defeating jace

Alright...im kinda tired of everyone moaning about how jace is "broken". At last weekend's new phexiian i heard countless people complain about him, and i feel alot of it is like jund hate. so ima give you the keys to beating jace and some general rules to follow...hopefully for every color.

rules:

1) stop playing bad decks and expecting to beat him ...while i don't think jace is broken, playing mono-green stompy with creatures only 6+ CMC like engulfing slagworm will auto-loss you games to him.

2) Don't attack him if you can win the game in 2 turns or less...since i've played jace it is amazing to me the number of people who will attack him in 1) when they have lethal on board and forget to swing at the player instead of jace and 2) could win on next turn forbidding jace doesn't find something good.

3) haste creatures = good vs. jace.


cards that beat jace:

green:
beast within - while not the most effiecent it works
Vengevine - haste with 4 power is the anti-jace + recursion
Fanna shaman - grabs vegevine...huge don't believe me ask Kevin how many times hes beat caw blade lol. (its like 10 to 1 shaman/vine favor)
red:
lightning bolt (all burn) - awesome jace killing card, especially in combo with the next card
Goblin guide - great jace killer...secret stop playing him turn 1!!! drop when they drop jace
Koth "a.k.a" the anti jace - at four CMC and a 4/4 haste body that is untouchable its awesome
Hero of Oxide Ridge - again 4 CMC that can't be blocked by UW walls or birds...amazing

White:
white doesn't really have jace answers...but doesn't really need to..since they are playing him
but...
new o-ring card- while its 6 CMC is high i like it cause it stops people from playing him for the rest of the game
Sun titan - this only works in combo with Jace Belreen which hint hint this is a caw blade trick for the mirror match.

Blue:
Your own jace the mind sculpter or Jace belreen
into the roil - while not perment it is a nice trick that hits both jace and sworded creatures

Black: prolly the worst anti jace color
discard - ok this is a bad idea unless you know how to use it. Jace decks will always always out card advantage you over teh course of the game, so while discard may slow them down a bit they will almost always get another jace before the game ends. so if discard is your strategy agaiest jace...plz plz have something to put the presure on....mono black control is not how you are going to beat jace. UW control > mono black even without jace.
so with that said some good creatures agaiest jace...ok creature...
vampire hexmage - im really surpiresed this isn't seeing more play, two mana kill target jace or gideon.

Aritfacts: yay everyone can play them

1) sword of body and mind: best sword vs. jace, anti blue prevents bouncing and you get board position and milling answeres without having to spend creatures in your hand. hint..if your able to connect with sword stop playing creatures from your hand....you'll just lose to day that way.

2)sword of war and peace: this sword is a beast vs. control jace decks...run it...

3) batterskull - only if your runnning stoneforge mystic

4) hex parasite: not the best since its a weak ceature but luckly jace decks usually can't kill 1/1s that don't attack

5) tumble magnet: while not a jace answer it is helpful in the caw blade match up

6) 2/1 that shuts down ablities: can't remember the name of the little fellow, but he does work vs. uw. shutting down jace and gideon is nice.

other cards:
Tezzerat: 5/5 fatty artifacts with haste = dead jace
creaping tar pit: this is coulda been named "Jace assassin" ( this is true for most man lands)

THEN....decks that just laugh at jace

1. Eldrazi green....this is a disguesting match up for jace...if you watch andy and myself play this last friday you saw he rolf stomped jace in about 5 mins for the entire match.

2. big red aggro : granted while batterskull helps uw in this, red still is good vs. jace and red does have the answers needed for batterskull in instant aritfact destruction.

3. Vengevine decks (Bant/Naya/green elves) - all three highly annoying and while i havn't played agaiest the latter two decks, bant deck is ahead in win %.

4. boros/vampires: both these decks do well agaiest jace though might need modos to beat day/gideon, but generally they don't lose to jace, even to the point most caw blade players will side out jace in these match ups.

