quote: | Originally posted by MSZ
let me guess, these guys play $700 worth of deck ya? wouldnt mind drafting, but 14 bucks a pop or so doesnt seem that great. im signing up as soon as my paypal clears. recently looked into that jace card, $80 bucks a pop is pretty immense lol. im not really up to date, and i dont really know the mechanics well. |
Standard has essentially been dominated by Jace, the Mindsculpter for the past year or so, and it's created such a metagame pillar that even Wizards has stated that they're displeased as to the impact it's had. It seems as though the top 8 decks at any major qualifier are all running four copies of Jace, and I'm not faulting anyone for it; the card is amazing, and does everything you need it to in order to put yourself in a winning position.
Unfortunately, it also means that Standard has since become an incredibly stale format, and has driven away a lot of players who aren't able to fork over four hundred dollars for four copies of Jace. The top decks in Standard right now are Caw-Blade, RUG, Valakut, UW Control, and UB control, and all of them (except Valakut) just can't function without running four copies of Jace. Of course, there have been a few non Jace-centric builds that have seen successful results lately, such as BR Vampires, Valakut, Elves, Eldrazi Green, Boros, and a few other aggro decks, but they're all very draw dependent, and just not quite as stable as the Tier 1 builds I mentioned (Valakut is essentially the most competitive deck not using Jace, at the moment).
Here's a list of some of the most recent first place decklists. You'll notice that anything running blue is also running JTM (which is the majority of the decks you'll see there):
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck_...ange2=4/16/2011
Wizards is obviously aware of the problem, and have just issued an announcement regarding the banning of Jace. The new expansion is set to be released in May, and it sounds as though they've included several anti-Planeswalker cards that are intended to balance the game away from Jace's dominance in the format.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazi...tg/daily/ld/138
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He traded sands for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand. Afari, Tales
Last edited by Paradox Lost on Apr-17-2011 at 04:14
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