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Core Set 2021 arrived at a particularly "exciting" time of various cards upsetting the balance in Standard. Even with Oko, Thief of Crowns having been banned months ago and Companions being errataed to cost 3 mana more, Wilderness Reclamation with Growth Spiral value piles ran amok in the format and while numerous debates have been had about Teferi, Time Raveler's power level, the general agreement was that he was definitely not a fun card in the control mirror and a frustrating card for aggro to deal with since he turned on instant speed wraths. On top of that, the notorious "Cat Oven" decks of Cauldron Familiar and Witch's Oven resulted in a scenario where mono red aggro decks couldn't police the format due to the repeated lifegain spam. To make matters worse, it allowed mono-Green "Nissa-Tron" decks using Nissa, Who Shakes the World to add Ugin, the Spirit Dragon to their arsenal, meaning that ramp value decks now had a powerful payoff capable of answering almost any threat in the game even after Nissa rotated.

Of course, anyone following Standard or Arena knows the problems didn't end there - UGx engines then proceeded to get Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, a slightly more expensive Growth Spiral on a stick, followed by Omnath, Locus of Creation, in all his free fetch-mana card-drawing glory. It wasn't very hard to see why these cards were a problem and Temur Reclamation decks surged again in all their Uro-slamming counterspelling glory (example) featuring cards like Brazen Borrower and Mystical Dispute - the latter being a very telling sign of partially-Blue value's rampancy in the meta. Hate spells generally only get mainboarded when there's a very high probability or need to answer a dominating deck in the meta. While UGx piles ran under different names like Omnath Adventures, Temur Reclamation, or just plain old Simic Ramp into Ugin, the problems and play patterns all clearly has something in common - they drew faster, played better value, and gained life faster than the average deck out there. (Or to put it another way - when's the last time you heard someone complain about Elder Gargaroth in Arena?)

The sheer rampancy of UGx value forced WotC to enact several waves of bans yet again since Kaladesh standard in January 2017 (the last notorious standard banning before that was Jace the Mindsculptor and Stoneforge Mystic in July 2011) - a time period that coincides with WoTC's stronger intent to improve creatures/permanents and a start of a more aggressive banning logic. Almost all the cards mentioned above had to be banned, and while Ugin sunk to "just" being yet another ramp payoff (albeit one that could act as removal and a boardwipe), his shadow still looms in many control/ramp decks support similar big-payoff cards like Koma, Cosmos Serpent.... especially in Tibalt's Trickery decks where resolving him and a few other big guys might just win the game on the spot, acting as the boardwipe/removal answer in these decks (and perhaps the finisher, if a Koma or Kiora Bests the Sea God can't be found.)

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So why do a whole history lesson (aside from helping anyone who's new to the game get an idea of the bigger picture)? Well, we can pick out three core problems from here:

1) Ugin existed in a meta full of Blue-Green ramp decks that trivialized his mana cost and allowed him to come down too early.

Resolving Ugin early widens the gap between you and your opponent simply because he can wipe the board and keep on threatening your opponent, something that is very rare for the average boardwipe to do (Compare Shatter the Sky or Settle the Wreckage, which had the potential to reward your opponent if played the wrong time!)

2) Ugin is a card capable of doing multiple things at once.

This is exciting if done right, but can become very oppressive if there are no limits to what a card can do. Ugin, much like his Eldrazi foes, was a powerful colorless badass that was clearly designed with the hope his expensive mana cost would act as the limit. As explained in point 1, too many cards existed to make this limit pointless and thus what could've been an exciting card was instead met with groans of yet another UGx payoff appearing.

3) Ugin is a problematic card, but a large part of the problem also stems from the cards that supported him.

If you watch the entire Day9 video featuring Tibalt's Trickery into Ugin, Day9 points out that Ugin is actually one of the weaker part of the deck - while he is an effective removal card he isn't relevant at the earliest stages of the game unlike Koma, who can come down Turn 1 and lock the opponent down to get a win out of nowhere. The way a Tibalt's Trickery deck plays inherently favors cards that are able to throw out massive amounts of damage the moment they hit the board by themselves, and Ugin, while powerful, is inherently better when backed by a suite of other value cards/counters - something a Tibalt's Trickery deck doesn't specialize in.

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My point is that if we take the above three points into consideration we see that "replacing Ugin" by itself doesn't necessarily fix all the problems of the last year or two that he partially represents. Many of the cards that were printed would still get banned over the same issues of non-value-pile decks being unable to race or outvalue these do-everything UGx decks.

But hey, let's say we're a time-traveling WoTC employee. We have free reign over this one card slot, knowledge of everything that comes ahead, and perhaps maaaaaaaybe we want to preserve Wizards' ban integrity a bit better than they've been doing over the recent Standards, and by the demands of the sdfkjgh s of the multiverse, it has to be a planeswalker of some kind. So how about...




