"Jace , Cunning Castaway: Kage bunshin no jutso!"

"Jace , Cunning Castaway: Kage bunshin no jutso!"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

After the events of Hour of Devastation Jace finds his way planeswalking into the plane of Ixalan and into the Pirates life.Now sing it with me. "It's a pirate life for us , its a pirate life for us , come on now everybody."

Ok.Now that I got that out of my system time to look at this new version of Jace and the possibility that he can play along side the other versions of himself in EDH , Modern or Standard.

Jace , Cunning Castaway is a mono blue 3 CMC planeswalker that comes into play with 3 starting loyalty counters. Make fun of his choice of wardrobe or his tan lines all you want but this Jace will fit in with a lot of decks that have blue splashed in their.

His first ability allows you to draw cards when one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player. The sad part is that after drawing a card you get to discard one in turn. Great if you need to filter your hand . not so good if you want to keep everything already in your hand. So choose wisely. 

In case you don't have a creature to attack with or defend Jace , Cunning Castaway , then you can use his own 2nd ability to create a 2/2 Blue Illusion creature that gets scarified when it becomes the target of an ability.Now some of you might be thinking why you would want to have a creature with such an obvious flaw and the reason is that you might be forcing an opponent to expend a removal on it or maybe a G-growth like effect on it thereby robbing him or her the chance to use it to pump a creature on their side of the board. Illusion creatures are great even if they fold like a Makahiya when you target them with a spell. 

Now on to the main ability which is a -5. Jace , Cunning Castaway does the appropriate hand seals and splits into three , all of these planeswalkers can exist at the same time because they are not legendary. Only the original remains in that state. All this means is that you can then activate the other two to creature 2 2/2 Illusions or use the first ability. The potential for abuse is magnified by Anointed procession that allows you to have twice as many tokens. So that means that his ultimate ability now gives you a total of 4 non-legendary Jace , Cunning Castaways on the battlefield.

My friend ST told me about this particular tech a couple of days after the Ixalan PR and I promised not to write about it until another site spoiled the interaction. I was hoping to pull this off if I get a Jace , Cunning Castaway in my fat bundle but he proved to be elusive and the sole Anointed procession I had have been lost into the vortex of cards that I keep in my car. Some day I may find it. Or if I become impatient just by the combo pieces right away.

Well there you have it  , do you want to pull off a Kage Bunshin No Jutsu with a planeswalker? You might be able to now.