I see your points and I'll try to explain my point of view:
Your not going to board in Jace against Canadian or Zoo or something like that. In most matchups where Jace comes in you'll board out Dazes anyway and getting to 4 lands with 8 cantrips is really no problem at all. Esper also runs only 22 lands, and even fewer cantrips. You'll also have a single Loam postboard.
And having double blue should be possible if you have four lands in play ;)
But I have to disagree and second what Spike said. Planeswalkers, be it Liliana, or (and especially) Jace just win the Mirror. We play no Burn and hardly any flash creatures, making Jace a very predictable card (a'la how long will he live, who do I have to kill, what to bounce and stuff). Same for Liliana, there is no Bolt eot or anything, she can play out her full strenght, aka make board/cardadvantage. And casting a Jace in the lategame is no problem. We are not RUG, we sometimes need to have about 3-4 Lands to apply pressure in the right moments, making an lategame Jace a draw-and-drop. I am playing the standardlist by Daniel, but a different sideboard, featuring 2 Lilly and 1 Jace, but at the moment im trying to fit the second inside.Originally Posted by KobeBryan
GReetings
I agree with you, but I think one big part of Jace has been overlooked:
Jace doesn't get your opponent to 0 life.
They really need to errata the way life loss works so that it can be redirected to planeswalkers. Deathrite being able to smack Jace or Liliana down would make me a very happy camper indeed.
they haunt minds...
That's like saying Ad Nauseam does not kill your opponent and is bad for storm. For matchups like "UW removal heavy control" jace is perfect since you'll likely get to the lategame where he is a bomb that they have trouble dealing with.
Currently playing: Elves
You can speculate that you're going long against Tundra decks and that Jace would be good against those, but those decks are much better equipped at that game plan than TA is. Playing to the strengths of your opponent is just not a good strategy. It also weakens the flexibility of the deck over several turns. Jace requires 4-5 lands, while our deck only requires 2-3. Those 2 extra cards/turns have to be made up for somewhere. This gives us two choices:
1. Play more lands. The additional lands needed to play Jace also lower your chances to topdeck business, and usually some of the first business to be cut are copies of Ponder, i.e. chances to get more cards to interact with your opponent when you don't have any. Meanwhile, playing more lands is going to make your Ponder/Brainstorm worse, reduce deck slots for cards that interact with your opponent, and minimize your advantage in the turns you're most likely to actually be playing (the first 5 or so).
2. Play the same number of lands. Then we have to play around natural anti-synergies we incur by diluting our own game plan. This includes getting to 4-5 lands with/through Daze, having fewer ways to interact with the opponent (you cut disruption for Jace and not threats, right?) or if you took out some threats you are simply less able to kill your opponent. Then we can count on the other opinions mentioned so far about hitting the correct colors or the exacerbated weakness to wasteland (either having no way to stop pressure or just being unable to cast the Jace).
This deck is far better off re-crafting its tools to fit its standard strategy- killing the opponent before they play anything meaningful. It's more profitable to exploit all of those implications to playing Jace and to punish that line of play with cards like Sinkhole. Typically, our disruption base is far more flexible than our threat base is, so it would probably be better to start there, or to find other creatures that double as disruption/beaters such as Scavenging Ooze or Vendilion Clique.
If you want to play bombs, this is not the deck for you. If you want 60 cards that are frustratingly powerful on their own, or if you want an absurd win rate by balancing all of your resources on razor-thin margins, now we're talking.
Your logic is fine for RUG tempo but a bit flawed for Team America I think.
For the common configuration of Team America with a slightly higher land count than RUG + deathrite it is possible to support jace without having to increase the land count or screwing with the plan of virtual card advantage due to less land slots/drops. The % you loose by removing the 2 worst cards to interact with your opponent and or 1 of the worst cards and 1 of the worst creatures or cantrips is very low but the upside of slamming a jace for the win is very high.
I am not arguing that you will be an equally good lategame deck just by running 2 jace. The plan is still to pressure them with discard, delver (& confidants - maybe board them instead of tombstalker) as much as possible. They will have to invest all their resources in fighting this pressure enabling your mid-game jace to easily resolve & seal the deal. I wrote about the problems of Team America with Tundra decks (Stoneblade) as well here and Jace helps out against those issues.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post693455
Currently playing: Elves
Jace can be a fine sideboard card in a deck like this, but I don't think it's the best option if you are trying to board against Esper Blade.
Against Miracles Jace is great, against blade he is not so much. They have too many ways to interact with you once they hit 4 lands, and you don't really have much high end action other than Jace after you sideboard. All of their draws become better and all of your draws become worse (relative to theirs that is) as the game goes on. Esper can protect their own Jaces and kill yours more effectively than you can against theirs.
The more mana Esper blade gets, the more powerful it becomes. They always have uses for extra lands, and we do not.
Against Miracles Jace is another creature that can't be killed with removal and doesn't overextend you into wrath effects. They can only really answer him with countermagic or a Jace of their own, so it's the nuts. But that deck also dies to Sinkhole + Hymn, and those cards are much better against blade.
they haunt minds...
