Is Empower Jace Worth Building Around in Commander?

Here's the pitch straight from the preview article: Jace is "bringing versions of himself to your battles." Here's the actual card text: you put loyalty counters on a Jace token, and if you already control one, you don't get a second, you just add more counters to the one you've got. That's not an army of Jaces showing up to fight for you. That's amass with a hood on.

Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes is the cleanest way to see it. A 2/3 for [G][U] that surveils and triggers empower Jace 2 on every land drop is a perfectly fine value creature on its own, and the token it builds is a bonus, not a second threat. Value consolidates onto one non-legendary permanent instead of spreading across the board, precisely the same design as amass, a mechanic that never became a real archetype in Commander. One token, one removal spell, zero payoff. That's the failure condition empower Jace inherits before a single card in the set gets built around it.

Play empower Jace cards for what they already do and treat the Jace token as gravy. Don't restructure a 99 around the mechanic unless you're creating a proliferate package or a dedicated nonlegendary-copy shell built to stack triggers onto the same copy. The token's non-legendary status matters here, it's the one detail that lets existing archetypes plug this in without a deckbuilding pivot.

In a generic pile, Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes is a two-mana landfall creature that surveils and happens to build a Jace token on the side, you're creating it whether or not you ever activate that token, and most games you won't. In an existing proliferate shell, that changes. A deck already running something like Inexorable Tide proliferates on every spell cast, which means the token's loyalty climbs an extra counter each time regardless of whether Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes ever triggers again, free value stapled onto a card that was already carrying load. The third context is the only one where "building around" is honest: a shell stacked with effects that copy non-legendary permanents, like Replication Technique, lets you clone the Jace token itself and stack multiple empower triggers across separate bodies instead of consolidating onto one. That's a real archetype. It's also a narrow one, and it needs three or four specific pieces before it's doing anything a normal deck can't.

You've seen this deck. It's built the week the spoilers dropped, it's got six empower Jace sources, and it's got two fewer interaction slots than it should because the token felt exciting on paper. Here's what actually happens at the table: the Jace token gets its loyalty counters the instant it's created, same as any amass Army gets its +1/+1 counters the instant it shows up, but unlike an Army, a planeswalker token doesn't attack or block. It just sits there, and every activation of "-3: Draw a card" spends the exact counters you spent a card slot generating. Any opponent with a creature that can swing at planeswalkers kills it before it ever pays off. Bloodline Recollector is a good parallel from this same set, it needs three creatures to die in a turn before it becomes prepared and lets you cast its back half, and if that threshold never hits, you've got a 2/2 doing nothing. Both cards ask for setup. Spoiler-season decks built on hype instead of real games consistently underrate how often that setup just doesn't happen.

You'd assume the set's flagship Jace-tribal commander is the one deck where empower Jace is mandatory. It isn't. Jace, Multiverse Architect's real engine is the −3: exile another planeswalker or creature you control, then reveal cards off the top until you hit a creature or planeswalker and slam it onto the battlefield for free. Feed it a cheap token and you're cheating a seven-mana bomb into play on a three-loyalty activation, repeatable every time you rebuild the fuel. That's the ability reviewers are already calling cEDH-viable, hitting cards like Hullbreaker Horror or Tidespout Tyrant for a fraction of their real cost, and none of that requires a single empower Jace trigger. The +1 draws two and bottoms one, which is fine card selection but not the reason this commander is dangerous. The set's own poster child for the mechanic wins games by ignoring it.

Delete the empower Jace clause mentally and ask if the card still makes your 99. Aerid Konstrari is the model for what a "yes" looks like: a 5/4 flier for four that makes a Heartwood mana rock on entry and death, and can pump itself off your artifact count, doesn't need any planeswalker synergy to earn a slot. It earns one on rate alone. Any card in this camp should clear that same bar before the keyword factors in at all. The one adjustment: if you're already running a proliferate package, upgrade these cards ahead of otherwise-equal alternatives, because the counters compound for free off cards you'd have run anyway. Don't build the token-copy shell unless you're already sitting on three or more pieces of that specific tech. It's a fun deck, but not one you back into by accident.

Empower Jace is a bonus clause for roughly nine tables out of ten, not a deckbuilding pillar. The two exceptions are real: proliferate shells get the mechanic for free, and dedicated token-copy polymorph decks turn it into an actual engine, but both require infrastructure most tables never bring to the table. If you want the litmus test for what a card looks like when it needs zero synergy tagline to be busted, look at Emrakul, the Exigent Doom, a 12/12 flying trample ward bomb that untaps every land you control the moment you cast it, no keyword required. Apply that same test to your list. Delete the clause, check what's left, and build accordingly.