Why is jace the mind sculptor so expensive

Sindbad suddenly becomes a 2-mana Archivist when we always put a land back on top for him; Codex Shredder gives us a similar effect for library manipulation. Because this isn't Legacy and we can't just jam-pack our deck with fetchlands to reset the top of the deck, we'll need to be more judicious with our shuffle effects.

Trinket Mage is the All-Star here, providing us with a small package to tutor for Crypt, Spellbomb, Shredder that can be bounced with Jace's minus ability for future shuffles. Field of Ruin can shuffle us up in a pinch and maybe even get to hit a valuable nonbasic on the other side.

Long-Term Plans and Pondering Mage are the other workhorses here, and the Mage can also be redeployed at the cost of just a bit of loyalty in a pinch.

Because this deck has a couple outstanding bomb rares not to mention constructed studs like Counterbalance , I wanted to fill out the creature base with some of my favorite weird Blue creatures. Ghost Ship was a favorite of mine when I started playing in the mids I loved the art and nobody explained to me that 'bury' prevented regeneration, so Ghost Ship just lived forever , Mirozel and Graxiplon have two of my favorite names I wish they would go back to some of these incredibly weird names for incredibly weird creatures , and Mirozel and Cloud Djinn have incredible art.

Diamond Mare is an early drop that allows us to stem some bleeding against early aggression. Riverwise Augur has a crappy body, but the Brainstorm effect is valuable. Removal here is not great, but if we can put things back on top of libraries and then get them with Counterbalance games will go in our favor. Spin into Myth provides us with a spell that actually has the text 'Fateseal' —often referred to when Jace's plus ability gets activated, since the effects are similar even if the keyword isn't evoked.

Granted, when Morphling was wrecking everyone, combat damage used the stack, so its stats could change to really mess up attempts to kill him, and it protected itself well. By the time I actually owned copies myself, its time had passed. But I tell you, in a format like this, Morphling can relive the glory days and take over a game by itself. Who in their right mind is still playing it?

Air Elemental is already a fine card in a format like this, and when we're actively taking steps to manipulate the top of our library the Djinn can recruit quite a few bangers and put you well ahead on cards.

Djinn is a flavor homerun and a very fun card to play with. Hard to think of a Rare I'd be more excited to play in a deck that's concerned with manipulating the top of the library! Blue doesn't really get reset buttons, per se, and I'm not playing Upheaval in these lists because even though I love the art and the card in general, it is absurdly unfun. Double Masters. Double Masters Borderless Newest.

Murktide Regent Modern. Azorius Control Modern. Indomitable Creativity Modern. Atraxa, Praetors' Voice Commander. The Locust God Commander. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow Commander. Blue-Red Control Modern. Bant Control Legacy. There was a time you could argue Liliana was the second-best planeswalker ever printed, but since then a few important new additions have forced her down the list a little bit. Modern Jund is the perfect example. Jund is happy to play off the top of its library and will often have less useful cards as the game goes on Thoughtseize , for instance , so the discard effect becomes brutally asymmetric.

Her edict effect is a useful form of damage control, and she ultimates quickly and with devastating effect. She shreds the hand, keeps the battlefield clear and closes games with her ultimate — Liliana really does it all.

A more recent addition to the planeswalker pool, at just two mana Wrenn and Six was bound for great things. The card is so good it had to be banned in Legacy — recurring Wasteland while ticking up a planeswalker was just too powerful, it turns out. Even in Modern, recurring fetchlands and cycle lands has seen this planeswalker replace cards like Dark Confidant as a two-drop card advantage engine of choice.

And these four abilities suit any situation, too. Bloodbraid Elf is likely to reinvigorate some archetypes, like Jund, that have fallen by the wayside, but the risk of Bloodbraid Elf is way lower than the risk of Jace.

We already know what Bloodbraid Elf is capable of in Modern. Bloodbraid Elf will change the format some, but like similarly powered cards like Bitterblossom or Ancestral Vision before it, Bloodbraid Elf is most likely going to just slot in as another powerful card in the format that fits into some decks and adds to the format in a meaningful way.

At the next cycle, assuming Bloodbraid Elf has proven itself to be a fine card for Modern, they could take a risk and unban another card.

The next card to get unbanned should have been Stoneforge Mystic. There is this huge fear surrounding Stoneforge Mystic that I don't believe is justified. Jitte isn't legal. People are killing each other on turn three. Stoneforge has some tough competition to compete with. I think they should have saved a high-risk unban like Jace, the Mind Sculptor for a time when Modern could use the boost.

All good things eventually come to an end, and I imagine there would come a time when even our current Modern format would start to grow stale and could use a boost like a Jace unban to reinvigorate it.

That's when you pull the trigger. Doing it now might turn out fine, of course, but it's like when your opponent is dead on board and you're holding a Counterspell in your hand.

Should you tap out for another irrelevant creature or hold up the Counterspell? Hold up the Counterspell. Don't create the risk. I will enjoy playing with Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I'm excited to build around it. I just hope it doesn't ruin a good thing. I hope the tradeoff of my enjoyment of playing with Jace isn't that Modern becomes a bad format. Ultimately, though, none of this actually matters.

I'll play with whatever cards they tell me to play with. If they ban my deck, I'll play a different deck. If they unban some card that is powerful, I'll play that card. There is really no use in complaining about what they do or don't unban. I might not like it, but I have no control over it, and I can either adapt or not. They chose to unban Jace and Bloodbraid Elf , so I will be adapting to either play with those cards or play a deck that can beat the decks that become good in this new world.

Most likely, I will do what I've done in every other format where Jace is legal. I'll play Jace. Unfortunately, I don't think it is that simple. Sorry, Shaheen Soorani, but I think Jace might actually hurt control decks more than it helps. Unlike a card like Stoneforge Mystic , which is just another creature against control decks but is itself a powerful threat to play with in control, Jace is a double-edged sword for control decks. While Jace is certainly a powerful addition to a control mage's repertoire, Jace is also the nightmare card for a control deck to play against.

What I suspect is most likely to happen is that other decks adopt Jace, the Mind Sculptor and use it to punish control decks. I think Jace fits best in high-power, low-to-the-ground archetypes. Grixis Death's Shadow , for example, is the perfect archetype to use a card like Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The deck has an issue with flooding, has cards like Thoughtseize to shuffle away that it doesn't want later in the game and puts a lot of early pressure on the opponent, which makes Jace often able to come into play onto a stable or favorable board.

With that said, I don't think Grixis Death's Shadow is going to be a good deck anymore, at least in its current configuration. Jace's -1 ability is insanely good against Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler , and Grixis has a low number of powerful threats, which is exactly the kind of matchup that Jace is good against.

For an analogy, the only thing holding Sultai Delver back from being a dominant archetype in Legacy is that Sultai is very poor against Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Grixis Death's Shadow and Sultai Delver are basically the same deck. They both play a low number of powerful, aggressive threats backed up by two-for-ones, hand disruption and cheap countermagic.