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WUR Tang Clan's Prodigy

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We’ve seen a couple of interesting takes on control decks in this Standard format thus far. Everything from Pyromancer's Goggles, Seasons Past, and Dragonlord Ojutai are all completely reasonable options. However, there’s yet another option, and this one falls somewhere between Jeskai Planeswalkers and the U/R Goggles deck. Let’s look at this exciting take on Standard from Watchwolf92:


One of the most interesting things about the Pro Tour was the distinct lack of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy decks. Jace was the best card in Standard before the rotation, and we just added a bunch of Madness cards to the format. How could Jace be anything but spectacular? It turns out that the loss of fetchlands is a pretty big deal for two reasons. First, it’s harder to flip Jace early on in the game. Second, it’s harder to splash for Jace in decks that aren’t Blue-based.

Despite that, this is one of the most exciting Jace decks I’ve seen in the new Standard format. The combination of Evolving Wilds to help stock your graveyard with lands, cheap instant-speed interaction like Fiery Impulse, and Madness spells like Fiery Temper and Nagging Thoughts give Jace the ability to flip reasonably early and generate additional cards over the course of the game, even before flipping. The looting effect is so powerful in this deck it plays the full four Nahiri, the Harbinger as well.

The most exciting aspect of this deck to me is its commitment to Ojutai's Command. This deck leans very heavily on the ability to use Ojutai's Command to rebuy Jace in the midgame and Dragonmaster Outcast in the late game to help close out games, while also providing the utility of drawing cards to hit land drops or gaining life against more aggressive decks.

Two of the most interesting cards in this deck are Avacyn's Judgment and Descend upon the Sinful. Avacyn's Judgment has largely been overshadowed by Fall of the Titans in the Pyromancer's Goggles decks, but is a very powerful midgame option in this Jace, Vryn's Prodigy deck. This gives you the ability to either kill two small creatures or kill a small creature and a Planeswalker. With Jace in the mix, you can even do this at instant speed. Descend upon the Sinful is exciting because this deck can enable Delirium with relative ease thanks to Jace and Chandra, Flamecaller’s ability to stock your graveyard. This means you have a powerful, curve-topping effect against other control and midrange strategies that both stabilizes the board and lets you start applying pressure.

As long as the format continues to be defined by midrange decks, this deck has a lot of tools for fighting back against that style of deck. The built in card advantage from Madness combined with the raw power of the Planeswalkers in this shell give the deck plenty of value in the fight against decks like Mardu, Jund, and Collected Company. Other decks that go big, like Pyromancer's Goggles brews may give the deck a hard time, but those are a relatively small portion of the metagame at the moment, which means this deck is an awesome choice.

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