This deck is designed to invite you, the player, to step into Jace's shoes (and his cloak, don't forget the cloak) for the duration of the game. To that end, including cards that feature him directly or otherwise prompt you to feel like him is only a secondary consideration - the primary criterion is that the cards and their interactions encourage you to think like him in order to win. (Budget constraints have been forgone in favor of making the most flavorful deck possible.) Not the traditional way of building a Vorthos theme deck around a character, no, but I wanted to try something different from that.
So what does it mean to be Jace?
Magically speaking, you are a mind mage first and foremost, and never forget it. You can dip into other areas of magic, especially with your early background in manipulating mana and ability to learn spells from others' minds, and you should do so judiciously, but a strategy that ignores your main specialty (like directly summoning an army of creatures to attack with) is not going to win you the game. Does that mean you have to mill your opponents to death instead? You can try, but mind magic is much, much more versatile than that, as is reflected in the cards, and trying to mill 90 or so cards per opponent in a format where original Eldrazi titans are run as protection against milling seems like a dubious prospect without a more detailed plan. You'll have to use that versatility and work something out, but if you do you have access to quite a bit of power, as befits the only Planeswalker ever to have a card banned out of an official Magic format. (Mind magic is widely considered a broken powerset for a reason! In fact, I excluded some powerful cards with a good mechanical fit that could be made to work thematically, like Boseiju, Who Shelters All, Consecrated Sphinx, Force of Will, Fabricate, High Tide, Mystical Tutor, Palinchron, Personal Tutor, and Whir of Invention on purpose to make the deck trickier to play and less oppressive. It's supposed to make you think, not steamroll everyone without trying.)
The key to working out an appropriate strategy, of course, is to understand what you seek to manipulate. In your case, that means minds - both yours and your opponents', and both in and out of the decks. Any deck can benefit from such an understanding in its player, but this one demands it, which brings us to play style. You may want to abandon your current plan in favor of a backup, but you never want to be out of options. Consider the benefits and drawbacks of each option carefully to optimize your plans. Anticipate your opponents (and yourself) to squeeze the most out of every drop of mana and every card you cast, then find ways to reuse them. Endure into the long game while you gather information and set up plans, or until you reach a shortcut. Convince your opponents that what you're doing to further your plans is also in their best interests. Fight as little as possible - you and your creatures are both physical underdogs - whether by forming alliances, pumping out effects that benefit everyone, or trickery if need be. Allies are very useful to hide behind, and if you read them well they may even be quite happy to have you borrow things out of their heads! But when you have no (true) allies, or your allies can't protect you, well... you do what you must to survive. You might not like being nasty with your powers, but you knew going in that there would only be one player left standing at the end of the game, so you came prepared. Haunted by lots of memories, but prepared - presumably this fight is over something very important for you to be stepping in. And when you do step in, you're not messing around.
With that out of the way, on to the cards!
You lead your deck as
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
. We'll go over the gameplay implications of this later; for now, let's just note a couple of flavor points beyond the usual from leading the deck yourself:
- Having nearly guaranteed access to your flipwalker card means that the flexibility of mind magic, as is present on both sides of the card (both hand refining and the Planeswalker abilities are widely useful) is highly unlikely to be far away at any point - and that's before we get to the rest of the deck! (Even if the creature side is stolen, it can only be used for so long before the transform condition brings it right back, which is a nice point of resistance to mind control.)
- You're not dipping into Black for nastiness or win conditions. That dalliance is firmly behind you, and besides, Blue mind magic is quite capable of providing you ways to win.
We start with the basics: Islands. Here there's no reason not to showcase the places Jace has been that already have cards out; ideally these would be comprised of any combination of 1 of each unique art from Vryn (Origins - the Origins Islands depicting Ravnica are duplicates of RTR art), RTR (5 variants were printed), Kamigawa, Alara, Zendikar, BFZ, SOI, and Kaladesh. Failing these, the Islands of Lorwyn and/or original Ravnica would be acceptable substitutes, but beware that one of the variants from Ravnica block was duplicated in RTR.
