Jace, Stealer of Staffs
Standard*
SCORE: 14 | 16 COMMENTS | 7215 VIEWS | IN 11 FOLDERS Top 8: 12/21
Playtest Series —Nov. 20, 2012
Against zandls-big-ass-wipes-3rd-fnm end result (5-0-0), mainboard games only. Literally every game was either both of us doing barely anything for the early to mid game or the opponent ramped, or got some early creatures out, or animated keyrunes and started beating. At the end game I'd either counter his creatures or board wipe them away then land a jace (of either kind) then tick him up for a number of turns while countering whatever the opponent played, then ultimate the jace and either win by casting Psychic Spiral or getting a memory adept and eventually ultimate him as well into a Psychic Spiral again. The sideboard from my opponent mostly would be spells to try to slow down my wincon, but aside from the one of garruk the rest isn't scary.
So far with this little of data I'd have to say BANT control seems to be a good matchup, but it would be a good idea to not completely write it off. The Cavern of Souls was an annoying card, but 4 maindeck Ghost Quarter really helped and against this deck in particular they seemed effective. Also there appeared to be no maindeck spells that were bad in this matchup.
Against scg-1110-8 end result (3-2-0), mainboard games only. This matchup was somewhat difficult, with all the spells to make the opponent's creatures big ugly beasts I have to be extremely cautious. surprisingly enough it seems Staff of Nin was actually this deck's wincon for this matchup as once I win the card advantage war and clear the field this deck's mainboard quite literally can't seem to win, though I imagine the sideboarded sigarda and garruk along with 7 other sideboard cards (this deck appears to have only 4 not relevant spells in it's sideboard and those are even more creatures) I feel I probably won't win the match if I don't win game 1 against this in a tournament.
it's control, I prevent myself from dying in the most efficient way I can until my opponent runs out of gas then the deck will usually finish the job with a Jace. Control decks are often build to act differently depending on what deck they're playing against, it works best when the user can predict what actions their opponent will do, a control deck usually requires one to spend dozens of hours playtesting against various builds of possible decks before one can be efficient in using it.
In short the deck plays not to get some combo out and there isn't one line of play the deck wants to go, it just out advantages it's opponent until Jace, Memory Adept ends the game, if done right the opponent should probably be ready to give up long before you actually bother to win.
StonRighMeow says... #1
Could you give a brief description of the main combos and how you would play it?
November 19, 2012 5:43 p.m.