| The first ability is powerful in a standard environment with fetch lands. Take a look at your top card. If it sucks, crack a fetch land. Preventing your opponent from drawing a treat can almost as good as answering it. (Well, almost…) Starting with three loyalty and then immediately jumping to five keeps it out of bolt range. I like putting my opponent put in the awkward position of having to attack me or my Planeswalker. A good control deck should quickly take control of the game if this guy stays in play too long.
Free brainstorm is huge! Swap two dead cards in your hand for gas and crack a fetch land. That’s just sick. That’s a card engine that makes me miss Sensei’s Diving Top. The original Jace gave you more cards. Whereas, Jace 2.0 is designed to give you better cards. To be honest, I’m not sure which is better. But, top/fetchland engines were big in extended before the DCI dropped the ban hammer. Hopefully, tournaments won’t drag on since players will only be brainstorming once per turn. |
 Meet Jace 2.0 |
 Banned since '08 |
Don’t forget that Jace can protect itself. That’s key for the cards playability. Sarkhan Vol’s ultimate seemed like a solid win condition. However, as Evan Erwin mentioned in his article, its hype wore off because Vol can’t protect a damn thing. Bouncing a threat (assuming it’s not a Bloodbraid) is a huge tempo swing. I like that he can hit the table and have an immediate effect on the game state.
R&D should have codenamed this card “Manhattan Project”. It’s a perfect win condition for a control deck. My buddy made top 8 at the Wisconsin States this year with his Grixis control deck. I’m sure he will be hunting down a couple of these. WotC has put tremendous focus |
on the combat phase of the game. We could see the rise of more “draw-go” style control deck. This could be an indicator from WotC that blue will no longer be the dormant color in standard. Maybe Worldwake will also feature strong counter magic as well?
There is nothing about this card that I don’t like. The artwork is sweet. I love that it has four abilities and look forward to the rest of the set. I wonder if other Planeswalker will feature four abilities. A friend of mine has a theory that Garruk will be upgraded as Green and Black variant. But, that is just a wild theory based on a comic. I’ve been a fan of BG decks since high school (my first ‘Rock’ was Craw Wrum). So, I’d be hyped if that were the case.
