Jaya Review

Laeuftbeidir

I like her a lot.

I have her only in the mid 30's, don't own hod and have only a 80% win ratio.. But I think on level 60 this deck will beat enemys reliably. I could even see me playing her in coalition events - something I can't say about koth. She feels fresh and intuitive. Great walker!

Gunmix25

babar3355 said:

With the prodding of a few wise friends, I am seeing the light with Jaya.  For one, as @Brakkis says her ultimate is totally bugged when Archive is on the board.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY22y02IYbI if you want to see how this looks.

But it doesn't even require your hand to be full... Any time you have archive and ult down it will pull as many copies of any spell into your hand as you have space for in your hand. Then it will repeat this procedure with the same card next time. Forever.

Exactly

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/73768/endless-copies-of-the-same-card-with-jaya-pw#latest

I covered this in the Bug forum too with a video showing the effect when using cycling and the effect in its basic form. Been abusing it in the third node for red A.I. event.

FindingHeart8

she's a lot of fun, she should have been red/blue though (I know she's not in card mtg either).

She's got a very Izzet feel about her.

arevala

I correct the first post here: she IS indeed the very top monocolor planeswalker.

Yeah, u have to own some nice cards no make it work fine, but once u've set it: is just brutal winning.

My creatureless deck:

SUPPORT:

Imminent Doom

Storm the Vault

Pyromancer's Goggles

SPELLS:

Hazoret's Undying Fury

Exquisite Firecraft

Conflux

Hour of Devastation

Electrolyze

Boil

Inferno Jet

The deal here is to cast Hazoret's Undying Fury with Imminent Doom on the board. Make sure to cast HUF correctly, i've read some people saying thats an awfull card and blah blah, i think it's just one of the most powerfull card in standard right now; so... learn how to use it! Pyromancer's Goggles are too slow, but i cannot add an eight spell yet due to my low level (couldn't make her max yet).

SECOND OPTION: U can remove Pyromacer's Goggles and add Firebrand Archer. Its jut a hit after another hit, so nice to see how burn works with her.

TIP: - Never use her 3rd ability, it just make things embarrassing.
        - Replace Boil if u are not facing Nicol Bolas,Mono R/B or any Blue realted PW
        -  Avoid filling your hand too fast

NOTE: STV is definitely NOT a stapple here, she can win easy without casting it, so u can replace ir with another cheap burn spell.

Mainloop25

arevala said:

Make sure to cast HUF correctly, i've read some people saying thats an awfull card and blah blah

Huh? Who is saying that? There are more people out there saying it's one of the most broken, actually 

TheExaminer

Will just leave this here.

Kinesia

Finally got her last night, about 34 so far and it's fun! Using first ability for 10 mana for a spell more than anything else really, the later ones haven't really been what I needed yet.

Also playing around with pirates and treasures since I have some new toys I'd never used before. I've pretty well been able to play HoD at will or attack with a 30/4 doublestrike pirate, or both in the same turn to remove defenders, it's funny.

There is NOONE else I have the same mana with, way more than Koth.

Stormcrow

Jaya's totally fine! I mean, her design is fine, at any rate. Apparently she's buggy but I'm assuming they'll fix that.

The number of options for good red spells out there is totally not fine, though. There were only 7 red spells in Dominaria (less than any other color got): 4 commons, 2 uncommons, and 1 rare. Every other color got a mythic and white, black, and blue all got Masterpieces. The single red rare is pretty restrictive in its use for what is otherwise just a mediocre burn spell, strictly worse than HoD. Ixalan and Rivals only add 12 more red spells, none of which are exactly overwhelming (Electrolyze is the masterpiece of the bunch and arguably also the best burn spell).

So what happened to all the Dominaria burn spells? Where's Fight with Fire or Shivan Fire? (Can't tell me a burn spell with a kicker would've been that hard to code.)