Our other lands are there to provide some useful function beyond Blue mana. Exotic Orchard, Transguild Promenade, and
Vivid Creek
we keep around in case we want mana of other colors (say, for activated abilities of stolen permanents), along with a Snow-Covered Island for snow mana (from that one time Tezzeret insisted you come to a meeting with Bolas and you lost a toe). Academy Ruins helps you recall artifacts (and you have several juicy artifacts between your storied history and gifts to the Guildpact), Homeward Path provides insurance against opponents stealing your creatures (you know better than to assume it's not possible) and unwanted donations, while Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx lets you leverage being very, very, Blue into more mana to work with - Gideon can tell you all about the benefits of devotion to an ideal, can't he?
Mage-Ring Network
,
Minamo, School at Water's Edge
, and Moonring Island all let you sink mana into their other abilities at instant speed. Halimar Depths gives you a peek into what you're about to remember, Reliquary Tower lets you keep more options ready to hand,
Shelldock Isle
stores a spell (preferably an expensive one) away for later, Arcane Lighthouse helps you target pesky creatures, and Tolaria West lets you call to mind just the manabond you want. Vesuva can back up any nonlegendary land you've already put out - or copy a manabond from someone else.
Hey, even most of the nonbasic lands are from planes you've been to. And for the rest that have specific places, you know someone else who's been to that plane if not that place.
At this point you may notice the conspicuous omission of most mana ramp and accelerators - this deck doesn't even sport a Sol Ring! The few mana ramp cards present all have other functions. This is deliberate - there is a mana efficiency subtheme instead, the reasons for which are explained in the subtheme's own section. (Yes, this means a slower start in general. It adds to the puzzle and has flavor reasons. But with the sheer amount of card draw in the deck, it works out fairly well despite the low-looking land count.)
Card Draw Show
No one can complain much about you using mind magic on yourself to bring things to mind faster, can they? Nor can they really complain about you helping them out with more options. So you have a wide variety of card draw spells and abilities, some of which can or always also give cards to other people. If you drive them out of the fight with that, well, then you've been clever.
Draw Control Show
Of course, it also helps to direct your memory towards things you want to remember soon. So while this deck lacks traditional tutors, you do have some ways to exert extra control over what cards you're about to draw with some little (or big) magical nudges.
Countermagic Show
Counterspells aren't mind magic, you say? Well yes, you can cast them by manipulating the mana in the spell you want to disrupt, but who says
you aren't achieving the same effect by manipulating the mind of the caster? Especially when it comes to spells already flavored that way, like
Lay Bare
and
Clash of Wills
, or effects that can adjust spells to your liking while countering the original caster's intended effects, such as
Aethersnatch
and
Insidious Will. After all, they still
don't get the effect they wanted and you
do.
Card Reuse Show
Just because you cast a spell once (or it wound up in your graveyard some other way) doesn't mean you should have forgotten it forever with no other use for it. No, forgetting can be a precarious thing, and so you have a variety of ways to get something out of cards in your graveyard (or, in the case of
Blue Sun's Zenith, have it not reach there in the first place). Whether that's turning on spell mastery for
Calculated Dismissal
,
Send to Sleep
, or
Talent of the Telepath
, transforming
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
, flashing them back, having them shuffle themselves back into your library like
Guile, or returning your whole graveyard to your library with any of
Elixir of Immortality,
Learn from the Past, and
Psychic Spiral
. In theory, you can even recycle those 'forgotten' spells back indefinitely
and hit an opponent's mind to boot with the mill from
Psychic Spiral
, which is pretty much exactly the trick you pulled on Alhammarret way back when.
Yes, yes, you can mill opponents out, it's not quick or pleasant driving them insane but you can do it. Even when opponents come prepared with memories that object to being forgotten and drag others back with them, you have ways to deal with that more permanently. (Those are scattered for one to find, and I won't list them all here. If you really want some (incomplete) hints to the various puzzles of this deck, check out the "Custom Categories" option.)
Incidentally, you do not have much in the way of "hard" mill protection, since it interferes with many of the ways to reuse cards. (Maybe stop removing memories from yourself so often.)
