span_argoman wrote: I find that Jace is strongest when you lock the AI's hand by draining mana and increasing the cost of the cards in hand such that even a cascade isn't going to summon out the first card. In particular this works well with the third ability which can keep your opponent's hand drained of mana and ensure they just about never get to play any card.You will get to this point where the AI is feebly trying to charge up its first card which is already designated its best card to play but it can't outstrip your mana drain and the cost increases. It's going to be slow so it won't be suited for QB but it can work rather well for Story / Events. If I had all the cards my ideal deck of this design would be: Drowner of Hope Thopter Spy Network Shrine of the Forgotten Gods Sunken Hollow Prairie Stream Sphinx's Tutelage Prism Array Talent of the Telepath Scatter to the Wind / Horribly Awry Disperse / Clutch of Currents / Harbinger of TidesCreatures The first two cards are there because their combo effect disables your opponent's creatures for the rest of the game. If you don't have both, Thopter Spy Network alone still works with the rest of the deck as the support gives you a draw whenever your token creatures attack the enemy planeswalker, working with Sphinx's Tutelage. Otherwise, Disciple of the Ring is another Mythic that fits the theme. Down in rarity, you have Deepfathom Skulker (though it is cost prohibitive for a 4/4), Jori En and Fathom Feeder. There's also Mizzium Meddler which should be considered purely for its mana efficiency rather than it's negligible effect. Further down the rarity line you get the usual suspects such as Sigiled Starfish or Jhessian Thief.Supports The next three cards are there for mana gain. Jace's mana gain isn't as strong as the other blue planeswalkers so you need some way to compensate. I have to say Shrine of the Forgotten Gods is (sadly) rather crucial to making any of the original planeswalkers (except Nissa) competitive at high levels. Sphinx's Tutelage is key to increasing the costs of cards in the opponent's hands. The deck has rather varied means of drawing (Prism Array, TotT) so you should not have to wait long to draw this into hand. Prism Array for the draw, and to disable anything that gets through. Getting a landfall will increase the opponent's first card cost by up to 6 mana. In the case of the opponent triggering a landfall, the draw triggers before the mana gain which means the cost increase from Tutelage will also trigger before the mana gain. Talent of the Telepath is important to fetch the right cards: Sphinx's Tutelage, your ramp supports, an emergency Disperse or Scatter to the Winds. Pretty much your entire deck except your creatures and Thopter Spy Network will be autocast by this spell and that is really good for setup. You want to be discarding any unnecessary cards in hand so that you can keep drawing. You can potentially be increasing the mana cost by 10 if you landfall with Prism Array out and have a bonus draw from one of your creatures or Thopter Spy Network.Spells Scatter to the Wind is necessary to clear the mana built up on your opponent's first card as otherwise one good cascade will undo all your good work. The other option is Jace's third ability. 15 loyalty for Trap 9 is a fair cost for pretty great odds to drain your opponent of a lot of mana. Horribly Awry also works well enough if you are missing Scatter to the Wind because it is really the creatures which you want to prevent from being played. You can use Disperse to bounce-destroy any tokens that get summoned by spells or supports. Disperse is there to bounce back anything that makes it through the gaps. Clutch of Currents is a costlier alternative that still maintains the autocast-ability from Talent of the Telepath. Harbinger of Tides is an alternative which is more in line with the deck theme but loses the benefit of fetching from Jace's second ability and the autocast-ability from Talent of the Telepath. It worked well for me in the past but Disperse has been my go-to at least for QB because for QB you only really need that temporary tempo disruption. You can try and see which works better for you. If there's any card you don't have or prefer not to have in the deck, there's still Jace's Sanctum as an alternative. Jace's Sanctum + Sphinx's Tutelage alone is 5 mana a turn which isn't small. This used to be a terror back before planeswalker caps were raised to 60 (mana gains were capped at +2/+1/+1/+0/+0 or +3/+1/+1/+0/+0 at 50) and before all the new planeswalkers with increased mana gains.The most important question though is why Jace instead of Kiora? Imo Jace edges Kiora out on