Reality Fracture’s official release is less than a month away, and now, spoiler season has officially begun. While there’s no shortage of exciting designs to look forward to, the newly revealed Empower Jace mechanic is certainly among the most unique we’ve ever seen. With some work, this mechanic can do a ton of heavy lifting, offering lots of potential.
MTG Empower Jace
Despite Jace being the center point of this new mechanic, you don’t actually need to incorporate any Planeswalkers into your deck to take advantage of it. Each Empower Jace card is entirely self-sufficient, creating a Jace Planeswalker token for you to add loyalty counters to should you not already control one.
From there, future instances of the mechanic will simply increase the Loyalty of the Jace token already in play. Notably, the number of Loyalty counters added to your Jace token varies from card to card, and in the case of Repurposed Enforcer, can depend entirely on other in-game factors.
What remains constant from design to design, however, is Jace’s abilities. Offering a Surveil at -1, and a card at -3, these Jace tokens can offer a lot of card selection and advantage. Unfortunately, there isn’t any way for these Jace tokens to uptick themselves, requiring multiple Empower Jace cards to keep the card advantage flowing. While this should create some interesting Limited gameplay, with some work, Empower Jace can do far, far more.
Abusing the New Mechanic
With some careful deckbuilding, there are a fair few ways to abuse the Empower Jace mechanic. Right off the bat, if you manage to create a Jace token via other means, your Empower Jace cards will simply put counters on that preexisting token. The easiest way to do this is to pair these new cards with Jace, Mirror Mage
Jace, Mirror MageKicker {2}
When Jace enters, if Jace was kicked, create a token that's a copy of Jace, except it's not legendary and its starting loyalty is 1.
+1: Scry 2.
0: Draw a card and reveal it. Remove a number of loyalty counters equal to that card's mana value from Jace. or Jace, Cunning Castaway, which both create non-legendary copies of themselves.
Digging deeper, there are even cards like Extravagant Replication
Extravagant ReplicationAt the beginning of your upkeep, create a token that's a copy of another target nonland permanent you control. and Flash Photography
Flash PhotographyYou may cast this spell as though it had flash if it targets a permanent you control.
Create a token that's a copy of target permanent.
Flashback {4}{U}{U} that can make token copies of your other Jace Planeswalkers. This way, you get the upside of cloning Jace, Memory Adept
Jace, Memory Adept+1: Draw a card. Target player mills a card.
0: Target player mills ten cards.
−7: Any number of target players each draw twenty cards. or Jace, Architect of Thought
Jace, Architect of Thought+1: Until your next turn, whenever a creature an opponent controls attacks, it gets -1/-0 until end of turn.
−2: Reveal the top three cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other on the bottom of your library in any order.
−8: For each player, search that player's library for a nonland card and exile it, then that player shuffles. You may cast those cards without paying their mana costs. and immediately using Tam’s Resistance to reach the ultimate. While copying Planeswalkers in general is awkward due to the “Legend Rule,” that’s nothing Mirror Box
Mirror BoxThe "legend rule" doesn't apply to permanents you control.
Each legendary creature you control gets +1/+1.
Each nontoken creature you control gets +1/+1 for each other creature you control with the same name as that creature. can’t solve.
Even if you don’t feel like jumping through these hoops, you can otherwise further maximize the Empower Jace mechanic by providing your Jace tokens with new abilities. Both Ichormoon Gauntlet and the newly spoiled Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes essentially gift your Jace tokens with ultimate abilities worth striving towards. In conjunction with Proliferate staples like Flux Channeler or Evolution Sage, racing to these game-changing abilities is easy.
There’s even a cycle of Planeswalker-enchanting “Talents,” like Rowan’s Talent
Rowan’s TalentEnchant planeswalker
Enchanted planeswalker has "[+1]: Up to one target creature gets +2/+0 and gains first strike and trample until end of turn."
Whenever you activate a loyalty ability of enchanted planeswalker, copy that ability. You may choose new targets for the copy., that provide both an additional Loyalty ability and a bonus to maximize it. With the help of The Chain Veil
The Chain VeilAt the beginning of your end step, if you didn't activate a loyalty ability of a planeswalker this turn, you lose 2 life.
{4}, {T}: For each planeswalker you control, you may activate one of its loyalty abilities once this turn as though none of its loyalty abilities have been activated this turn. providing extra activations per turn, you should have no problem getting plenty of extra mileage out of your Jace tokens.
As a whole, Reality Fracture looks like an absolute blast, and the Empower Jace mechanic is a neat thing to build around.
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