Now before you throw those Shocks, hear me out - Jaya Ballard, Task Mage actually addresses all three of the points I listed above.

1) Jaya deals with a meta full of Blue-Green ramp decks by allowing players to outvalue a lot of the Blue-based problem cards without running Blue or Green.

Don't like 3Feri? Blow him up with Jaya on the next by discarding a Mountain! What's that, you can return your Uro from the graveyard over and over? Good luck keeping up with that five card tax with a player who can just keep sending him back over topdecks. While it can't directly answer all the of the 'problem cards' I mentioned (e.g. Wilderness Reclamation and Growth Spiral), it does shoot down many of the more problematic cards that were considered to be the bane of Arena for the last year or so, potentially allowing this alt-timeline WoTC to stem the bleeding and not need to ban as many cards with such an effective silver bullet present in Standard.

Also, remember that point about the need to run Mystical Dispute mainboard because so many decks are blatantly Blue? Turns out that's not exactly helpful when your problem cards are also Blue. You pretty much just make the best decks absorb these cards to do better in the mirror. If Veil of Summer had not been banned by the same time Oko did, it would've likely caused very similar problems for effectively acting as a Green counterspell vs Blue cards most of the time it's played. On top of that, both of these cards can easily shift to handling nonBlue cards with very little punishment for doing so. Jaya, being a card that demands a lot of Red, falls into neither of the 'best' UGx colors and thus contributes less to this isuse.


2) Jaya can do a lot of things, but she can't do them perfectly.

Jaya is a planeswalker with 3 abilities that can kill things repeatedly, wipe the board, and win the game on her own if left unchecked. Sound familiar?

The difference between Ugin and Jaya is that she's much more resource intensive - you have to pay increasing amounts of mana and discard a card to use her stronger abilities, and unlike Ugin she can't increase her loyalty so you have to be prepared to deal with Shocks across the board being able to kill her. The need to discard cards forces players to think about what card they're throwing away each turn, or build their deck in a way (read: Mono-Red and those dead Mountain topdeck) that mitigates that issue, much like how Tibalt's Trickery decks can't just windmill slam anything they please and expect the best results. (Bonus points for not necessarily improving those decks either, as she's even more fragile and less capable of closing out games.)

While Jaya does have the ability to repeatedly nuke blue permanents off the board, her best use case is specifically biased against Blue. There are actual incentives to run less Blue-based stuff in the meta as a result and people might become more open to trying cards that don't involve Blue as a route to victory, resulting in the various UGx piles having a less powerful hold over the meta. She can do a relatively more expensive Incinerate, but it forces the player to commit another land and card that could be used to run out another aggressive small creature or big spell that could've advanced their gameplan such as the aggressive Robber of the Rich or multi-card-value Bonecrusher Giant, cards that come out and deal damage faster than she will. Unlike Ugin, playing Jaya is not always the best answer in a situation and there are various cards that would compete with her slot, meaning that as the UGx piles shrink in frequency, so does Jaya's effectiveness.

(Also, one-off mention of "regeneration" shouldn't be an issue if Teferi, Master of Time is able to reference phasing actions).

Lastly, her boardwipe ability is actually expensive to get out, can't be cheated around nearly as easily due to both high cost and 1-turn delay to tap, and is likely to kill her as well, bringing her more in line with the boardwipes of this era that don't get to stick around and win the game after they've cleared the board for you.

3) Jaya doesn't exaggerate the issues of the cards that came before/after her.

As someone who's tried to play with Stoneforge Mystic aggressively in the past, let me tell you - that one turn delay to tap hurts a card's speed way more than it might seem! Because Jaya is not some instant slam on the board value engine, she runs counter to those decks' interests of wanting to get as much immediate value as possible and instead is more likely to appear in decks that are adapting to repeatedly nuke all these spammy permanent payoffs off the board. Instead, Winota, Joiner of Forces decks could run her as a 1-of to try and hedge against the rampant UGx piles while other decks like Burn or a hypothetical Izzet Spellslinger also running Mystical Dispute and Rielle, the Everwise could emerge to hate these oppressive decks out of the metagame.

Bonus Point: Jaya still meets the idea of reprinting exciting legacy characters.

Ever since Dominara, WoTC seems to be trying to bring back their best hits more and more - Karn, Teferi, and of course, Ugin. While all three of the previously mentioned Planeswalkers have had a high impact card released that affected people's deckbuilding (Karn's being Karn, the Great Creator), Jaya Ballard and Jaya, Venerated Firemage have quietly sunk into the background not exactly causing any exciting discussion. By reprinting Task Mage, she's placed in a meta where she has the opportunity to effectively influence decks and become a relatively popular card, likely creating a few new Jaya fans for future releases.

This concludes my URO Talk on why Jaya Ballard, Task Mage would've been an ideal reprint for M21 instead of Eugene. Cheers and I hope you enjoyed reading it!