Well, Jace has gone and done it. In Reality Fracture, he’s created himself a brand new multiverse (dubbed the Echoverse) filled with what he considers the ideal version of his friends and enemies. Many of these happen to be current or previous Planeswalker pals – Chandra, Liliana, Garruk, Gideon and more. While most have lost their spark, a few remain Planeswalkers and are featured in Reality Fracture along with a number of Planeswalker-matters cards for those looking to build or enhance current superfriends decks.
Let’s take a look at the best Reality Fracture Planeswalker-matters cards for Commander!
The Theorist, Jace Beleren: Reality Fracture’s Headline Planeswalker
$35.76 
You know, there are so many problems to playing Planeswalkers in Commander. They’re typically too large of a mana investment, they take too many turns to try and ultimate, and you usually have 3 opponents who try and take them out. This means the only Planeswalker cards that are relevant in Commander are ones that have static abilities or loyalty abilities that are immediately useful the turn they come down or are very cheap to cast. Think Wrenn and Six or Professor Onyx.
As the headliner villain in Reality Fracture, Jace’s Theorist persona actually is an incredibly strong offering for Commander as he solves a number of the aforementioned problems. First of all, he only costs 
; second, he can immediately bounce the most problematic artifact or creature on each opponent’s board; and lastly, he draws you a card on each opponent’s upkeep.
Just getting him out Turn 3 after a Turn 2 mana rock could let you run away with the game. Even staying alive 2-3 turn cycles nets you 6-8 cards for 4 mana. Even the bare minimum of bouncing 3 things and drawing a card for 4 mana is decent value. Meanwhile, your opponents will be scrambling to remove him, buying you time to get the rest of your board in place.
Planeswalker Support Cards in Reality Fracture
Sanctum Lurker
Sanctum Lurker is a mono-black creature and features an effect similar to Deification in that it makes your planeswalkers very difficult to kill. Your opponents basically need a destroy or sacrifice effect to remove your Planeswalkers with the Lurker out, as combat damage and loyalty abilities won’t reduce them past 0 and they won’t die to state-based actions.
Can Planeswalkers have negative loyalty?
A Planeswalker’s loyalty is tracked with Loyalty counters: you can’t have a negative amount of counters on permanents. So dealing 34 combat damage to a Planeswalker with 5 loyalty counters will bring it down to 0 loyalty counters which, under most circumstances, will destroy it. Sanctum Lurker will keep it alive.
Can I use a Minus ability of a Planeswalker that costs more loyalty than I have with Sanctum Lurker out?
No, Sanctum Lurker does not let you pay loyalty you don’t have. Luckily, even if you have a Planeswalker like Narset, Parter of Veils out, the Lurker does give you a +Loyalty ability to get some counters back.
Loyal Tutor
Hey, a new tutor effect! Like its predecessors Worldly Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor and Enlightened Tutor, Loyal Tutor costs 1 mana (
in this case), is an instant, and puts a card (in this case, a planeswalker) on top of your library.
Wonder if they’ll add it to the Game Changers list?
More Reality Fracture Planeswalkers for Commander
Ajani Unrelenting & Ajani Resolute
Both Ajani variants in this set are incredible in their own right.
Ajani Unrelenting
Ajani Unrelenting can use any of his abilities the turn he comes down, which is a great tradeoff considering his high 
cost. Additionally, he has a passive triggered ability that gets you a 2/2 colorless Wizard Cadet whenever you activate any loyalty ability, not just his – very potent for superfriends decks.
For +1, he gives all your creatures +1/+0 and haste.
For -2, he has you discard your hand and draw a card for each creature you control – this alone can be serious card advantage.
Lastly, his -3 is a potential one-sided board wipe option, dealing 4 damage to each creature except tokens you control.
Ajani Resolute
Ajani Resolute is busted in his own right. For a mere 
, Ajani Resolute has a passive triggered ability that nets you 1 loyalty counter on him each time you gain life.