Sinkhole dovetails with Hymn very nicely, with the land destruction approach being backed up by Wasteland (with the potential for Loam recursion) and Daze. While this is going on, ideally you have presented a threat that needs to be quickly dealt with. I think some people are not adopting/testing Sinkhole due to budgetary reasons. But then again, if you can sling 4 Underground Seas, surely you could find a way of obtaining 4 Sinkhole?
Not having to ramp into 4 mana in TA is powerful for the same reason it's powerful in RUG: Brainstorms can be used to tuck back extra lands and shuffle them away in exchange for more disruption and threats. Daze's island-bounce "drawback" actually becomes more of a bonus since you can more often turn Brainstorm into Ancestral Recall.
This entire plan would work slightly better if TA could run Nimble Mongoose or another shrouded threat. But the Goose does not play nicely with Deathrite or Tombstalker -- both of which are powerful enough to warrant their susceptibility to removal.
That is true. Jace is stronger vs. miracles than Stoneblade. Hymn is strong versus stoneblade and Sinkhole might be... never tested it. However I am sure that Hymn & Sinkhole are both mediocre against "the sd.top" deck miracles. I guess you can tune the sideboard according to which UW deck you expect. My experience of the applications of Sinkhole against thre rest of the field is also limited, but with Jace I do know that it is strong against any non-red control/midrange deck. Sylvan Library is strong in that segment too.
Currently playing: Elves
If you keep a top player digging for lands with their top activations, you're in a good spot. Sinkhole also stops topdecks pretty effectively, and being able to hit basic lands means life from the loam is going to be really awkward for them if you draw it. Or they'll fetch all their basics and lose to a single sinkhole, which happens more often than you would think with that card. People have trained themselves to play around Stifle and Wasteland, but not Sinkhole and Wasteland. The strategies are different to minimize impact of those cards. Along with Hymn to further drain their resources, it is a pretty devastating disruption suite. On their own they aren't quite as effective, but together the sum is greater than the parts.
Last edited by nitewolf9; 01-28-2013 at 01:25 PM.
they haunt minds...
This is exactly why I stopped running Top against a disruptive deck like this; Top activations searching for lands is the worst, but best, thing you can be doing in this situation and just puts you guys so far ahead. Top is too slow if you're not running 5+ basic lands in your deck.
Hymn, Daze, Wasteland, and Sinkhole is a pretty nutter butters disruption suite, especially if you just drop a Goyf and start pounding face. I picked up a set of Sinkholes so I could do just this once in a while.
Question for you, though: Is Nimble Mongoose not good enough with the possibility of DRS and RIP sucking up graveyards, or is there just no room? I really like Nimble in this format of AD everywhere, but I'm sure it's been tested and dropped, I just wanted some feedback since I heart/hate that little bastard.
-Matt
This is mostly what I was getting at, but from a different angle. If we're looking to prepare for a generalized form of "Jace decks", there are multiple ways to attack this problem. Miracles and Landstill are going to struggle with an opposing Jace sure, but Stoneblade and BUG Midrange are probably not so it's not really practical to go that route. It's much better to search for better answers without all of the implicit downsides.
I think this deck is close enough to RUG that we can at least trade notes and learn from it. If the opponent is planning on playing spells with lands, we can probably disrupt it.
I really have no idea how to evaluate Stalker vs Goose, but I can say that AD doesn't hit either, and against Jund for example their only outs to Tombstalker realistically are liliana and lavamancer + bolt. For mongoose they have liliana + tarmogoyf + bloodbraid elf + deathrite, and Stalker races them more effectively when he goes unanswered. Against white based removal, along with Jaces, Mongoose is very good. Still, Stalker kills them faster. Mongoose is probably still better there. Against Tribal I'm not sure which is better. Against midrange decks like maverick and jund/junk, I'd rather have stalker.
Stalker is staying in my deck as the threat of choice, mainly because I like having an airforce, but I wouldn't fault someone for running goose. Especially if there was a lot more control and combo (1 mana threat >>>>> 2 mana threat here) in their expected metagame. It's also nice that we can just kill Goyfs outside of combat.
they haunt minds...
What do you think about one or two copies of Lim-Dûls Vault in this deck?
Did some one tested it already or think about it?
It can provide us a twist on the game with brainstorm.
Do not own Sinkholes. Any subs that I can run that will also help in the Esperblade matchup?
Yes, UNL Sinkholes.
-Matt
I am trying out 2x Clique and 2x JTMS in my "control" slot. Even though there aren't many fans of Jace on the thread, there are quite a few builds on TC that have run him to success in the main or board. Sinkholes are fine but I am not super interested in dropping $100 on sideboard cards (as cool as Sinkhole is).
I need to upgrade my Sinkholes. :-(
Ok, how about Maelstrom Pulse instead of Sinkhole, has anybody tried it? It should deal with Jace or Batterskull, or with Lingering Souls tokens if you really need to.
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