Historic Brawl - Jace, Unraveler of Secrets

92
10 49 4 36
Control

Image with cards sorted by their purpose: Sorted Deck List

Introduction

Why am I making this thread?
Well Jace, Unraveler of Secretsimage is intriguing and was a card I wanted to play as commander since Historic Brawl became avaiable.
But to my surprise I could not find a list using him anywhere I searched. So I had to come with my very own creation of a 100 card Historic Brawl deck.
I want to both show this to others as well as asking for possible advice on how to improve the deck.

Let my get some things out right away:

1. This is not a T1 commander. In fact during my roughly 200 games I have never a single Golos, Baral, Esika, Kinnan or Niv-Mizzet. And only yesterday I run into my first Winota.
2. Baral, Chief of Complience is the more popular commander but he also faces tougher opponents and in my opinion is less fun.
3. I know a lot of people don't like counterspells at all. But despite popular believe you don't win by just playing counterspells every turn. Eventually you will run out of those and then you lose. This deck does require a lot of decision making on when and what to counter in order to win.
4. The deck overall has about 50% winrate for me. I did not use a deck tracker so I can't provide the exact stats. Very aggressive creature get under it and usually manage to kill me before you I stabilize. I does very well against midrange and ramp deck though.
5. If you want to win by attacking with creatures this deck is not for you. This usually deck wins by draining the opponent out of ressources, drowning them in card advantage and removing their will to play. I very rarely attack the opponent with the flashed in creatures or the tokens and get their health down to zero.

Here is an IMAGE with cards sorted by their purpose.
Some cards might fulfil multiple roles. From left to right there is:

  • Commander
  • Card Draw
  • Counter Spells
  • Board Manipulation
  • Ramp / Cost Reduction
  • Utility
  • Planeswalkers
  • Lands

The gameplan

This deck is to ramp early and set the opponent back with counter spells and our ways to manipulate the board.
The goal is to get on of our planeswalkers (ideally our commander) to stick and then protect them until we can ultimate at which point the game is basically over.
I'm mostly relying on instants and creature with flash to possibly ambush opponent's creatures and avoid tapping out on my turn.
The good this about Jace though is that he can protect himself against a lone creature on board as long as it doesn't have haste so tapping out to play him is usually fine especially when playing him on turn 4 or 5.

Card Choices

  • Mana Base

The deck has a lot of powerful late game cards and really doesn't want to miss a land drop on the first 7 or 8 turns.
Therefore I'm running 36 regular lands, 3 MFC lands, 5 mana rocks, Solemn Simulacrumimage for ramp and Search for Azcanta // Azcanta, the Sunken Ruinimage plus Primal Amulet // Primal Wellspringimage as flip lands with the latter also being one of our 4 sources of cost reduction.
I'm quite happy with that although with the amount of card draw and Scry from Jace it might be possible to run with 1 or 2 less lands but I haven't tried that yet.
However I'm struggling with the utility lands.
Castle Vantressimage and Mystic Sanctuaryimage usually come in untapped and are just straight upgrades. Hall of Storm Giantsimage is a big late game threat and doesn't hurt the manabase much although having to play tapped can be a downside.
Field of Ruinimage and Ghost Quarterimage unfortunately are necessary to deal with Field of the Deadimage.
Reliquary Towerimage is really good as we can draw lots of cards and not having a maximum handsize comes in handy.
For all the other utility cards I have to admit that in all the 200 games I played, I haven't used either of them a single time. I always had something better to do with my mana or not enough left to activate them.
So I'm really not sure if it's worth including them at all or if I'm missing a potentially good one. But then again I'm mono Blue and so far the colorless lands didn't hurt me either.

  • Questionable Cards

Expel from Orazcaimage
Again another bounce spell that can hit all non lands. Can possibly sent the bounces card back to the deck instead of hand late game.
However no chance to kick it for a card draw but still remaining 2 mana bounce with the biggest upside.

As Foretoldimage
This card is amazing if I can drop it on turn 3 and it starts ticking. It allows a turn 5 Jace play while still have a 2 mana counter avaiable.
But it's really bad when you top deck it later in the game and need something useful right away.

