I can't help but wonder if Origins has a wild
card in its planeswalker stable, comparable to
Nicol Bolas in M13 or Garruk in M15. It's hard
to imagine who that would be - they'd have to
bring something to the set but not pull focus
from the main five. And frankly, the idea of
double-faced cards that become planeswalkers is
already kind of blowing my mind; I'm not sure I
could handle any more in the set.
Of the five, Jace is probably the easiest to
flip - there are blue decks that are capable of
having five or more cards in their graveyard by
the first time they activate him. His most
eye-catching ability is the middle one, as often
happens with planeswalkers, but I suspect it may
be hard to get the numbers to line up in such a
way that you can use it more than once in a game
on any regular basis. Of course, there are times
that you won't actually need to use it more than
once.
Today's card of the day is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
and the transformed Jace, Telepath Unbound.
This can be played with a few cards already in
the grave to accelerate the transformation,
though the draw and discard is beneficial in and
of itself the 0/2 for two is vulnerable.
Transformed this has a defensive +1 of giving a
-2/-0 to one creature until your next turn which
is useful for avoiding a trade and minimizing
potential damage to Jace. The -3 allows
casting of an instant or sorcery from the
graveyard which works well with the 0/2 as
setup. The -9 has you mill five cards from
an opponent whenever you cast a spell which is a
nice boost for a library destruction deck,
though aside from the -3 the earlier abilities
don't really support that kind of build.
Overall this is a planeswalker with some decent
support effects and the low base cost should
make it fairly popular in current formats.
In Limited nearly any planeswalker is worth a
first pick and even though this is a little weak
in the format it still rates a first pick in
Booster as the +1 and -3 are both effective
tools. For Sealed this depends more on the
pool than other planeswalkers as it can't carry
a deck and should be sidedecked or splashed at
best if Blue is weak.
Welcome to Walker Week. We're gonna be looking
at the brand new Dual-faced 'walkers from
Origins.
Today, we're starting off with Magic's poster
boy, Jace. Creature-wise, he's basically a
Merfolk Looter. Which is pretty good, except
Legendary status hurts him a bit. His flip
trigger is, well, pretty reasonable. 5 cards in
your graveyard is going to happen mid game, so
he's effectively a 5 loyalty 'walker. Which is a
pretty strong play. His +1 is a weaker version
of Jace 5.0's, though his ability to grant
flashback to an instant or sorcery is why he's
going to see play at all. His Mill Ult emblem is
okay in mill, but not really worth the effort.
People love snapcasters, and while this isn't
instant speed, it's still great to be able to
reuse spells from the grave.
Nicol Bolas in M13 or Garruk in M15. It's hard
to imagine who that would be - they'd have to
bring something to the set but not pull focus
from the main five. And frankly, the idea of
double-faced cards that become planeswalkers is
already kind of blowing my mind; I'm not sure I
could handle any more in the set.