control deck that should be game over. I'm going to be playing blue white control using the man lands which will be great cause i don't have to have Baneslayers anymore. *since I sold mine, and they will go down in price anyway*
u/w and u/b control is back and this guys is the head of the deck.
So you seriously believe scrying/praying for the ult is the best use of a card that can let you pick and choose which cards to draw every turn in addition to giving card advantage.
I have myself, and seen others, mill people with Jace in non-FNM tournaments. (I've done it twice in one game FtW... it was a weird game)
-12 is not that hard to get to, it takes 6 turns, which is doable in a control deck, especially if said control deck is fixing its draws every turn.
Now, I'm not saying you would probably not want to just get Jace to 5 and then start brainstorming every turn, because in most cases you would. I am just saying his final ability is QUITE relevant.
I can't imagine a single situation where building up loyalty counters on him would make sense over getting the best possible cards and drawing extra every single turn.
1 could win you the game if everything went perfectly for 6 straight turns AND he doesn't get slowed down or removed.
The other will win you the game after 2-4 turns and in addition to giving you more tools to protect Jace.
Why would you not take the second route? Unless you built a deck with literally no other win conditions which makes no sense in conjunction with a card that lets you sift through your deck for win cons every goddamn turn
The strength of an ultimate means nothing when the loyalty cost is too high and the other abilities too strong. You'll never make it to Jace's ultimate, nor will you want to.
This. Using his +0 ability twice is honestly better than his ultimate in a lot of ways. If you can't win off brainstorming 2 turns in a row for free in Type 2 Im not sure what is in your deck.
This is a great planeswalker but it's going to take more control for him to seriously impact the meta. As people have pointed out the current speed of Jund and other aggro decks have a lot of ways to kill this bastard as a 4play - he's not likely to ever survive turn 4 against jund, for example, regardless of what you had on the board previously.
If much better control mechanics for blue arise, or when Alara phases out of T2, I imagine his power will jump significantly. I can imagine how good he might have been in 5cc for example.
Also, control isn't all too heavy in this meta, and this guy works best in that shell. Bit of fog is all we have, which is actually pretty sad.
While this guy's good, and his ultimate reads "I WIN!", I'm not sure he's actually good enough to warp an aggro-heavy meta. Or rather: I'm sure he won't, on his own.
You're underestimating how good "draw 3, ditch 2" is as a mechanic. Hell, even "draw 1, discard 1" gets crazy after 3-4 repetitions. Doing it just once, say the turn Jace comes into play, is certainly not on par with a brainstorm but is almost an efficient use of 4 mana. Doing it at sorcery speed the next turn, for 0, will be enough to outright win the game in many cases. A well-built deck should be able to flat-out win if this guy ever activates twice - you're essentially drawing 6 cards over 2 turns (and the second turn it's free), which should be an easy GG almost every time (you ditched 4 cards but they were cards you wouldn't have played anyway). Running fetch lands completely mitigates the issue of redrawing cards.
Brainstorm's card advantage is NOT +1. It's +1 net cards but often +2-3 relevant cards, which makes an enormous difference.
You're right, though, he need more control pieces to get off his brainstorm twice
Can someone help me: when I have 1 counter on Pyromancer Ascension, and I cast a spell that would give it the second counter: can i place the pyromancer abilities on the stack in a way that it triggers from that spell, or will I basically have to cast a 3rd spell to set it off?
Vapor Snare is bomby as hell.
Ponder is a much better card and does a lot more than you give it credit for. I cannot imagine why you would be looking for reasons to remove Ponder from your decks - I would much rather look for reasons to include Ponder, since that means your deck is a fairly smooth engine that can clinch games and Ponder is a better card that almost any "random" draw in most decks it can be run in.
Think of it as removal that triggers landfall and quicksand starts to look pretty good.
That's because Zendikar is so very, very awful to draft
You will never fateseal beyond getting him out of bolt range you will never fateseal beyond getting him out of bolt range you will never....
I still don't really see a reason for it, it would be a fun combo but really if you're having luck keeping jace out it won't matter too much what else is being played with him. I'd expect more to see just standard control and manlands.
Bloodbraid elf's power isn't letting you cascade into cards that would have been in your hand anyway and it's certainly not something you play with counterspells that you could very rarely and very situationally stack a few cards of your deck to avoid cascading into.
Doublepost Merged and Warned
They will be used in completely different decks and do completely different things.
no it really isn't better for milling.
But by brainstorming again, you can once more shuck this card off to a later draw (essentially bypassing it entirely) and seeing 2 completely new cards with which to select your new hand.
It's almost always better to brainstorm barring a few very specific plays, which is why this ability is so amazingly powerful to have going off every turn.
Granted, a BB would also get ride of the card, but paying 4 mana to get rid of a card (and -1 loyalty) versus 0 mana and 0 loyalty to gain the same card advantage replaying BBE would give you (in addition to fixing your next turn again) is still generally a much stronger play.
Free brainstorm is nuts
It won't be as good because you can't respond at instant speed by giving the Coatl +3/+3 the way brainstorm could. Yes it would make for a huge beat but right now I think Knight of the Reliquary is better for this since he hits the board as a monster.
So you seriously believe scrying/praying for the ult is the best use of a card that can let you pick and choose which cards to draw every turn in addition to giving card advantage.
Just asking.
I can't imagine a single situation where building up loyalty counters on him would make sense over getting the best possible cards and drawing extra every single turn.
1 could win you the game if everything went perfectly for 6 straight turns AND he doesn't get slowed down or removed.
The other will win you the game after 2-4 turns and in addition to giving you more tools to protect Jace.
Why would you not take the second route? Unless you built a deck with literally no other win conditions which makes no sense in conjunction with a card that lets you sift through your deck for win cons every goddamn turn
This. Using his +0 ability twice is honestly better than his ultimate in a lot of ways. If you can't win off brainstorming 2 turns in a row for free in Type 2 Im not sure what is in your deck.
If much better control mechanics for blue arise, or when Alara phases out of T2, I imagine his power will jump significantly. I can imagine how good he might have been in 5cc for example.
You're underestimating how good "draw 3, ditch 2" is as a mechanic. Hell, even "draw 1, discard 1" gets crazy after 3-4 repetitions. Doing it just once, say the turn Jace comes into play, is certainly not on par with a brainstorm but is almost an efficient use of 4 mana. Doing it at sorcery speed the next turn, for 0, will be enough to outright win the game in many cases. A well-built deck should be able to flat-out win if this guy ever activates twice - you're essentially drawing 6 cards over 2 turns (and the second turn it's free), which should be an easy GG almost every time (you ditched 4 cards but they were cards you wouldn't have played anyway). Running fetch lands completely mitigates the issue of redrawing cards.
Brainstorm's card advantage is NOT +1. It's +1 net cards but often +2-3 relevant cards, which makes an enormous difference.
You're right, though, he need more control pieces to get off his brainstorm twice
Thanks!