Where's Jaya's Immolating Inferno? (X damage spells could be translated as dealing damage equal to the number of red gems on the board, or something like that, although TBH I'd really like to see it coded as something like Awaken, but able to store up an open-ended amount of mana on the card until you cast it.) Seems like an obvious choice for the red mythic in the set where we're also getting Jaya.

It just seems like a really weird choice to give us a spell-focused, mono-red Planeswalker after three sets in a row with garbage options for red burn spells. Assuming they fix Jaya's bugs, when Hour rotates out, if the next set doesn't bring some really solid burn spells options (and some non-burn red utility spells would be nice, too), it's gonna be ugly. Jaya's fine on paper but she's going to feel only slightly more relevant than Arlinn Kord if your "best" option for a burn spell is Exquisite Firecraft.

Brakkis

Stormcrow said:

Where's Jaya's Immolating Inferno? (X damage spells could be translated as dealing damage equal to the number of red gems on the board, or something like that, although TBH I'd really like to see it coded as something like Awaken, but able to store up an open-ended amount of mana on the card until you cast it.) Seems like an obvious choice for the red mythic in the set where we're also getting Jaya.

 Um... Jaya's Immolating Inferno is in the Dominaria set. It was the first rare I got.

FindingHeart8

I think she's got potential.

Like other players said above, she can be wicked good...with the some of the best cards in game.  Let's be reasonable here, most planeswalkers would be a force to be reckoned with if they were rocking the best cards in the game

I wish she was red/blue, because there's a ton of blue spells that I'd love to see rocketed to a 1-turn cast with her 1st ability. Mono-red though is surprisingly lacking in comparison.

Tilwin90

Jaya is sensational if you know how to use her (that came out wrong...).
Right now standard spells are really powerful in red, including HUF, Hour of Devastation, Inferno Jet and Star of Extinction (that's right, Star only cares about supports and creatures so spells in your hand are safe). 
Add that ultimate on the board for some delicious drawing sessions and Jaya turns all those nice spells free. 
I also noticed that the first ability is smart enough to dodge already full spells and go for the first spell card in your hand that doesn't have full mana yet. It's more of a convenience tool as you could do this manually if you chose of course.
And her second ability draws tons of cards while also bringing something extra to the table.
Her mana gains rival those of Chandra2, but her abilities are what really propel her.

I'm a huge Jaya fan. She is more spells oriented while Koth is more creature oriented. Her mana gains are not as bombastic but since they are flatter she doesn't run into the "no red gems" problem that often.

boopers

babar3355 said:

Anyway, I will upgrade her to a top tier of mono's... but still doubt I will use her in any serious events.

I used her on HoD right node... the mono spell version.  Tore through all 13 matches like a paper shredder.

Stormcrow

Brakkis said:

 Um... Jaya's Immolating Inferno is in the Dominaria set. It was the first rare I got.

Brainfart on my part, but probably because MTGPQ's Immolating Inferno is pretty bad compared to the paper version. Like most of the red burn spells we've gotten, it's got that arbitrarily low damage cap.

Tilwin90 said:

Right now standard spells are really powerful in red, including HUF, Hour of Devastation, Inferno Jet and Star of Extinction

Right, but 3 out of those 4 are gonna rotate out with the next set released and...then what does she do? Even Star, capped at 10 damage to all creatures as it is, really doesn't impress me that much. (Given that PQ creatures usually have much higher P/T than paper creatures, it's especially weird to me that the paper version does 20 damage to all creatures and the PQ version does half that.) People keep saying "Red has great spells right now!" but it's literally ONLY Hour of Devastation that has great spells for Red.

Theros

Hod rotating out is a big concern indeed. Not only  for jaya but also green PWS for lack of gem converters for affordability

boopers

bken1234 said:

There's a huge bug with her and archive. I have a BL where I pulled 30 copies of HoD in 37 rounds. It's posted in the bugs forum.

