Sunday 22 November 2015

Card Spotlight: Flesh Carver

Wrote this a while ago but didn't publish as it seemed a bit long winded for what it was. Either way, I've not done much else so you can have this!

It has been a year in the cube now and the Flesh Carver is starting to establish his position in the cube. I have always been a huge fan of the card but most of the other people I play with have historically seemed to overlook it. It remained one of those cards people would pick up and read when you play it, then seemingly lose interest in what it does disregarding it for whatever reason as a jumped up Grey Ogre.

Flesh Carver
Black creatures are somewhat all over the place. They do a lot of different things, have a wide array of costs and fit best in specific places. It is hard to outright claim a ranking for the black creatures based on how good they are. It is all too circumstantial. Power wise it is hard to argue against things like Geralf's Messengers and Obliterator but they are not really playable outside mono black decks. Dark Confidant is commonly regarded as the best but he is still a card that very much needs to be in the right kind of place to be good. You do not see top end control decks packing Dark Confidant etc.


Tasigur is the other obvious contender for best black creature at present but it is really a Golgari or Dimir card. While Flesh Carver is never going to be the best creature in the deck or the most powerful black creature possible for a given situation he might well be the best on average across all the decks and situations possible. It is very hard for the card not to fit into a place somewhat well. The most comparable card is Kitchen Finks, a card that is comparably powerful as a control card as it is an aggressive one.

Finks offers a lot more tempo than Flesh Carver with better stats and a life injection however it affords less utility once in play. Finks is just stats while Carver performs a variety of tasks beyond being a body. Flesh Carver is a little slow to be a super aggro card and it isn't the most efficient defensive tool making it not the best 3 drop for a control card. Finks is superior in the aggro and control lists. Carver is fine in either as I shall get to but the real strength of Flesh Carver is as a midrange card where it out performs the mighty Finks quite a lot more than Finks outperforms it in aggro or control.

Carver has high efficiency and high utility while being a relatively cheap card. Having high efficiency and utility isn't that hard to find on a magic card but it is very hard to find on a card costing less than four mana. It is also the case that most of the cheaper cards that do offer both are somewhat narrow. Bow of Nylea isn't a great example of this as it isn't what I would call a cheap card. It does however illustrate well how a card can have high utility while still being a narrow card. Something that on face value might seem an oxymoron. Bow of Nylea does a lot of things but you can only play it a slow control decks, specifically ones that need both life gain and library refreshment.

Flash Carver is a dork and is therefore never dead. Being so rounded you are happy with him being filler in any kind of archetype. He gets a little better the more midrange you are and he gets a little better with sacrifice synergies too. What I have found is that Flesh Carver is still a total house in some of the least exciting places for him.

Why is he so good? All the individual things don't look great, I don't play Penumbra Bobcat or Rotlung Reanimator in my cube and have not done so for quite some years now, I don't play Severed Legion and I don't even entertain Voracious Null. A 2/2 isn't getting much work done. It can't even trade with some of the top aggressive one drops, doesn't apply a threatening clock and typically to be worth three mana it has to do something really top rate in addition to the body. Trinket Mage, Shardless Agent, Dualcaster Mage, arguably Eternal Witness and Reclamation Sage as examples of powerful additions that make Grey Ogres playable.. Cards like Manic Vandal, Phyrexian Rager which used to be decent in cube have fallen well out of favour as the "free" body they come with isn't worth the mana. You are just better off running cheaper, more direct and more efficient cards that don't come with a relatively useless 2/2 such as Night's Whisper or Smash to Smithereens.

Even giving a 2/2 fear doesn't greatly improve it. Fear is a long way from flying and 3 mana two power fliers are struggling to perform in cube at present as well. Only the hasting red Phoenix cards are getting much play and they always feel really fair. It is the fact that you can increase the size of the Flesh Carver so as to significantly increase the value of the fear that makes that aspect of the card good. You don't even have to do it either, just the threat of being able to turn into a 4, 6 or 8 powered evasive dorks is huge and will incur removal sooner rather than late. Partial evasion scales better than you might think as you increase the stats. The selection of things able to get in the way was already small compared to that of a normal dork. You may not be any less blockable just from being bigger but you are substantially harder to trade with as well as the obvious being more important to block due to the larger damage output. By being big and evasive you reduce the pool of things that can effectively block you to a tiny fraction of cards. Pretty much you need a black or artifact with deathtouch to take down a determined flesh carver in combat.

So how good is 1B and sac a dork to put two +1/+1 counters on your Carver? In and of itself pretty bad is the answer but that is not at all how it works out. Sacrifice mechanisms always have some inherent power due to their ability to fizzle spells with non targeted perks like Lightning Helix and Electrolyze. You would sac things for no value a lot of the time if able so getting some counters is a fine enough deal. While it is more than no value you are paying a card and at least two mana for a mere +2/+2 on your dork. There are not that many good magic cards for cube that require you to invest further resources into them to improve them. Lotleth Troll is an example of such a card that seems good but in reality isn't all that.

Lotleth Troll is a card that only sees play when you actively want to discard creatures and even then it is only used when the deck is also quite tempo driven. More control or combo decks will prefer to use cards like Faithless Looting or Liliana to discard stuff as they afford much more value than Lotleth Troll for doing so. The main problem with Lotleth Troll is that you can invest a load of cards into making him a really scary threat only to have him Pathed and have your total basket of eggs stamped into an unsightly mess.

Exile and bounce effects still undo any investment made into your Carver but destroying it will not as the token generating effect scales with the power of your Carver. If you grow your Carver to a 6/6 only to get it Wrathed you will be left with a 6/6 token and not a useless 2/2 one. In this regard Flesh Carver is a lot more like Voice of Resurgence than it is Kitchen Finks, the second life of the card can be just as dangerous as the first. The token does not have any evasions which is for the best given how good the card is anyway.

While exile and bounce do in some ways counter Flesh Carver they are rare and premium. Your opponent will feel a lot more ripped off having to use their Swords to Plowshares on your Grey Ogre than you will be about not getting a token from it. You can pump your Flesh Carver at instant speed which gives you all the options and control you need to be able to outplay people and effects with it. If you get Wrathed you can dump all your extra dorks and mana into Carver so as to get a big token. If you fear bounce or exile you hold back on growing your Carver either waiting to respond to mass removal or waiting for your opponent to tap out or offer sufficient information for you to go all in for the kill with it.

Essentially, 1B sac a guy to get 2 +1/+1 counters is only weak at face value. The risk factor is very much mitigated by the scaling you get with the token and the ability to do so in response to things. The sec outlet is useful, the threat of a big evasive thing is scary, the ability to grow your guy to survive combat or removal also a significant perk.

