Jace, the Mind Sculptor debuted in Magic a decade ago and was the fourteenth unique planeswalker card printed in Magic. At the time of his reintroduction in Worldwake , Jace was one of players' favorite Planeswalkers in many players' favorite color, blue. Unlike today's sets that typically have three to five Planeswalkers, Worldwake would feature Jace as the sole Planeswalker. As the lead developer now known as final designer of the team for both Conflux and Worldwake , we had accomplished this once before when we created Nicol Bolos, Planeswalker in Conflux , but unlike Nicol Bolas, this would be the second Jace card printed, which had unique challenges of its own.
How could we make a Jace that stood out from Lorwyn 's Jace Beleren yet delivered on what our players loved about Jace? In addition to the task of focusing Worldwake on a single Jace Planeswalker from a game design perspective, we were working with the Creative team to make this new Jace awesome.
Much like the selection of Nicol Bolas to headline Conflux , we specifically chose Jace as we were developing him to be a key Planeswalker when working to achieve the brand's franchise and media ambitions. Originally, we had planned the Planeswalker focus with Future Sight as detailed in Mark Rosewater's column here , and now that Planeswalkers had become a reality, we knew we needed to do star building for our Planeswalkers.
Introducing Planeswalkers as powerful focal points of major set releases was the path forward to put our Planeswalkers front and center in people's minds when they thought about Magic.
I spoke with Ken Nagle, the design team lead for Worldwake , about Jace and what his team worked on for Jace before handing it off to my final design team. We wanted a four-ability planeswalker that could somehow combo with itself. I knew he would be put through the ringer in final design and playtesting but tried to capture Jace's essence. Jace, up to that point, was milling opponents to death, so we made sure he could do that.
Also, I made that mind wipe ultimate since that's what he does to his teacher, Alhammarret, in Magic story. We knew he was an important card to the set as the only Planeswalker, so we didn't hold back.
Each player draws that many cards. For each Magic set, we would conduct a rare poll to get feedback from all the Magic players at Wizards. From that rare poll, it was clear that the Jace above, while reasonable, wasn't hitting all the aspirations we had for him. You absolutely do not want them to draw that Maelstrom Pulse.
How many fetches did they have in play? How many outs did you surmise they had in their deck? Had you tried this trick before? Are they of a playing caliber where they will be likely to sacrifice the fetch end of turn?
Again, all of this requires practice, but being aware of such mind games will help your gameplay. Did they level you by leaving something good on top by incentivizing you to sacrifice your fetchland? Nobody wants to look silly and watch their powerful planewalker get snagged by a Mana Leak. But there is certainly such thing as playing too cautiously. Holding onto your Jace for too long can lead to a number of issues.
The biggest issue I see coming up are creaturelands. They lead on Celestial Colonnade and a few turns go by without much happening. You both play a few Serum Visions and set up your land drops. Your turn 4 rolls around and they have 3 mana available. You can just tap out and slam your Jace into their mana or you can wait for a more opportune time. After all, you do have a copy of Logic Knot in hand. What if they counter your Jace and then untap and slam their own? Well, Magic is hard, but under most circumstances I am slamming down that Jace there.
You are forcing them to have a counterspell for it that costs less than Cryptic Command. Additionally, you only get punished if they untap and slam their own planeswalker. Your Logic Knot will surely find something to hit later anyway. Another issue with waiting is that they have a Celestial Colonnade.
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