Magic: The Gathering’s ‘Reality Fracture’ Designers Unveil New ‘What If’ Set Details as Four Cards Debut (EXCLUSIVE)

The world of Magic: The Gathering will break with the upcoming release of new mainline set “Reality Fracture,” something Magic maker Wizards of the Coast says fans have been asking for for a long time.

“Doing another ‘what if’ set is a frequent player request, so it was something I’ve been on the lookout to do for years,” Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater tells Variety. “What finally made it happen was the story. Once I heard about the Echoverse, I was like, ‘Okay, we have our “what if” set.'”

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Releasing Oct. 2, “Reality Fracture” takes on “The Echoverse,” which Wizards describes as “Jace Beleren’s magnum opus, an artificial Multiverse of his own design” that will bring a host of warped cards and characters to Magic. Per Wizards, “Your favorite legends will take on new colors, your favorite cards will be twisted into new versions, and the story of Jace Beleren will reshape the Multiverse as you know it. It’s an exciting time to be a fan of Magic‘s Multiverse, and we’re bringing this mind-bending celebration to Commander!”

“Research was a huge part of ‘Reality Fracture,'” Wizards of the Coast worldbuilding design manager Meris Mullaley says. “The Echoed Pairs represent a kaleidoscope of divergent paths, some inspired by top-down character or plane ideas, other driven by mechanical hooks. We talked at length at how legendary characters would think, behave, or appear if they embodied a different mana color.”

Variety has an exclusive first look at four new cards (one with two art variants) from the upcoming set:

See more from Variety‘s interview with Rosewater and Mullaley below.

What new mechanics were you trying to introduce with Reality Fracture and how much was purposefully done in contrast to previous sets or even specific cards?

Mark Rosewater: The only brand new mechanic is empower Jace. The set has a “what if” theme and Jace was the antagonist of the story, so we were looking for an existing mechanic that we could stretch into something completely new that would allow us to expand the feel of Jace in the cards. Empower Jace was inspired by the amass mechanic (first seen in War of the Spark), but instead of creating a creature token, you’re creating a planeswalker token. We’ve never made common planeswalkers, so having common cards create a planeswalker token was dipping into space we’d never previously explored. Empower Jace was popular from the very first playtest, and never left the set. We think players are going to really enjoy it.

At what point did Wizards decide that a reverse Strixhaven was going to be the main setting of this storyline?

Rosewater: Very early in the set’s design, we were planning to have the expansion set on a while number of planes in the Echoverse, but after getting feedback on March of the Machine that the story spread around too much, we decided to center it on just one plane. This also allowed us to tell a much more personal story. The first plane we considered was Mirrodin Pure, an alternate take on the planet Mirrodin that we had hinted at many years ago, but never made. We ended up changing to Hexhaven, a what if version of Strixhaven, as that was a setting we’d just been to and there was a clean way to create a new version of it, doing something players had been asking for (ally-colored colleges rather than the normal enemy-colored ones of Strixhaven).

Meris Mullaley: Hexhaven offered newer Magic players a recent setting they would be familiar with, with Secrets of Strixhaven being the preceding Magic multiverse set. Mirrodin has a deep history and is loved by fans and that inspired our creative choices for legend pairs like Karn.

Were there always plans for Hexhaven going back to when they made the first Strixhaven set — or did you consider other planes that have longer history in the game and stronger connections to Jace like Ravnica?

Rosewater: We didn’t create Hexhaven until we were making Reality Fracture. When building the colleges in original Strixhaven, we had no plans for an ally-colored version of the schools.

Mullaley: I joined the project midway through creative development after Hexhaven was firmly part of the plan.

The flavor text of Entrust the Spark heavily suggests Jace dies, or at least gives up his Planeswalker spark. Can you confirm that plot point?

Mullaley: In the conclusion of the Reality Fracture web fiction, Jace dies by Vraska’s hand. His mind and body served as a physical tether for the Echoverse reality and the only way to stop the Echoverse from overwriting the original Multiverse was to break that connection. His spark leaves his body after he dies and seeks Tam out, which was something Jace had planned.

What was the process for deciding to make a ‘what if’ set?

Rosewater: Doing another “what if” set is a frequent player request, so it was something I’ve been on the lookout to do for years. What finally made it happen was the story. Once I heard about the Echoverse, I was like, “Okay, we have our ‘what if’ set.”

Magic’s last attempt at a “what if” set in Planar Chaos led to some notable color pie breaks. How was that avoided this time around? How were creature types and their usual color affiliations treated?

Rosewater: The big lesson of Planar Chaos was that we shouldn’t mess around with the color pie. It’s hard to communicate that a color doesn’t do something when someone can just point to a printed card and go, “yes you do”. So when I was first asked about Reality Fracture, I said I’m excited to do a what if set, but messing with the color pie is off the table. If a character shows up in a new color, we have to represent them with the mechanical tools of that color.

Mullaley: Research was a huge part of Reality Fracture. The Echoed Pairs represent a kaleidoscope of divergent paths, some inspired by top-down character or plane ideas, other driven by mechanical hooks. We talked at length at how legendary characters would think, behave, or appear if they embodied a different mana color.

Will we see more of the Echoverse and Hexhaven in the future? If the Hexhaven schools become popular, is there a way to bring them back like the clans were brought back after disappearing in Dragons of Tarkir?

Rosewater: We can’t speak to the future. R&D does have a saying though, “Success breeds repetition.”

Mullaley: Emrakul was trapped in the moon of Innistrad during the events of Eldritch Moon. Sometimes creative work is throwing a pass that your future self or your future peers may catch and run with years down the road.