Red decks hate it, they aim burn at it and it grows out of reach wasting the burn. They aim burn at other stuff and they get efficiently consumed in the ever more dangerous Flesh Carver. Even without any shenanigans a red deck is eating a two for one against Flesh Carver almost always. All told red decks do hate a Kitchen Finks more but at least you can kill it and carry one swinging past it after it has like 4 for 1'd you....

Flesh carver does all of these four things; a body with the potential to grow, a replacement body when it dies, evasion, and a sacrifice outlet. Each of them gives the card another angle for use, synergy and exploitation but more importantly each of them scales with each of the other inbuilt effects. It is a rare example of a single card that has multiple avenues of self synergy. The whole is significantly greater than the sum of its parts.


Monday 9 November 2015

Emrakul Desire


Did a draft and ended up with what I thought was going to be a bastardization of two combo decks. I had Emrakul, Show and Tell and some options on other ways to cheat him in as well as a couple of backup dorks like Wurmcoil to fill in for the Emrakul in his absence. I also had part of a storm deck with Mind's Desire and Brain Freeze. Normally the 'don't quite have one combo deck so ram in another combo and hope' strategies are awful. What I found was that the two directions my deck could go in really supported the other aspects well.

Mind's DesireI don't normally force decks but I wanted to do a storm deck of sorts as I haven't had that as an option in my cube for a little while. Midrange is a bit too king of the hill at present and so I thought the reintroduction of combo would sort that out quite well. My first pick was a Wheel of Fortune over something like a Birds of Paradise or Courser of Kruphix. Whichever it was it was a dodgy pick but hey, the cube is for for funsies and I wanted to storm! I then followed that with a Grim Monolith over a Jitte. Less wrong due to having the Wheel already but still a very dubious pick, both from me and the player on my right! From that point I wound up going in a red artifact ramp deck direction. The blue was being hard cut with 2/3 of the table in blue! Half way through I managed to pick up a Time Spiral shortly followed by a Mind's Desire which made me really want to reopen the blue storm account.

Drafting combo means you will have several boosters with no relevant picks which does give you the opportunity to pick up speculative things like Desire and Spiral that you may end up not playing. Apart from the key cards in any given combo deck there is a great deal of overlap in the support cards. Ramp is great, card quality is great and so if you have a reasonable base of those cards you can end up in decks quite different from the one you had in mind at the beginning of the draft.


Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
25 Spells

Chrome Mox

Terrarion
Chromatic Star
Sensei's Divining Top
Mana Vault


Brainstorm
Opt
Faithless Looting

Grim Monolith
Helm of Awakening
Tormenting Voice
Brain Freeze

Helm of AwakeningSnapcaster Mage
Goblin Electromancer
Demonic Tutor

Wheel of Fortune
Show and Tell

Thran Dynamo
Ral Zarek
Turn About

Tezzeret the Seeker

Mind's Desire
Time Spiral
Wurmcoil Engine

Emrakul, the Eons Torn
Tormenting Voice
15 Lands

Bad Lands
Bloodstained Mire
Steam Vents
Shivan Reef

Temple of Deceit
Sulphur Falls
Dragon Skull Summit
Ancient Tomb

6 Islands
Mountain





The deck had two main plans, either get sufficient storm to mill someone to death with Brain Freeze or Show and Tell an early Emrakul into play and win with that. The overlap between the two main plans however gave rise to lots of other quite appealing ways to win. Hitting Emrakul off a Desire is a whole lot better than doing so with Show and Tell as it gives the extra turn and is much more of an immediate win. I won one of my games because the Show and Tell I hit with the Desire let my put an all important land into play! The utility of Emrakul reshuffling your graveyard was huge as well. It gave me all the confidence to blow or discard seemingly key spells early or chew through my library as I knew I could easily get it back. Wheel of Fortune does not take many casts before it is putting both players near decking themselves yet when you are sitting on Emrakul it is a Time Twister for you and still a milling Wheel for them. You can also just win with the -5 on Tezzeret!

TurnaboutWurmcoil was more of a Solemn Simulacrum type card in that I played it as a speed bump. It allowed me to do some interacting and being normal. It forces your opponents into doing things and can simply end the game against aggressive decks without answers. Essentially it buys time and is just filler in the deck. It is nice when your filler can win the odd game but it wasn't something I was relying on. It really wanted to be an Upheaval but I was short on some things and so he got inelegantly rammed into the list. Against the control decks, especially the ones with exile and bounce effects I boarded him out a lot. I boarded out the Show and Tell and the Tormented Voice a bit too in the control matches as they are a little too risky for my liking. Despite this Emrakul never came out!

Although it never happened it is worth noting Ob Nixilus Reignited is in the format now and is a very good answer to an Emrakul that was not cast into play. You may have noticed this deck is very light on answers. I had a Wasteland in the board which came in a lot and a Tangle Wire than never came in. I had a bit of burn and that was it. No discard, no bounce, no counter magic or other removal. I had to be quick, consistent and robust enough just to be able to plow through anything and get a win. If someone makes a Bow of Nylea against me I have no way to remove it and no way to win with mill through it. That last statement isn't strictly true as you could force it though with the Wheel or respond to a Bow use in upkeep with a Freeze. All told, many things can make life really hard.

Ral ZarekMy other board options were light, I had a Memory Jar for extra draw and mill potential, a Magmatic Insight for some more digging and smoothing. I had some red dragons which I never had to resort too. Fortunately the deck was robust enough to get it done and could pull wins out of the hat from seemingly nowhere. Storm as a mechanic really doesn't care much about countermagic so compared to a lot of combo decks you can get away with far less disruption while not worrying about speed in that match-up that much either. I had a Sneak Attack but I figured it did so little on its own I would stick to just the Show and Tell route.

The Electromancer was fairly weak as I didn't really have the right setup for him. He reduced the cost of very few cards in the deck and nearly had as much impact on the games as a 2/2 as he did as a cost reducer. Beyond that and the Wurmcoil I wouldn't change anything else much in the list. It was surprisingly good for a draft deck. The standout cards were the Chromatic Star / Terrarion and the Ral Zarek! The one mana colour fixers did so much work, they could act as cheap of free storm generators, they could act as a card storage bank for using things like Wheel and Time Spiral optimally, and they would allow you to carry on going off in combination with the Dynamo, Monolith and Vault. Tezzeret did a lot of untapping Terrarion, Chromatic Sphere would have been better probably but not exclusively and I didn't see it. Probably would have played all three if I could.

