MTG Reality Fracture is a planeswalker-heavy set with a much tighter cast of characters. One of the ways the design team has achieved this, while also putting the set’s villain Jace front and center, is with a brand new, innovative mechanic: Empower Jace.
Empower Jace is a keyword that works a bit like Amass, but with a Jace planeswalker instead of an army creature token. When you Empower Jace, you create a Jace token with that many loyalty counters, or add that many loyalty counters to a Jace token you already control.
The token Jaces created by this mechanic have just two loyalty abilities. They can -1 to Surveil and then can -3 to draw a card. Neither of these tick up, so you’ll need lots of Empower Jace cards to keep this value engine going.
That might not be a problem though. In a preview panel, Magic’s head designer Mark Rosewater said that this mechanic shows up at every rarity, including on commons. The upshot of this is that “Jace appears in pretty much every Limited game”.
As well as strong cards that add loyalty to your Jace tokens, Reality Fracture also has several cards that give all your planeswalkers new abilities. While you still only get to use one loyalty ability a turn, these give you extra flexibility.
Way of the Pyromancer gives you an extra red mana a turn while you tick up, for instance, a classic Chandra ability. Way of the Cryomancer lets you copy an instant or sorcery spell, and Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes gives your planeswalkers an ultimate that turns one creature into an unstoppable monster.
Interestingly, there are a couple of Jace cards in Magic already that make Jace tokens and these also work with the empower Jace ability. You could make a lot of copies of Jace, Cunning Castaway by quickly boosting them up to five loyalty and then popping the ult.
But how fiendish would it be to instead use a card like Mythos of Illuna to make a token copy of a stronger Jace, then empower it up to quickly unleash an ultimate? You could absolutely ruin someone’s day with Jace the Mindsculptor, or try and lock everyone out of the game with Jace, Unraveler of Secrets – that would be very Jace of you. It wouldn’t be very good, I’m pretty sure, but it would be very Jace.
There were plenty more reveals in the recent Reality Fracture video. Share your thoughts on the mirrored Karn, elder sphinxes and more over on the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