this build cause of his second and third ability. Sure Kiora has 6 loyalty to drain 6 mana but Jace has 15 loyalty to drain up to 54 mana. That actually matters when the mana cost of the opponent's first card is greatly increased by Sphinx's Tutelage. The second ability is more when you urgently need Scatter to the Winds cause you cannot wait another turn to use Mind Sculpt. You have a 1/3 chance of getting the spell and another 1/3 chance of getting Talent and fetching a Scatter in your next three cards. You do lose this benefit if you use Harbinger of Tides instead of Disperse though. Another minor reason is when you have enough planeswalkers, you can keep this deck configuration in Jace and keep Kiora (if you have her) in Quick Battle configuration rather than having to change her decklist when switching between events and QB.What achievements is this deck good at getting? It is most definitely slow, but it's suited for hitting story achievements like finish the match in 25 rounds or more, or event achievements for casting a certain number of supports (if you don't have Tezzeret yet). Arguably it might be a decent candidate for the kill 2 or less enemy creatures achievements but I don't have Shrine and without it my setup is too slow to lock down the opponent early enough. But Thopter Spy Network + Drowner of Hope will disable enemy creatures once out to ensure that you need not kill again till the end of the match. *edit* I added in the alternatives of Clutch of Currents and Harbinger of Tides for Disperse. Also added in the explanation for Horribly Awry which I forgot earlier.
madwren wrote: Been playing a control deck (thus, slow) that's been surprisingly effective. It plays a number of ways, but has two basic win conditions: Extreme bounce and tempo,or riding Big Octopus to victory. Mirrorpooling a Scatter into a Crush is pretty satisfying. Mist Intruder - ingest as mana denial, plus powers Strider's cheap bounce Murk Strider Mizzium Meddler - body plus denial. 1-2 mana a turn may not seem like much, but it helps, and he's able to take down most creatures commonly used as defenders. Harbinger of the Tides Scour from Existence Horribly Awry Scatter to the Winds - If you can start your game with 2 blue matches on consecutive turns, you've emptied their mana and generated a 6/6 critter. Crush of Tentacles Clutch of Currents Mirrorpool I usually wind up recurring a Scour with his second ability, or dropping the ultimate and not letting them get anything going. Reflector Mage can be subbed in for Harbinger or Meddler, and you can use your bounce spell of choice. I like Clutch because it's just one blue match to cast. This is the type of deck I feel ingest works best in. By itself, it has mixed effectiveness, but as a component of a control deck, it's great.
RhythmicDemise wrote: I need help with a deck blue is something I'm just now having to play I have a few rares and mythics including Creatures: Father Feeder Noyan Dar Souldblade Djinn Will breaker Forgotten Creation Jori End Prized Amalgam Mizzium Meddler Thing in Ice Spells: Turn to Frog Days Undoing Welcome to the Fold Invocation of Saint Traft Altered Ego Ugins Insight Supports: Thopter Spy Network Oath of Jace Fevered Visions Any help would be appreciated
span_argoman wrote: RhythmicDemise wrote: I need help with a deck blue is something I'm just now having to play I have a few rares and mythics including Creatures: Father Feeder Noyan Dar Souldblade Djinn Will breaker Forgotten Creation Jori End Prized Amalgam Mizzium Meddler Thing in Ice Spells: Turn to Frog Days Undoing Welcome to the Fold Invocation of Saint Traft Altered Ego Ugins Insight Supports: Thopter Spy Network Oath of Jace Fevered Visions Any help would be appreciated You have several options. You can go for a Horrors deck with Thing in the Ice. Main issue with that is that it's slow to summon out Thing in the Ice and the only other Horror you have there is Forgotten Creation. The plus point is it's cheap so Jace can summon it out easily. Just remember not to reinforce it by accident. Another option is Noyan Dar and Soulblade Djinn forming the core of a spell-heavy deck. But Noyan Dar is very expensive so it might be a bit risky if you don't have enough ramp (mana gain). Jori En is a decent card for draw, Mizzium Meddler has good stats for its cost. Willbreaker is overpriced junk. Fathom Feeder is probably just too expensive for Jace. Prized Amalgam is dependent on how many other zombie cards you have which you feel are good enough to use. But I think a Blue zombie deck will only be of medium power at best with the current card selection. Thopter Spy Network is an amazing card which you should try to fit in until you have cards with better synergy with your main deck idea. Good supports to have in the deck with it (to meet the one other support requirement) are Corrupted Grafstone, Drownyard Temple, Shrine of the Forgotten Gods, Prairie Stream, Sunken Hollow, Prism Array or Sphinx's Tutelage. Fevered Visions is a good cheap support for draw and that little bit more of bonus damage. But be wary against using it on planeswalkers typically in need of draw such as Kiora, Nissa or Koth as you give them a free draw. Oath of Jace just isn't a very good card. Day's Undoing is a very good spell for cycling and finding the cards you need. Welcome to the Fold is Exert Influence Junior and it's especially useful when combined with Jace's first ability allowing you to steal any creature with 11 power or less. Altered Ego is a great spell for reinforcing your creatures. All the better if you managed to steal a big creature to reinforce. Otherwise, the creatures you're running are all pretty big and should benefit quite nicely from it (Noyan Dar gets a +3/+3 when you cast it too). Turn to Frog is iffy. You can slot it in as creature removal if you've space. But typically Disperse is enough to buy you time to finish the game before the opponent builds up too threatening a board. Plus with sufficient draw you should be able to spam bounces and removal with mana as your limitation. Invocation of Saint Traft is not bad but it's best for berserkers which Blue doesn't really have, nor do you want to run Berserker's Plate. Ugin's Insight is overpriced junk. You also want to bear in mind to have something to deal with Runaway Carriage. So something that does mass disable (Guardians of Tazeem, Aligned Hedron Network + removal/bounce) or mass bounce (Displacement Wave, Crush of Tentacles, Engulf the Shore). Or True-Faith Censer or Haunted Cloak to give one of your creatures Vigilance to block and get rid of that annoyance. What good colourless Rares and Mythics do you have? You can see how they might be able to help supplement your deck.
RhythmicDemise wrote: [img][/img][img][/img] span_argoman wrote: RhythmicDemise wrote: I need help with a deck blue is something I'm just now having to play I have a few rares and mythics including Creatures: Father Feeder Noyan Dar Souldblade Djinn Will breaker Forgotten Creation Jori End Prized Amalgam Mizzium Meddler Thing in Ice Spells: Turn to Frog Days Undoing Welcome to the Fold Invocation of Saint Traft Altered Ego Ugins Insight Supports: Thopter Spy Network Oath of Jace Fevered Visions Any help would be appreciated You have several options. You can go for a Horrors deck with Thing in the Ice. Main issue with that is that it's slow to summon out Thing in the Ice and the only other Horror you have there is Forgotten Creation. The plus point is it's cheap so Jace can summon it out easily. Just remember not to reinforce it by accident. Another option is Noyan Dar and Soulblade Djinn forming the core of a spell-heavy deck. But Noyan Dar is very expensive so it might be a bit risky if you don't have enough ramp (mana gain). Jori En is a decent card for draw, Mizzium Meddler has good stats for its cost. Willbreaker is overpriced junk. Fathom Feeder is probably just too expensive for Jace. Prized Amalgam is dependent on how many other zombie cards you have which you feel are good enough to use. But I think a Blue zombie deck will only be of medium power at best with the current card selection. Thopter Spy Network is an amazing card which you should try to fit in until you have cards with better synergy with your main deck idea. Good supports to have in the deck with it (to meet the one other support requirement) are Corrupted Grafstone, Drownyard Temple, Shrine of the Forgotten Gods, Prairie Stream, Sunken Hollow, Prism Array or Sphinx's Tutelage. Fevered Visions is a good cheap support for draw and that little bit more of bonus damage. But be wary against using it on planeswalkers typically in need of draw such as Kiora, Nissa or Koth as you give them a free draw. Oath of Jace just isn't a very good card. Day's Undoing is a very good spell for cycling and finding the cards you need. Welcome to the Fold is Exert Influence Junior and it's especially useful when combined with Jace's first ability allowing you to steal any creature with 11 power or less. Altered Ego is a great spell for reinforcing your creatures. All the better if you managed to steal a big creature to reinforce. Otherwise, the creatures you're running are all pretty big and should benefit quite nicely from it (Noyan Dar gets a +3/+3 when you cast it too). Turn to Frog is iffy. You can slot it in as creature removal if you've space. But