Time Tricks Show
So you're not a time mage. So what? Slowing down your opponents' perception and cognition (or speeding up your own) will quite suffice to be effectively faster than everyone else with
Leyline of Anticipation and
Lighthouse Chronologist
.
Besides that, you have many, many instants and instant-speed abilities available to you, and those encourage you to choose your timing carefully because of the sheer number of options you have.
Illusions and Other Creatures Show
You might have noticed by now that your creatures are, well, not very good at combat. It's not that Blue has no creatures that do well in combat and fit its themes; on the contrary, observe
Soulblade Djinn
,
Thing in the Ice
, and
Isleback Spawn
. But on top of mind magic not particularly lending itself to creature summoning in the first place, there were some... incidents (including one with a drake) during your ill-advised stint with the Infinite Consortium that made for rather an aversion to summoning creatures out of somewhere in order to force them to fight and die for you. But hey, Illusions don't have this problem; they're mostly mind magic with solidity thrown in where needed.
So your creatures are all Illusions; cards that flavorfully should be Illusions but mechanically aren't; Spirits that can just go back where they came from when they take too much damage; Avatars or Incarnations of abstract concepts that you have some connection to, so they don't particularly mind sending you some manifestation to hide behind (the
Soul of Ravnica
would hardly object to protecting its Living Guildpact, for example); or relatively fragile mana constructs that are meant to maintain magical effects rather than to fight.
You miss out on a lot of potentially great creatures that way, such as Arcanis the Omnipotent, Archaeomancer, Cryptoplasm, many Sphinxes including Consecrated Sphinx and Sphinx of the Final Word, Disciple of the Ring,
Mercurial Pretender
, Psychosis Crawler, Quicksilver Elemental, Torrential Gearhulk, and Uyo, Silent Prophet, but those spells just don't come easily to you.
Now if your opponents summon threatening creatures they might send at you, that's another matter...
Taking Control Show
Sometimes you have to resort to a little
Mind Control
in order to keep your opponents' creatures from beating down on you. Or taking some of their noncreature spells - usually out of their heads, though you can
Aethersnatch
a spell as it's cast. And if you really need to and have the mana to spare, there is always the ultimate in mind control:
Mindslaver. (Which you
can use to lock down all your opponents at once, if you're careful and able to juggle them all.)
Self-Improvement Show
Less obviously terrifying to those around you is your ability to improve your own mind in various ways. Squeezing more out of each little nudge to remember and each healing spell, casting your spells faster, and in particular ensuring that you can keep many options ready without forgetting some of them.
In flavor Omniscience should be here as the exemplar of endless personal growth, but in effect it does something different.
Mana Efficiency Show
No, you can't sense leylines or regrow land like Nissa does, but you've been in plenty of scrapes where mana wasn't easy to get a hold of. So it's only sensible to learn how to store mana up for later use, keep the costs of your spells down,
and get more out of casting them. Plus after having been on the wrong end of a manablade, you wouldn't get into a serious fight without the ability to regenerate damaged manabonds via
Crucible of Worlds, no matter
how expensive that is. Of course, there's also the ultimate in cost reduction,
Omniscience.
Artifact Use Show
Sometimes you have to make use of things other people have made, or stories you've heard about them, in order to shore up weaknesses. Maybe that's "borrowing"
Alhammarret's Archive, recreating
Venser's Journal from Tamiyo's memories (although
her journal you had to give back), or just having a
Spellbook
. But just because someone else made it first doesn't mean you shouldn't learn from them, especially not when you've been to so many places.
Life Gain Show
If you're getting hit by creatures and you can't hide behind your own, how do you deal with it? With a few healing spells, which you do know, although they have to all be artifacts since the Commander format has some difficulties with properly representing your ability to dip into White mana.
Group Hug Show
What better way to not be targeted than to appear innocuous and helpful? Offer to help everyone else do more and let them tire themselves out against each other with cards like
Minds Aglow,
Show and Tell
, and
Vision Skeins
while you set up your plans and gather both information and cards.