TerrarionRal has never before impressed in cube but in this list he was the total man. A Lightning Bolt is good and is pretty much the disruption in the deck. Mostly however it was about the tap and untap which were both fantastic. Usually it is the case that it is hard to put either to much exciting use and very hard to get both being good at once. A normal good outcome is an extra mana or blocker but the good outcomes in this list were of significantly higher value. Because the ability is a sorcery and has no lasting tap down effect the tap and untap are quite cross purposes. One is aggressive, the other defensive or rampy. You want one before combat and the other after doing stuff post main phase or ideally in their turn! In this list however the tap down was great. It let me fog out mana that could be used as disruption on my combo things while setting up my mana. It even let me snipe out planeswalkers with Electromancer past blockers. Ral would come down quickly and supported Vault and Monolith brilliantly. Because the deck was not that artifact heavy he outperformed the Tezzeret who infrequently had two useful targets to untap. The ability to untap lands to colour fix or creatures to block was very significant. There was games were Wurmcoil or Emrakul would have had to sit back on defense if I didn't have the capacity to untap as I would have died to the swing back.

I thought I had underdone it in terms of adding support cards to the cube for combo but this deck somewhat proved me wrong. It felt like it was going badly but performed exceptionally. Rather than adding more combo support I think I will be focusing on rebalance in the other direction and try and get some anti storm and artifact cards in.


Sunday 8 November 2015

Commander 2015 Review




Kalemne, Deciple of Iroas - 2

This is a powerful dork for sure but it has so many problems with it for cube. The whole experience aspect of this card is drivel in isolation. You will not cast many 5+ cmc dorks period, let alone with this still in play. The best chance you have of this getting bigger is with other cards providing you with experience. Without the experience bit this card is still very powerful. It can hit for six, take out anything with 3 or less toughness without taking a scratch, scales doubly well with equipment and other pump, and holds the line while beating face. I find myself reminded of Hound of Griselbrand, Brimaz and Boros Reckoner. Critically those cards have one or more things Kalemne doesn't which make them all more playable and two of those cards are not in my main cube at present. Four mana is a big cut off point, it is where the planeswalkers and things come in in force. At three mana you can get away with cards that are just powerful dorks for the mana, at four your cards needs to be doing a whole lot more for you than that. The power difference between Brimaz and Kalemne probably isn't enough to justify a 1 mana cost difference but even if it were it still wouldn't be enough given where those two cards lie on the curve. Kalemne is gold making her a lot less playable. Not an issue in constructed but for draft this card is neither exciting nor powerful enough to merit inclusion in the cube. The biggest issue with Kalemne to my mind is that for four mana she brings nothing to the table right away. You get no haste action as you do with most of the top rate agressive 4 drop dorks. You get no immediate actionable effect like Sublime Archangle, Olivia Voldaren or Wolfir Silverheart. You get no value as you do from Solemn Simulacrum or Hound of Grisselbrand. You just get something that dies to almost any removal spell, mass or spot, while gaining no value in the process. Yes, sometimes you will cast it on a fairly empty board and find your opponent lacking answers and end the game swiftly there after. This is something you will do just as well with the top quality aggro three drops, Do that instead of playing this.


Banshee of the Dread Choir - 0

It is a shame myriad does nothing at all in 1 on 1 magic. I like the mechanic but for cube it is a blank and will be for all other cards with it on. I don't do multiplayer magic, one opponent is slow enough thanks all the same. I also like skill to be a significant factor in my games. Call me elitist, don't care. This card, even without the myriad doing anything is surprisingly decent. While not there for cube this will do a tonne of work for those brave souls involved in multiplayer magic.


Fiery Confluence - 8

This is quite the eye opener. I have read it several times to make sure I am not wrong about what it does before I splurge all over it. Although not quite as good Cryptic Command it is damn close. Power wise this is likely better than Cryptic it is just less useful and convenient and instant than the mighty Cryptic. All told this card gets it done and will do a lot of work in diversifying red. I really really love this card. You can wrath creatures or artifacts pretty well with this. You can take out planeswalkers with ease. You can just six someone to the face and give them the old good games. Then you can do a blend of some or all of those things as you need. Cryptic has six possible modes, Fiery Confluence has a whopping ten. Six to the face for four is such a powerful baseline for the card it doesn't really matter if your opponent has no <4 toughness dorks or artifacts in their deck, you still have a great spell. There are so many situations this card will either bail you brilliantly or close the game. That is a good pair of possible outcomes. It is cards like this that will allow red to branch out into more midrange and control decks should it wish.


Kalemne's Captain - 1

A decent big thing with a usefulish ability that is all just a bit to expensive and fair to see any cube play.


Scythclaw - 1.5

I don't really know what to make of this. It is quite cool to cheat about with a Stoneforge Mystic but ultimately it is a lot less potent than a Batterskull all round. Sure, you might hit for ten and then five if you get through. A 1/1 or just +1/+1 and a re-equip to another dork in play for 3 really are not getting it done in value terms or making the lose half their life portion of the card any more exciting or useful. The clock on this card is still quite slow compared to things that cost five mana and the board impact it has is a whole lot less. Interesting and different yes, cube worthy not so much.


Mizirek, Kraul Death Priest - 5.5

I am reminded of Vulturous Zombie. A five mana Golgari flyer you can hard abuse. This is smaller to start with but has a much much more potent effect that is also easier to trigger. This can give value right away and have it remain in effect should it be killed itself. You can easily trigger the effect with your own lands or potentially creatures although both need to be specific cards or have an outlet to sac them to. In the case of creatures you don't overly want to be saccing them off either because it reduces the value of the pumps. Either way, you don't need to have many creature or sac many things before this has done good work and is a scary threat itself. You could sit back on something like a Harrow as a combat trick or way of saving Mizirek, you can pack more edict effects as your removal options and grow your board while shrinking theirs. While I love the power, utility and synergy of this card I am aware it is a gold five mana threat that you need to build around somewhat so that it isn't just a Wind Drake. Certainly this has the power to deserve a cube slot and I will try it out at length. Sadly I fear it will get cut for space reasons leaving broader, if less powerful, cards in the five slots for green, black and golgari.


Kaseto, Orochi Archamge - 3.5

Not even sure this would be an auto include in a tribal snake deck! It is all a big Grey Ogre for my liking. Yes, you can close out games and be annoying as hell in combat but that all costs more mana and isn't gaining you card advantage or sensibly board advantage. The value of a combat trick is lost greatly when it is in play. The fact he can self pump makes him a fine stand alone card and not unlike a lot of the various black Shade cards. Compared to crud like Frozen Shade Kaseto has better starting stats, bonus unblockable, potential assists with other snake dorks and for the minor price of being in two colours and having bulkier increments of pump. Not quite as potent as Rashaka Deathdealer nor as direct as Nantuko Shade but in the same ball park. I guess the reason I think this is not so playable in cube is that it is just a three mana good dork you want to win the game with like Rablemaster, Geist of Saint Traft, Brimaz etc except that you have to spend mana on it. At least Nantuko Shade and Rashaka Deathdealer are two drops and can be used much more aggressively.


