Why Jace, the Mind Sculptor Should NOT Be Banned From Standard

There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter lately on banning Jace, the Mind Sculptor from standard. The movement has seemed to have been started by Starcitygames own Evan Erwin aka "Misterorange" on Twitter and there is now a lot of people joining him in #banjace. The major causing of this movement was Grand Prix Dallas/Fort Worth, where the top eight had 32 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, all in the main board I believe. (for those of you who can't do basic math, that means every deck contained four Jace the Mind Sculptors.) While a lot of tournaments that have been happening lately have been pretty close to that, no top eights have actually had such ridiculous results. In addition to being insanely powerful, Jace is also hard to obtain since he has around a $100 dollar price tag, another almost unheard of phenomenon since he was far and above the best card in a small set full of not very good rares/mythic rares (or at least none that compared to Jace.)

Despite all this, I am here to say that Jace, the Mind Sculptor should NOT be banned from Standard (or any other format for that matter) for a lot of reasons. I am only going to cover the main one, balance, as I'm not a master of the market and I'm not going to go into a debate as to why its unhealthy to ban a card that's so expensive; I'll leave that to someone else. On an aside, to Mr. Evan Erwin, your discussion on Twitter caused me to write this. I really like you and the work that you do and I read and watch a lot of your content on SCG but I simply cannot agree with the idea of banning Jace, so I have written this as an attempt to make you and everyone else who wants to ban Jace to perhaps think again.

Lets start with balance concerns. I'm going to really put my neck on the chopping block for this one.

The main reason to not ban Jace: Jace is NOT the most defining card in standard.

There, I said it. You might call me insane for thinking such a thing when the 32 copies in a top eight event just happened, but that is what I believe. There is no dispute to Jace being in every deck with blue; Jace is simply the best thing you can do with four mana. This is no different from when Cryptic Command was in standard (and even in this extended season, Cryptic Command counts often trumped Jace counts in most decks.) However, whats up for debate here is not why Jace is in every blue deck, but rather why every deck has blue in it. The reason is not actually because of Jace, but because of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

If we go back to Scars of Mirrodin Standard before Mirrodin Besieged, the top deck for a majority of the time was Valakut. It took most of the world a while to figure out how to beat it, and eventually the biggest consensus most people could agree on was that counter-magic is pretty effective. Other things, such as hand disruption and constant pressure were also found to be effective. These are all things that are good against combo decks, as history has shown. It was pretty quickly decided that fast aggro actually can't beat Valakut, because none was fast enough to stop it before turn four where it pretty much wins the game.

Fast forward to now, we have a top eight consisting of four Caw-Blade decks and four RUG decks. Caw-Blade really is the anti-Valakut, as it has everything to beat a deck like Valakut; counter-magic, hand disruption, and early pressure. RUG, while less suited to beat Valakut, still has counter magic and Titans to end the game fast when the time is right. RUG was this popular in the Top 8 mostly because of its strong game vs. Caw-Blade more so than Valakut where it actually has an even to bad match up (though not un-winnable.)

The point here is that only blue decks can really beat Valakut with our current card pool in standard. Without counter magic, you cannot reliably stop Valakut as it is more like a combo deck and they can goldfish faster than aggro decks 90% of the time. Jace has absolutely nothing to do with this. It just so happens that he's a very strong blue card with a lot of utility, and since blue is required, there is no reason to NOT jam him into your blue deck. The same can be said for preordain, which also had 32 copies in the top 8, or the Mana Leaks and Spell Pierces that had similar numbers. Because Valakut is so degenerate towards the aggro decks that would normally have a much better time beating the Jace decks, these decks cannot exist due to the prominence of Valakut, and we have a dominance of Jace control decks that stop the Valakut decks. Take a look at this chart I souped up.

If you have played any Legacy at all, you'll notice this chart to be quite familiar to you. While it isn't exactly precise as there are lots of diverse decks, the combo decks destroy the fast aggro decks (like zoo, goblins, etc.), the aggro decks beat up on the Counter-top decks, and the Counter-top decks stop the Combo decks. In Legacy, Combo is so degenerate that fields are often flooded with blue decks. In Standards case, despite its recent top showings, Valakut is such a degenerate deck that blue decks are the only ones that can stop it. Because most aggro is not strong enough to stop the control decks however, we are stuck with a world dominated by blue mages. The only decks that are strong enough to beat the control decks (aka almost anything with Vengevine) are the ones that really fold to Valakut because Valakut is just way faster.

This is my main point and the one I want to get across. There are numbers to show these facts too; there is an article that was written recently (on SCG I believe, still trying to track down the source) that shows the match win % across the field. Valakut has a dominant game over everything except Caw-Blade. Valakut is the true menace in the metagame as it truly gives you about 4-5 turns to do something or automatically lose, since you cannot do anything about land drops. If I were to ban a card, I'd ban Valakut as it holds back WAY more innovation and deck design space than Jace ever will.

There is one other main reason to not ban Jace; He's rotating soon.

You only need to put up with Jace for five more months. Considering the fact that two sets will also be joining Standard in that time period to truly complete the format, there is no reason to ban it. It will simply leave the format soon enough anyway. For all we know, New Phyrexia or M12 could even bring some new powerful and defining cards that even draw the meta game away from blue/Jace decks. If we had these numbers a year ago when he came out, then MAYBE this would be a different argument, but its so close to rotation that its not even worth it. It's also important to note that back then Jace wasn't even that defining, because the top deck was a mid-game aggro deck. There was no Valakut back then, or any combo for that matter. Am I making sense now?

Of course I didn't touch on the problems Jace makes in standard, but I hardly think thats a topic to talk about since everyone knows it already. He isn't what makes the meta game the way it is, and regardless of how powerful he is we have two sets on the horizon to completely change the format. There is no reason to currently ban Jace in Standard unless you want to live in an even more unbalanced, Valakut dominated standard.

Brandon Vance