A surprise double feature for the Casual Chat today!

This is because I missed last week’s Casual Chat and rather than lament on it, I decided to do another Casual Chat today! It’ll probably be a shorter one, but one that I think is a neat idea.

I wanted to explore the mechanics for the upcoming set for Magic, Reality Fracture. Plenty of people will talk about the story implications from the set, so I wanted to focus on the mechanics of the set and judge them in how well I think they are implemented and how likely it is we will see them in the future.

I will also talk a bit about how the set does a neat effect for the booster packs and what that could mean in the future.

Let’s get started!

Prepare

Nothing like starting a discussion on new mechanics by talking about a mechanic from three sets ago.

Prepared spells are a mechanic that debuted in Secrets of Strixhaven, where a spell is attached to a creature that if a creature is prepared, then the spell that is attached to the creature can be cast. There are a variety of ways a creature can be prepared, something as simple as entering the battlefield prepared or needing to fulfill a condition to be prepared.

I for one am a huge fan of prepared spells, and this was from when they first debuted. I think the idea of attaching spells, some of them being previously existing spells, is a brilliant way to add more depth to a set while also providing what could potentially be a one time use of a spell or adds a creative way to build a deck in order to prepare a creature as soon as possible.

Reality Fracture does nothing too different for prepared spells, other than have the same spell on a lot commons and uncommons, more so to emphasize that the students of Hexhaven are more regimented.

Since this mechanic has already made its appearance again in a main set, I can imagine that it is highly likely that we will see it again. I want to see more prepared spells on other card types, like how Adventures eventually became attached to artifacts, I want the same to be done for prepared spells.

Hell, I can see it potentially becoming a deciduous mechanic like Sagas, where they appear sporadically but have something interesting done with them.

Heartwood Tokens

Next up is a predefined token known as a Heartwood token.

A Heartwood token is a red and green artifact token that can tap to add a red or a green mana.

Not crazy in the grand scheme of things, but it is an interesting choice of design for a set like this. While I understand that Treasures have become the go too way to generate mana, having a new token not only generate mana but also stay in play is a fascinating design choice.

This has some interesting implications in where design is heading, which to me is saying that big spells are going to be more prevalent in the upcoming sets.

While many people do rag on Wizards of the Coast getting rid of blocks and there not being cohesive designs between sets, there is still some through lines that carry over from set to set and I think that Heartwood tokens is a way that the designers are gearing up for more big spells in the pipeline.

Kamigawa: Titanbreach is coming up, and that set hopefully has big monsters and big mechs that Wizards wants to see play, and rather than rely on temporary mana like Treasures or restrictive mana like Powerstones, go in the middle and make mana generating tokens that make specific colors.

This is all speculative on my part, and this is purely assumptions based on how I would design a mana generating token while also working on new sets.

As far as how I see the token itself, I think that it will do well in Limited but may struggle in Constructed in its current state. If Wizards makes more cards that make these tokens then I can see them go pretty far, but probably won’t overtake Treasures in the immediate future.

If these are one and done’s like Powerstone tokens that may show up in a supplemental set or on a random card, then these tokens are a neat experiment that languishes because there is no support.

I do hope more cards that make Heartwood tokens are released, but I’m not hedging my bets.

Empower Jace

Now onto the marquee mechanic of the set, Empower Jace.

Empower Jace is a keyword action that is formatted “empower Jace X” where you put X loyalty counters on a Jace token you control. If you do not control one, first you create a blue Jace Planeswalker token with “-1, Surveil 1” and “-3, Draw a card.”

Within the story of Reality Fracture, Jace fragments his mind, which is represented in the set as these Jace tokens. Game play wise, I am cautiously optimistic with the mechanic.

The mechanic shares a lot DNA with Amass, with the mechanic being called Amass Jace during testing according to the designers. Much like Amass, it is an interesting concept to play around with, and also one that happens to work well to explain to a new player if they started playing Magic with The Hobbit set. Rather than it being an Army token, it’s attached to a Planeswalker token with a specific name, which focuses the mechanic to one game object rather than three or four.

I do like the restraint that the loyalty counters are put onto Jace tokens rather than any Jace Planeswalker because that is something that could have gotten out of hand fairly quickly in formats that have some of the scarier Jace’s.

The set also utilizes cards that give Planeswalkers additional abilities, which means that while you would normally be limited in using the down abilities of the Jace token, you can still potentially use the Jace tokens for other abilities.

This also opens design space for other Planeswalkers to become empowered in the future, though that is something that is more likely to come from supplemental product.

While I do like the mechanic, I do think that bringing it to other sets as a main mechanic is pretty difficult without a major story reason to do so. It is a great mechanic that can show up in a couple cards here and there, but as a main stay mechanic I don’t see it coming up too often.

Collating Echoed Pairs

This is not a mechanic, but a piece of information that was revealed in terms of how this set is being collated.

Every pack of Reality Fracture, Play Booster or Collector Booster, will have cards that are Echoed Pairs, which means that a card that represents the normal Magic universe and its doppelganger in the Echoverse is guaranteed in the pack.

The way this is done is simple in concept, but I imagine very difficult in practice. In order to guarantee that each booster pack would have an Echoed Pair, they essentially added an additional slot in the booster that was for a potential Echoed Pair.

To use Mark Rosewater’s example in his article, imagine if cards A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2 were aligned in that order in one hopper, staggering by one in the subsequent hoppers to make it so that the cards would be placed in a pack as A1/A2/B1, A2/B1/B2, B1/B2/C1, B2/C1/C2, C1/C2/A1, and C2/A1/A2.

This would always guarantee that a pair exists in a pack, with an extra card that was part of a pair. Now this was a simplified version of something that I imagine is incredibly complicated, but it does provide a whole new way for Magic to play around with how sets can be designed in the future.

Now that they have access to this format, they can put more cards that match each other in a pack for some interesting draft designs. Pick-Two Draft is a format that does have its fans and can potentially gain a benefit from with this new avenue of collation.

I do hope that Wizards plays around with this, refining it in different ways as well as doing some interesting things with it.

In Conclusion

I do think that this set is pretty light on major mechanics, but there is a lot going on with the individual cards that I think that it can be forgiven that the set isn’t packed to the gills with a thousand different mechanics.

The through line mechanics are pretty interesting design space, and I do hope we can see these mechanics come by in the future.

Thank you all for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual