I fail to see how that makes any sense relative to what I posted. BUG or UB would be able to fill an opponents graveyard faster, but its still not coming on line at the earliest until turn four or five while Delver can come online as early as turn two. Even under the best case scenario the Delver math works out like this:Originally Posted by Antonius
Delver Math (Turn Two)
Turn/Damage
2/3
3/6
4/9
5/12
6/15
7/18
8/21
Trying to give Jace's Phantasm the best case hand with a UB shell, the math is still terrible. Consider having an opener with three land (Underground Sea, Swamp, Wasteland), Jace's Phantasm, Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, and Thought Scour.
Turn One: Underground Sea, Jace's Phantasm
Turn Two: Attack with Phantasm (Total Damage: 1), play swamp, cast Thoughtseize (opponent's graveyard = 1)
Turn Three: Attack with Phantasm (Total Damage: 2), play Wasteland, cast Hymn to Tourach, Wasteland a non-basic (opponent's graveyard = 4)
Turn Four: Attack with Phantasm (Total Damage: 3), cast Thought Scour (Opponent's Graveyard = 6)
In addition to using Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, Wasteland and Thought Scour to fill your opponents graveyard, you could top deck into Force of Will and a creature removal spell, resolve them both and your opponent would still be only at eight cards in their graveyard meaning they would of needed to fetch twice or cast two additional spells. Is it possible: yes. Is it probable or worth the investment, probably not. The aforementioned is a better case scenario assuming Jace's Phantasm comes online by turn five. In such a case the math looks like this:
Jace's Phantasm Math (Turn Five)
Turn/Damage
2/1
3/2
4/3
5/8
6/13
7/18
8/23
Both creatures, unaided, still result in the same turn clock. I'll concede there would be games that Jace's Phantasm comes online before turn five, but those would be far and few between; I'd rather take Delver.
So when they start stacking one of the other four colors, are you going to get pissed at them for making that the best color? The blue bashing is irrelevant and pointless. If blue wasn't the best color, some other color would be and the boards would be filled with people clamoring about how terrible [color that's not blue] is and how Wizards always prints good cards for [color that's not blue].
Guys this card is dumb. If you're milling your opponent, why confuse the gameplan by only milling them ten deep and then dropping a dude. Compare to Serra Ascendant, a similarly conditional beater that actually keeps itself relevant by lifelinking for 6 when it gets big.
If it's in a deck with Sword of Body and Mind, you're probably playing SFM, and if you're winning by playing the Sword, you're winning because you're playing the Sword, not because you're attaching it to a 5/5. There's no chance that this card expresses itself over Delver.
Look at Tarmogoyf. Now back at me. Now look at Tarmogoyf; now back at me. It's going to be okay.
Except the damage increments are not as consistent as Delver beats.
That said, hilarious against Dredge.
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A few points: I don't think if this guy sees serious competitive play it will be as a 4-of. I'd imagine he'd be included as 1-2 copies for late game beats.
The advantage over Delver is that once the threshold is achieved, he lands as an immediate threat that is out of bolt-range and can trade favorable with Goyfs and fend off Batterskull tokens.
The 'best case' (though obviously unrealistic and card disadvantageous) would be to land him turn 1, and also cast Archive Trap in response to your opponent's t1 fetch/GSZ. This is magical Christmas land of course.
I think the comparison to Tombstalker is appropriate - you're generally not bringing one out until turn 5+~, and in the mean time you've been disrupting your opponent's lines of play. The advantage over TS is that it's easier to play multiples if needed.
The techiest card against dredge, 4 turn clock or if you drop dubs they'll be dead in 2 turns.
I agree with this guy not being a 4 of, seems like a good 1 of or 2 of in legacy for those situations where both players are in topdeck mode and bam you draw a 5/5 flier for U.
Sad to see blue getting the best beaters though, really stupid on wizards part.
I love how this guy is basically the reversed threshold creature. Neat design, but I hope it comes back to bite wizards because blue shouldn't be getting 5/5 fliers for U EVER.
Overall I'm not sure what impact this guy will have on legacy, maybe he'll be good in some UB shell of some sort. Seems pretty good with hymn and obviously thought scour.
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I feel that if it will see play anywhere, it'll be in some kind of hybridized Team America/Delver list, replacing Tombstalker. Maybe running Delver, a couple of these, Bob, and Goyf, and then tempo spells.....that seems playable/decent. Also, it feels awful against dredge, because they're going to have Narcomoebas. If you honestly think that they won't have a couple of Narcos in the 4 turns it would take you to beat them down with this thing, you're crazy, or just plain lucky like a fox.
As far as the color pie theory of the card is concerned, blue does have somewhat of a history of getting fat dudes with drawbacks....going all the way back to Serendib, although more recently things like the Phantasmal cycle, Dragon esp., have been printed. The bigger issue IMO is that they've become too cheap. If Delver was 1U, I would be perfectly fine with it. I feel similarly about this card, although I'm not sure what I would cost it. More than just U, for sure.
Obv this card is going to be overpowered. It's got Jace in its name.
Still waiting on interesting and playable red creatures ... *holds breath*
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Sideboard in RUG mirrors. Done.