Tome of the Infiniteimage
The most recent addition from Jumpstart. I was able to draw it twice since then and it is actually the reason I won one of those games.
Most of the 1 mana spells it gets provide good utility such as access to cheap removal the deck is lacking, life gain, hand hate and probably the best, a fog effect to stall out.
However again it's a 3 mana card that does nothing on it's own and gives the opponent a "free" turn to establish a board.

Jace, Wielder of Mysteriesimage
This card usually gets attacked immediately by the opponent and most of the time only sticks around for 2 turns and therefore draws to cards.
That being that it does prevent me from taking damage and forces the opponent to deal with it so it might be better than a simple "draw 2" spell.
The potential self mill can help get The Magic Mirrorimage on board earlier too.

Teferi, Master of Timeimage
Kind of in the same boat as Jace. Looting with his plus ability is technically worse than the card draw but sometimes it's usful to get cards out of the hand into the graveyard.
He can also protect himself with the minus and again forces the opponent to deal with him as the ultimate is just too powerful.

  • Notable card exclusions

Narset, Parter of Veilsimage
I previously run this card. The main issue I had with her is that she screwed me over way to much by revealing lands which I had to put on the bottom of the library and then get mana screwed right after.
She is also hard to protect and keep on board to benefits from her passive ability.

Thassa, Deep-Dwellingimage
This deck just does not run enough cards that are worth flickering.
And a 4 mana enchantment that does nothing on its own is just not worth it especially as the deck doesn't have too much devotion.

Flood of Tearsimage
The bounce effect looks tempting. However I really don't want to bounce back my own stuff.
My permanents are mostly mana rocks and Artifacts or Planeswalkers that tick up and I don't want to reset them.
I probably don't have 4 permanents in play so I would not get something back immediately either.

Barrin, Tolarian Archmageimage
The bounce effect attached to a body sounds great on paper but it really isn't.
It can only bounce back creatures, it has to be done on sorcery speed and the body isn't even a good blocker.
I also have nothing to bounce back to my own hand so the card draw is irrelevant.

Conclusion

I hope you all enjoyed this write-up and it might make you try out the deck yourself.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for cards I might have missed please do not hesitate to comment below.
May your spells not be countered.

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tmGrunty
Last Updated: 17 Sep 2021
Created: 17 Aug 2021
337 119 0

Commander - 1 cards (1 distinct)

Mainboard - 99 cards (74 distinct)

Creature (10)
$3.38
$0.49€0.310.02
$5.998.93
$0.65€0.610.02
$0.90€0.480.02
$6.90€6.220.03
$0.39€0.230.02
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (49)
$0.46
$0.77€0.470.02
$1.00€0.570.02
$2.84
$13.59
$10.80€7.150.03
$1.41€0.740.05
$0.75€0.570.10
$0.25€0.170.03
$0.84
$0.24€0.090.03
$0.68€0.330.02
$0.17€0.050.03
$0.360.03
$0.19€0.110.03
$3.50
$0.25€0.130.03
$0.20€0.050.03
$3.24
$0.810.88
$0.25€0.090.03
$0.45€0.160.04
$0.18€0.050.03
$1.61€1.150.18
$0.44€0.180.02
$28.775.02
$3.06€2.860.03
$0.400.03
$1.00
$2.96€2.960.06
$0.30€0.220.03
$10.80€7.160.02
$7.00€8.253.44
$0.33€0.230.03
$4.22
$0.23€0.160.03
$0.25€0.09
$2.14€1.640.02
$0.39€0.190.03
$0.35€0.25
$0.49€0.220.02
$4.37€4.660.56
$1.27€0.895.47
$0.19€0.080.03
Land (36)
$1.48€1.000.02
$0.84€0.440.03
$0.50€0.290.02
$1.69€1.110.02
$2.47€1.370.03
$1.07€1.120.03
$0.99
$0.51
$0.33€0.250.03
$1.37€0.730.03
$3.03
Planeswalker (4)
$28.50
$1.98€1.680.02
$5.88
$4.82€2.710.03

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