Banned: Jace, the Mind Sculptor (Part 1)

Today, we are going to discuss Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and why WotC should have known it was going to be troublesome. This will be yet another series, albeit not as large as the others.. But let me begin with a short story:

I was speaking with a Pro-Tour player who asked me a question: “What are the best words on a Magic card?”

I responded “Counter Target Spell”.

“No.” He said. “Draw a Card.”

Immediately I realized that not only is he correct, but why he is correct. Magic at its core, is a game of resource management, and the balance one has between the three; Life, Cards, Mana. Every game starts out with each player having 20 life, 7 cards and 0 mana. How quickly one can get the opponent to 0 life (usually) determines the game's winner and one can use any resources to achieve that ends.

Blue attempts to gain an advantage by being able to draw additional cards. Black is willing to sacrifice life in order to gain cards or mana to achieve its ends. Green's mana acceleration is legendary. Red is willing to roll the dice to try and gain an advantage as it has no inherent resource acceleration. White, being a defensive color, doesn't have that ability in its color wheel but has other cards available to it that can negate some of this advantage should an opponent utilize it.

Having those three (3) little words on a card mean so much. It is why marginal cards like Wall of Blossoms and Wall of Omens go from mid-pick in a draft to tournament staples. It is because that WotC has realized that maybe cantrips should not be printed so much.

But this goes beyond a marginal effect plus drawing a card. While drawing a card is nice bonus, if the effect is also nice, then one has a stronger card. A 0/4 defender does not help one win a game. In losing scenarios, it just buys a turn. But a 0/4 defender that also draws a card not only buys a turn, but replaces itself, giving a slight card advantage in the process, but gets the player that much closer to drawing what is needed to win. In short, it makes the deck more consistent.

Consistency is what makes tournament decks the way they are. It is why very strong but very inconsistent decks do not advance to day 2. They can not make it through the Grinders.

Basically, card drawing is a good ability to have. But as the banned list shows, it needs to be scrutinized so that this ability can not be abused.

We will continue this next time.

Resource Abused	White	Red	Blue	Black	Green	Artifacts & Lands	Totals
Tutor/Fetch	2	1	4	3	4	1	15
Recycle	1		1	1			3
Creatures		5		1		1	7
Reset		1	1	1		1	4
Mana +/-			3		1	20	24
Life Loss				2		2	4
Card Draw			9	1		1	11
Totals	3	7	18	9	5	26	68