It's not a perfect solution, but what's your other option, attempt to play tons and tons of creatures and overwhelm jace, when your opponent may just opt to brainstorm again and let you kill the jace?
I'd rather have a way to get RID of him, as dealing with a 3/3 beast is easy peasy most of the time, while a Jace the Mind sculptor staring me down across the board is a lot worse if left unchecked. I'd gladly 3 for 1 myself in this case. (also allows surgical extraction to go off pretty easily now that we have a reliable 3 mana destroy plansewalker/anything spell)
Hex parasite seems like a 'good answer'.
And uh, if you're playing surgical extraction in monogreen something is horribly wrong. Now if it was B/G and you wanted to run despise or w/e, sure.
But yeah, greens battle plan against jace is just to swarm him down.
Beast Hunt may be a good card, but not because its an answer to jace- because its an answer to anything. Getting 3-for-1'd by jace isn't especially impressive to run it solely for that
Beast Within destroys target permanent. That includes Planeswalkers. So Hex Parasite, Despise, and Beast Within are killer cards for planeswalkers. Black/Green is going to be the deck of removal and PW hate.
turning jace into a gray ogre *after* he already brainstormed doesn't seem like a winning proposition. You're getting 3-for-1'd.
Honestly the life loss doesn't matter. In a vacuum it might be just 1% weaker than edict or something overall, but in practical use its just edict #1-4 for monoblack (with edict itself being #5-8), and not used in non-mono-black. In standard its a nice deal, but in standard a doom blade is better (and a dismember is miiiiiiighty good)
"Dies to removal" has never been more apt. If you pump that much life into his ability and your opponent is holding any response whatsoever in his hand, you are finished. That's not a recipe for a good card.
and if it had shroud, it would be more broken than tarmogoyf, so what do you expect?
If you're looking for a bone for red, try looking at:
Immolating Souleater + Assault Strobe
Because its quite possible to get turn 2 wins in standard with those two.
One card that stuck out at me was shrine of burning rage. Besides the hilariously awful name, I was thinking it just *might* wiggle its way into some RDW lists. Now, granted its a bad topdeck and thats exactly what RDW avoids, but dropped early on, its a potential 5-8+ damage to finish the game for a 2 drop (with activation cost, but only presumably as you seal the deal later on, so thats not a big hurdle). And damage/mana efficiency is *exactly* what RDW is about.
Now its no lightning bolt or autoinclude, but it could at least use some thought
Also, soul conduit has to be the most hilarious multiplayer/edh card out of the set. Talk about politics!
because swapping their land for a 3/3 isnt that bad for them
however, swapping their titan/jace/bomb for a 3/3 is bad for them
And because 2G simply isn't *that* cheap.
Stone rain was problematic enough to be pushed to 4CC, but it was never competitive powered. You need 2 CC with sinkhole to really get something going there in terms of abusiveness. And seeing as the real problem was people being unable to cast their stuff in mostly non-competitive formats, ie casual, making the game unfun, thats why its perfectly ok to have a 3CC card that blows up a land *but* gives you a 3/3
Because you aren't getting locked out of the board this way, so its both too weak to foster a land destruction deck for competitive and not one-sided enough to be a problem in casual. And yet all the same, its an extremely powerful card (because it doesn't just blow up lands, duh)
It definitely shows their willingness to start printing cards that interact with planeswalkers tho. We're not that far off from a "destroy target planeswalker" card, no matter what the flavour would mean (they would justify it by calling it "sever alliance" and giving it sweet art or such).
We've had 0 cards that interacted with planeswalkers so far, only 1 that had it in the reminder text, and now we have 2 in the same set.
And phyrexian ingester is just a blue-only duplicant
For 1 extra mana cost, you get an extra +3/+3
Its actually arguably weaker, lacking the ability to soak up lord-buffs from creature types and 6 being so much easier than 5UU even in a blue deck
On Daily MTG a few days ago while discussing JTMS, Tom LaPille mentioned that there are at least two cards in New Phyrexia aimed specifically at dealing with planeswalkers. I took a quick glance over the cards, did anyone see anything that really stood out as far as answers for planeswalkers? I didn't really see anything but then, I was just scanning.