For 0, he gains you 1 life – netting you 1 loyalty counter as well.
For -4, create an Ajani’s Pridemate token – which also gets bigger each time you gain life.
Lastly, for -10, you get an emblem with “Creatures you control get +2/+2”.
Ulting Ajani Resolute the Turn He Comes Down
The thing is, in the right deck, creating numerous triggers of small amounts of lifegain is trivial. From the (in)famous soul sisters Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant that gain you 1 life whenever anyone’s creature enters to more modern entries like Hinterland Sanctifier that only trigger on your creatures, you can sculpt your deck to have bursts of lifegain. Feasibly, you could ultimate Ajani Resolute the turn he comes down!
Let’s say you have 2 creatures that gain you life when other creatures enter. Cast Ajani, then go to combat with a large token creator on board. Like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, Rabble Rousing or the awesome Endless Foot Assault from the TMNT set. Go to combat, get a bunch of tokens, trigger your lifegain creatures a bunch, get enough Loyalty on Ajani to use his -10 the turn he comes out. If you’re in Boros, maybe you have some extra combat spells to immediately make use of this +2/+2 boon!
Should You Activate a Planeswalker’s Ability Right Away?
This brings up one important point about Planeswalkers. In most circumstances, when you cast and resolve a Planeswalker spell, the first thing you should immediately do is activate the intended Loyalty ability. This ensures you get immediate value out of the Planeswalker spell before someone has the opportunity to remove it.
This is because when you cast a Planeswalker spell and it resolves, you’re the first person to receive priority again. No one can cast anything like Beast Within until you put something on the stack and pass priority or move phases. So if you activate the loyalty ability immediately, even though someone can respond and destroy your Planeswalker, the ability will still (probably) resolve.
This does mean the ult-same-turn Ajani Resolute strategy has a weakness: you do need to gain life after casting him, giving your opponents ample opportunity to destroy him with an instant speed spell before you activate him.
Garruk, Veiled Butcher & Garruk, Curse Breaker
Like Ajani, Garruk also makes an appearance in this set with new cards for both his multiverse and echoverse variants, and both cards are awesome.
Garruk, Veiled Butcher
Garruk, Veiled Butcher is an aggressive, oppressive black Planeswalker that enters with 5 loyalty counters and can activate each of his 3 abilities the same turn. He also comes with a staxy passive effect: if a creature an opponent controls would die, exile it instead.
For +2, up to one creature gets -4/-1 until your next turn. As his only + ability, the effect is middling, but you’re likely to make use of the other abilities initially anyways.
For -2, each player sacrifices a creature. If you sacrificed one, create a 4/4 beast with trample. While a Fleshbag Marauder effect for 5 mana isn’t great, if he sticks around, he can do this twice – and his passive effect ensures those creatures are exiled.
For -3, each opponent discards 2 cards. For each one who didn’t discard two nonland cards, you draw a card.
His last effect is quite powerful – and quite salty. Having your opponents lose up to a combined 6 cards and drawing you up to 3 is a large swing in card advantage.
Given that Garruk enters with 5 counters, you could feasibly use both of his minus abilities for some strong board and hand control (though he’d die in the process). Adding any amount of proliferation or ways to increase his counters (like Way of the Mentor) means you could repeatedly empty your opponent’s hands turn after turn.
Garruk, Curse Breaker
Garruk, Curse Breaker is a green-aligned Planeswalker that also enters with 5 loyalty counters, also can activate all of his abilities the turn he enters, and also has a strong passive ability tied to him. Whenever a creature you control with power 4 or greater enters, draw a card.
In Magic’s design these days, 4 power creatures are trivially easy to attain, making Garruk a strong draw engine in your deck.
For +2, untap up to 2 lands. This brings his mana cost to ~3 if it’s the first ability you use, but more if you’re set up to gain more than one mana per land (Golgari Rot Farm, Cabal Coffers, Wild Growth).
For -3, create a 4/4 Beast with trample. This will immediately trigger his passive, drawing you a card as well.
