New details about MTG Reality Fracture were revealed at Magiccon Las Vegas today and while it is about an alternate reality created by a Jace turned villainous, as we all suspected, it turns out to take place almost entirely on a darker 'echoverse' version of Strixhaven, known as Hexhaven. In fact, Wizards has confirmed that while an alternate multiverse is out there, we only see glimpses of it in the Reality Fracture MTG set.
Magic: The Gathering's wizard school Strixhaven has never managed to entirely avoid comparisons to Harry Potter, and, I'm sorry, but this new version just isn't helping with that. It seriously makes me think of Hogwarts in the later books, with surveillance in the corridors, and enforcers to keep everyone in line. Jace has faceless henchmen that look like his own bullies (check out the card Mage-Ring bully), and eyeball creatures watching everyone. Yikes!
Hexhaven swaps the colors of Strixhaven to the allied color pairs. But the subjects are the same, the schools just have one color changed, giving them a different approach to learning.
The history school, Lorehold, for instance, is now the blue/white Fatehold, which seems to have a very loose understanding of what history is about, as it's purely focused on predicting the future, and trying to create the outcome that you want.
The math school, Quandrix, is now the blue/black Theorix, which is all about unlocking esoteric secrets through theoretical physics, bending space and making anomalies.
The science school Witherbloom, is now the white/green Vigorbloom, and it's alarmingly known as the 'school of invasive healing'. Basically they do surgeries and heal you with bits of plant.
The language school, Silverquill, is now the red/black Stingerquill, which we don't have details on, but my assumption is it's Silverquill but even meaner.
Again, we lack details on the new art school, except that Prismari is now the red/green Konstrari. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably more about woodworking and sculpture than throwing big splodges of paint around.
I imagine some fans will be disappointed that we're not seeing more planes in Reality Fracture, but the real innovation in this 'What If?' set concerns the characters.
As Mark Rosewater explained in a recent press preview, one of the concerns with creating a set that included 'mirrorverse' versions of Magic: The Gathering characters is how players who aren't already familiar with the characters would know what had changed.
The solution they've landed on is pretty intriguing: every single booster will contain the regular version of a character and the new echoverse version. The example we've been given is Chandra, Torch of Defiance, one of the best MTG planeswalker cards of old, would appear in a pack alongside her new blue card, Chandra, Chill of Compliance.
We don't know exactly who is getting this treatment, except that it'll include both planeswalkers and legendary creatures. Art depicts the Lorwyn 5 plus Vraska, so those guys are confirmed.
It's not quite clear how this is going to work, as it seems like this would dramatically shift the rate of rares in packs. We also don't know if the 'normal' versions of characters will be Standard-legal reprints or if some will be original cards.
What do you think of the vision for this set? Let us know over on the Wargamer Discord.