Best Deck Build for Jace's Dream Puppets

Question

I have played through a considerable portion of the game, mostly with Garruk's Pack Instinct and Ajani's Celestial Light. I am trying to gain an appreciation of all the decks, and I am currently working on Jace's Dream Puppets.

In particular I find him difficult to play against anyone who can generate a lot of creatures (like Odric or Krenko). Also, do you build a deck to be as generally effective as possible, or do you focus a build to combat a specific opponent?

My question is 2 part:

1. What strategy do you use to build an optimal deck for Jace?
2. Do you further customize when you battle a particular opponent?

Answer 1

The deck that I have had the most success with is as follows:

Jace's Phantasm (2), Visions of the Beyond (2), Tome Scour (2), Unsummon (2), Hedron Crab (2), Counterspell (2), Into the Roil (2), Jace's Erasure (2), Mind Sculpt (3), Crippling Chill (3), Sands of Delirium (1), Sword of Body and Mind (1), Clone (2), Sleep (1), Icy Manipulator (2), Telemin Performance (1), Archive Trap (1), Body Double (1), Traumatize (1), Scalpelexis (1), Isleback Spawn (2), Chancellor of the Spires (2)

The breakdown looks like this:

Mana 1: 10
Mana 2: 9
Mana 3: 5
Mana 4: 5
Mana 5: 5
Mana 7: 4

Sub Total: 38

Total (inc Mana cards): 65

The focus of the deck is to attack the other player's library, while drawing cards. Half of the spells in the deck are low-cost (1 or 2 mana) to allow for a constant assault. This also means you should be able to start right away.

I've ignored cards that allow the opponent to draw cards, as I found this to be a great help whenever I play against Jace's deck.

In answer to the second question, there are several ways to modify this deck, but I would advise staying as close as possible to the 60 card deck minimum.

A full listing of available cards (by deck) can be found here

Answer 2

For Jace, I've found that Fog Banks are pretty much the best thing you have in 2013 to handle blocking. You should also focus on counter spells (or other means of nullifying, like Pacifism) to slow down an opponents progress.

The thing with decks that push out lots of creatures is, well, it creates a momentum in the game that essentially forces you to kill your opponent before they hit their 'critical mass'. Once a goblin deck gets 4-5 creatures out they become extremely difficult to deal with, so until they get there you are really playing a sort of whack-a-mole. You can mitigate their progress with counter spells and the like, but that just buys you time.

Exalted decks (black/white in 2013) are similar, but rely a bit more on key cards to make them really unstoppable (Angelic Benediction, Nefarox, Sublime Archangel, etc). For them, I've found it is best to sometimes hang on to counter spells / sacrifices until the opponent's key card comes out.