For -4, you have a very unique take on an Overrun effect – Until your next turn, whenever one or more creatures attack one of your opponents, those creatures get +2/+2 and gain trample until end of turn.
This is a very fun political play in Commander – anyone’s creature attacking your opponents get a buff and trample, not just your own! Unlike the Veiled Butcher, Curse Breaker can’t activate both of his minus abilities without using his plus ability. Despite this, he provides immediate value, a passive draw engine and a very fun political buff to play around.
Ways of the Planeswalkers: Enchantments for Superfriends
This set comes with 10 “Way of the <Planeswalker Specialty>” Legendary Enchantment cards, all of which come with the new “Empower Jace X” mechanic, getting you a Jace token with X starting loyalty counters. Most of these empower your Planeswalkers with a new loyalty ability, but some have unique abilities that interact with your Planeswalkers. They’re all worth a look, but I wanted to highlight the ones below as the best ones. Here’s a Jace token for reference:
Way of the Mentor & Way of the Necromancer
Both of these enchantments come with relatively trivial ways to add loyalty counters to each of your Planeswalkers based on some condition. Way of the Mentor just wants you to gain life, and Way of the Necromancer just wants your creatures to die. Meet these requirements and get Loyalty counters on each Planeswalker you control.
No once-per-turn restrictions, no on-your-turn restrictions, no non-token restrictions. The mana costs of and 
are also quite modest. These are very flexible and very easy to build around. Just check the example above on ulting Ajani Resolute the turn he comes down. Now you can do it with all of your Planeswalkers!
Way of the Cryomancer
Chandra, Chill of Compliance has her own Way – Cryomancy – and it is potentially the most explosive on this list. Each Planeswalker you control has
“-3: When you next cast an instant or sorcery spell this turn, copy that spell. You may choose new targets for the copy.”
Since this card has “empower Jace 5,” you can use the Jace token to use the new ability. Follow that up with any other Planeswalkers you have out, and your next spell could be copied a half dozen times or more. Can you imagine 4 Torment of Hailfires or 4 Time Warps? 4 Crackle with Power? This can be a game ender for a Superfriends deck.
Even the floor of copying 1 spell and having a leftover Jace token for is generally playable.
Way of the Paradox
Activate any Planeswalker ability, get an additional land drop that turn. Pretty straightforward value play. Gains you 1 life too, combos quite well with Ajani Resolute and Way of the Mentor.
Way of the Mind Sculptor
At , I was on the fence about including this. Way of the Mind Sculptor empowers Jace 5 and comes with one triggered ability: Whenever you activate a loyalty ability, if you removed two or more loyalty counters to activate it, draw a card.
The floor here is that you can -3 your Jace token to draw a card, which triggers this for a second card. For 5 mana, that’s a tough sell. But if you have numerous other Planeswalkers that you’re removing Loyalty counters from, this can soon be an on-rate or above-rate draw engine.
Tam, the Possibility: A New Superfriends Commander
Last but not least, this set comes with a great new Planeswalker commander option.
Tam, the Possibility discounts your Planeswalker spells by . She also comes with a way to refill your Loyalty counters on your Planeswalker spells:
: Proliferate X times, where X is number of planeswalker types among planeswalkers you control.
Very straightforward but very powerful. Being that her color identity includes all 5 colors, you can throw in all your favorite planeswalkers to make your ideal superfriends deck. The more friends you have, the easier time Tam has to keep their loyalty counters loaded by proliferating them!
End Step
Reality Fracture may only have eight Planeswalkers, but between Jace, the Ways, and Tam, it’s one of the best sets superfriends players have seen in a while. The support pieces are the real story. Sanctum Lurker, Way of the Necromancer and Way of the Mentor make walkers stick around, and Way of the Cryomancer can end the game on the spot.
So which are you sleeving up first? Are you building around Tam, or slotting the Ways into an existing superfriends deck? Let me know in the comments!