Magic: The Gathering’s next set, Reality Fracture, closes a three-year plot arc and the 19-year story of Jace Beleren, the mind mage now calling himself The Theorist. He has created a parallel multiverse called the Echoverse, and Polygon can exclusively reveal three new cards that show his conflict with the Planeswalkers of Lorwyn.
The first is Cruel Calculations, a blue sorcery with a new frame called Sculptor’s Stronghold that appears on 25 cards in the set. Executive producer Mike Turian says the treatment shows Jace watching over the Echoverse. The card ties into the Theorix school at Hexhaven, the Echoverse’s twisted version of Strixhaven.
“This art for Cruel Calculations shows some of the inherent risks that come with the kind of forbidden reality-bending math and physics being taught in Theorix,” narrative lead Meris Mullaley tells Polygon. “The best Theorix students can learn to bend reality, but for every elite student, there are many peers who failed their tests.”
Cruel Calculations and the Evil Math
Principal game designer Yoni Skolnik says the card was designed as “an epic Theorix spell.” Placeholder names included Evil Math and Absolute Value.
“I know so many Magic players whose favorite thing about the game can be boiled down to doing math and being evil (myself included),” Skolnik said.
Cruel Calculations works with Reality Fracture’s self-mill archetype and may see play in constructed decks that mill opponents. Skolnik said the cost of 2U was “aggressive but reasonable,” since it needs another card to enable.
“In testing current Standard, Exhibition Tidecaller from Secrets of Strixhaven was the card that most impressed me in enabling Cruel Calculations,” he said.
Empower Jace and the Third Card
Reality Fracture’s core mechanic is Empower Jace, a riff on the amass mechanic from War of the Spark. It adds loyalty counters to an existing Jace token or creates a blue Jace planeswalker token that can surveil 1 for one loyalty or draw a card for three.
“We created Empower Jace in exploratory design and put it into the very first vision design file,” head designer Mark Rosewater tells Polygon. “It got rave reviews at every playtest, and it never left the set.”
Empower Jace appears in all five colors, most heavily in blue. Rosewater says the set includes eight Planeswalkers: The Theorist, regular and Echoverse versions of Ajani, Chandra, and Garruk, and one unrevealed.
Polygon also revealed Violent Echoes, a red instant that deals six damage and adds loyalty tokens based on excess damage.
Face Yourself and the Set’s Focus
A borderless version of the red sorcery Face Yourself furthers the planeswalker focus. It’s a color-shifted riff on Clone Legion from Khans of Tarkir, generating token copies of each creature a player controls with haste, though they’re sacrificed at end of turn unless you control a planeswalker.
“We’ve been expanding red’s design space a little,” Rosewater said.
The three cards show how thoroughly Jace has reshaped Reality Fracture, looming over its artwork and powering its central mechanic.
Key facts:
– Cruel Calculations: blue sorcery, 2U cost
– Sculptor’s Stronghold frame: 25 cards
– Empower Jace: all five colors, most in blue
– Violent Echoes: red instant, six damage
– Face Yourself: red sorcery, Clone Legion riff
– Planeswalkers in set: 8 total, 1 unrevealed
Source: polygon.com
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