I know it doesn’t sound as good and is trickier to deliver because who says “is in the eating” anymore…

He dies to everything your other creatures don’t die. So, up until now you had your opponent with some blanc cards in hand, but you give him extra targets that he will gladly use to get rid of his otherwise not that great cards in hand.

Jace also makes yard hate even more crushing than it already is.

congrats on your finish, but winning essentialy 4 games, where 1 is a glascannon combo deck and the other 3 matches against the mirror doesn’t strike me as great “proof” that the card does something.
you haven’t even mentioned him besides the naya match.

so, is that just a rub in for people not liking the card or did jace actually do anything so far? in my testings, the card was always underwhelming, i never ever used him to my advantage. he does not block against fast decks, and he does not survive every other deck.
even decks like lanthern control were able to kill him against me, so i don’t see why he would be a good addition to a already very solid grixis control shell

Totally agree – could have played 2x anything – proves nothing – also your take on the twin match up – doesnt seem remotely ture in my experience or pretty much anyone else Ive ever spoken to – smacks of – Im awesome at magic and can beat anyone – real turn off mate

Thanks man!

2x Cryptic Command is a metagame call, based primarily on the fact that most decks are either low to the ground (Naya Zoo, Affinity, Burn) or great matchups anyway (the mirror, Twin). The Remand could become another Cryptic if the format moves in a different direction, but for now I’m liking two

Let me know how you do!

Nothing in the write-up has convinced me of your claim that Jace has proved himself. It’s almost like you could’ve put 2 Think Twice in that spot and come out in exactly the same position and come to the conclusion that Think Twice has a home in Grixis Control.

I’m not saying Jace is bad, I just don’t think you’ve made a convincing argument that he’s good.

I’m not impressed with him though, I’d probably be way more happy if his ‘flip’ was a may ability so that when required he could stay a Merfolk Looter for when you need it. Otherwise I don’t like his +1, I don’t think his -3 is that great (although it’s not awful, and is good CA) and his -9 is very good in grindy match-ups (the mirror for example).

Honestly – I think those two spots should be taken by something to help the bad match-ups for the deck. Something like Dispel’s for the burn match-up (that aren’t completely dead in the other matches), they also do well vs Grishoalbrand.

While it is true that Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy opens us up to Abrupt Decay/Lightning Bolt in games where we would otherwise have those cards be relatively dead (outside of Snapcaster Mage) we have discussed multiple times, both in this article and my other Grixis pieces, how Grixis is in fact the perfect deck to fit Jace into. Playing a cheap creature just to see him Bolted certainly doesn’t feel good, but we are well suited to protect him/get him back with Kolaghan’s Command if needed. The “dies to removal” argument is tried and true, but the ceiling of what Jace can accomplish is very high. Basically, that’s what it comes down to: I feel like the ceiling of what Jace is capable of is worth it to me to include him in the deck, even though he might attract otherwise poor removal.

Jace isn’t an all-star. He’s not Snapcaster Mage, he gets boarded out in many matchups, and he dies to Lightning Bolt sometimes. Not every card in our deck can be Snapcaster level power, but he’s also not “Snapcaster #4.5” He does something different and if left alone (or protected) for a turn he can generate way more value than his two mana investment suggests.

As for consistent results, stop by the stream sometime! Maybe I should do some Grixis Videos if people want, or we can move on to another archetype.

Naturally, results mean nothing unless they stack up. But I don’t doubt Trevor will continue tuning this shell and keep us posted on how it does in the future. It’s still nice to hear about the brew doing well at its first event, and I prefer that to Trevor “hiding” it from us until it’s acquired enough finishes to earn your badge of consistency. Out of curiosity, how many finishes, and of what level, does a deck need to prove, at least to you, that it works? If we’re going to require or expect certain baselines to measure success, it would be helpful to know where those baselines reside.

Results are nice but relatively meaningless until they acquire consistency. You beat 3 grixis decks and a grishoalbrand deck – the latter being on the back of “opponent fumbling” and then a t0 leyline against him.

I don’t think you even mention jace until the naya matchup which you actually lost, so while an interesting report on grixis control as a deck, I don’t find this a very compelling “jace vryns prodigy is good in modern” article.