Ehh, that was my gut reaction. I have a lot of positive experience with Jail. Up to outright winning games with well-timed Jail installs. I love how it always catches people off-guard. And when they seem to play around threat of it correctly — whelp, worker it, no biggie.
I see no value in promoting Jail for the sake of promoting Jail. It’s a healthy card as-is. However, I do perceive cheap Jail being potentially oppressive.
Also, on a second though on Juri, I did not consider that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Imagine the following
3g Jurisdiction
Channeled Ongoing Spell
Attach to Law Hero
Your Law Hero can cast and channel any non-ultimate spells as if he was the proper hero.
Arrives: Pick a non-ultimate spell from your Codex, show it to your opponent and put it into your hand.
Now that card is a functional standalone design.
It’s ± current Jurisdiction, but with lingering effect that sticks only if Bigby sticks. So, very often, it’s the same old Jurisdiction because you likely play a single spell with it on your turn and Bigby gets instagibbed after that. But oh boy is it one hell of an annoying win-more if it sticks.
That is impossible to cost. A lot of time it’s the same old Juri, thus costing it at 3g seems prohibitive. So it should cost 2g, right? Spoiler alert: prooooooobably no.
As part of my “Errata for Law” project I already did like 10 games, both as or against Law in various decks, not just monoblue. We were specifically trying to force Jurisdiction and modified T2 Law. We discovered that 1g Jurisdiction is… REALLY strong.
Even in straight up monoblue you do have enough situational spells to fuel it. And it’s impossible to play around. Elite Training, Bootcamp, Free Speech, Community Service, Injunction, even Hallucination — ANYTHING can appear at a drop of a hat.
It eliminates all the mindgames and predictions around teching proper situational spell at the proper time and having a proper hero available at the right moment… It was even a bit… Unfun at times? It does break one of fundamental Codex mechanics, after all And, turns out, 1g is not too expensive of a price to pay for it. We even got away with teching it in first two cards of the game — yes, really! — that’s how strong it is.
We also kept track of cases where the difference between 1g and 2g actually mattered. There were some when I’d gladly pay 2g for Juri — especially in that ungodly abomination of a deck [Law]/Blood/Present. Most often, though, that was not the case and 1 extra gold made all the difference.
I am still not sure if 1g Jurisdiction is fun in a good way, or fun in destructive, OP BS way. Gotta play a lot more with it to develop a better feeling.
For now — woe is me! — I can’t test it at 1.5g. And can’t invent a meaningful drawback to tuck upon a 1g version.