typically Disperse is enough to buy you time to finish the game before the opponent builds up too threatening a board. Plus with sufficient draw you should be able to spam bounces and removal with mana as your limitation. Invocation of Saint Traft is not bad but it's best for berserkers which Blue doesn't really have, nor do you want to run Berserker's Plate. Ugin's Insight is overpriced junk. You also want to bear in mind to have something to deal with Runaway Carriage. So something that does mass disable (Guardians of Tazeem, Aligned Hedron Network + removal/bounce) or mass bounce (Displacement Wave, Crush of Tentacles, Engulf the Shore). Or True-Faith Censer or Haunted Cloak to give one of your creatures Vigilance to block and get rid of that annoyance. What good colourless Rares and Mythics do you have? You can see how they might be able to help supplement your deck. I'm lacking in colorless rares and mythics I have Bane of Bala Ged Matter Reshaper Brain in a Jar Canopy Vista Cinder Glade Shrine of the Forsaken Gods Smoldering Marsh Sunken Hollow Titan's Presence Haunted Cloak I'm in gold tier BTW and blue is lacking for me I also have Tezzeret but my other decks lose maybe one out of every 20-30 matches
Trollman wrote: What is the ideal level of Jace? Let's assume for the moment that our intention is to use Jace as an Event clearer and that we notice that increasing a Planeswalker's level gets you matched with higher level planeswalkers and thus that it is better for your Planeswalker to be the lowest level that can effectively pull off your plan. Obviously if we were concerned about PVE events like Avacyn's Madness or Story Mode matches that have static enemies regardless of your Planeswalker's level, the answer to which level would be best for each Planeswalker would always be "sixty," but let's assume we're concerning ourselves with something like Nodes of Power. What level is it best to stop advancing Jace on to maximize win ratios and minimize win times? The most glaring piece of data to me is that Blue, Black, and White gems give the same mana at level 28 as they do at level 60. So while maxxing out Jace's level certainly gives him a more powerful Mind Sculpt, your ability to play cards out of your deck in the first five to ten turns is pretty much exactly the same as if you'd stopped leveling thirtytwo levels ago. And when you register for Nodes of Power with a 28th level Jace you face much weaker opposition than if you'd registered a 60th level Jace. These lower level opponents have less hit points and can be knocked out faster and their own powers and mana gains are less impactful. I'm honestly not sure where and when this sort of argument stops being compelling. If you registered a 15th level Jace, you'd face weaker opposition still, and you'd still be getting 5 mana off a Blue match and 4 off a White or Black match. It definitely seems like you could pack a 15th level Jace deck with cheap rares and roflstomp the kind of opposition you're likely to face. Is there a level where opposition simply stops getting any less powerful?
span_argoman wrote: I find that Jace is strongest when you lock the AI's hand by draining mana and increasing the cost of the cards in hand such that even a cascade isn't going to summon out the first card. In particular this works well with the third ability which can keep your opponent's hand drained of mana and ensure they just about never get to play any card. You will get to this point where the AI is feebly trying to charge up its first card which is already designated its best card to play but it can't outstrip your mana drain and the cost increases. It's going to be slow so it won't be suited for QB but it can work rather well for Story / Events. If I had all the cards my ideal deck of this design would be: Drowner of Hope Thopter Spy Network Shrine of the Forgotten Gods Sunken Hollow Prairie Stream Sphinx's Tutelage Prism Array Talent of the Telepath Scatter to the Wind / Horribly Awry Disperse / Clutch of Currents / Harbinger of TidesCreatures The first two cards are there because their combo effect disables your opponent's creatures for the rest of the game. If you don't have both, Thopter Spy Network alone still works with the rest of the deck as the support gives you a draw whenever your token creatures attack the enemy planeswalker, working with Sphinx's Tutelage. Otherwise, Disciple of the Ring is another Mythic that fits the theme. Down in rarity, you have Deepfathom Skulker (though it is cost prohibitive for a 4/4), Jori En and Fathom Feeder. There's also Mizzium Meddler which should be considered purely for its mana efficiency rather than it's negligible effect. Further