It's not a bug.  The interaction we are seeing is a fundamental part of the engine.  AA acts like an interrupt, in that whenever you draw a card, you draw another one immediately after.  This includes when that card is draw in the middle of another triggered effect like her A3. 

The best I can figure, her A3 is coded like this:

0) Trigger: draw spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck

2) Fetch the copy - unless hand is full
3) give original full mana 

The nuance here is that if you cannot fetch the copy, it is actually "drawn" on the next drawn card, even the next turn.  It then becomes an original and copies again.  as soon as you have room in your hand to fetch it, it ceases to copy.

However, AA is not triggering until after the copy is placed on top of the deck, A3 trigger is taking precedence over AA trigger.  But as soon as step 1 above is complete, AA triggers, bypassing the fetch part of the sequence.  so in the string above:
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> loop
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card 
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> loop
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card 
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> hand fills
2) Fetch the copy - unless hand is full (which it is, leaving a copy on top to be drawn next)
3) All drawn cards were turned into "originals" and gain full mana

That is why your hand fills and gains full mana... AA is interrupting the A3 coded sequence like it is supposed to.

I think what the devs tried to do here is ensure that no matter what, whenever you draw a spell, you always benefit from that duplication rather than it fizzling if you hand is full.  This was done in lieu of expanding your hand to 7 cards like we have seen in the past (which has typically been changed).  

It can certainly be changed, but it's a bug as much as naru/ruse was a bug...

DBJones

There's just one issue with your theory on how this works, how is Archive triggering more than once? It doesn't trigger off its own draws. I think Jaya's ultimate is drawing rather than fetching. If it wasn't, Archive would only trigger once and you'd end with three of the drawn spell in hand, two full of mana.

boopers

DBJones said:

There's just one issue with your theory on how this works, how is Archive triggering more than once? It doesn't trigger off its own draws. I think Jaya's ultimate is drawing rather than fetching. If it wasn't, Archive would only trigger once and you'd end with three of the drawn spell in hand, two full of mana.

You are probably right.  But if you are the sequence of A3 looks more like this:

0) Trigger: draw spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck

2) Draw the copy - unless hand is full
3) do not loop back to (0)
4) give original full mana 

When you introduce AA to the mix, step three is being bypassed by the AA trigger.

And now that I'm thinking about it, this must be how AA is coded as well.

0) Trigger: drawn card
1) draw next card
2) do not loop back to (0)

better?

Tilwin90

Stormcrow said:

Right, but 3 out of those 4 are gonna rotate out with the next set released and...then what does she do? Even Star, capped at 10 damage to all creatures as it is, really doesn't impress me that much. (Given that PQ creatures usually have much higher P/T than paper creatures, it's especially weird to me that the paper version does 20 damage to all creatures and the PQ version does half that.) People keep saying "Red has great spells right now!" but it's literally ONLY Hour of Devastation that has great spells for Red.

I never said she was the best planeswalker out there, but I have to give Oktagon credit for how flexible she turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, initially I was a skeptic and I thought "great, another garbage, Chandra2 slightly improved... yay... not really", but they are getting better at designing these stuff.

She is reliant of spells, that's true, and red is quite a spell-oriented color (instants and sorceries), so I am positive that in the future she will find usage. Sure, standard is a bit wonky now in terms of spells all around... I mean look at IXN, RIX and DOM. Most of the powerful stuff are either supports (which turned UW bonkers) or creatures (specifically looking at all the mythic goodie creatures that are flooding the format).

Now let's look at the spells...  Out of them I can count the number of truly good ones (of course subjectively based on how often I would play them and how big an impact they make in the format), and they are:
(IXN) River's Rebuke, Perilous Voyage
(RIX) Vona's Hunger, Mastermind's Acquisition
(DOM) Rebirth, Sundering (both reliant on creatures)

If you look at all this, you will see lots of blue love, a bit of black and splash white.