Mizzix of the Igmagnus - 1

While this could get silly fun it is mostly just super bad. Let us compare this to the humble Goblin Electromancer, a card with the same stats and much the same effect for two mana not four. I say much the same, obviously Electromancer's effect is just better as you can use it right away without having to gain experience. The value of colourless casting cost reduction diminishes a lot as well. At two mana I might consider playing this over Electromancer in the right deck. Three mana would be pushing it and four is just laughable. It gets a 1 just on the the off chance there are really good ways to gain experience so you can lay this with some already built up. Even then we still just have a pricey vulnerable Electromancer we probably wish was just an enchantment or something.


Daxos, the Retrurned - 1

More of the distinctive wiff of Grey Ogre about this card. The perk for your underrate body is a pricey token generator that requires you to be playing enchantments before it does anything at all and then again before it becomes at all good value for mana. At least the tokens are enchantments? So, just to be clear, before this card is at all good you have to have made it as a Grey Ogre, have it live long enough for you to cast at least one enchantment, then invest increments of 3 mana, prolly six or nine total, alongside casting more enchantments. This should give you say three 3/3's that didn't cost you cards. Basically, Call of the Herd is a whole world better than this and that gets precisely no play anymore.


Illusory Ambusher - 6

I like this card, it is somewhere between an Ice (of Fire fame), Jace's Ingenuity and a Shriekmaw. It isn't reliable removal nor is it cheap. Sometimes it isn't removal at all, then it is a bad fog in both scope and reliability. It should draw you cards most of the time and it will range between 2 and 6 mostly. Assume it draws cards 85% of the times you play it and 2 through 6 are reasonably even in their probabilities (they are not of course, they go down each time in likelihood however you could hit for like 15 so w/e, we will go with it for a very approximate idea). This means you are looking at 3.4 cards per cast on top of the damage prevention or removal. Sadly I would take 3 cards guaranteed over 3.4 with the chance on 0 for my five mana. I would likely take two which makes Mulldrifter look somewhat more appealing. Although a less consistent card than the Muldrifter I think this deserves a cube slot because it can be so utterly over powered and shouldn't ever wind up being totally awful or dead. It has flash and 4 power, you can just kill people with it after all!


Gigantoplasm - 1

This is not the Clone you are looking for. I give it a 1 out of 10 on the off chance there is some kind of neat combo with the effect it has on some particular obscure dork but I doubt it is at all good it if even exists.


Skullwinder - 3.5

This is a tricky one. Obviously cost and body wise it is quite a lot better than Eternal Witness but the effect has a nasty taint of symmetry about it. In a combo deck there is less chance of you caring about them getting a card back but it isn't no chance, it may still be a dead card because of that Force of Will you can't afford to let them have. You can also fire this off so fast as to give your opponent only bad options or even no option on a return. You could also do this with graveyard removal effects, your or even their delve stuff. There are lots of ways this can be better than Witness but I don't think any of them are that reliable nor is the Snake body that much better than the 2/1 that you would risk it. I am sure this still has a place somewhere but it shouldn't be a common one.


Ezuri, Claw of Progress - 2.5

Here we have a jumped up Hill Giant rather than the Grey Ogres we have been seeing so many of. Ezuri needs other dorks, not only to gain experience but also to pump. While Ezuri can have an effect on the game right away it is fairly unlikely. You need to already have experience or get a small dork into play on the same turn while having something else that can attack. Ezuri can be quite powerful in the right deck if he gets going but like Kalemne it does too little right away on a weak body for where he is on the curve. You might not need further mana investments as such but you do need other cards to support him. Not enough card here to excite me even if it were a mono coloured one.


Centaur Vinecrasher - 3

I quite liked this at first look but I have since gone off it rather. It is the aggressive version of Masked Admirers, a card that has never seen any love in the cube. A four mana dork with a two mana conditional recursion effect to hand. Vengevine is zero mana to return to play and is quite a lot more direct and standalone than either Vinecrasher or Admirers hence it being good and these seemingly quite a lot less so. For the two mana conditional return to hand to be an exciting bonus the starting creature has to be itself reasonably exciting and a generic trampler isn't really that. At 4/4 he is fine but not good, at 5/5 he is good but not something you are auto including. You need this to hit 6/6 before it is exciting and that is going to take quite a lot of work. Being aggressive it is important to be good on curve and you will be fairly lucky to have this as a 3/3 by then. All in all, the card doesn't do enough when in play, is a little pricey, rather linear and needs a little too much hand holding to perform at the required level.


Sandstone Oracle - 4.5

While I think this is probably a little too situational to be a main cube card I do rather like it and can see a selection of places this would fit very nicely. The body is fairly useful and the effect can be extreme. Yes it is seven mana which would normally rule out this kind of nonesense if it were a coloured creature but as a colourless artifact this holds far more potential. There are lots of ways to produce a lot of colourless mana, ways to cheapen artifacts or just put them into play all of which mean this card in reality is more comparable to a four or five drop in the right deck. Those decks are the kind of rampy, perhaps combo-y, ones which will dump their hands quickly and with ease and may even have symmetrical draw seven effects so as to ensure a big trigger from your Oracle. I suspect Memory Jar is one of the things this will compete with for spaces in decks. In the wrong deck this is going to be very bad. Slow, low power and unlikely to trigger for many if any cards should you live to play it.


Dream Pillager - 0.5

I love the idea but the execution is left wanting. I am not sure how this could be balanced better, Consecrated Sphinx power, toughness and costing would seem like a good starting point. Seven mana is way to much to pay for a 4/4 that does nothing unless it hits face. Actually, I think I like a 2RR 0/3 flier with firebreathing and this effect, more like a red Thieving Magpie then but well flavoured. Guess I will stick with boring old Prophetic Flamespeaker for now.


