Jace, Multiverse Architect EDH Deck Guide: Bracket 2, 3 and 4 Builds

Jace, Multiverse Architect is a polymorph commander: his −3 exiles a token you control and puts the first creature or planeswalker card off the top of your library onto the battlefield. Build the library so that card is always a bomb, and the deck plays itself. We built him three ways, one per bracket, and ran each list through our deck audit: a $352 Bracket 2 list that keeps the precon's bones, a Bracket 3 list where Displacer Kitten turns Jace into an engine, and a $957 Bracket 4 superfriends deck that flips less and controls more.

Our Multiverse Reforged review covers the stock $49.99 precon card by card. This guide is about what happens once you start cutting. Jace's rivals for the command seat are ranked in the best new commanders in Reality Fracture.

Jace costs and enters with 4 loyalty. His +1 draws two cards and puts one from your hand on the bottom of your library. His −3 exiles another creature or planeswalker you control, then reveals cards until it hits a creature or planeswalker card and puts that card onto the battlefield. His static ability taxes the table: at the beginning of combat on each opponent's turn, that player pays or their creatures can't attack any Jace you control.

The problem with Jace isn't the text, it's the loyalty. Flip the turn he lands and he's at 1, and he needs three turns of +1 before he can flip again: one free creature every four turns. The stock precon accepts that rate. All three of our builds attack it, and the same three cards do the attacking in every list.

Sanctum Lurker is the engine. For it gives every planeswalker you control a +2 that pings each opponent for 1 and gains you a life, and it stops your planeswalkers from dying at 0 loyalty. Jace now goes 4, flip to 1, +2 to 3, flip to 0 and survive, +2, +2, flip. That's a flip every other turn instead of every fourth, and the Lurker's own enters trigger makes a Jace token on the way in. The catch: if the Lurker dies, every walker sitting at 0 dies with it.

Oath of Teferi lets each planeswalker activate twice a turn, so Jace can +1 and then −3 in the same main phase. With Lurker and Oath both out, Jace flips every turn for four straight turns before he needs a recharge. Ajani Unrelenting turns every loyalty activation on your side into a 2/2 Cadet token, which means Jace's own +1 manufactures next turn's fodder.

Two more planeswalkers pull in the same direction. The Theorist, Jace Beleren makes a 1/1 Illusion with his +1 and draws you a card on each opponent's draw step, three cards a turn cycle in a pod. Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God has every loyalty ability of every other planeswalker on the battlefield, so the turn he lands next to Jace he is a second polymorph source.

The empower Jace cards finish the picture. Fatehold Charm, the Lurker and Overwrite the Multiverse all build a Jace planeswalker token, and because Jace's −3 accepts planeswalkers, that token is legal fodder that the combat tax also protects. Our Reality Fracture mechanics explainer has the full rules for the token. The best single turn any of these lists can produce: cast Overwrite the Multiverse for to exile every creature on the table, empower Jace for the number exiled, then −3 that freshly made token into an Archon of Cruelty-sized hit on an empty board.

The Bracket 2 list is what the precon turns into after one editing pass. Its audit reads 36 lands, a 4.03 average mana value, zero Game Changers, zero tutors and a $352 price tag. Bracket 2 here is a power level, not a budget: that's seven times the precon's MSRP, and the precon itself is the budget version of this deck.

Out go Dack Fayden, Helping Hand, who hands the creatures he reveals to your opponents, along with Akroma, Angel of Fury, Niv-Mizzet, Ghost Counsel, The Ur-Sphinx, Teferi's Reproach, Cursed Mirror, Currency Converter and three lands. In come Polymorph as a fourth sorcery-speed flip effect, the Lurker, Oath, Spark Double, Overwrite the Multiverse, and the planeswalker suite: Ajani, the Theorist, Bolas and Jace, Reality Sculptor join Elspeth, Sun's Champion, whose +1 makes three Soldiers a turn for Mass Polymorph and Synthetic Destiny to convert.

The precon's fodder engines all stay. Windcrag Siege on its Jeskai mode makes a Goblin every upkeep, Skrelv's Hive makes a Mite, Dreadhorde Invasion grows an Army, and Lingering Souls, Shark Typhoon, Occult Epiphany and Kher Keep fill in the gaps. Plan for All Outcomes empowers Jace on your first noncreature spell each turn, so the token recharges while you cantrip.

Twenty-two of the 99 are live flips here, against 19 in the stock deck, and the hits are still mostly six mana and up: Darksteel Angel, Avacyn, Angel of Horror, Archfiend of Despair, Memnarch, the Warden, Serra's Emissary. The cost of the engine is that the Lurker and Spark Double can come off the top too. Spark Double is a fine miss when Jace is already out, since it copies him with an extra loyalty counter and the copy isn't legendary. Venser, Fervent Forger survives this cut, and he's the flip we'd least like to see; he leaves at Bracket 3.

Thirteen swaps separate the Bracket 3 list from Bracket 2, and its audit reads 37 lands, a 4.0 average mana value, zero Game Changers, zero tutors and $468. No Game Changers and still a Bracket 3 rating means the jump comes from what the cards do together; open the audit to see what tipped it before you sit this down at a precon table.

