Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
The version of Jace built for the kitchen table rather than the tournament floor, and it wears that design brief openly. Where competitive Jaces have leaned on bounce, filtering, and brutal lock loops, this one offers two unglamorous +1 abilities that build loyalty steadily: one to refill the hand, one to untap your team so you can attack and block in the same turn cycle. That untap mode is the quiet tell about the deck this Jace expects to sit in, a board of creatures wide enough that a free second use of them each turn matters. The payoff is the ultimate, a triple Insurrection-style theft that gains permanent control of up to three creatures rather than borrowing them for a swing. At a base of five loyalty climbing one per turn, it arrives faster than most planeswalker ultimates, which is the point: the design wants the big swingy moment within reach, not gated behind a decade of patience. It is a teaching-Jace, a planeswalker whose decisions are legible and whose finish is a spectacle, sized for a table that wants to feel the loyalty count tick toward something dramatic rather than grind out an incremental advantage.
