[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Jetfire, Ingenious Scientist

[DirkGently]

Jace doesn't defend himself very effectively - unsummon is a much better defense in 1v1 - nor does he have a big impact the turn he's played. I think those are the two spots walkers want to exist in commander. So he's really pretty mediocre here imo. He's also very hard to ult even with support like doubling season. I would only play him if I was interested in manipulating my topdeck for shenanigans, or maybe superfriends. Otherwise I think he's just not a great fit for the format.

[Hermes_]

Jace the wallet breaker

I pulled an OG foil one when i opened a box of Worldwake, I traded him for the value for my first edh deck. Relentless Rats

[EonAon]

Biggest problem with jace is that he is very powerful but if you have the answers which there are way more of in this format to answer him than the caw blade era where they took all the easy ways to answer him and let it stew.

[umtiger]

Jace, TMS + Oracle of Mul Daya is my jam! I pretty much always play Jace, TMS when I play blue.

All the things they say about Jace TMS are true. But I still play it regularly and it always does way more than my opponents ever expect.

At the end of the day, the context of the game and what your opponents are doing mean more than "oh, this card isn't as good as it used to be" and "that's not a good enough card in commander," etc. etc.

[Dunadain]

It's still probably the best PW in a vacuum

Idk what you mean by "in a vacuum" but... Oko, Thief of Crowns.


Jace has been edged out of most formats, though I think it was to do more with Pyroblast being everywhere than anything else.

Though, even in the hyper narrow "four drop that provides incremental card advantage and helps stabilize" category, it's kind of been supplanted by The One Ring.

As for Jace in EDH, I don't really like most PWs in Commander, the multiplayer format makes it much harder to adequately defend them, but Jace is still one of the best options out there (provided you're running fetches).

[TheAmericanSpirit]

It's still probably the best PW in a vacuum

Idk what you mean by "in a vacuum" but... Oko, Thief of Crowns.

Fair enough.

[Mookie]

Jace, the Mind Sculptor is... fine. In a vacuum, would I play a four mana permanent in blue that drew a card on ETB and every turn after that? Maybe, but I don't know that I would be excited by it - Kumena's Awakening and Patient Rebuilding exist and see minimal play (although drawing a card immediately is a significant upgrade over them). Jace is obviously more flexible if you have Brainstorm synergies like shuffle effects / ways to play lands off the top of your library / card draw triggers, and you have the additional flexibility of Unsummon-ing something... but you also have the downside of Jace being more vulnerable than an enchantment. Jace can work with superfriends synergies, but he doesn't particularly benefit from proliferate / Doubling Season - 12 loyalty is a lot for an ultimate, and it only hits one opponent.

...anyway, I think JTMS is strong in 1v1, but I'd generally go with a different planeswalker in multiplayer unless I were specifically doing Jace tribal (typal?) or something.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023; Etrata, the Silencer

[pokken]

This card has so much rules text on it that my brain normally just turns off and refuses. But lord. What a piece of crap mechanic. This is one of the worst designed magic cards in the history of magic cards.

1) unblockable, so combat is meaningless
2) repeatedly killing opponents' creatures, in a way you can abuse in the command zone and blinking and stuff
3) stupid alt lose conditions that knock a single person out at a time

This card may as well have never existed for all the good it does.

[Igzex]

A friend tried building her once. He quickly learned that she simply doesn't work. If you're trying to 86 the player in the commanding position they're just going to kill her before she even untaps, or at least hold back until they can. She can't be blocked anyway so if her target doesn't have an out to her they can just not play creatures because a base power of 3 is not really what anyone would call pressure. The best she can really do is wait in the command zone for someone to have a big board that will utterly destroy her player before she can finally whack them.

You're better off winning via Voltron damage really and ignoring the text under the "Can't Be Blocked" part which is depressing.

[PrimevalCommander]

Ravenloft Adventurer secret commander to one shot a player a turn after a bit of mill? Shuffle clause at the very end ruins it. Pretty worthless card.

[onering]

She's so %$#% bad. What's hilarious is that she seems like she would be miserable to play against given her abilities, but she's actually just miserable to play.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I never liked gimmick wincons like this, but the self-tuck is an egregiously vicious drawback. You can kinda chain tutor it with Night Dealings if you can get 2 more power, but that's 9 mana a pop to reset so I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze there either. She's just unsalvageable.

