#task mage

Jaya Ballard, Task Mage by Matt Cavotta

I talked about Teysa being my first EDH deck. Well, I guess I should talk about my second staple. Jaya Ballard, Task Mage was first given to me by a friend at the time. In fact he gave me his entire Magic collection, which included the Fire and Lightning Premium Deck. When I looked at Jaya, I knew she was an instant favorite and great card to build around. Here is her current build.

Jaya has been around almost as long as Teysa, and just as many builds. She has been a big help in my development as a player. Burn is as burn does. For the longest time I had Jaya set up to just burn anything. As I do not have a lot of money, it was just play what good burn spells I had.

Then I wanted her to be Vorthos, in that I use almost every card with her flavor text. Well, I managed to have gotten hold of Pyroblast and Incinerate, two of the three cards her abilities come from. I still haven’t gotten Inferno. I also have Meteor Shower and Simian Spirit Guide in the deck. I did have Lava Burst in, and still want it in, but don’t know where to find room for it. I did have Word of Blasting, but it was a dead card since there are rarely any Walls in my playgroup. Sadly I don’t really know much about Jaya. I haven’t managed to find the second and third books of the Time Spiral block. Or any books for that matter that include her. What I do know comes from the MTG Salvation Wiki page on her.

Going to take a little break and do some fan-theory here. In the Current Status section of the page, Jodah states Jaya died between end of the Ice Age and the present. It also speculates that it is possible it is Jodah from an alternative timeline, like the ones that gave us shifted Akroma, Braids, and Crovax. Well, I also heard that she was plucked from Ice Age into the present by a time rift during Time Spiral block. It was also mentioned earlier on the page that Jaya gave Jodah an amulet that allowed for him to live as long as he willed. Who is to say that she didn’t have one of those amulets herself. I know Planeswalkers’ power severely weakened because of the Mending, but that didn’t do anything to spells they cast before it. Such as Avacyn and the hedrons. Then there are some people who’ve accepted Chandra as Jaya’s daughter. Well, Chandra is the youngest of the Origins and Lorwyn Five. But with the way the story is going, I can see it turning into Jaya returning to Keral Keep, telling Chandra the truth, and Chandra flipping out. Hopefully a battle of pyromancers breaks loose.

Speaking of Chandra, she has be my second favorite sparky pyromancer Planeswalker. I got my first Chandra from the Jace vs. Chandra duel deck. She is also the reason why I learned to play with Planeswalkers because I wanted her in my Jaya EDH deck, but didn’t know how they worked. Thanks to a handy-dandy YouTube video, I learned how. But it was a time when there weren’t many Magic players that I knew of. Luckily that changed quickly.

Well, then I was thinking of doing that format where you have two generals instead of one, but still a total of 100 cards singleton. I realized that with what I was running, Jaya wanted to hit the players in the face more than burn the field. But what Jaya actually plays is burn the field. One of my friends plays a Latulla, Keldon Overseer EDH deck. Which is more aggressive than my Jaya deck. Well, both Jaya and Latulla are Spellshapers, so why not have Latulla as a second general. She can beat face harder than Jaya. But then I got Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh/Roaring Flame. Not only do I have an alternative general, but all five Chandras.

Chandra Ablaze by Steve Argyle

And to keep it a little Vorthos with the alternative general, I have Chandra’s Phoenix, Chandra’s Outrage, Chandra’s Ignition, and Exquisite Firecraft. To unite them, Pyromancer’s Goggles. I still need to pick up Pyromancer’s Gauntlet and Ravaging Blaze to be satisfied with the amount of Chandra flavor.

So my Jaya Ballard EDH deck is currently being molded to work with either Jaya or Chandra. Chandra is nice because she likes to beat face, and Roaring Flame’s ult is nice, especially when stacked. I was an idiot and only bought one of her Emblems instead of multiples.

As it stands, my current build of Jaya is a little nicer to blue players in that I no longer play Boiling Seas. A little more artifact hate. Spell manipulation and copiers. Burn people’s faces off. Nonbasic land destruction. And the big points of “damage can’t be prevented” and “players can’t gain life.”

Here’s a little story. One game I played Boiling Seas, about turn four or five in a six player EDH game with only two players actually playing Blue. Those two players get set back like two turns max. Well, for some reason I start getting hate from the other players. Next day one of my friends who was in that match decided to teach the players about true mass land destruction by putting Armageddon into his Narset, Enlightened Master deck. Good times. At least I don’t play Decree of Annihilation.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do2H4YaKsc8)