Ah, Jace 4.0 has arrived. I think Jace is
quickly becoming Magic: the Gathering's mascot.
Is any other 'walker up to four versions yet?
Liliana and Chandra have three that I know of...
So Jace comes down on turn four, with four
loyalty, and has a +1 to put him at five by the
time your opponent can start chiseling him down.
That's not bad. Especially since his +1 ability
hampers your opponents' ability to chisel him
down, or you, or your creatures, or each other,
for that matter. He makes a swarm of 1/1 tokens
cry in frustration, and Selesnya's populate
mechanic sure looks like it could build up a
swarm of tokens that you'll have to deal with
before Standard rotates again.
His second ability, which his starting loyalty
allows him to use twice, is a mini Fact or
Fiction. Three cards is a lot worse than five,
though. Your opponent will almost always put the
card he's most afraid of alone and the other two
in the other pile. But you get to choose which
pile, and it's a repeatable effect (until Jace
dies) so it's a solid card advantage engine.
However, if you're willing to spam his +1 and
effectively turtle until you get his ultimate
off, you get to steal the best spell out of each
player's deck for free. This is most useful in
multiplayer EDH, where you've got multiple
opponents to steal spells from, everybody's
packing Timmy cards, and exiling a card means
your opponent has no other copies to hit you
with. In a tournament 60-card duel, you're much
less likely to get something that justifies all
those turns of -1/-0 when you could have been
Fact or Fictioning.
If I may go off on a tangent for a minute, I'd
like to point out that Jace's second ability
exemplifies everything that's wrong with current
Magic design. If it even rhymes with "draw a
card," it has to be in blue and in nothing else.
Did you know that Fact or Fiction is restricted
in Vintage? Did you know that there are ways to
use even a "mini" Fact or Fiction to stack your
library and mitigate the "disadvantage" of
having things on the bottom of your library
instead of in your hand or graveyard? Did you
ever doubt that this card was going to be good?
It's a Jace, for heaven's sake.
Today's card of the day is Jace, Architect of
Thought which is a four mana Blue with four
loyalty and three effects. The +1 is
mainly notable for requiring a single creature
with at least six power or two creatures with a
total of seven to actually destroy him without
blockers. That provides a solid stalling
mechanism to build up to the ultimate and is
very effective against swarm designs. The
second ability is decent to get one or two
additional cards and just using that twice is
worth the four mana alone. The ultimate
can be impressive, far more so in Multiplayer,
and can be devastating with some in deck support
and if an opponent has a particularly timely
card available. Overall this isn't the
most powerful Jace, but it has three useful
effects and will see play in some Blue decks and
possibly combo builds as the ultimate's full
potential is explored.
For Limited this is a planeswalker that can be
extremely difficult to deal with by using the
first ability repeatedly and finishing with the
ultimate. The second can get some card
advantage, but using it over the other effects
needs to be a carefully considered option as the
stall into ultimate method has multiple benefits
including seeing their deck.
Like nearly any planeswalker this is an easy
first pick in Booster and automatic inclusion in
a Blue guild Sealed, though the double blue
makes it difficult to try splashing in other
guilds.
Welcome back to the card of
the day section here at Pojo.com! Today we are
looking at Jace, Architect of Thought from
Return to Ravnica. Jace, Architect of Thought is
a mythic rare planeswalker Jace that costs two
generic and two blue mana. Jace enters the
battlefield with four loyalty counters. His
first ability is a plus one loyalty that says
until your next turn, whenever a creature your
opponents control attacks, it gets -1/-0 until
end of turn. Jace's second ability is a minus
two, and says reveal the top three cards of your
library. And opponent separates them into two
piles. Put one pile into your hand, the other on
the bottom of your library in any order. Jace's
final is a minus eight loyalty, and says: For
each player, search that player's library for a
nonland card and exile it, then that player
shuffles his or her library. You may cast those
cards without paying their mana costs.
Jace is back and broken as ever. I really wish Wizards would
kill Jace off or something. Or at the very least
stop making him their poster child. There are
other Planeswalkers too! But, anyways, Jace,
Architect of Thought is brought to us now in
Ravnica. And his abilities scream "Play me!" The
first ability is very nice, especially if you
are facing an opponent running a swarm of 1
powered creatures. Mix in the other minus to
power cards blue has lately, and you could well
just ride a wave of no damage to victory. But I
think it is really Jace's second ability that
gets the most attention. Card advantage has
always been big when playing Magic. And while
your opponent may see what's coming, the
question always is, can they stop it?
Almost every Planeswalker gets some super crazy final
ability, because should you be able to get it
off, it should be a game ender, or bring the
game at the very least into your favor. Jace,
Architect of Thought is definitely all about
that. Grab the best card from everybody,
including your own, deck. Absolutely. I know
many people use Jace's final to grab Omniscience
from their own deck, and then the best things
they can utilize from everyone elses. When you
combine the final of Jace, Architect of Thought
with Tamiyo, Moon Sage, you may as well tell
your opponent to scoop.