down the rarity line you get the usual suspects such as Sigiled Starfish or Jhessian Thief.Supports The next three cards are there for mana gain. Jace's mana gain isn't as strong as the other blue planeswalkers so you need some way to compensate. I have to say Shrine of the Forgotten Gods is (sadly) rather crucial to making any of the original planeswalkers (except Nissa) competitive at high levels. Sphinx's Tutelage is key to increasing the costs of cards in the opponent's hands. The deck has rather varied means of drawing (Prism Array, TotT) so you should not have to wait long to draw this into hand. Prism Array for the draw, and to disable anything that gets through. Getting a landfall will increase the opponent's first card cost by up to 6 mana. In the case of the opponent triggering a landfall, the draw triggers before the mana gain which means the cost increase from Tutelage will also trigger before the mana gain. Talent of the Telepath is important to fetch the right cards: Sphinx's Tutelage, your ramp supports, an emergency Disperse or Scatter to the Winds. Pretty much your entire deck except your creatures and Thopter Spy Network will be autocast by this spell and that is really good for setup. You want to be discarding any unnecessary cards in hand so that you can keep drawing. You can potentially be increasing the mana cost by 10 if you landfall with Prism Array out and have a bonus draw from one of your creatures or Thopter Spy Network.Spells Scatter to the Wind is necessary to clear the mana built up on your opponent's first card as otherwise one good cascade will undo all your good work. The other option is Jace's third ability. 15 loyalty for Trap 9 is a fair cost for pretty great odds to drain your opponent of a lot of mana. Horribly Awry also works well enough if you are missing Scatter to the Wind because it is really the creatures which you want to prevent from being played. You can use Disperse to bounce-destroy any tokens that get summoned by spells or supports. Disperse is there to bounce back anything that makes it through the gaps. Clutch of Currents is a costlier alternative that still maintains the autocast-ability from Talent of the Telepath. Harbinger of Tides is an alternative which is more in line with the deck theme but loses the benefit of fetching from Jace's second ability and the autocast-ability from Talent of the Telepath. It worked well for me in the past but Disperse has been my go-to at least for QB because for QB you only really need that temporary tempo disruption. You can try and see which works better for you. If there's any card you don't have or prefer not to have in the deck, there's still Jace's Sanctum as an alternative. Jace's Sanctum + Sphinx's Tutelage alone is 5 mana a turn which isn't small. This used to be a terror back before planeswalker caps were raised to 60 (mana gains were capped at +2/+1/+1/+0/+0 or +3/+1/+1/+0/+0 at 50) and before all the new planeswalkers with increased mana gains.The most important question though is why Jace instead of Kiora? Imo Jace edges Kiora out on this build cause of his second and third ability. Sure Kiora has 6 loyalty to drain 6 mana but Jace has 15 loyalty to drain up to 54 mana. That actually matters when the mana cost of the opponent's first card is greatly increased by Sphinx's Tutelage. The second ability is more when you urgently need Scatter to the Winds cause you cannot wait another turn to use Mind Sculpt. You have a 1/3 chance of getting the spell and another 1/3 chance of getting Talent and fetching a Scatter in your next three cards. You do lose this benefit if you use Harbinger of Tides instead of Disperse though. Another minor reason is when you have enough planeswalkers, you can keep this deck configuration in Jace and keep Kiora (if you have her) in Quick Battle configuration rather than having to change her decklist when switching between events and QB.What achievements is this deck good at getting? It is most definitely slow, but it's suited for hitting story achievements like finish the match in 25 rounds or more, or event achievements for casting a certain number of supports (if you don't have Tezzeret yet). Arguably it might be a decent candidate for the kill 2 or less enemy creatures achievements but I don't have Shrine and without it my setup is too slow to lock down the opponent early enough. But Thopter Spy Network + Drowner of Hope will disable enemy creatures once out to ensure that you need not kill again till the end of the match. *edit* I added in the alternatives of Clutch of Currents and Harbinger of Tides for Disperse. Also added in the explanation for Horribly Awry which I forgot earlier.