The most unique feature of Magic: The Gathering’s latest set, Reality Fracture, is the presence of the mechanic Empower Jace attached to many cards. This creates a Jace Planeswalker token with two activated abilities: the first spends one loyalty to Surveil one, and the other subtracts three to draw a card.
Before playing in the Reality Fracture early access event hosted on Magic Arena, I was skeptical about the impact of this mechanic in Limited. While Planeswalkers are probably the most powerful card type in Magic, this Jace token doesn’t feel all that impactful on gameplay. After playing a couple dozen games of both Sealed and Draft thanks to early access, I can say I was wrong. Virtually every game of Reality Fracture Limited I played was shaped by the presence of the Jace token — and by how well players were able to optimize this resource.
Empower Jace is the most important mechanic in Reality Fracture
To understand why Empower Jace is so relevant in Reality Fracture Limited, just keep this in mind: Jace makes every deck better. The mechanic appears across every color, and the Magic designers did a good job balancing it across a variety of cards that play every possible role. You can get a Jace token from an early creature that’s a great blocker like Arcane Amphisbaena, from a removal like No Admittance, from a counterspell like Countersculpt, or from a big spell like Hexhaven Battalion (one of my favorite cards in the set). A Jace token can hit the battlefield at any point during a match. But how much of an actual impact does that have, really?
At a basic level, Empower Jace — and the Jace Planeswalker token it creates or buffs — fixes some of the most common problems in every Limited deck. In a format where your deck can only be optimized to a certain degree, games are often decided by flooding (drawing too many lands), mana screw (not drawing enough lands), or by topdeck battles. The Jace token helps with all of that by smoothing out your draws with Surveil, and by drawing you extra cards. But that’s just the floor of the mechanic’s potential.
The important thing to know is that the Jace token rarely comes alone. A seemingly innocuous card like Mindseeker Oculus is the perfect example. For three mana, you get a creature with a decent body and a Jace token that can immediately draw a card and then Surveil in the next turn, unless your opponent attacks it — meaning that the token is also effectively gaining you life. And things start getting even more interesting once we start looking at the cycle of legendary enchantments.
Every color in Reality Fracture gets two legendary enchantments with Empower Jace, except blue, which gets an extra non-legendary one — because Jace has to cheat, apparently. In each color, at least one of these cards will add a new loyalty ability to all of your Planeswalkers. The other often leads into typical color strategies, particularly those present within the set. With a couple of exceptions, these are all very strong and worth including in your deck, or building around them.
Evaluating Empower Jace cards is key to success in Reality Fracture Limited
Understanding the impact that these cards have on the game is not easy, and I love how the mechanics rewards critical thinking while complicated traditional Limited strategies. For example, a card like Way of the Pyromancer might seem bad by traditional Limited standards, but it’s actually excellent. It’s the only two-mana “ramp spell” in the set, so you should always play it in your Konstrari deck to accelerate into your big threats. But compared to a regular ramp spell, Way of the Pyromancer does a lot more. If your opponent doesn’t remove the Jace token, next turn you will have the ability to ramp again or even draw a card, which is incredible for a two-mana spell.
Way of the Paradox is similarly good. Traditionally, these cards have been undervalued in Limited as “do-nothing” spells (meaning they don’t impact the board), but now, with three mana, you get to ramp, draw a card, gain one life, and keep a Jace token around. On the other hand, cards like Way of the Wildspeaker or Way of the Healer, which do have an impact on the board state, are made even better by coming with a Jace token that you can leverage later.
Overall, this plays into the synergistic nature of the set I mentioned earlier. One of these enchantments makes all your Empower Jace cards better, and the more of these you play, the stronger the overall result will be.
Here is an example of a Draft deck that absolutely surprised me by getting seven wins. Normally, I would evaluate this as a classic “midrange pile”: it’s not aggro enough, it doesn’t have enough removal, and it doesn’t ramp quickly enough. However, key cards like Way of the Pyromancer and Way of the Paradox glued everything together, making sure I wouldn’t run out of cards and I could manipulate my deck enough to draw into my big spells. As much as it pains me to say it (I never had much sympathy for Magic’s poster boy), Jace made this work.
Besides evaluating Empower Jace cards correctly, it’s also important to know how to respond to them. Planeswalkers have a subtle value: They force the opponent to make decisions. Should I attack the Jace token or go for the life points? Should I aim this removal at the Planeswalker or save it for a creature? You’ll have to ask and find an answer for these questions quite often when playing Reality Fracture.
In general, it’s a bad idea to use a removal spell to kill a Jace token. Using the Mindseeker Oculus example again, your opponent has already got a creature and a card out of it. If you use a removal spell on the token, that’s worse than a two-for-one. It’s best to take out the Jace tokens with creatures (which makes flyers even better than usual in this set), and only if you think your opponent will get extra cards from it in the next turn. If you’re already presenting good pressure on the board, it’s better not to delay your attacks by going after the token and keep pressuring life points instead.
Magic‘s designers announced in 2023 that the number of Planeswalkers printed in new sets would be decreasing to one or two. Reality Fracture marks the first time they’ve significantly moved away from that design choice. As a result, Limited play will inevitably see Planeswalkers determining the outcome of games, but I’m not just referring to absurdly strong new cards like The Theorist, Jace Beleren; Ajani Unrelenting; or the returning Kaladesh powerhouse Chandra, Torch of Defiance.
The humble Jace token from Empower Jace is the most interesting feature in Reality Fracture, and likely its most important one when it comes to Limited gameplay. If the mechanic is confirmed to be as balanced as it looks now, this will mark a big design win for the Magic team, and it will make Reality Fracture one of the best Limited sets in years. But what will its long-term appeal look like as we move on to other sets? Empower other specific Planeswalkers? Empower any Planeswalker? Both present exciting prospects for the future of the game.
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