I'm gonna start a new section here that hopefully will go on for a little while. So I really like to experiment with my Commander decks to find new tech and new cards that are amazing in the format but sometimes overlooked because they are bad in standard, not multiplayer or just seemingly narrow cards.
Now most of these cards I actually do run in my decks however almost none of these are in all my decks and I won't be covering cards like Sol Ring or Sensei's Diving Top and say to yall "Wow what a great card" because you know they are great already. These are just cards that are older and less played or cards that I am looking forward to playing (lookin' at you Wild Defiance).
On to the card this week...
Have you ever been sitting there looking at the board or your hand in your green/black or black/red creature aggro deck and said to yourself: "if only I could Impulse right now for that one card I need to finish this puzzle of cards in my hand!"
I have.
So I started to look around gatherer and found this little gem from Dark Ascension:
So I shoved this little guy in my Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck and ran with it. The first game I got it out on turn three and it sat there the entire game slowly building up eyeball counters. I would use it every now and again to find an answer to someone's bomb or look for a land or something but no one at the table wanted to use a removal spell on it.
The thing was Jar of Eyeballs seemed way too marginal.
Afterwards when on the last turn I had Jarred for Living Death and wiped the field bringing back almost all of the creatures in my library my friend came up to me and said: "I was holding a Krosan Grip in my hand the entire game, I just couldn't justify using it on Jar of Eyeballs until it was too late."
Lets look at this card more indepth to see why it is such a powerful card in a creature deck.
Now if you have ever run blue you know about Impulse:
If you ARE in blue and thinking of running Jar I'd recommend looking at how many creaturs you are running. If that comes out to be less than twenty (which it probably does) there are just better options in your color.
The issue for most people when it comes to Jar is that if played turn three it is a do nothing card that taps you out. Pretty much irregardless of the situation it will come down and just sit there. Therein lies some of the innate beauty of the card.
In a large multiplayer game there are TONS of artifacts coming down that say to the table deal with me or you WILL die. Then on the other side of the spectrum you have Sensei's Diving Top and Jar of Eyeballs which say we are here giving incremental value but we don't really pose a threat.
So lets look at the text box, it states: "Whenever a creature you control dies put two eyeball counters on Jar of Eyeballs."
Sadly this means that your opponents creatures won't feed your card draw engine but any creature they steal that is yours still puts counters on the Jar. This lends itself well to a deck like Savra where lots of tokens are being created for sacrificing anyway (think Awakening Zone tokens) and most of the creatures come back from the graveyard once or twice to die again.
"Pay three colorless mana, tap, remove all eyeball counters from Jar of Eyeballs" This clause is possibly the most important because it makes it better than this card:
But far worse than this one:
This is because it does not have to sac itself so it falls more into the category of reccuring card advantage. After a couple of games however, where your opponents begin to see it more like a reusable Impulse for X, they will try to kill it either right away (which is just value for you because I'm pretty sure any veteran magic player would be extatic to trade Jar for a piece of artifact removal) or they wait until it has tons of counters on it. If you do find yourself in that situation you either need to pop it with less counters on it more often (still nice but not quite as tutor-esque as before) or keep three mana open at all times so you can pop in response to destruction or just once the remover is tapped out.
For our new players: if you have tons of counters on Jar and search when everyone has tons of untapped mana it will get destroyed in response and you will get absolutely nothing from it.
So to wrap up Jar is a fun, unique way for a non-blue creature decks to tutor up answers instant speed. Generals that work well with Jar include:
The Mimeoplasm (lots of reanimation)
Almost all B/G generals
Cards that synergyze well with Jar include:
These are just a couple that I have found to work well though certainly not the only cards that work well with Jar.
Hopefully this helps you in building your next Commander deck! I will try to do a card of the week every week that I think is fun or useful but oft overlooked. Please leave feedback on whether I should keep doing these or if you would like to see something different.
