If you’re not a fan of that comparison, how about having access to kolaghan’s command. Again, a powerful conditional role player that subtly re-centered the modern format since its introduction. Nothing major of course but the ripples form kommand are continually being felt in the form of slightly different builds across multiple decks (including those that don’t run the card but are attacked by it).

Havjng jace in modern will be like these cards. You’ll see it fairly often, you’ll occasionally get blown out it. Most of the time it’ll be just a solid role player for a certain deck.

It’s important to explain who the people you’re responding to are because if it’s writers, sensationalism/hyperbole are common, and readers’ comments(assuming you’ve read and collected data from big enough sample…) are still not always worth taking seriously(ex: poorly-reasoned opinions from spectators who don’t play).

Results from recent tournaments and experience playing the card tell me that bad cascades are bad, but do not necessarily happen enough to really matter. Unlucky cascades suck and streaks of them can feel really long, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doing heavy-lifting in a deck, like Jund. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

That will depend on how the Jace decks turn out. Merfolk has previously struggled against decks with lots of sweepers and better against Jeskai decks relying on 1-for-1’s. If UW is the way forward for those decks Merfolk will suffer.

Me: elf into bob
Opp: snapcaster push bob block elf.

Goddamn elf is good!