I hope you like playing blue.
The unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor is undeniably a huge boon to blue
decks everywhere in Modern, help that I don’t believe they needed at all.
Blue was already arguably the best color in Modern, with four of the nine
decks at #PTRIX
that had 5% or more of the metagame share being blue with Grixis Death’s
Shadow, Jeskai Control, U/R Gifts Storm, and U/W Control. That’s of course
not even counting Five-Color Humans with their sixteen maindeck blue cards.
Snapcaster Mage has been the most played creature in Modern for quite some
time now without help from the most powerful planeswalker ever printed.
That’s now no longer the case, and the fact is Jace, the Mind Sculptor is
Modern-legal. As a midrange player, I spent the first day of this
announcement mourning my ability ever to register a non-blue deck again,
but the fact is with Jace being legal now in Modern I don’t ever plan on
playing a Modern deck without it as I believe it is just that good. This
doesn’t mean I have to play any individual strategy, as the variance of
Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks in the format will most likely be incredibly
wide, but my tournament choice has been reduced from “What deck in all of
Modern do I want to play?” to “What deck with Jace, the Mind Sculptor do I
want to play?” This is fine, it’s just how life is now. Like I said before,
I already spent my day mourning, now it’s time to move on and face the new
Modern format head on. Before I get to some first takes on new Jace decks,
I want to talk about a couple misconceptions that I hear many people say
about Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks.
Why is turn 3 Karn Liberated fair, but turn 4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
unfair?
The reason behind thinking that turn 3 Karn Liberated is fair is because in
order to be able to cast Karn regularly on this turn you need to build your
deck with around thirty unique cards in order to do it. These cards do not
interact with your opponent in any way to protect you or even help out
really unless you can achieve the combination of Tron lands necessary to
cast your powerful threats. This process is also easily disrupted by a wide
variety of methods throughout the format.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor, on the other hand, works best when you put cheap
interactive spells and fetchlands in your deck, which are already the best
cards on rate in the format. You don’t need to play big draw spells like
Sphinx’s Revelation or clunky win conditions like Nahiri, the Harbinger;
you just need to play lands, interaction spells, Jace, the Mind Sculptor,
and call it a day.
To summarize, the opportunity cost of putting Jace, the Mind Sculptor in
your deck is basically non-existent, which is why I believe it will see
widespread play throughout the format, while having Karn Liberated in your
deck means you need to play with a set of specific cards to enable it.
But Jace, the Mind Sculptor didn’t even win that game! The other cards
did!
This is the kind of statement I have heard a lot from players frequently
when watching games with Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks for the first time.
I’m going to use the
VS Video that Brad Nelson and I recorded two months ago
as an example, with Jace Jeskai vs. Bloodbraid Jund as the match. A popular
comment was that the bevy of removal spells did in Jund and Jace didn’t do
as much. Well, take a look at the decklist that I used for this video:
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
Brad would frequently use a discard spell to take my removal spell before
playing his threat, only to have me draw another removal spell. That’s
because with Jace, the Mind Sculptor as your win condition you have the
ability to maximize interaction to ensure you can stay alive to the mid
game where it will take over for you. Snapcaster Mage is similarly very
effective with cheap, interactive spells, and the two of them combine
together to give your deck an absurd amount of redundancy. Even in the
games where Jace, the Mind Sculptor wasn’t drawn, it still had an impact to
help Jeskai beat Jund because of the ability to design the deck in such a
fashion where the abundance of interactive spells made sure Jeskai didn’t
stumble.
The flexibility in deck design is one of the biggest reason why Jace, the
Mind Sculptor is such a powerful card as it even impacts games where you
don’t draw it, and this obscure impact on the game is often missed by
players.
With those two responses on the record, let’s get to some first day rough
drafts of new decks utilizing Jace, the Mind Sculptor:
Creatures (19)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (26)
Spells (10)
This deck is a Ross Merriam special, built after the Turbo Land decks of
Standard’s past. It was one of his favorite decks to ever play, and we’ve
even discussed trying to make the deck work again in Modern before the
announcement that Jace, the Mind Sculptor was unbanned. Immediately after
the announcement, Ross went to work putting the list together, and after
running it through some matches I was instantly hooked. This was the list I
submitted for the Team Modern Super League on Tuesday but plan on
continuing to refine it.
The goal of the deck is to simply play as many lands as possible with the
help of Oracle of Mul Daya, generating a substantial mana advantage which
is also compounded by Lotus Cobra. Then when you’re making an abundance of
land drops there’s no better win condition than Tireless Tracker, which
often helps draw multiple cards a turn while the advantage spirals out of
control. The deck doesn’t necessarily have some big finish that it’s
working towards, just drawing a ridiculous number of cards with Tireless
Trackers that become the largest creature on the battlefield.
