After more than three decades of history, Magic: The Gathering has already been practically everything. Included, a game that some of its fans have considered dead several times. With a dominant position in the collectible card game market throughout its history, it’s a stable, enduring game. Even if it died tomorrow it wouldn’t really die. It’s impossible to conceive of a world where Magic: The Gathering truly ceased to exist: people would keep playing with the cards that already exist even if Wizards of the Coast abandoned the game.
That’s what makes it special. It has already transcended its commercial side. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t selling well. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it’s the kind of game that already belongs as much to its fans as to the company that produces it, in large part because of the enormous history behind it. Something its latest set, Reality Fracture, tries to capitalize on with uneven success, but with tremendous charm.
Jace Beleren, we’ll always love you
This set revolves around the history of Magic and, in particular, Jace Beleren. A mage and planeswalker who has lived through many of the stories in the game’s world and has been traumatized by all of them. He has lived through invasions, wars, and enormous losses and has decided he’s had enough. That’s why he has looked for a way to change everything, which is to make the Magic universe we know collide with a parallel mirror universe, where all the primordial evils we’ve seen over the past thirty years don’t exist.
No Eldrazi or Phyrexians or, of course, the Brothers’ War. That doesn’t mean there aren’t terrible things or that people don’t suffer. And when the two universes merge, there are winners and losers, with some of the game’s iconic characters in their bleakest versions yet. But Jace sees it as a small price to pay in exchange for not living under constant existential threats.
What does this mean in gameplay terms? The return of iconic cards, but in an interesting color-reversed version, and many, many Jaces. The first part is simple: many classic Magic: The Gathering cards return, but in a different color. What was blue was red and what was white is now black. And their abilities change too to show that reflection. This is meant to evoke the mirror universe that Jace wants to use to replace and improve the universe we know.
But what Jace also does is divide himself. Aware that his plan will fail, he separates all the parts of himself he doesn’t need to carry his plan forward and discards and locks them away to keep going. And alongside Jace himself, there are multiple Jace planeswalker tokens that gain extra abilities from other planeswalkers’ enchantments. A small detail that shows that, even in this situation, Jace continues to be defined by others. And, after two years with much less emphasis on this kind of card, a greater emphasis on these long-forgotten elements of the game.
A slightly out-of-tune love letter
Perhaps Reality Fracture’s big problem is that, although in gameplay terms it does all this with grace and charm, it doesn’t hold up well to comparison. Compared with one of the most beloved sets in the history of Magic: The Gathering, Planar Chaos, the difference in quality is obvious.
Planar Chaos made subtle references, even making cards based on characters who were mentioned in passing in lines of flavor text on old cards. It also dared to break what were considered each color’s proper effects, giving white ways to counter spells, blue ways to destroy them, and green creatures with the ability to fly; worse than their counterparts in other colors, but they did it. And the new mechanics like flash, split second, and suspend were a revolution that are still used today or can no longer be used for very good reasons.
Meanwhile, Reality Fracture doesn’t go as far. All the references are to very well-known characters, with multiple cards to their name already. All the color changes strictly respect color identity. And aside from the Jace tokens, there are no new mechanics. That doesn’t make the set bad, but it does make it feel less interesting by comparison. Though in fairness, it’s hard to live up to Planar Chaos, considered one of the best sets in the history of Magic. If not the best.
In the end the set is a love letter to Magic that shows how the game has evolved. The game is now so vast and so clearly defined that it’s hard to make the big swings that could be made 19 years ago. And even so, the result is remarkable and, on its own merits, astonishing and surprising. A set that overflows with love for Magic in every way.
