Reality Fracture Debut Stream: Jace Tokens, Elder Sphinxes, a Lotus Token, and Two Versions of Every Character

Wizards of the Coast opened Reality Fracture preview season yesterday with a debut stream on Twitch and YouTube, and the set turned out to be stranger and more ambitious than the teaser material suggested. This is the first in-Multiverse Standard set after two Universes Beyond releases, and it is built around a single question: what if the Multiverse's biggest stories had gone differently?

Here is everything the stream revealed, and what it means for players and collectors ahead of the October 2 release.

Empower: Amass, but for Planeswalkers

The set's headline mechanic is Empower. If you played War of the Spark in 2019, you know Amass: you either make an Army creature token or put counters on the one you already have. Empower works exactly the same way, except the token is a planeswalker. Specifically, it is a Jace planeswalker token that the set's cards build up over the course of a game.

The Empower cards shown so far are mostly blue, with splashes into white and green, and at least one land, Theorist's Sanctum, that Empowers. The design intent is obvious: a planeswalker-centric environment where your Jace token grows into a real threat. Anyone with memories of Teferi, Time Raveler-era Standard will have feelings about that.

Echoverse Legends: Two Versions of the Same Character in Every Pack

This is the part collectors should pay the most attention to. Every Play Booster contains two seeded cards: the canon Multiverse version of a character and its Echoverse counterpart, the alternate-reality version. The stream showed several of these pairs.

• Ghalta, the Unstoppable paired with Ghalta, the Immovable.
• Way of the Cryomancer paired with Way of the Pyromancer.
• Karn, Argent Defender paired with Karn, Gilded Guardian. Karn, Argent Defender in particular drew immediate attention as a card that could be brutal against a large chunk of the format.

Wizards has not done seeded pairs in a Standard-legal set before. For set collectors it means the "complete" set is really a set of pairs, and for singles buyers it means the pull rate of any given rare is tied to its partner. Expect prices on the two halves of a strong pair to move together.

Hexhaven Academy and the Elder Sphinxes

Strixhaven had five colleges founded by Elder Dragons. Reality Fracture's Hexhaven Academy has five militant schools founded by Elder Sphinxes, each aligned to a color pair:

• Fatehold (blue-white), founded by Denzilore.
• Theorix (blue-black), founded by Uldaros.
• Stingerquill (black-red), founded by Ingris.
• Konstrari (red-green), founded by Aerid.
• Vigorbloom (green-white), founded by Kwia.

All five founders were revealed on stream, and they are the mythic-tier legends that will anchor Commander demand. Kwia, Vigorbloom creates a Lotus token, and yes, it is a token that functions like the most famous card in the game. Expect that card to be the most discussed single from the entire stream.

The set also continues the Prepared Spells mechanic from Secrets of Strixhaven, this time attached to the cadets of the militant schools. Diviner of Victory and Pompous Battlemage were the examples shown.

Other Notable Cards

Loyal Tutor is a narrower Enlightened Tutor variant that several commentators immediately flagged as a likely Game Changer designation before release. Clash of Elements, Hexhaven Invigorator, Protege's Awakening, Return to the Light Realms, Something Worth Saving, and Tam's Resistance rounded out the reveals. New planeswalker cards also answer story questions, including what happens when Chandra sides with Baral, Chief of Compliance.

The Dates, and the Supply Problem

• Previews: September 8 through September 17, with the full card image gallery expected by September 18.
• Prerelease: September 25 through October 1 at local game stores.
• Release: October 2.

The complicating factor is the supply warning Wizards issued in late August: Play Booster boxes will be available in limited quantities at launch in North America. Combined with seeded pairs that make the chase structure unusual, this is a set where the first month of singles pricing will be unusually noisy.

What To Do This Week

If you have a local game store you play at, get on its prerelease list now. Prerelease kits are allocated separately from launch product and are the most reliable way to get cards in hand on time. If you are buying for a Commander deck, wait for the full gallery on September 18 before committing to preorders on the Elder Sphinxes; the debut stream showed five of them and the singles market has not had a chance to sort out which two or three are actually good. If you are a set collector, plan around pairs from the start, and budget for the fact that "one of each rare" is going to mean more cards than usual.