Besides being Oracle of Mul Daya copies five through seven, Courser of
Kruphix plays a vital defensive role in the deck. The deck doesn’t interact
well with the opponent or even block well, so the biggest worry with the
deck is being run over by aggressive strategies. Courser is the one card
that blocks well and is much better positioned in the new format than I
thought at first glance since it can be bounced effectively by Jace, the
Mind Sculptor. Between Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt, two popular cards
to fight Jace, the Mind Sculptor, having four toughness is a key number
moving forward. It also doesn’t hurt how well Courser works with Jace’s
Brainstorm ability to play the land put back on top of the deck.
I originally started with three Temporal Mastery in the deck but have since
moved it up to four. Getting to play extra turns with the deck when each
turn means another Jace, the Mind Sculptor or two more land drops thanks to
Oracle of Mul Daya has been incredibly powerful. With the mana this deck
generates, quickly hardcasting a Temporal Mastery while doing other things
with your turn is completely reasonable. Many people are focused on some
other miracles right now, but I believe Temporal Mastery is a card that
could break out in multiple archetypes thanks to its synergy with Jace, the
Mind Sculptor.
While I’ve been very impressed with the maindeck so far, the sideboard is a
mess. Currently I’m splashing for Ancient Grudge, Lightning Bolt, and Blood
Moon, but Blood Moon has been quite underwhelming which is making me look
at other colors as the splash options. Between double digit fetchlands,
Utopia Sprawl, and Lotus Cobra, splashing is incredibly easy in the deck,
and therefore the options for the sideboard are vast. It’s what I plan on
working hard on moving forward, but this is a promising deck I’m really
excited about playing.
Creatures (15)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (19)
Spells (24)
We’re brainstorming with the numbers in the decklist here but I believe
Jace, the Mind Sculptor can find a home in the Death’s Shadow decklists as
well. For that I prefer the Traverse the Ulvenwald versions to help hit
land drops to get to the requisite four mana, but Death’s Shadow games are
often long enough that Jace could make a great impact on them.
I also believe I would prefer to be on the Tarmogoyf side for the secondary
creature right now over the delve threats, as the delve threats fail the
Jace test miserably. Having a Tasigur, the Golden Fang or a Gurmag Angler
bounced back to your hand, especially if you’re holding another copy in
hand of either, is backbreaking. That’s enough to scare me away from the
delve threats for now.
Dreadbore is a removal spell I haven’t thought too much about over the
years but think it’s in a prime spot to be a breakout card. Both Grixis and
Jund decks will seemingly be popular options for the midrange players
moving forward, and Dreadbore is one of the best hard answers to a resolved
planeswalker. It’s cheap enough that recasting it from a Snapcaster Mage is
a pretty easy proposition to fulfill.
Creatures (27)
- 1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
- 3 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Lotus Cobra
- 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
- 4 Voice of Resurgence
- 4 Courser of Kruphix
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 2 Ramunap Excavator
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (23)
Spells (6)
Is it better that Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a better fit for the G/W
Company deck that I normally play than Collected Company? If Jace was green
or white I would say absolutely, but splashing it at double blue is really
difficult to do. Not taking too much damage from the manabase is crucial in
this deck, as surviving is your main objective, and therefore, basic lands
are at a premium. But also this deck needs to play plenty of Plains and
Forests in order to facilitate Knight of the Reliquary, meaning that if you
want lots of basics and lots of Plains and Forests, then casting a double
blue spell is difficult.
To this end I would be interested in playing Oath of Nissa that can not
only help fix your mana requirements but also look for a specific creature
you are looking for. It also works well with Jace’s Brainstorm ability to
move cards off the top of your library, because that’s an ability that
needs even more help. With us not having to mold the deck around Collected
Company it’s possible it can evolve into a more interactive deck and have
more four mana creatures, such as Oracle of Mul Daya, basically a Courser
of Kruphix and Azusa, Lost but Seeking put together.
I will mostly have to move away from the deck looking so similar to G/W
Company to greater utilize Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but this is another
shell that I will be working on in the coming weeks.
I can’t see the future and don’t know exactly what will happen to Modern
with Jace, the Mind Sculptor being unbanned, but for the foreseeable future
it looks like I’ll have to be playing blue, and therefore, I’m feeling as
such. Many players who are smarter than me and have been around longer
believe that Modern is vast enough to absorb the bomb of Jace and come out
diverse, but I’m skeptical. Hopefully I’m wrong and I can go back to
playing G/W Company like I want to. I’ll definitely be playing it at #SCGINDY this
weekend, which also lands on my birthday, and hopefully not for the last
time.