Dawnbreak Reclaimer - 5.75

So a six mana 5/5 flier is not the worst starting point for a card. Then you give it a very very powerful effect but make it symmetrical and abusable and you end up with a card that is very hard to evaluate. You can abuse this by either having only huge things in your bin or by ensuring your opponent has nothing, or at least very low powered things in theirs. Both of these situations should lead to you being well ahead on your six mana investment. Achieve both and you will be very far ahead! I have just spotted the may clause on the recursion which really makes this card pretty good. You don't have to go that heavy at all on working the graveyards because if you don't like the proposed returns you can simply opt not to do it. I like this a lot more than Reya Dawnbringer, a safer more reliable version of this that was so over cost you only ever cheated it into play. This bad boy is totally fine to just be cast and leave it to do its magic. I think I also prefer this to Sun Titan. The bodies are comparable but I think the smaller flier is more dangerous and affords more utility in games. Both trigger once per your turn starting with the turn you make them but there after Reclaimer doesn't need to attack to get the effect and can just sit safely back on d. The thing with Sun Titan is that he often ends up not doing all that much. He is a bit too easy to group block and take down which means you have spent 6 mana to get two 3 mana things back, deal 6 damage to a selection of dorks of your opponents choosing (divided as you choose though!) and perhaps hold off one turns worth of ground based attacks. That sounds good but turns out it just isn't enough stuff and not usefully presented. Decks that make six drop dorks don't have that many 3 or less cmc permanents to recur. You get a Wall back and draw a card, maybe you ramp a land from the bin. Brimaz is a great get back but if your 6/6 vigilance isn't winning it then your 3/4 one isn't adding that much extra to things. Sun Titan is a whole lot of power but it very restricted and contained. Both this and Sun Titan require some work in building around them (and so Elspeth, Sun's Champion will firmly remain the premier white six drop for now) but Reclaimer has so much more scope in the ways you can use and abuse it that I will be trying this out a whole lot and hoping it remains in the main cube. I want to make this and see my opponent squirm at the choice between Grave Titan and Atarka or something equally obnoxious. You can have the Birds back mate.


Ezuri's Pradation - 3.5

Phew, this can do some work. Against decks with lots of medium and small creatures this is simply always going to be game over. Wrath you, make a total army, gg. Against other decks this will do painfully little. You have a Baneslayer in play, my 8 mana spell gives you 5 life and does nothing else. Incredibly powerful but just too situational both for this kind of effect as well as for an 8 mana card.


Awaken the Sky Tyrant - 0.5

Meh. Tokens are too killable and a conditional 4 mana thing isn't getting it done. This needs some serious enchantment synergy to be any sort of consideration.



Seal of the Guildpact - 2

Great design and a powerful card but far far too much mana for a cost reducer. I will stick to my Familiars, Medallions, and Helm of Awakening thanks.


Deadly Tempest - 3

I want a bit more utility on my six mana Wrath than a little bit of incidental damage. If I am Wrathing I am controlling and if I am doing that I don't really care about the so called perk of this card. At five and with the lack of good Wraths in black this might have made it. At six I will find spicier alternatives.


Dread Summons - 0.5

Despite clearly being a lot more powerful in multiplayer formats there is some potential for this card in cube, all be it small. Assuming both players are packing roughly a third creatures you are looking at a fairly poor return on your mana in terms of board development. At five you will get about 2 dorks, at 8 mana you are looking at 4, hardly good token generation. You have a chance to hit perfect and get a decent amount of value but your odds on hitting nothing are going to much greater. The only time I really see this being a consideration is when you want to mill your opponent and yourself. There are other ways to mill everyone that are much more mana efficient however they are dead on their own while this does at least do a useful thing too. Sadly, most of the decks you want to mill your opponent in don't have that many dorks in them themselves...


Verdant Confluence - 4

Not quite as pokey as the red offering but not without its charms. Certainly it is very powerful but I am not sure where I would want it nor where it would be able to shine best. All the options are good and pretty much any of the possible 10 options represents good value for six mana and one card. Sadly my conclusion is that this shouldn't be a main cube card. It is a bit pricey for what you want from these kinds of cards in much the same way that Prophetic Bolt sees almost no play. The effects are a tiny bit awkward and don't have that synergy with each other. Counters are decent, they let you shape the board so your creatures are favourable in combat and gain tempo but as they are sorcery there is no trickery possible nor does it offer any direct card advantage and could lead to disaster if appropriate removal is at hand for your opponent. Lands are getting a lot less useful by six mana and only being able to find basics is a real bummer. It means you cannot do any of the cool stuff you can do with Primeval Titan and it also means a lot of the time you won't have any or enough targets for your Confluence. Finally Regrowth for permanent cards, great but awful tempo and a little bit win more. Regrowth and the like get back anything which can be spells, which are typically what you need to deal with things or get back into a game. Sure, getting three things back will likely win you any game that has gone to top deck but then that is exactly what six drops should do. I will try it because it is power and choices but I fear it is never getting into any list over a powerful creature or planeswalker in that cost area.


Mirror Match - 2.5

Powerful but like the green Wrath attempt, a bit too situational. This might be better than Aetherspouts but that card proved to be inadequate for what you needed it to do and this has all the same limitations. You might luck out and get a whole bunch of entering and leaving play triggers from the guys while taking out all the attackers which is likely going to be of game ending significance. You might equally kill nothing and get nothing in return, just a six mana Fog. Yummy. Also, lest we not forget how easy it is to spot a Cryptic when you are about to attack into one. You just know they have to have something else they super dead, it might not actually be fatal but it would be too much to handle. This would be much the same, oh look, you have six mana up and don't seem too scared about my totally fatal attack. Perhaps I'll go for a two turn clock instead and attack with just these safe dorks? Oh dear, your six mana spell is bad.


Mizzix's Mastery - 6.5

This is all a bit Mind's Desire for my liking. Eight to overload is significantly more than six to desire but you have a four mana option as well as knowing and being able to setup what you will cast with the Mastery as well as not having to have generated any storm. All in all this seems very powerful. There are a lot of decks with a lot of spells that if cast for 3R would be incredibly powerful. Cards like Upheaval, Time Spiral and the previously mentioned Mind's Desire. This is a card I expect to see almost all of its play in the abusive decks that don't like to play fair. In more typical midrange, aggro or control decks it will be harder to setup, have less exciting targets and have less chance on using both modes to good effect. The overload mode needs two things to be good, firstly 8 mana, the hard bit, and secondly some useful cards to recast together from the yard. That could be lots of burn, it could be some specific things that setup a win, it could be lots of Rituals to cast something even more mental, it might just be some boring storm things into a win, you have many directions. The four mana mode is more like a Reanimate effect, ideally you want to set it up by having a big powerful spell you got into the yard without having to cast it. Time Stretch as a good example of something to have Mastery over! I think for the card to really shine you want to play in a deck where you can expect both modes to be of use.