[Mookie]

I vaguely recall playing with Etrata, the Silencer in a Sealed league. She was... playable. In EDH, she can function as a janky voltron commander (since she theoretically kills in three hits), but she will generally require more support (and provide less payoff) than other options. In the 99, I think she's outclassed by other unblockable creatures unless you're doing something weird.

...that said, Ravenloft Adventurer and Mari, the Killing Quill are some sweet support cards for Etrata. I guess they all go in Ramses, Assassin Lord assassin tribal? I wouldn't be surprised to see more hit counter support in the future.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, August 9th, 2023; Ingenuity Engine

[3drinks]

I never liked gimmick wincons like this, but the self-tuck is an egregiously vicious drawback. You can kinda chain tutor it with Night Dealings if you can get 2 more power, but that's 9 mana a pop to reset so I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze there either. She's just unsalvageable.

Worth noting using the commander replacement rule, if it would move from the battlefield to another zone, you can opt to place it in the command zone instead. Up to you if an exponential +2 mv is worth over burning your grim tutor to fetch again, naturally (I tend to lean towards the added cost, unless I'd be playing it from the zone for the third plus time).

Of course you could always wait till the ability hits the stack, then respond with crystal shard|tsr to bounce to your hand by failing to pay the 1.

[Mookie]

I have Ingenuity Engine in my joke cascade deck, alongside pretty much every other cascade card and free spell generator. That said, I'd play Scornful Egotist if it had cascade, so that says less about Ingenuity Engine itself than it does about cascade in general. Beyond that, the sacrifice / bounce ability seems a bit niche - you presumably want to play it in an artifact deck, and Crystal Shard-for-artifacts does sound sort of sweet, but seven mana is a lot. I suppose I could see it in Zhulodok, Void Gorger - it gets two extra cascade triggers from Zhulodok, and you can bounce it back to hand if you ever run out of gas, plus it's good to cast off Darksteel Monolith.

[PrimevalCommander]

I appreciate the restraint they used designing this card. Cascade is a dangerous keyword, and can be hard to hit the right balance. While a high MV with cascade looks good, you want to feel like the base spell is at least somewhat valuable for that cost. This one is more than fair, but still somewhat useful for certain decks. I'm not interested in this card, but it is something that might have a home somewhere, as shown by Mookie.

[3drinks]

Thursday, August 10th, 2023; Mages' Contest and in a very similar vein, Illicit Auction

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Mage's Contest is definitely the better of the two as there's cheaper ways to hijack creatures in Red. Contest though basically asks the same question as Perplex: What else are you willing to sacrifice to have that resolve? The few times I've seen Contest, I've seen it backfire more often than not. The caster always gets greedy trying to push the high bid up, then the target shrugs when the bidding hits 14 or so and lets the spell get countered, leaving the Contest caster holding a bag worth nearly 40% of their starting LP. Honestly I'd rather just play Dash Hopes or some other nonblue counter.

[Treamayne]

Thursday, August 10th, 2023; Mages' Contest and in a very similar vein, Illicit Auction

A fairly blatent example of a 1:1 card that does not translate well to multiplayer, since (barring extreme circumstances) only the caster and the Contest player's bids matter. Now, if a new version had the high bidder gain control of the spell and reselect targets. . .

[DirkGently]

Setting aside the possibility of tricking an opponent into overpaying for mage's contest, its ceiling is a cancel that costs 1 life. I know it's red but That's a pretty low ceiling, and realistically it'll probably cost at least 5 life. I don't consider it playable.

Auction is more interesting since a Wrong Turn that also lowers an enemy's life is decent. 5 mana Control Magic with life payment is pretty meh but at least it's not vulnerable to enchantment removal. It's more of a meme than a real card but it's funny at least.

[3drinks]

Friday, August 11th, 2023; Whisperwood Elemental

[Mookie]

In a vacuum, Whisperwood Elemental is okay - it makes a 2/2 body every turn and can provide some wrath protection. It doesn't make as many bodies as Tendershoot Dryad, but the bodies aren't tokens either, which is relevant for stuff like Guardian Project.

The ceiling on Whisperwood Elemental is a bit higher - it's a nice way to generate face-down permanents if you're running Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer or have other morph / manifest synergies. Manifest also has some interesting implications alongside blink effects and topdeck manipulation.

I don't think Whisperwood Elemental is a staple anywhere, but it's a reasonable way to produce board presence for decks that want it. Green has a lot of reasonable 5-drop creatures, from Acidic Slime to Yedora, Grave Gardener, and this is yet another one of them.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

This was really solid in Standard, can't say I've seen it in EDH.