When I read the opening few lines I very nearly changed my view of Mike. He started by saying, effectively, what does it say of an environment where every single one of the top eight decks runs four Jace? My eyes widened, not anticipating a Jace rant, but at the very least saying that-which-needs-to-be-said.
Unfortunately he then went on to do his usual apologist article.
I mean, really, when you say things like "Put another way, shouldn't there be lines and lines of players in the streets, holding up signs to "Ban Preordain !"?" you are either setting up a strawman argument or you really do spectacularly miss the point. I don't have to build my deck to deal my opponent's preordains. I don't have to build my deck to force the inclusion of preordain because not running it is like an athlete not taking steroids if they were all of a sudden legal. I don't sit down to games thinking it will be a race to cast the first preordain. I don't come away from games thinking that preordain won the game all-by-itself. The opposite is true of Jace. It is not the frequency of the card that grates, it is that the card dominates the environment. This would be true even if 'only' seven decks were running jace, or if those players were 'only' running three copies.
The salt-in-the-wound is that the negative reaction to Jace 2.0 started when it was first spoiled at the beginning of 2010. Even back then, people were moaning that every single blue mage would have to run this in multiples. Now we have a situation where not only does every blue mage have to run four copies, but every player has to be a blue mage. For Mike to run an article along the lines of "who knew this would happen?" is rather insulting. The answer seems to be "everyone except you". To have a $100 card in the environment (well, $125 at www.magicmadhouse.co.uk/magic-the-gather...) tells you all you need to know.
The leaden chains of Jace weigh heavily upon my deck construction decisions. Allow me to breathe again!
This is exactly how I feel. I have plenty of fun (yeah, subjective) deck ideas that simply come crashing down just because of this one card. Defining the format blah blah...
On the other hand many decks that I've thought about building would simply be so much better with four Jaces in them. But I've made a conscious decision to rather buy 10 full tanks of gasoline for my car than buy four pieces of cardboard. (and gasoline is quite expensive where I live in)
What a sad, sad article from Mike. And I usually like reading his articles
I know I'm off my usual Stomping Ground s here so I won't say too much, but permit me to venture one quick theory:
Put another way, shouldn't there be lines and lines of players in the streets, holding up signs to "Ban Preordain!"?
No, because Preordain is a common. There's nothing wrong with every deck running a utility common; at worst the card might be a dollar or two. There is very much something wrong with the fact that playsets of the other absolute must-play card costs about as much as most people's first car.
I'm just glad that our first NPH preview card exists primarily to destroy the hooded ponce; I think that fact is exactly why they showed it to us this week. "Look, fans, your long and harrowing journey through the blue land of Mordor is almost over!"
I'm sure I'm not the only one crossing my fingers and hoping that they'll be very careful about this sort of thing for a long time.
As far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing. --Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
I've been a defender of Jace for a while. I've thought the domination of the format by mythics was bad in the long-term, and Jace was one of those mythics, but it really was no worse than Lotus Cobra , Elspeth, Knight Errant , or Vengevine . I've always found it to be VERY powerful, but not totally dominating. It did roughly separate the format into Jace and anti-Jace at times, but the anti-Jace decks weren't like Spree of Hate (See this article for an explanation of Spree of Hate: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/fk28b). They were decks like Jund, which was format dominating before Jace came around. That I'm fine with, because I'm not going out of my way because of Jace. I can hate on it without drastically changing my card choices. But this is absurd. 32 copies of Jace in a single top 8. "But Phantom," you say, "What about Preordain ?" Well, I'm not sculpting my decks to beat Preordain . In Black Knights, Black Knight is better in a vacuum than Vampire Hexmage , but I've cut out the namesake card from the deck to replace with maindeck Vampire Hexmage , because Vampire Hexmage is among the only cards in the game that can always, always ALWAYS kill Jace, the Mind Sculptor . The card is dominating the format, to an extent that it never was before. The reason, I think, is threefold. First, The overall card power in the format has dropped. Alara Block, because of the more difficult mana costs, could afford to provide more card power. Additionally, it had Cascade Cards, which, as everyone knows, is completely Broken. This held Jace in Check. Second, the mana fixing has dropped in quantity but risen in quality, which leads to a net benefit for mana bases. We've lost the tri-lands, and had them replaced by the SoM block lands, which I don't have a nickname for. This means more decks can play Jace, and