Magus of the Wheel - 7

So, the big problem with Wheel of Fortune was that it is a 3 mana sorcery. It sits in your hand dead until you have basically used everything else, then you cast it and have three less mana to do your new things with. Then you pass to your opponent who gets to do all their new stuff with all their mana. Magus of the Wheel can be safely and reasonably cast on curve. A Trained Armaddon in red isn't the worst in any sort of deck. Then, at any convenient point you can cash in your 3/3 and get seven new spells for two mana. You can do this at the end of their turn so as to save the two mana. All in all a very powerful effect presented in a convenient package that will never be dead and that affords good options. In the more standard midrange, control and aggro this will see considerably more play than Wheel of Fortune did or will. As for combo the direct Wheel is probably still the way to go but both is certainly an option! This card is golden for RDW, it makes Dark Confidant look pretty limp. I cannot think of many games at all where Confidant has drawn seven or more cards. Confidant is a weaker dork that is easier to ping to death, offers a slow influx of cards for a life cost. Magus is reasonably robust for a 3 drop, gives a huge influx of card at the cost of refilling your opponents hand. If I use my hand in RDW and then get seven more cards I feel like I have won, even if I give you seven more too. Great card, great depth for red again. I am looking forward to playing with this. It feels old school powerful but with built in modern safety!


Anya, Merciless Angel - 3

While considering this card I imagined it in combat with a Baneslayer Angel controlled by a player between 5 and 9 life. The outcome of that isn't exclusive to that specific interaction and is the reason I am not a big fan of this card. It is simply way to easy to dodge the big indestructible thing and blow out your opponents plans. When you are playing red and you have someone on 9 or less life you don't think, ooh, I can make a five drop without haste that is good value and hard to kill. You think, I wish I had another two points of burn in hand or on the top of my deck because then it is game over. This is one of those fairly linear expensive threats that is of sufficient power to merit a cube slot but that has no real home and therefor wouldn't see much play at all. In a control deck a 5 mana 7/7 indestructible flier is a lot more interesting but then a control deck is not readily getting their opponents below 10 life and then you have a card worse than Sera Angel...


Great Oak Guardian - 5.5

This seems incredibly powerful and quite versatile. It blocks and kills most things in the cube, it is a mini Overrun on legs, it is a combat trick. It can even be mana ramp in the right deck! You can even just flop it out as a 4/5 threat at the end of your opponents turn. Not great value for mana but might be exactly what you need to be doing. Probably this is only getting play in creature based green ramp decks in which case it might be a little too much on the narrow side. It certainly isn't game over like Craterhoof is. I am a touch wary as it seems to be another six mana utility card and typically you want your more expensive cards including the utility ones to also be of high raw isolated power. This needs support to be powerful but not exactly onerous support, just having guys is the thing. Once you have the support this card seems do offer as much or more as most other cube 6 drops.


Arachnogenesis - 4

Powerful but a little narrow. I think Moment's Peace offers more utility in these kinds of lines. Let's be honest, this is a funky Fog and not a token generator. Too often this would get a single spider and be awful if you were relying on having spiders around. Certainly it has the capacity to utterly wreak token or weenie decks. This card is the anti aggro equivalent of Caller of the Claw. You get Wrathed and Caller and you probably win. You get smacked with a hoard or weenies and tokens, Arachnogenesis is likely as much of a win. I am not sure this holds enough value in the situations it is not so powerful in to get a cube slot sadly. Against midrange and control most of the time it will be dead or really low value and that doesn't cut it. There are not enough archetypes that actively want to Fog that this could find a home in.


Meteor Blast - 3

At first I liked this a lot but then I came to realise it is actually just a really expensive Searing Blaze. For an X spell this has substantially less good scaling or flexibility than most. Four damage for four mana is better than most X burn spells will do but it isn't exactly good. Not being able to do 5 to something is pretty annoying on your expensive spell. It makes it far less likely you are taking out loads of good stuff. The primary target you get might be a 4/4 but odds on the rest of the things you can hit have >4 toughness or are like 1/1 tokens and therefor don't represent good value for mana upon killing. You want to use this with X being at least 2 otherwise it is bad value but then it is getting really overpriced for what it is. At five or six mana this is not even close to reliable enough removal. Perhaps if it were instant.


Aethersnatch - 4

The most reliable of the Desertion / Commandeer style cards but still a six mana Counterspell. These effects can be incredibly swingy but I don't see there being enough room in most decks to afford this kind of thing. Control decks are tight, you need smooth curve, power density and have a minimum threat count all of which Aethersnatch will hurt. The card can single handedly win games and has massive power potential with the big however that it is the kind of card I would only play when I have an awful deck and think I can only win games by luckily stealing them.


Scourge of Nel Toth - 4

Hard to say with with one. Very powerful in the right deck and deeply poor outside of that environment. A 6/6 flyer is a good thing, at seven mana it is not. In order for this to perform well you have to get it into your graveyard and then have small sacrificial dorks to bring it into play for the far more reasonable cost of BB. It is both a dragon and a zombie which give it some minor bonus synergies but mostly you just want discard outlets or perhaps Buried Alive for this bad boy. While I think this will be very strong when in the right deck it is a bit forced. The cube is best served when the majority of the cards can hold their own on their own. Narrow as it is I suspect we are ultimately looking at a B cube card. The support it has is very good, things like Liliana, Bloodghast, Bloodsoaked Champion etc. which goes a long way in helping alleviate the narrow issue. Black is a little aimless as a main colour these days so perhaps pushing it in a direction is what it needs?


Meren of Clan Nel Toth - 7

One of the best cards in the collection and exactly the thing Golgari decks want to populate their four slot. This is an uncondiational Oversold Cemetery on decent legs that triggers the turn you make it. A 4 mana 3/4 isn't great value for mana but it is a good size to be nominally. You outlive most of the cheap removal and dorks as well as the midrange utility creatures. Compare 4 mana 3/4 of Meren to 3 mana 2/1 of Eternal Witness and the quality of the body is more apparent. Yes, Meren only gets creatures but she does it every turn and really needs to die sharpish else the game is going to be over. This is all assuming you never gain any experience from Meren, as stuff starts to get dead she starts to get more obnoxious! Meren is fully cube worthy without any of the experience bits. It is easy to exploit the recursion, easy to power up experience and just makes the card that extra bit more juicy and powerful.


Synthetic Destiny - 1

Overkill really, there are better ways to do this effect and broadly speaking it isn't that good of a combo in cube even with the better cards.


Pathbreaker Ibex - 4

Craterhoof Behemoth's little brother! While the power and usefulness of this dork is pretty high it lacks a critical component compared to Craterhoof. Ibex has to live to attack and can be killed or tapped before you get your alpha strike. With a reliable mechanism to give it haste you have a very potent spell that might well outperform Overrun yet you can still play in decks than couldn't realistically run the 8 drop Behemoth. Very few decks will be able to give this the haste it needs and so I don't see it being too playable.