Politics and Alliances Show
If you want to have allies to hide behind, well, you need to make alliances, navigate them, and have a plan for when they turn on you. Offer to fill the reanimator player's graveyard - and then tip them over the edge of insanity when they're the only opponent left? Point out that you're playing a deliberately weakened theme deck to deflect people's attention? Show the player with the weakest card draw a
Diviner Spirit
and get them to
let you attack them with it for cards, or maybe make an
Intellectual Offering? Use a
Spectral Searchlight to help someone cast their larger spells early? Offer to shut down a combo deck with your counterspells? It's all up to you. (And it's nice to have someone who'll give you all the cards from a
Fact or Fiction
or
Epiphany at the Drownyard.)
There's also the question of who you make enemies of, mostly by stealing their things or milling them when they don't want to be milled, and when to do so. Hey, no one said politics was easy.
Flexibility Show
It's nice to have options that can be turned to more than one end, even if they only
seem to do one thing. And when you're dealing with systems as delicate and complex as minds, of course a single type of action can be made to have many different effects. So you have a variety of obviously or subtly flexible cards, such as
Contingency Plan,
Cyclonic Rift, and
Insidious Will. Frankly, given your long and storied history of your initial plans not working out and having to ditch them in favor of something else, you're going to need the flexible cards.
You might have noticed already that this deck is not built to allow going in with the same plan every game and have that plan consistently work - no 8x8 or other theories on how to reliably see particular effects in every game (other than countermagic, draw spells, and hand filtering), no combos with many backups for each piece, no traditional tutoring... Well, that's deliberate. You'll just have to adapt to the situation and know when to keep a plan and when to toss it or relegate it to a backup. And if you want to get a specific card, you'll have to work for it, whether by drawing through the deck until you find it, using a Transmute ability (and knowing the CMC of what you want, and giving up the transmuted card, and deciding whether it's worth the drawback of having to reveal the card you look for), completing the quest of
Archmage Ascension
, or managing to use the ultimate ability of Jace, Architect of Thought.
Tricks and Surprises Show
Sometimes you have to resort to trickery and/or surprising your opponents. Whether that's
Aethersnatch
ing a commander that someone thought would at worst wind up back in the command zone, "killing off" one of your own Planeswalker cards with its ultimate a turn earlier than anyone expected only to replace it with another iteration, finishing off someone's library with a
Psychic Spiral
right before their draw step, putting down lots of lands and then dropping
Academy Ruins + Lighthouse Chronologist + Mindslaver
to suddenly take everyone else's turns, solving the underlying problem everyone was fighting over out of the blue using
Enter the Infinite + Laboratory Maniac
and any draw spell, or any number of other possibilities... there are a lot of these, and the deck wants you to think of them when they come up.
Anticipating Opponents Show
As a first point, observe that all your permanent removal is in the form of counterspells. If you want something in particular gone, either hold the mana and the counterspell available to do it yourself, or convince someone else to do it. Which naturally means that you'll need to think about whether you should hold mana open on any particular turn, and what's worth spending a counterspell on.
Alongside that are some individual cards that emphasize working out what your opponents might do more than is usual. Do you suspect an attack that you might want to throw an Illusionary Ambusher in front of? What might you want to save for later under
Shelldock Isle
, or should you leave something unimportant there in case no one's library winds up that depleted? Might an opponent put out something you have trouble dealing with using your own
Show and Tell
?
Drawbacks Show
This has been mentioned a few times, but some of your options have downsides beyond just that you'll likely make enemies eventually. Flashing back a spell with
Jace, Telepath Unbound
means you can't put it back into your library later, but recycling your graveyard turns off spell mastery, gives you little guarantee of retrieving that particular spell, and tosses out any scrying or other library manipulation you might have done. Hiding a card under
Shelldock Isle
means you can't access it until someone's library has been mostly depleted. Group hugging means your remaining opponents will have gotten to see many of their cards, and probably made good use of their best ones, when they turn on you. Choose wisely!
So, what do you say? Want to wear the cloak for a game?
(Note to anyone looking to construct this deck: the Maybeboard consists of cards that almost made my final cut, so there may be some substitutions from there you'd prefer depending on local metagame and sourcing considerations.)