get it down on the fourth or even the third turn reliably. The third reason is one card: Oblivion Ring . It was everything Vampire Hexmage ISN'T, a reliable spell to kill Planeswalkers, that's very easily splashable and kills them permanently (usually). Now, people apparently have called Into the Roil the top Blue Instant (which, as we all know, means the top Instant) in Standard, because it resets a Planeswalkers Loyalty and delays it by 1 turn. There's no good answer to Jace in the Format, so the Format is stagnating under his power. Even under Affinity, We had Oxidise, Viridian Shaman, and all kinds of other removal for it. Now, Jace has become even more dominating than Affinity was. Last week started me thinking about this, and I began to do some testing of several different decks, which normally would never see each other. I got the following results: Faeries, when it had access to Time Spiral and Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Blocks, beat Caw-Blade in 4 out of 10 matches, for a 40% win percentage. Jund, when it had access to Alara and Zendikar blocks, beat Caw-Blade in 2 out of 10 matches, for a 20% win percentage. I then went further afield: Rubin Zoo in extended (the old extended) from right after the release of Zendikar beat Caw-Blade in 5 out of 10 matches, for a 50% win percentage. Zvi Mowshowitz's "My Fires" deck from Invasion-era standard beat Caw-Blade in 0 matches, for a 0% win percentage. Affinity beat Cawblade in 5 out of 10 matches, for a 50% win percentage. And, scariest of all, Affinity WITH SKULLCLAMP beat Cawblade in 7 out of 10 matches, for a 70% win percentage. Yes. in 3 full games, (3 matches each), a Cawblade deck without and anti-affinity sideboard beat an Affinity deck with a playset of Skullclamp . The reason? Jace could hate out Affinity, by bouncing Arcbound Creatures, including Arcbound Ravager , to generate card advantage, and blocked whatever had Cranial Plating with Squadron Hawk s. Once it got Sword of Feast and Famine , Affinity just couldn't keep up, especially because Jace's bouncing creatures equipped with Skullclamp didn't trigger Skullclamp 's card draw trigger. It could save the counters for Shrapnel Blast, making Mana Leak s double as Stone Rain s, and managed to pull off wins in game 1 reliably. Affinity generally won after Sideboard, but sometimes Caw-Blade would get a second win. This is ridiculous. Decks with Jace are beating Decks with Skullclamp. How do you explain these numbers, mr. Flores? I've defended Jace for over a year now, and I think that he's too strong and too dominating now. In any case, I offer up these numbers to everyone else out there, as a demonstration of just how powerful Cawblade is. Next week, I'm planning on having numbers for Trix, Legacy Fish, G/U madness, Psychatog, Mirari's Wake, Ichorid and Bridge Dredge, and a few others.
The format, at the highest levels, has clearly warped around Jace. Most decks are built to include it, and every deck must be ready to beat it. The whole article reads like "Don't take away my favorite card, it's not that bad!" I'm sure someone had written a similar article about Skullclamp ("But look! It powers up Affinity and Goblins and Elves!").
One of my friends brings a typical comment from our area: "I wish I could afford to play standard right now." The reply is "The only really expensive card is Jace, and only one person has 4. And he doesn't even play good decks!" This still isn't enough to bring him back. And it won't be banned for another two months at the earliest, because we just passed the banned/restricted window.
Even then, I fear Wizards won't ban it, despite the fact that it's sculpting formats, driving players from the game, and giving their marquee new card type a bad name. Wizards has an undeniable love of control. They'll print some card in New Phyrexia that they'll deem "the ultimate answer for Jace!" It won't be good enough (just like Kataki wasn't for Affinity, even though it came after the main standard bannings, look at Affinity in Extended back then). They'll let June pass with a "We're keeping an eye on it" comment, and they'll let the rotation finally take Jace into the waiting arms of Extended. They also don't want to face the backlash from the players who paid hundreds of dollars for the best card, so they can finally stand a chance "competitively."
They also don't want to face the backlash from the players who paid hundreds of dollars for the best card, so they can finally stand a chance "competitively."
This will undoubtedly sway ban decisions in a way that hasn't been relevant in standard before now. One possibility is reprinting Jace 2.0 in M12 to bring down the costs before banning in standard, but I doubt they will endure the double whammy of "what?? another 12 months of Jace???" followed by "what??? I just bought my fourth Jace!".
Wizards has reaped what it has sown. They created mythics, they created chase-mythics, they created overpowered-chase-mythics, and then they created Jace. What did they expect?
From the first moment I heard about the creation of Planeswalkers, I felt the storm clouds rolling in. I saw them as cool and insanely powerful. Then, I saw them in play. And I immediately saw how terrible they are for the game. Once a Planeswalker has hit the table, if you have no way of handling it, you find yourself on a very short clock.
