So, this week's In Development is all about those new duals, with a foray into Tectonic Edge as well.
The comments are fun this time around, too. Am I a rare card shill? I think my neglect of Baneslayer says no, but you can be the judge. :)
So, I'm told this is a good card. My fellow CFB writers are all over his value, so despite Cedric Phillips' downcheck on this new take on Jace, I'm inclined to believe that it genuinely is.
That said, I suspect this also means I won't be spending much time writing about it in terms of playing it. This is partly my own contrarian nature -- clearly, I don't just like playing the "best deck" over and over, so I end up taking quirky designs to tournaments. This is also partly the mandate of my column over at CFB, where I am not budget in the strictest sense, but tend to gnaw at a specific idea for a while. That way if a reader chooses to play the "In Development" home game, they don't end up swapping out super-expensive cards each and every week.
But as I said, not budget in the strictest sense. I still assume you're going to buy all the dual lands and fetches.
Finally, there's the fact that Jace seems okay to me, but isn't my style of gaming. This may seem curious since my favorite card ever is a blue card (cf this site's name), but I typically play that blue card in the context of decks that will rarely if ever counter a spell.
It does seem like Jace will be a tremendous problem when it's across the board from you. He can immediately go to 5 loyalty and then sit there, outside of Bolt range, Brainstorming each turn and bouncing creatures every so often.
That said, I don't know that I'd be happy as the control player to drop this Jace as soon as I could, so it feels like he's going to be a late-game icer, much like Cruel Ultimatum.
Of course, I'm saying this without testing him, which is a topic I'll be addressing in this week's In Development. My overall thought for the moment is that while Jace will be a big old sixty dollar bill, or worse, in the coming weeks, I won't be disappointed to not be running him in my decks. He's nifty, but for the moment, not my style.
...and we might imagined something borrowed from a friend's account, and a few blue cards as well. I was checking in on the most recent Extended PTQ online earlier this week, and was pleasantly surprised to see a mix of expected and novel builds in the top eight.
You can check out the top eight and quite a few more decks here. You can also go ahead and click on through to the Extended entry for all the lists in the top eight with some commentary from me.
There's a reasonable amount of chatter in the usual places about this card being in a set with no Eldrazi spells:
I personally think this is a cool move. This excites me nearly as much as it would have back when I was a young, new player to the game. I like these "preview" elements in Magic sets.
Also, as Ben Bleiweiss points out, this land is already a tutor for Sundering Titans and Platinum Angels in Tron decks. Neat, right?
However, what's cool in totally flavor-based terms is how the Eye plugs into this card:
Colorless spell? Check.
And the flavor text:
Only those gifted with the eye of Ugin, the spirit dragon, can see his fiery breath.
Full credit for noticing this goes to my friend Shane, who is, I think, continuously scanning each new set for connections to the Future-shifted cards from Future Sight.
I'm very much looking forward to reading more about the intent behind "colorless" as a flavor element. It certainly feels like it plugs well into the eldritch monstrosity feel that the Rise of the Eldrazi suggested.
This week's In Development is up, and it's all about my Johnny-tastic time at last weekend's PTQ. Click on over to read about how I ended up losing a tournament but winning at life with the help of a 10/10, a 1/1, and a funky enchantment.
Check out the top eight decks from last weekend's PTQ in San Antonio.
Although the invite was taken down by Andres Suares with Domain Zoo featuring Bant Charm, which is a pretty good call, my eye was caught by the second place deck. Ryan Benito nearly made it there with a U/W Touch-Blink deck featuring Reveillark and Martyr of Sands. It's been a while since there was a last-minute wave of Touch-Blink decks in Standard, so you might want to click through and review those cards and what they do. I'm just fascinated to see such a divergent deck choice make it up to the finals of a PTQ.
In fact, this is a pretty interesting top eight. We have:
1) Andres Suares with Bant Charm Domain Zoo (aka "Charmed Zoo")
2) Ryan Benito with TBML
3) Chet Steinhagen with Scapeshift
4) James Wise with Jund Dudes
5) Sang Jung with Rubin Zoo
6) Drew Dumanski with BB Naya (where BB is Bloodbraid and Boom // Bust)
7) Hal Brady with Dark Depths
8) Andrew Jones with Affinity
This kind of top eight makes me happy about Extended all over again.
This is a fun little video from ChannelFireball that also happens to show off the Superstars venue. Once a grain storage facility and later an art gallery, it's a giant warehouse-style place with lots of space to play. If you're planning on going to the $10 sealed event this weekend, you'll be playing in that building.