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.
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.
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.
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.