Enter Jace, The Mind Sculptor . No card in the history of magic has ever been as insideous as Jace, The Mind Sculptor . Unlike Ravager Affinity, where it was so clear a blind man could see its corruption from the dark side of the moon; Jace, The Mind Sculptor has the more potent poison of versatility. Its power is not confined to one narrow deck design. Jace, The Mind Sculptor is the God of utility cards.
Jace, The Mind Sculptor has completely warped the format, and Mike Flores, as well as the rest of WotC know it. What's worse is that, instead of admitting their mistake, they are trying pathetic, and poorly created spin as this article. There is no excusing 4 copies in every top-8 deck. You can't hide it or explain it away. Every player who wants a shot at a top spot knows that if they don't shell out $400+ for this one card set, they are just wasting their time competing.
Mike Flores had the gull to focus on Preordain , explaining how it wasn't broken. Preordain can be a very powerful card, and even being a 4 of in every top-8 deck doesn't make it worthy of being called broken. When you build a deck, you don't think; "How the hell am I going to handle Preordain ?"
At the bare minimum, Jace, The Mind Sculptor must be restricted or banned in all formats. It should've been restricted already. Those extra three copies people wasted their money on can be put in the spokes of their bikes. The cost shouldn't be a factor. The game is corrupted. And only, ONLY the expulsion of Jace, The Mind Sculptor can heal it.
So what is different about this format compared to so many others that have fallen under the pall of some kind of dominant deck like Jund or Faeries or, given our proximity to some-kind-of-Mirrodin, Ravager Affinity? Put another way, shouldn't there be lines and lines of players in the streets, holding up signs to "Ban Preordain!"?
Well, no. Not really. In fact, of course not.
One difference is that as basically everyone here has already said, Preordain is common, while Jace is mythic rare. Another reason is that preordain is a staple card. That might not be a common way to put it, but you know what I mean - it can fit well in almost any deck of the appropriate color but doesn't actually define any of them, like dual lands. In the case of Preordain, there are many, many cheap blue tempo-improving effects out there. Staples do one simple, small thing, and Preordain happens to do it particularly well. Same for Mana Leak - it's just the counterspell with the most advantage and least disadvantage at the moment. But the point is, banning staple cards is rare. Sure, it happens (Mirrodin artifact lands), but I have the impression the DCI very rarely needs or wants to. Good or not, they aren't particularly powerful on their own.
If Jace wasn't in every deck, then Preordain and Mana Leak wouldn't be either.
One of my friends brings a typical comment from our area: "I wish I could afford to play standard right now." The reply is "The only really expensive card is Jace, and only one person has 4. And he doesn't even play good decks!" This still isn't enough to bring him back. And it won't be banned for another two months at the earliest, because we just passed the banned/restricted window.
This.
Not to hijack the forum or anything, but I just wanted to comment on the tourney scene announcement. I've wanted to play semi-competitively for awhile, but can only really play in limited formats once every few weeks. Standard is too expensive since the rise of mythics/planeswalkers, extended is too expensive even with only 4 blocks, and legacy seems fun but in general has always been out of my price range. I think there was a quote from MR awhile back that defended making utility mythics by saying something like "players need a reason to keep buying booster packs, or we'll be out of business!" which is a valid point. This business stance, however, has cut off the creative deckbuilding skills for those that want to build new decks and test them for, you know, fun. Well, I mean, unless they feel like utilizing free, non-sanctioned wizards products to help them playtest in a small group instead of just playing the decks in tourneys for enjoyment. In this way, it's no surprise netdecking has become the new standard - I'd want to know what deck was actually competitive and good before I drop $400 on it too!
As for 'ban Jace,' I can understand why it hasn't happened. Banning Preordain is like banning Jace, The Mind Sculptor since they're both utility cards and don't really have answers outside of counterspells (which are also blue! yay!) If planeswalkers actually had multiple reasonable answers in standard, I believe we would see the spree of hate decks. Unfortunately, Vampire Hexmage , Mold Shambler , Duress and counterspells are the only real answers I can come up with, and blue decks are almost never built without counterspells, which is some inherent hate against planeswalker decks I suppose.
All I can say is there had better be a huge poster of JTMS up in R&D's offices with the words "Never Again" underneath it. I know wizards say they don't care about resale value, but when one card is so dominant and so expensive that magic players around the world are paying thousands and thousands of dollars to move jaces around 100 bucks at a time instead of buying new product, that has to show up on their radar. Not to mention the fact that the cards prohibitive price turns people off from playing the game, myself and both my brothers have given up on standard entirely because we can't afford jace, everyone else plays jace, and playing against jace is no fun at all. I can't wait for this terrible card to cycle out of standard.