Corpse Auger - 1.5

Limp body, unpredictable effect with wild scaling that makes it unreliable and even dangerous. It can do nothing, it can kill you. There are certainly places it represents huge power and in which you can easily exploit it however that leaves it rather narrow. If I want to draw cards for life in black I can do so a lot more easily than this thing.


Karlov of the Ghost Council - 3.5

An odd little chap we have here. You need the support for this guy, without life gain he is a do nothing gribbly. With lifegain in abundance you have a two drop that can quickly become huge without any specific further investment on the card itself. The removal ability is weird and shouldn't come up too often. Usually an 8/8 is getting it done for you. There are not many creatures in the cube where you gain tempo from killing them and turning your 8/8 into a 2/2. I suspect the majority of times the effect is used is in response to a removal effect just to get some extra value before you lose your threat. Like Scourge of Nel Toth, this is very powerful in the right deck but it probably too narrow to run in the main cube unless you force it with sufficient support cards.


Daxos' Torment - 5

Yet more incredibly powerful narrow cards! You almost get enough value from one hit with this for it to be worth it. Thundermaw often only needs the 1 hit to close a game. Black also has surprising depth of playable enchantments including the mighty recastable Recurring Nightmare. With enough enchantments this should be an auto include in most decks but I am not sure what that number is and if such a deck would be viable. Broadly speaking two further enchantments after you cast Torment should be enough for it to end the game. You could get away with six or so enchantments to do this but ideally you would want over ten and that seems impractical. Ultimately this is another one of those cards that lets you focus areas of your cube, push the support for them and keep things fresh. Only pack this if you have some enchantment themes on the go and an above average enchantment count in your cube. Daxos' Torment, Karlov of the Ghost Council and Scourge of Nel Toth are all such cards but this does seem like the most viable to run in a standard good cards cube of the three.


Bloodspore Thrynax - 0

Too expensive, slow and onerous in setup costs.


Righteous Confluence - 5.5

Better than the green one, worse than the other three. While knights are always good the life and the enchantment removal are more situational. Knights are also a bit clunky, they are best suited to an aggro deck which usually doesn't want to go past four mana and would rather something like a Cloudgoat Ranger for some evasion. Being sorcery is annoying too as it makes it far less appealing as a control card. Less appealing as it might be that should be where it gets most of its play as it does things that control the game and has the versatility needed in control lists.  One thing I will say for this monster is that 15 life for 5 mana is an insane chunk and will be horrific for red decks to contend with. While it may be fairly good it is boring as all hell. Primal Command used to see a lot of play before Bow of Nylea stole its thunder. Mostly that was for library sustain in the control matches however it proved potent as 7 life far more often. It might offer less utility than Primal Command but it certainly offers much more power.


Thought Vessel - 4

I love the card but in reality it isn't doing enough for you to get played over a colour producing two drop artifact ramp card of which there are many or the humble Mind Stone. Unlimited handsize is rarely relevant and even on the odd occasion it comes into play it is rarely that significant. Great, you get to keep 4 bonus unwanted lands after your Upheaval....


Arjun, the Shifting Flame - 2

Not quite enough monster to go with the cost and the effect for this to be a cube thing. The effect is quite potent, especially in a 40 card deck, you will have great scope to find the things you need while stacking your library. As a two mana combo card this effect would be extreme, on a six drop 5/5 fatty it ins't and reliable or useful as a Consectrated Sphinx.


Mystic Confluence - 8

My my my. We have the big brother of Cryptic Command and it is impressively close in terms of how good it it. Confluence is more powerful but Command is far more versatile. I am also a big fan of the design of Confluence as it can be a high value soft counter or you can lower the value to improve the hardness of your counter. You can Evacuate their team, you can Jace's Ingenuity, Lovely. A lot of the Confluences feel like they are all of a planeswalker at once, you cast it, get 3 activations and it is gone rather than going through the rigmorale  of doing all that over three turns. Being instant is therefore much more like having a Teferi emblem in play for your planeswalker! I see this taking the spot of filler planeswalkers and Fact or Fiction a lot. It is too expensive to really consider a counterspell alone and only a stop gap in terms of removal. It is also one of the better blue answers to storm decks as playable countermagic goes.


Rite of the Raging Storm - 0

Not a cube card but lovely design for a multiplayer one at least.


Thief of Blood - 4

This is Wrath of Planeswalkers on legs. It is a super Vampire Hexmage. Sadly I think it is ultimately and expensive sorcery speed removal spell that is too situational to be playable blind. It is rare to be facing down more than one planeswalker but at even just one walker you are kind of getting a two for one with Thief. Due to the popularity of tokens and how much they are found coming from planeswalkers I think I would generally prefer Aethersnap in my deck and there is presently little call for that card in cube. Thief of Blood is powerful, swingy and does a somewhat exclusive thing but it just doesn't seem that pickable or playable.


Oreskos Explorer - 4

This is a calm version of Knight of the White Orchid. For a 1W cost instead of a WW one you lose the ability to put the plains into play and you lose the first strike. Losing both of those makes this card a little underpowered for cube. It is because the getting of the planes is conditional and generally relies on you going second, getting stitched or being late game to trigger. Explorer is much more powerful in the multiplayer setting and sadly seems a little bland for one on one cube.


Wretched Confluence - 7

Despite the lovely and unexpected instant speed of this Confluence I think I prefer the red one. The red one has more direction and purpose to it while this is just a collection of stuff. The only disruption or really interaction offered by Wretched Confluence is from the Disfigure modes. Unlike Mana Leak on Mystic Confluence which should usually only need on use to counter a spell the Disfigure will often need two or all three options to kill the offending card. Spending five mana to kill something like a Titan is not great and shouldn't be getting you ahead. It will be nice to kill three things with this but odds on if you do you will be mana down. This kills most tokens, almost all one drops and most two drops but at five mana, even if you get a three for one on killing stuff the odds are you have taken a kicking from them already. Disfigure effect is also only relevant to creatures, and so for a versatile expensive spell you don't get that much in the way of broad protection. You cannot go attacking their hand with this card which would be of far more use against control decks. Most of what Wretched Confluence seems to be is a card draw spell as two thirds of the modes draw cards. You either get powerful, known and needed things back from the bin or you dig into your deck of unknowns for a life a go. This pairing of card draw effects makes this a more potent draw tool than Mystic Command but black isn't overly lacking in that area. Wretched does somewhat posses and extra mode over the over Confluences however in that draw one lose one mode is targetable. Of the wins I get with Death Cloud I would say around half are just as a really bad BBBX Fireball that hits us both. I can see this being used as a bad Lightning Bolt in much the same way to close out games. It doesn't even really matter that it is such bad value when you do it because it ends the game, value is of no consequence when the game is over, there is no bonus credit for the in game efficiency of the spells. As such, any card that has a situational win the game clause that is not part of the main function of the card is significantly improved through having that effect regardless of other ways in which the same winning effect could be done cheaper or better with other cards. Confluence is a powerful and safe card but it lacks the versatility of the other Confluences. Despite being instant it still managed to have a slightly clunky black feel about it. A strong card for sure but if I am not sure how often it will win out for deck slots over cards like Ob Nixilus Reignited.


