Jace Beleren is the archetypal blue planeswalker. Aloof and taciturn, and more likely to act on the mind in order to avoid anything resembling physical contact. Jace Beleren has three abilities and these match blue’s ability to ‘mill’ cards from an opponent’s library, and blue’s card drawing.
Jace Beleren costs three mana to cast, enters the battlefield with three loyalty counters, and has three abilities. Jace Beleren is one of the cheapest planeswalkers you can cast, with most costing four, five or six mana to bring to the game.
The first ability adds two loyalty counters. Each player draws a card. As with cards such as Howling Mine, you gain additional cards at the cost of giving other players additional cards too. The advantage with Jace Beleren is that you are building quite quickly towards his third ability.
If you don’t like the idea of giving four other players a card every time you want a card, the Jace Beleren’s second ability is more for you. For the cost of removing a loyalty counter, you and only you draw a card. Casting Jace Beleren for three mana, drawing a card, and then drawing two more cards in successive turns before seeing him off is no bad thing at the melee table. You’ll miss out on his third ability, but maybe you don’t mind that.
The third ability requires the removal of 10 loyalty counters from Jace Beleren. This is a lot, although Jace’s +2 ability means you get there quicker than you might think. Also, if you cast Jace Beleren and only use his first ability, then by the time you are able to use the third ability you’ll have 11 loyalty counters, so Jace Beleren will hand around the battlefield after you use the ability.
The ability lets you target a player and have that player put the top twenty cards of their library into their graveyard. In Grand Melee with a minimum of five other players this is not a particularly exciting ability. Chances are you may very well help that player rather than harm them. When you additionally consider that most players turn up with decks of 80 cards or larger, you are very unlikely to remove anyone with this ability.
In summary Jace Beleren is cheaper than other planeswalkers but has less utility. His first ability helps four other players and his third ability is unlikely to trouble anyone. His second ability is nice but if you’re playing blue you probably have less convoluted ways of drawing three cards. Jace Beleren’s third ability could be useful, but only as part of a deck specifically designed to remove cards from your opponents’ libraries. This is rarely a successful Grand Melee strategy.
Verdict: Weak. A deck based around Jace Beleren is highly unlikely to work, though he has a marginal role in other decks.
Connections
Like Jace? You may also like [Jace, Memory Adept] [Gideon Jura] [Venser, the Sojourner]
Don’t Like Jace? You may prefer [Xenagos, the Reveler], [Liliana Vess] [Garruk Wildspeaker]