5. and enemy of every deck....GW or mono white quest this deck is nuts...god draw = you win regardless of what your playing agaiest....and having access to argentum armor, sword of body and mind and vengevine and fana shaman...this deck is loaded with anti jace cards and quest turns any of your 2/2s into a kill target jace creature....if the match makes it that long.

any ways...these are some the of the answers i came up with off the top of my head while deck building last week. and as anyone who played during jund's dominance or fairies this is way way more answers then they ever had.

Jace is not broken...he just prevents bad decks from beating good decks. hope this helps you when you start your new deck.

Ok so the problem here isn't so much that jace is broken, and there are answers to him in the current format, the problem is that jace is blue, and blue provides the opportunity for whomever is playing jace to have answers to whatever their opponent decides to play to "answer" jace. Secondly no one plays jace turn 4, if you do you need to reevaluate how you play the game, or you're playing someone who couldn't win if you played their deck for them. Jace is a bastard only because of the decks built around him. Take Caw blade for example by the time you drop jace you should have total board control, at least one hawk with equipment, prolly a chump blocker in the form of stoneforge, and gideon on the board. This is an excellent board even without jace, now you throw mindsculptor into the mix and what happens? You have card advantage, you have answers for all their answers, you can day and still have a 6/6 on the board, aggro has to beat up on gideon for at least 2 turns, meanwhile you can choose to send any potential answer your opponent may have to the bottom of their library, or look at the top 3 cards of your deck AND even shuffle those away with a casted squad hawk if they don't tickle your fancy. Theres a reason 6 of the top 8 at Paris were running caw blade, and theres a reason caw blade won. I don't think it was all jace, if anything I think gideon is the mvp of caw blade, but once jace hits the board in that deck if played properly you might as well scoop. And while it might be fun to PLAY caw blade the fun level on the other side of the table is non existent, which I feel is the real gripe in our current meta game.

ok in caw blade jace turn 4-6 is the goal, with a uninterrupted sword. He is what usually gives you board control vs. aggro even if he does die. As far as the local meta cares there is only one caw-blade player and that is I. and while your situation happens where jace, gideon, hawk w/ sword it only occers because people are not playing the right cards and you named a situation in which the caw-blade player wins regardless of jace, its just a win-more at that point. the question is how did the uw deck get there in the first place? it was simply the other player didn't come ready to play a top tier deck. and proabaly would of lost to any of them valakut, e-green, boros, etc. I'll take example of a deck we (myself, andy, kevin) built that almost auto-wins its caw-blade match up, along with taking down valakut and others. but its the BANT deck - uwg. this deck is a prime example of how to beat jace. it follows the rules i listed in basically - bad cards do not beat good ones, so we took the best those colors could offer which happen some of them are on my list : vengevine, fana shaman, Gideon, squadron hawks, mystics. Kevin really took over the deck as his baby, and it has done well. Jace was even in the deck to start, and when i last left it we ended up cutting him cause he was just in the way, so moved him to SB for control matches. Also paris only had two caw blade decks, two uw control , two boros, a quest and a tezz deck. so if we look at the other four non- uw decks look at the cards they played to get there....tezz, koth, bolt, goblin guide, quest, etc. Caw-blade is not unbeatable, it is only unbeatable if you are unwilling to trade for, or obtain other powerful cards in this block. was the same way with jund. Though i'll give you fairies as being stupid, but even they had fallout. i think the event maybe your thinking about is GP dallas, which still only had 4 caw-blade decks.

With that though, didn't create this to start a jace war (no pun intended). but to simply give people who generally want to win a guide on how to play against the #1 deck in the format (and there will always be one). and the cards that should help any color in deck building with caw blade in mine. as a caw blade player for like 3 months now, the cards i listed are the ones that I myself fear, or have seen used very effectively against me, in the testing we do for bigger events. The real problem in the moment is that people have lost sight of vengevine sadly. it should be Vengevine > jace > Valakut > vengevine triangle...but our little green plant man is all but lost from memory. that would be a pretty sweet standard triangle too...Jund didn't have it and neither did fairies...

hope the info helps