Jace, Cunning Castaway
The only version of the character whose entire kit points sideways instead of up. Where the marquee Jaces police the board (bouncing creatures, locking out attacks, digging toward a hard lock), this one starts at three loyalty and asks you to be the aggressor. The +1 is a pre-declared reward that sets up a delayed trigger: activate it before combat, and every time your creatures connect for combat damage that turn, you loot. That "whenever" clause is doing more work than it looks like, because it can fire more than once in a turn, off first-strike-then-regular damage or off hitting multiple opponents. Miss the attack step and it does nothing, which makes it the rare planeswalker built to accompany a beatdown plan rather than stall one out. The −2 is the defensive valve the top ability ignores, a 2/2 Illusion that sacrifices itself the moment a spell targets it: a body that blocks freely but folds to any spell aimed at it, a familiar blue tension between a creature and a trap. The design's real curiosity is the ultimate. Two non-legendary copies means the legend rule never sweeps them, and each token arrives at three loyalty with the full kit, two short of its own −5. A single +1 apiece puts each copy back within reach of replicating; hold the original at six or higher before firing, and it survives to join them. The horde compounds: a planeswalker built to go wide with itself.