/still wouldn't do it.
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My first reaction:
Then I took 5 seconds to think about it and realized that this card is only good against Dredge, and dredge has free flying blockers.
How would you even use this card? Would you put it in a Mill deck? No. You'd put Mill cards in a Mill deck. Aggro deck? Seems to me that a lot of aggro decks win well before 1/6 of the opposing deck's library goes in the graveyard.
There's basically 3 ways to make this guy turn on:
1. Your opponent Dredges.
2. You Mill your opponent.
3. You play a tight control game that stalls out the game long enough to get 10 cards in your opponent's grave through counter, discard, removal, or sweepers.
It seems the best bet for abusing Phantasm is as a finisher for a control deck.
Oh no, he's turning blue! Now he's broken and overpowered and warping the format! Ban Brainstorm!
I think you guys are missing one important point! This is no Delver. This is no T1 Aggro-machine. Its a mid-lategamecard. I believe a creature-base like this, would be pretty good for my Team America:
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Jace's Bird
3(2) Tombstalker
2(1) Vendilion Clique
In the first few turns you fire out Delver and Discard/Removal/(Stifle)/Wasteland and so on, and then after 4-5-6 turns you start putting the big birds on the battlefield...
I think this could actually work. Testing will tell.
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Beating someone with Jace's Bird sounds dirty.
Jace's Phantasm is not a card. I can't believe there's even a thread for this.
He's not a good early drop. He's not good combined with cute mill cards because cute mill cards are bad. He's not good against Dredge because a four turn clock against Dredge with 10+ cards in their yard is usually at least two turns too slow. He's not as good of a midgame draw as Snapcaster Mage. And he's worse than Delver.
Not gonna lie, though. Glimpse the Unthinkable? Funny, funny stuff.
Heh, I love overreaction threads. This card is bad. I would love for it to see play against a RUG delver who didn't draw delver and only got goyf/nimbles. Sort of a "I dare you to hit threshhold, bitch" sort of game.
Nope, this card won't be useful in basically any deck, unless it's in a meta of 50% rug delver 50% dredge and you would rather not play graveyard hate because you think it's more fun to be a badass and race them.
Just wanted to point out, however much I always agree with you, that this statement really doesn't mean what you want it to. Delver only sees play in one deck and everyone can agree it's nuts.
Theres like 5 different decks around it.
UGR Thresh
UWB Tempo blade http://thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.ph...1&iddeck=60778
UR Delver
Grixis tempo
UB tempo
and I have lately even seen bant builts with it.
What I wanted to say was, "It won't see play at all," since it's not a very good card. But I decided to qualify the statement with the second clause because I'm fairly certain some Team America/UB Tempo players will try it out for a while, and some of them might decide to keep it. Personally, I don't think you should run this card over Delver in pretty much any situation; even against Dredge, you're better off with a Crypt or a Relic than this thing because they can very easily race your 5/5 (especially when they're already at 10+ cards milled).
There's a lot of cards that people play when they shouldn't. I mean, people played Snapcaster in RUG Tempo for months despite how inappropriate that card is for that deck, so I imagine people will try this card for a while.
There's more than one. Canadian Threshold is certainly the most popular, but there's UR Delver (which took #1 and #2 at the Birmingham SCG), Team America, Team Portugal, and a few fringe builds like that Delver Zoo deck that took 2nd place at Bazaar of Moxen.
These decks are all broadly similar, though: blue-based tempo decks with a lot of spells and relatively few creatures that try to keep the opponent off-balance with a bunch of one-for-ones while killing him with a fast clock. Compare that to, say, Tarmogoyf, which at one point saw play in decks as varied as Zoo and Counterbalance Control.
I guess it's fair that people are picking on that statement when I did the same thing to Aggro_zombies'. I meant it in a different light though, in that AZ's statement did not preclude the possibility of new card being used in competitive decks (which is what I thought he was intending, but misspoke). The card is bad, we both agree on that, but what I believed he was trying to say is "No good deck will play it."
Now that's the difference between 1-2 and 0, which is in most people's eyes (mathematicians, physicists, etc) is a much bigger difference than 1 to ~3. Delver is good, it's in, I'll concede, 2 deck types now. I don't count esper blade + delver or other fringe decks that throw him in there because it isn't in a good portion of those decks. It's in RUG delver and UR burn delver (very similar decks, actually, but I guess people don't like me lumping them together).
My point is that I assumed AZ wanted to say new card is bad and won't be used, while he merely accounted for the possibility of people using it incorrectly to some success for a while, until the new card sheen wore off and they came to their senses.
This sort of reminds me of Dragonmaster Outcast. The card has a lot of interesting potential.
You can also think of it this way: this is like a card that's a 5/5 flier for 5U, but says "when this comes into play, untap 5 lands." That is, it's really undercosted if you view it as a finisher. If you're playing a UW control deck like Thopter/Sword, this is an engaging card. You can play this guy and not tap out, which means that you can hold up mana for counters and removal and Top spins.
Ultimately, it probably won't do much in Legacy, but it will still probably impact smaller formats. That you can turn this guy on with Tome Scours in Standard is going to be a pretty good deal.
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