Outlaws of Thunder Junction has surprised us with the inclusion of a second MTG Planeswalker card. Alongside Oko, there’s also Jace Reawakened. This card is particularly weird because it’s a Planeswalker that costs just two mana. And, while the typeline is clear that this is a Jace Planeswalker, the artwork is only half Jace. The other half of the character looks like the nightmare monster Ashiok.
As for the card’s effects, well it’s a pretty powerful MTG Planeswalker given the extremely low mana cost. Starting with the static ability, which is pure downside – you can’t play the card on turns one, two, or three. After that, though, things get much better.
The first +1 effect is a simple looting ability. The second lets you ‘plot’ a card with three mana or less, which we now know lets you cast it (at sorcery speed) for free on a future turn. Then, if you’re able to pull off the -6 loyalty ability, you get to copy all your spells for a turn. Yikes!
So what’s going on with the card art – what’s Ashiok doing there? Well, in the MTG Thunder Junction chapter released yesterday, it came to light that Ashiok – who hired everyone to pull off the vault heist in the first place, was actually Jace Beleren in disguise, working alongside Vraska. What they’re both up to is shaping up to be a pretty interesting mystery.
Back to the card itself, we can see this Planeswalker working pretty well in a hypothetical Control deck. If you play Jace on turn four, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to hold up a counter spell or kill spell to protect him.
There aren’t any pure Control strategies in the best MTG Arena decks right now, however, the meta is mostly aggro and midrange. But this version of Jace might help to reawaken the archetype. If the plot mechanic worked at instant speed this would be particularly disgusting – as is, we’ll have to wait and see if the card can make a splash.
Aside from a few transforming creatures and MTG Battles, there are only two other Planeswalker cards with a mana cost of two (Tibalt, The Fiend-Blooded and Wrenn and Six) and both have far more anemic effects than Jace, Reawakened. In fact, three mana Planeswalkers have traditionally been problematically powerful (looking at Teferi and Oko in particular).
This is also a break from Wizards’ new policy of only including one Planeswalker in each set. We’ll have to see if it goes back to that with MTG Bloomburrow later in the year.
For more Thunder Junction news, check out the set’s face MTG Commanders. And we heard some interesting things from Wizards of the Coast about the Atii and Native representation on this plane.