Magic: The Gathering’s final in-universe expansion of the year, Reality Fracture, is a consequential one for the lore of MTG. The current story arc, in which longtime hero Jace Beleren has become the overarching villain, reaches its conclusion here, and with Jace playing such a pivotal role in the story, it makes sense that he also plays a major part in the cards.
In fact, Jace is the focus of a new mechanic debuting in Reality Fracture, one that lead designer Mark Rosewater has been hyping up since MagicCon Atlanta in September 2025. That mechanic, as announced today during the Reality Fracture reveal stream, is the Jace Token, a new type of token that focuses on Planeswalker abilities. Here’s how the token works.
Empowering Jace
Throughout Reality Fracture, there are cards with the keywords “Empower Jace,” followed by a number. Protege’s Awakening, for example, is a four-mana sorcery spell that reads “Empower Jace 6.”
Whenever you play a card or activate an ability with Empower Jace, you will add loyalty counters to a Jace Token equal to the number next to the keyword; for Protege’s Awakening, for example, you’ll add six counters. If you don’t already have a Jace token, you’ll add one to the board, and then place the counters on it.
The Jace token, meanwhile, is a Planeswalker with two abilities: You can either remove one loyalty counter to surveil 1–or look at the top card of your library and either return it to the top of your library or put it in the graveyard–or you can remove three loyalty counters to draw a card.
An intriguing technicality
While this all makes sense within the confines of Reality Fracture, what about in the broader Magic landscape? Jace fans are going to like this answer: If you’re able to make a copy of another Jace planeswalker card, and you use an Empower Jace ability, you can elect to put the counters onto the copied Jace rather than the Jace token itself.
For example, if you were to activate the second ability of Tamiyo, Compleated Sage to exile Jace, The Mind Sculptor from your graveyard, you would then create a token of Jace, The Mind Sculptor. Because that’s a token of a Jace, and Empower Jace’s rules text only specifies a “Jace token,” you can add any Empower Jace loyalty counters from spells to the copied Mind Sculptor with no issue.
Granted, there aren’t many ways to do this efficiently, but it is possible, and Magic players are nothing if not resourceful. Perhaps someone can make this happen on the professional circuit sometime soon.
Reality Fracture is scheduled to launch October 2 in local game stores and big box retailers. Prerelease events will take place in local game stories beginning on September 25.
