“Men will literally build a new multiverse rather than go to therapy.”
That was the main statement of the Reality Fracture press briefing, and honestly, it’s pretty valid.
Magic the Gathering’s next Universes Within set is closing in on us fast, but what can we expect from Reality Fracture, and the twisted new multiverse Jace is building?
Story
Well, firstly, it isn’t really all that twisted. Reality Fracture is the culmination of the past three years of Magic story, which started in Wilds of Eldraine. Jace has finally had enough. As a member of the Gatewatch, he’s defended reality from a wide variety of foes. Phyrexans, Eldrazi, that wiley old Nicol Bolas, you name it, he’s fought it. Fighting for all those years has taken its toll though and he’s finally had enough. He decides it’s time to fight the problem at the core and builds a new multiverse bit by bit. The Echoverse.
The Echoverse is shaped by his memories and fears as he slowly builds a world completely without those threats, and sure, maybe he changes a few other bits along the way. Whilst he originally planned this with Vraska, she got cold feet around the time of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, so instead he’s created a new protege, Tamira, whom he placed in Strixhaven.
Reality Fracture is a set of two scales. One, the immense showcase of an entirely new multiverse, and the other is drilling deep down into Jace’s fears. This is the culmination of Jace’s whole arc, so we should see a tour of his greatest triumphs (and maybe failures too). Whilst we do get to see some of the Echoverse as a whole, the majority of our time will be spent in Hexhaven, the alternate Strixhaven.
Cycles
We’ve seen a few sets (or “cycles”) of cards during the press briefing, though only one complete one. Which we can cover first.
Each of the five colleges of Strixhaven were founded by a Dragon. However, thanks to Jace’s personal history with them, the five colleges of Hexhaven were founded by Sphinx instead.
Aerid Konstrari helms the reflection of Prismari. Focusing on sculpting and architecture, these wizards craft constructs and puppets to fight on their behalf. Denzilore Fatehold (countering Lorehold) is beholden to the future, not the past. Ingris Stingerquill is one of the least changed, though the splash of red has given them a tinge of passion and anger over Silverquill. Kwia Vigorbloom focuses on life over death (sorry Witherbloom), with their healing magics becoming intertwined with plantlife. Lastly, Uldaros Theorix, who was described as “evil maths”, is dedicated to controlling the power of mathematics, in contrast to Quandrix.
Next up, we already knew about these, but a lot of famous faces from the world we know and love have alternate counterparts (like this lovely pair of Karn’s here). Paired cards feature art (including 15 beautiful borderless pairs) from their home planes and the corresponding warped reflection, and will always appear together in boosters. In fact, every play or collector booster pack will feature a pair of cards (bringing the total number of Legendaries in each play booster to three, which should please Commander players). This focus on pairings is designed to make the theming really clear during Limited formats like Draft, and introduces another layer of strategy into sorting through packs. The other thing that should be clear when you’re drafting is one of the core components of the set… Jace.
Mechanics
Two mechanics have been featured heavily in these previews, and both will be kind of familiar. I’ll cover the new one first.
Empower Jace is a bit of a twist on Amass (seen most recently in The Hobbit set). Designed as a way to make sure the main villain of the set has his presence felt in almost every game of Limited, Empower Jace creates a Jace planeswalker token, and then adds loyalty to it. This ability even features on some common cards in the set, so is sure to come up regularly. I can already feel your brains whirring from the other side of the screen by the way, and I can confirm that if you somehow make a token copy of a Jace planeswalker, you can use this keyword to add loyalty to that instead (this was brought up the second Q&A opened up). Whether this opens the door to Empower keywords for other planeswalker types remains to be seen, but in this set at least it’s only the headliner himself.
The other “main” mechanic/keyword the set will feature comes back from a familiar plane. Like I said earlier, most of the cards in Reality Fracture will be looking in on Hexhaven. What fan favourite mechanic will we see returning in the parallel magic school? Will we finally be getting some more Lessons?… No, it’s Prepared.
If you missed Secrets of Strixhaven, Prepare basically prints a spell on top of a creature spell. At any time a creature is in play, and its Prepared condition is met, you can pay mana to cast the prepared spell. It’s a lovely way of adding value to creatures, and one of my favourite new keywords in recent releases.
Lastly, we are going to get a cycle of cards at lower rarities that focus on Planeswalkers and their effects. These “Way” cards will typically add additional abilities to Planeswalkers you control, and conveniently make you one as part of their effect.
Art
As always, a fun new set includes a bunch of fun new art. I’ll save a gallery dump to the end of the article, but I’ll briefly go over what we were shown in bullet points…
- Serialised Headliners – We’re getting serialised cards in this set, featuring a full art Throwback treatment in double rainbow foil, only available in Collector boosters.
- Shattered Mirror – 13 card treatments literally showing the broken reflections that led to these cards (as seen above). Non-foils can be found in both types of booster but special Facet Foil treatments (which highlight the mirror with foil) can only be found in Collector boosters.
- Borderless Pairs – The 15 aforementioned borderless pairs of mirrored characters can be found in any boosters.
- Braintwister Treatments – Not much is known about these cards beyond the name, and the fact they’re inspired by the works of MC Escher (the artist, not a very funky DJ) and the fact 23 of them will be available in both boosters. We will feature the “The Theorist, Jace Beloren” treatment below.
- Japan Showcase – As usual we are also getting a line up of excellent Japanese showcases. 10 different cards this time, with foil treatments only being available in Collector boosters. Please note that the only way to get Japanese language versions of these cards is to buy a Japanese booster. ALL other language boosters will only feature English cards.
As promised, I’m going to try and paste as many of the revealed cards we haven’t already talked about as possible down below in a gallery, since I know that’s what you are all here for really. Happy browsing, and see you in the Echoverse!
