Pojo's Magic The Gathering news, tips, strategies and more!

Pojo's MTG
MTG Home
Message Board
News & Archives
Deck Garage
BMoor Dolf BeJoSe

Columnists
Paul's Perspective
Jeff Zandi
DeQuan Watson
Jordon Kronick
IQ
Aburame Shino
Rare Hunter
Tim Stoltzfus
WiCkEd
Judge Bill's Corner


Trading Card
Game

Card of the Day
Guide for Newbies
Decks to Beat
Featured Articles
Peasant Magic
Fan Tips
Tourney Reports


Other
Color Chart
Book Reviews
Online Play
MTG Links
Staff



This Space
For Rent

Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Jace, the Living Guildpact
Image from Wizards.com

Jace, the Living Guildpact
- M15

Reviewed Aug. 26, 2014

Constructed: 3.13
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 3.62
Multiplayer: 3.40

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale:
1 - Horrible  3 - Average.  5 - Awesome

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Deck Garage

Jace, the Living Guildpact|

All planeswalkers are good to a degree, but I'm not sold on this version of Jace. He starts out with a solid loyalty bank, and his +1 is decent card filtering to ensure you don't draw dead wood. His second ability is re-usable bounce, which can get VERY annoying, but (un)fortunately it can't be re-used very often. Still, it's as close to a universal answer to permanents as monoblue can reasonably ask for.

The Ultimate intrigues me. At face value, it's pretty good. Everybody loses their hand and graveyard, then you get a fresh hand of seven while everybody else is stuck in topdecking mode. It gets a little more intriguing when you remember that Jace's +1 puts cards into your own graveyard, then his Ultimate shuffles them back in. It gets downright ironic when you remember how previous incarnations of Jace were all about milling opponents, and now this one's Ultimate undoes any progress a previous Jace might have made. All in all, this is decent in a control deck as a means of filtering draws, getting threats off the table, and then locking down your opponents, but he needs to be protected more than most other 'walkers, and it's hard not to look at any Jace that isn't Mind Sculptor and not be a little disappointed.

Constructed- 3
Casual- 3.5
Limited- 4.5
Multiplayer- 4


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Jace, the Living Guildpact

I've misread quite a few cards recently - Spirit Bonds confused me for a while, for example. I also thought that Jace here let you put one of the cards you looked at into your hand. I'm going to have to start trying to fall back on the fact that English is a difficult language soon! As actually written, though, this may be one of the weaker versions of Jace so far, but he's still not bad as such. There are plenty of strategies that don't mind sending cards directly to the graveyard (Burning Vengeance, Unburial Rites, Spellheart Chimera, etc), and even if you're not one of those decks, you can get rid of cards you don't need for zero mana as you need to. His -3 is clearly valuable; his ultimate is one of the only ones that doesn't really win the game for you, but resetting your hand and putting your graveyard back into your library is still a major advantage. Suppose you're a control deck that plays lots of kill spells and other answer cards. Maybe your opponent can outlast them all once. Can they do so twice? Few decks can.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Jace, the Living Guildpact which is a four mana Blue planeswalker with five loyalty.  The +1 has you look at the top two cards of your library and put one in the graveyard which is very situational, particularly in a half Blue deck and is nowhere near as compelling as some of the other Jace cards.  The -3 returns a target non-land permanent to the owner's hand which is a decent effect, but at
-3 is quite a bit of loyalty which is compounded by the weak +1.  The -8 has every player shuffle their hand and graveyard into their library then you draw seven cards which is a solid effect for drawing cards, though the shuffle aspect is also situational and if the opponent has few cards in hand that side of it is not overly beneficial.  Overall this is a very weak Jace and worse is just not that interesting to be design around as at best it is a fourth turn draw seven cards and pseudo-Scry three times, so it is unlikely to see much play in any format.
 
In Limited this is either two Unsummon uses over three turns or a four turn draw seven cards which is decent if he can be kept in play and building loyalty.  It is a planeswalker and a solid rare draft, so it isn't a bad move to select it first in Booster.  The benefit in the game is often going to be subdued with Scry-like uses and bounce or some card draw, so it is only worth using in the deck if later Blue choices are strong.  In Sealed it should not be forced into a build and again is best used alongside an already playable Blue pool.
 
Constructed: 3.0
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 3.0

Mattedesa

Deck Garage

Jace, the Living Guildpact

It's hard to look at a new version of a planeswalker without comparing it to the previous versions. If we were to do compare this Jace with his predecessors, he clearly comes out lacking. I think that's why so many people have been down on him. But, how good is he really, when we look at him completely on his own?

His +1 lets you look at the top 2 of your library and put one in the graveyard. This is very similar to scrying, except that you don't have a choice to keep them both or scry them both away. Still, deciding which of the next two cards you get is helpful. Putting something into the graveyard could be helpful, but blue is not the best color for graveyard tricks, and his 2 blue in the cost mean it's probably going to be the primary color in your deck.

For -3, bouncing another nonland permanent certainly has its uses. It will temporarily deal with a creature, enchantment, artifact, or another planeswalker. Unlike the +1, this effect DOES work well with the other blue abilities, as the blue mage can counter the permanent card as the opponent tries to recast it. Another use for this ability is to bounce one of your own permanents before you cast a board sweeper like Supreme Verdict.

The ultimate, as expected, gives you a huge advantage. To rid the opponent of their hand and give yourself a hand of seven cards, unless you're in terrible board position (which you probably aren't if Jace was allowed to build up to ultimate) should usually be enough to give you the game. But we know better than to rate planeswalkers by their ultimates, don't we?

Overall, these are some solid abilities, and the starting 5 loyalty makes him a little harder to kill. While Planeswalkers change the game just by being on the board, I don't see anything about this Jace that seems over the top in a way to make him a huge factor in constructed decks.

Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 3.5


Copyright© 1998-2014 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.