Supplementary I am looking at the composition of card types and I have the following statistic:
Spells: 91
Supports: 103
Creatures: 270

Now normally this could be the reason we have the least amount of good spells around... because we have fewer of them. But the number of supports is not that much bigger. And I can count way more good supports in the format:

(IXN) Dowsing Dagger, Azcanta, Blasting Cannon, Legion's Landing, Ixalan's Binding, Settle the Wreckage, Growing Rites of Itlimoc
(RIX) Storm the Vault, Path of Discovery, Journey to Eternity, Sphinx's Decree
(DOM) Lich's Mastery, Thran Temporal Gateway, In Bolas's Clutches, The Eldest Reborn, Seal Away, On Serra's Wings, Gilded Lotus

Bottom line - red is not the only color facing this problem. I am curious what and how they will port from M19, since looking at the set I see a cycle of powerful mythic spells. I have hopes for Apex of Power, Banefire and Guttersnipe (depending on the damage dealt it could be a better or a worse Imminent Doom), and I know that's not very much to hope for.

In the meantime I'm going to enjoy the current standard format and my junky Jaya decks that are a lot of fun to play and give me a different playstyle.

Gunmix25

boopers said:

bken1234 said:

There's a huge bug with her and archive. I have a BL where I pulled 30 copies of HoD in 37 rounds. It's posted in the bugs forum.

It's not a bug.  The interaction we are seeing is a fundamental part of the engine.  AA acts like an interrupt, in that whenever you draw a card, you draw another one immediately after.  This includes when that card is draw in the middle of another triggered effect like her A3. 

The best I can figure, her A3 is coded like this:

0) Trigger: draw spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck

2) Fetch the copy - unless hand is full
3) give original full mana 

The nuance here is that if you cannot fetch the copy, it is actually "drawn" on the next drawn card, even the next turn.  It then becomes an original and copies again.  as soon as you have room in your hand to fetch it, it ceases to copy.

However, AA is not triggering until after the copy is placed on top of the deck, A3 trigger is taking precedence over AA trigger.  But as soon as step 1 above is complete, AA triggers, bypassing the fetch part of the sequence.  so in the string above:
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> loop
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card 
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> loop
0) Trigger A3: drawn spell
1) create copy and place on top of the deck
1.1) Trigger AA: Drawn card 
1.2) Draw copied card (it now becomes an "original" version by being drawn)----------------------> hand fills
2) Fetch the copy - unless hand is full (which it is, leaving a copy on top to be drawn next)
3) All drawn cards were turned into "originals" and gain full mana

That is why your hand fills and gains full mana... AA is interrupting the A3 coded sequence like it is supposed to.

I think what the devs tried to do here is ensure that no matter what, whenever you draw a spell, you always benefit from that duplication rather than it fizzling if you hand is full.  This was done in lieu of expanding your hand to 7 cards like we have seen in the past (which has typically been changed).  

It can certainly be changed, but it's a bug as much as naru/ruse was a bug...

Based on the wording, it should be working like this:

0) Trigger: draw spell

1) give drawn spell full mana 
2) create a copy of said spell.

but since it is operating out of sequence that was laid out in text. it isn't working like it says per se. 

That said, this effect creates a problematic infinite loop on draw. Once triggered, it is the only card you draw for the rest of the match. Based on Oktagon's rule, this card creates or can create a situation whereas a infinite loop may occur on top of the draw. So in essence, not too far off from the Naru-ruse combo. 

babar3355

I actually do think its a bug.  The wording of the ultimate and archive should follow this sequence:

1. Draw a card
2. Ult Triggers first effect, copy the card
3. Archive triggers, draw an additional different card
4. Ult fills original card with mana

The "bug"  is caused by the coding placing a copy of the spell on top of the deck rather than copying it in hand. Then archive draws that copy, then ult triggers again, causing a loop.  I promise this isnt how it was intended to work.  Imagine if we didnt have a hand size limit... the game would just keep drawing cards infinitely and we would eventually have to quit the game.