Magic: The Gathering What If? - Everything You Need To Know About Reality Fracture
With Prerelease just around the corner, here’s everything you need to know about Magic: The Gathering | Fractured Reality.
Bending the Rules of Reality
Empower Jace
If there is one thing you need to understand about Reality Fracture it is that Jace is everywhere. Nothing shows that more than bringing Jace into every game of Magic: The Gathering you play. If you’re familiar with the Amass mechanic from War of the Spark or The Lord of the Rings sets, then you’ll have a good grasp of what Empower Jace does.
Let’s look at Way of the Mind Sculptor. When this legendary enchantment enters, you empower Jace 5. To empower Jace, you put X loyalty counters on a Jace token you control, where X is the empower value. In this case, you would put 5 counters on a Jace token you control. If you don’t control a Jace token, you first create a blue Jace planeswalker token. The Jace planeswalker token has two loyalty abilities. -1 loyalty counter allows you to surveil 1, and -3 loyalty counters allows you to draw a card.
These abilities and the ease of creating the Jace planeswalker token mean that they will be useful in adding consistency throughout the game. You can use it to smooth out your draws early on, or build up enough loyalty to turn it into a source of card advantage. Another interesting detail: Jace tokens aren’t legendary. Empower Jace won’t create a second one while you already control one, but if another effect lets you create another Jace token, the legend rule won’t force you to choose between them. What’s more is that Empower Jace does not look for other non-token Jace planeswalkers. So you will not be able to add counters to those, and if you have them in play, you will still create a Jace token if you do not have one already.
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Heartwood Tokens
Reality Fracture also brings us Heartwood tokens, a new predefined artifact token. Each Heartwood token is a red and green artifact that can be tapped to add either red or green mana. These created artifact tokens help not only with some early- to mid-game ramp, but also provide artifact synergies for decks that care about those.
Who better to showcase the Heartwood token mechanic than the elder sphinx themselves, Aerid Konstrari. Not only do they create the token when the creature enters or dies, but they can also boost their power by X, where X is the number of artifacts you control. Additionally, these tokens are red and green artifacts, not colourless artifacts.
Prepare
Just like the students and teachers of Strixhaven, their Echoverse counterparts at Hexhaven come prepared to cast names and take spells, or something like that. For those of you who have not seen this prepare mechanic before, let’s have a brief study session.
These preparation cards are made up of two parts. The majority of the card will be what you’ll find on your classic creature spell. You’ll see the card’s mana cost, name, typing, and stats. You’ll also see on the bottom left side of the card the creature’s abilities. Preparation cards always have the characteristics of the creature, whether in deck, hand, graveyard, or anywhere else.
On the right-hand side, you’ll see the card’s prepare spell. When a creature becomes prepared, you create a copy of that spell indicated on the card in exile. As long as the creature is in play and is prepared, you may cast that copy. Once you do, the creature is no longer prepared. If the creature leaves the battlefield or becomes unprepared in any other way, the copy of the spell in exile ceases to exist.
Notably, a creature cannot become prepared again while it is already prepared. You are either prepared, or you aren’t. What’s more is, if you control a prepared creature and an opponent somehow gains control of the creature, now they are the ones able to cast the prepare spell.
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Like An Echo Through Time - Meet The Other Side Of The Echoverse
Mechanics might shape how Reality Fracture plays, but the Echoverse is what gives the set its identity. Jace has created his own version of reality, one where many of the disasters that shaped the Multiverse never happened. The result is a world populated by familiar faces who have taken very different paths. You’ll meet your renowned Magic: The Gathering Characters in all their splendour, but you’ll also see their counterparts. These characters if things in their timeline changed ever so slightly. These are your Echoed Pairs.
Every Reality Fracture Play Booster and Collector Booster contains echoed-pair cards. One card represents the character we know from the Multiverse, while the other shows their Echoverse counterpart. A fiery Chandra is paired with an icy Chandra. A compassionate Ajani is paired with a vengeful one. A Karn that has existed only as the colourless construct that we know, and one that’s just a bit more colourful.
The planeswalkers aren’t the only ones who have shifted as well. Iconic legendary creatures are reimagined. What if Ghalta wasn’t an unstoppable force, but rather an immovable object? What if Ruric Thar celebrated in non-creature spells instead of dealing damage to those who cast them? What if Jiang Yanggu turned into Jiang Wick? Rest in peace, Mowu.
These aren’t simply alternate costumes. The cards are designed to show how different lives have produced different characters. That’s what makes the echoed pairs more interesting than simply giving every popular character an evil counterpart. We are so excited to see just what other stories can be told, what interesting easter eggs there will be, and just who, or what, ends up changed as a result of Jace’s meddling.
Collecting Your Own Piece of the Echoverse
The alternate versions of Magic’s characters might be the main attraction, but Wizards has clearly had a lot of fun with the collector side of Reality Fracture. There are plenty of different treatments to chase, and most of them play into the same idea of a familiar Magic world being pulled apart and put back together.
Recall That Headliner?
Just like how we saw Emeritus of Ideation and the prepare spell Ancestral Recall in Strixhaven, Hexhaven has their fun counterpart, with the headliner also being illustrated by Mark Poole! Bloodline Recollector is this set’s headliner card. With only 500 of these gorgeous cards in print, we know this is something every collector will dream of getting their hands on.
Shattering Reality and… Mirrors?
The Facet Foil Shattered Mirror treatment is probably the one that best captures what Reality Fracture is trying to do. These cards take familiar Magic designs and put them alongside their Echoverse interpretations, with the artwork showing the old and new versions together. One of the most iconic of these is Stingcaster Mage with shards of the original Snapcaster Mage artwork overlaid on the card.
Face to Face, Legends Meet Their Match
One of the best features of the set, in my opinion, is the echoed pairs and how you’ll see both sides of the same coin in each pack, one pair at least per pack. And to bring the idea to life even more, we have the Borderless Echoed Pair treatment, where the two variants face off against each other, their fight extending through card borders.
Twisting Your Mind and Jace’s Speciality
Of course, Jace isn’t going to create an entirely new reality and then let everyone else have all the fun. The Braintwister Series gives some of the set’s cards a strange, distorted borderless treatment, with surreal Escher-esque art styles.
Obviously, Jace wouldn’t be settled with just one signature art style. We also have the Sculptor’s Stronghold art treatment, taking the twisting complexities of Echoverse and imposing them on the card art itself.
Panoramic Special Guests
Most sets these days have their own variation of special guest cards, but Reality Fracture combines this idea with the scene cards we see so often in Universes Beyond sets. Artist Marina Banker has created a beautiful panorama of cards, where all 10 special guest cards combine to create one stunning piece of art.
Portals, Towers, And So Much More
The creative team at Wizards of the Coast really went all out when designing this set. The portal lands from Strixhaven gave us a view into Hexhaven return, now peering in through from the other side. As an echo of panoramic lands that create images horizontally, we now have great towers of lands that extend vertically to create their full image. The art direction of Reality Fracture has really left nothing to be desired, and I know I personally can’t wait to play with my vertical tower of lands.
Across The Echoverse
After everything we’ve seen from Reality Fracture, it feels like we’re finally ready to step through the portal ourselves. The Echoverse has given us new takes on characters we thought we knew, strange new mechanics to experiment with and plenty of cards that are going to have us comparing them side by side.
Reality Fracture Prerelease events run from September 25 through October 1, giving us our first chance to experience the set together. Whether you’re heading to your local store with a group of friends or sitting down across from someone you’ve never played against before, that’s when the Echoverse really comes to life.
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