The Top Cards From Commander 2015

1.   Mystic Confluence
2.   Fiery Confluence
3.   Magus of the Wheel
4.   Wretched Confluence
5.   Meren of Clan Nel Toth
6.   Mizzix's Mastery
7.   Illusory Ambusher
8.   Dawnbreak Reclaimer
9.   Great Oak Guardian


The top five are all lock ins for the A cube, the other 4 have a reasonable shot of staying in the A cube. There are a decent bunch of other cards I will try out and quite like but that are ultimately B cube cards or occasional cards through needed to much in the say of support. There are some really lovely cards in this set, some exciting ones that spice up some old school decks that rarely get any new love these days. Some great design, some high power. Compared to last years commander sets I think we will end up with far less cube mainstays from the 2015 but it is about quality not quantity!





Monday 2 November 2015

Card Spotlight: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy


Jace, Vryn's ProdigyIt is no secret that new Jace is mentally good, in a wide variety of formats too. I rated him very highly in my preliminary reviews. It was a powerful set and Jace sat atop the pile. That said, I still significantly underrated him. After playing with new Jace literally once I proclaimed it was the best of all the Jace's and sill I think I was underrating it at that time. I had it in the same ballpark as Snapcaster and Deathrite Shaman however I thought that Jace was weaker than those cards. Now I am moving towards preferring Jace to Snapcaster and finding it pretty much on par with Deathrite. That means new Jace is not just atop the MtG Origins cards but atop all of the creatures in the game!

The flipping planeswalkers are almost entirely new card types and it feels harsh to other creatures putting them in the same group as the flip walkers offer so much more. They are certainly more creatures than they are planeswalkers. Basically, in the case of Jace, I don't think it matters whether you rank him with planeswalkers or creatures, he is the big name in both groups.

In my initial reviews I looked at Jace as a looter, then as a planeswalker and finally as a Snapcaster Mage. On each account I found Jace to be weaker than alternatives. Most of the time in cube and magic in general you want direct cards that do the thing you want them to do as well as they can do it. Because Looter il-Kor, Snapcaster and other Jace's all look more direct and effective I was losing track of the fact that Vryn's prodigy acts like all three of these great things. It is almost like saying Crypic Command is bad because Counterspell and Boomerang are more direct cards.

So Jace does three good things, two very well and although other planeswalker Jace's get more done it is hard to call Telepath Unbound worse given that he costs two mana. This makes Jace a cheap and powerful utility card. There are two more specific reasons I prefer Jace to Snapcaster. Firstly, Jace may only be sorcery speed but the two mana you pay is almost never on the same turn that you use the -3. This means it is a lot quicker and punchier than Snapcaster in what it will recast for you. The second reason is simply that Snapcaster is only ever a two for one itself. Jace can quite comfortably recast two spells and remain in play doing more work than a mere 2/1.

Another way to appreciate the value of Jace is looking at the worst case scenarios. If you don't flip him you have baited a removal spell with a two drop. This is no bad thing, there is a high chance you gained a tempo lead as a result while also making the path safer for your pricier threats. Jace is sufficiently powerful that you will almost always kill it on sight if you can and this ability to force plays with a card that costs two mana is brutal. A lot of two drops lose value significantly as the game goes on but Jace sits in the Snapcaster camp of getting better late game while also sitting in the Dark Confidant camp of being game winning if unanswered when cast on turn two.

If you flip Jace only to have him die right away in planeswalker form you have still done massive work. Worst case scenario is you get 6 life and 1 loot effect for your two mana. Likely this will be more like 9+ life or 2+ life and a bonus card. That is the worst case scenario which all seems rather tasty. Best case, you win the game. Simple.

Jace, Telepath UnboundThat is the final aspect of Jace which secures it a place as one of the all time great magic cards, he is a game winning threat on top of all that value and utility. It is not just the subtle contributions from looting, manipulating combat, forcing removal use or getting a cheap two for one that can lead to a win that I am talking about either. I somewhat disregarded Jace as a game ending threat in my initial review. The ultimate seemed overly hard to get to and not that easy to win with. I was imagining best case scenarios being a few loots, a few flashbacks and some damage mitigation into the mix. Great stuff but not always enough to take down all cube games.


What I have found on a number of occasions is that the momentum from the Jace just gets so out of hand that you can basically attribute the entire win to the Jace. Sometimes he just threatens so many things while simultaneously controlling the board that he gets to 9 loyalty directly when you have a hand full of gas still. With 40 card decks Jace's ultimate will end the game with 3-5 casts which is a walk in the park if you have managed to get the Jace to 9 or more.

It comes as no surprise to me that Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is now the most valuable normal rariry card you can pull out of a normal in print booster ever. Lots of clauses in that sentence to get round Tarmogoyf in MM, expedition lands and stuff that has inflated hugely since the set in question has gone out of print. Despite these exceptions it is still a mighty feat. Sadly I fear he may get banned in some or all formats but until then he will be heavily shaping the magic meta for a long while yet.

As an aside note Jace is so extreme he seems to be doing some odd things to the magic economy. He represents so much value in one card that he is single handedly killing the price of a lot of the other cards in the set. Origins was high quality yet the non Jace cards are relatively cheap for what they are and the play they are seeing, especially for a base set. There are good playable Mythics at $2 in Origins! While it may boost sales of product having a mythic rare most decks want four copies of it is not great for the game going forward. Not only does it represent a huge barrier to entry for new players but it puts a lot of existing players in an uncomfortable position. Do you shell out a total fortune on four cards that could just get banned and kill your investment? In the way in which Wizards made the restricted list to ensure the value of high cost cards to collectors and such I feel there should be some effort made to protect the value of Jace so as to not deter players making that investment. I suspect doing that would further increase the price of Jace but that is not as much of a problem with an in print set and should help boost sales in a more helpful way to everyone. It is not really practicable to promise not to ban a card which is the issue here rather than reprints. Going back to just common, uncommon and rare would help even the price distribution on cards but I cannot see Wizards going for that and it wouldn't solve the specific Jace problem, just future ones.