Hex Parasite and Despise are specifically aimed at planeswalkers
Ironically, both are CMC 1 spells that are countered for free by Mental Misstep
Vintage and Legacy
Vintage (called "Type 1") lets you play any card from any set except unglued/unhinged, and has some cards restricted to 1 copy and only the barest few banned, for things like Ante and game-within-games and physical actions. Legacy ("Type 1.5") also lets you play any card from any set, except instead of stuff being restricted to 1 copy, a much larger list of abusive cards is simply banned outright in order to balance it more. So basically the only difference is the banlist.
There are a few cards in NPH that will definitely see vintage/legacy play or sideboard, like mental misstep.
you're down 1 card
they're down 1 card and up 2
= 3 for 1
For example, if you use a doom blade on an eager cadet, its a 1 for 1
you're down 1 card
they're down 1 card
but if you use a doom blade on a wall of omens, its a 2 for 1
you're down 1 card
they're down 1 card and up 1
So you're trading your 1 card and 3 mana for their 1 card, 4 mana, and they get to keep whatever their drew, filtered for 3, and a 3/3 beater.
Hex parasite seems like a 'good answer'.
And uh, if you're playing surgical extraction in monogreen something is horribly wrong. Now if it was B/G and you wanted to run despise or w/e, sure.
But yeah, greens battle plan against jace is just to swarm him down.
Beast Hunt may be a good card, but not because its an answer to jace- because its an answer to anything. Getting 3-for-1'd by jace isn't especially impressive to run it solely for that
turning jace into a gray ogre *after* he already brainstormed doesn't seem like a winning proposition. You're getting 3-for-1'd.
Honestly the life loss doesn't matter. In a vacuum it might be just 1% weaker than edict or something overall, but in practical use its just edict #1-4 for monoblack (with edict itself being #5-8), and not used in non-mono-black. In standard its a nice deal, but in standard a doom blade is better (and a dismember is miiiiiiighty good)
and if it had shroud, it would be more broken than tarmogoyf, so what do you expect?
If you're looking for a bone for red, try looking at:
Immolating Souleater + Assault Strobe
Because its quite possible to get turn 2 wins in standard with those two.
You become immune to damage when you reach 0 life, and die the second they draw a shock
But yeah it creates a lock!
Nothing interacts between the two
A 2/2 bear that hoses infect.
You wanted them to print a 2/2 bear that makes both you and your creatures immune to all damage?
A dragon that swings for 16 damage on turn 5?
Geez, what more do they need to do
Now its no lightning bolt or autoinclude, but it could at least use some thought
Also, soul conduit has to be the most hilarious multiplayer/edh card out of the set. Talk about politics!
And because 2G simply isn't *that* cheap.
Stone rain was problematic enough to be pushed to 4CC, but it was never competitive powered. You need 2 CC with sinkhole to really get something going there in terms of abusiveness. And seeing as the real problem was people being unable to cast their stuff in mostly non-competitive formats, ie casual, making the game unfun, thats why its perfectly ok to have a 3CC card that blows up a land *but* gives you a 3/3
Because you aren't getting locked out of the board this way, so its both too weak to foster a land destruction deck for competitive and not one-sided enough to be a problem in casual. And yet all the same, its an extremely powerful card (because it doesn't just blow up lands, duh)
We've had 0 cards that interacted with planeswalkers so far, only 1 that had it in the reminder text, and now we have 2 in the same set.
And phyrexian ingester is just a blue-only duplicant
For 1 extra mana cost, you get an extra +3/+3
Its actually arguably weaker, lacking the ability to soak up lord-buffs from creature types and 6 being so much easier than 5UU even in a blue deck
Hex Parasite and Despise are specifically aimed at planeswalkers
Ironically, both are CMC 1 spells that are countered for free by Mental Misstep
Vintage and Legacy
Vintage (called "Type 1") lets you play any card from any set except unglued/unhinged, and has some cards restricted to 1 copy and only the barest few banned, for things like Ante and game-within-games and physical actions. Legacy ("Type 1.5") also lets you play any card from any set, except instead of stuff being restricted to 1 copy, a much larger list of abusive cards is simply banned outright in order to balance it more. So basically the only difference is the banlist.
There are a few cards in NPH that will definitely see vintage/legacy play or sideboard, like mental misstep.
As opposed to having the eternal formats stagnate?
I think its quite intentional