Displacer Kitten is the whole upgrade. Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, it exiles a nonland permanent you control and returns it, and a flickered planeswalker comes back as a new object with its printed loyalty and no memory of having activated this turn. So: −3 Jace to flip a token, cast Brainstorm, the Kitten returns Jace at 4 loyalty, −3 again. Two flips off a one-mana cantrip, and every Signet and Talisman you cast after turn five does the same thing. One rules note for commanders: when the Kitten exiles Jace, the game offers you the command zone instead. Take exile, because the Kitten only returns a card that actually went there.

Reality Fracture gave the Kitten 37 new combo partners according to our Combos by Set page, which is worth a scroll before you add more flicker targets. In this list the Kitten also re-triggers Archon of Cruelty for value and Overlord of the Mistmoors for two more Insect tokens when you'd rather have fodder than another flip.

Identity Echo is a polymorph you can activate every turn for , Bitterblossom is a flier every upkeep for a life, and Hullbreaker Horror is the best card to hit off Synthetic Destiny on an opponent's end step: flash, uncounterable, and it bounces their board wipe or their blocker every time you cast a spell. Avacyn, Angel of Hope turns your own Martial Coup and White Sun's Twilight one-sided, Vraska, Betrayal's Sting's zero ability draws a card and proliferates (adds one more of each counter a permanent already has) across every walker and Jace token you have, and Counterspell is the first real counter in the deck.

The cuts are five of the precon's new legends at once: Tamiyo, Upriser Crowned, Venser, Ginger, Queen of Sweets, Jhoira, Weatherlight Corsair and Omnath, Locus of the Void, plus Fact or Fiction, Staff of the Storyteller, Shark Typhoon and Plan for All Outcomes. Five shock lands replace the two Landscapes, Path of Ancestry and Restless Anchorage, and the land count goes up one.

The Bracket 4 list is a different deck wearing the same commander. Its audit reads 35 lands, a 3.65 average mana value, six Game Changers, two tutors and $957. The price roughly doubles from Bracket 3, which is what fetch lands, free counterspells and the two tutors cost.

Sixteen cards come in: the tax trio of Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora and Smothering Tithe; Fierce Guardianship, Deflecting Swat, Swan Song and An Offer You Can't Refuse to protect the flip; Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor to find Mass Polymorph or an Avacyn; Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge; and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, whose −2/−2 clears every token blocker opposite you while your own 1/1 fodder attacks as 3/3s. Deflecting Swat earns its slot the first time someone points removal at your token in response to the −3: change the target, and the flip resolves.

The planeswalker package gets the real engine pieces. Aminatou, the Fateshifter's +1 puts a card from your hand on top of your library, which is the Brainstorm trick on a stick for a stranded Darksteel Angel, and her −1 flickers Jace back to 4 loyalty once a turn. Jace, the Mind Sculptor's zero ability sets the top the same way. Ichormoon Gauntlet proliferates every time you cast a noncreature spell and gives every planeswalker a zero that proliferates again, so Jace, the Theorist, Reality Sculptor and the Mind Sculptor all climb together. Twenty-five loyalty spread across Jaces turns on Reality Sculptor's third ability, which exiles all but the bottom card of each opponent's library. It's a stretch, but in this list it's a real one.

Cursed Mirror comes back in, because it enters as a copy of any creature until end of turn and a flipped Archon of Cruelty gets a second enters trigger for . What the list gives up is flips: Polymorph, Identity Echo and Overwrite the Multiverse are all cut, Memnarch, Ob Nixilis, the Ascended and Valgavoth, Terror Eater leave the library, and the live-flip count drops to 21. This Jace flips when the coast is clear and spends the rest of the game taxing and countering.

Brackets 4 and 5 allow the same cards, so the audit's own cEDH signals are the tiebreaker: a 3.65 curve, no fast mana beyond Sol Ring, and two tutors. It's a strong Bracket 4 deck, not a cEDH one.

Bracket 2 if your table runs upgraded precons and you want the flip to be the show. Bracket 3 if you want the Kitten engine and can live with a deck that gets focused the first time it flips twice in a turn. Bracket 4 if your pod already plays Rhystic Study and free counters, because this version answers back. The toll, whichever build you pick, is three separate decisions a turn cycle, and the player who's ahead on mana always pays it.

One Rule 0 note that applies to all three: Darksteel Angel is in every list, and flipping an indestructible "you can't lose the game" Angel on turn five feels a bracket higher than the number on the audit, whatever that number says. Say it before the game, not after. If three builds of one commander is your kind of reading, our Great Goblin guide does the same for The Hobbit.

Build your own version of any of these and run it through our deck audit before you pick a table; the bracket moves fast once Game Changers go in. Then record the games. When a deck's best turns come off the top of its library, counting the games is the only way to know whether it's good. Every card from the precon is on the Reality Fracture Commander set page, and the main-set additions we rate for the 99 are in our best Reality Fracture cards for your 99.