Reality Fracture Prerelease: Know These Mechanics

The Short Version

Reality Fracture looks busy on a first read, but a sealed pool from it comes down to two new ideas and one old keyword doing a lot of work:

1. Empower Jace is on 35 cards, 11 of them common. It hands you a small Jace planeswalker token that surveils and draws, and keeps feeding it loyalty.
2. Prepared is back from Secrets of Strixhaven on 24 cards, 10 of them common. Creatures come with a spell attached that you can cast later.
3. Surveil is on 43 cards, more than any other keyword in the set, and the Jace token surveils too. The white-blue cards pay you for it.

Around those: an uncommon slot where 66 of the 109 uncommons are legendary (most of the Echo variants live there), three returning keywords, two token types, and a cycle of common dual lands that care whether you control a planeswalker. The Jace token counts, which is the single most useful thing to know before you build.

New to sealed? A prerelease kit holds six Play Boosters and you build a 40-card deck from them plus basic lands. How sealed deck works →

Empower Jace

This is the set's signature mechanic, and it runs through every color. A card that says "Empower Jace 2" puts two loyalty counters on the Jace token you control. If you don't have one, it creates one first.

Read the token closely, because it shapes every decision. It has no plus ability. Its loyalty only goes down, so the token is a battery: each empower charges it, and you spend the charge one activation per turn on surveils or cards. The simplest way to value an empower card is that every 3 loyalty is a card.

Four things that come up at the table:

It stacks on the Jace you already have. A second empower card doesn't make a second token; the counters go on the existing one. Two Empower Jace 2 cards on the same turn give you one Jace with 4 loyalty, which is a card and a surveil rather than two separate surveils.

You can use it right away. Planeswalkers don't have summoning sickness. Cast a sorcery-speed empower card in your main phase and you can activate the new token that turn. Cast an instant one, like Academic Ascent or Countersculpt , on your opponent's turn and the token is waiting for you on yours.

Opponents can attack it. It's a planeswalker, so creatures can attack it and "any target" burn can hit it. A 2-loyalty Jace that eats an attack from a 3/3 has done you a favor: that is 3 damage that didn't come at you. Decide each turn whether it is worth blocking for. Tomik, Orzhov Lawmage makes your planeswalkers hard to gang up on, letting only one creature attack each of them per combat.

It makes you "a player who controls a planeswalker." That matters for the common dual lands (below), for Compel Brutality , which can have a planeswalker you control deal damage equal to its loyalty to a creature, and for the ten legendary Way enchantments at uncommon, which each empower Jace and then reward you for having planeswalkers: most by giving them a new loyalty ability the token can use.

No Admittance ↗

Two mana for 3 damage to any target plus Empower Jace 1. Cast it in your main phase and the new Jace can surveil 1 that same turn.

Arcane Amphisbaena ↗

A two-mana 1/1 deathtouch blocker that leaves a two-loyalty Jace behind. A trade and a surveil (or two) for one card.

Mindseeker Oculus ↗

Three mana, a 2/1, and Empower Jace 4. That is a card drawn later and a surveil on top, so the body is close to free.

Keeper of the Quiet Hour ↗

A colorless three-mana 3/2 with Empower Jace 2, so every deck at the table can play it. Expect to see a lot of these.

Behold a Jace is the other Jace word in the set, and a rare sight at the prerelease: only two cards use it. To behold a Jace you choose a Jace you control or reveal a Jace card from your hand, and the token counts. Countersculpt is the uncommon one, and the rare Theorist's Sanctum is the other. Countersculpt is a hard counter if you can behold a Jace, and costs 1 more if you can't.

Prepared

Prepared returns from Secrets of Strixhaven, where it debuted in April. A preparation card is a creature with a small spell printed in a second frame beside it, a bit like an Adventure. While the creature is on the battlefield and prepared, you may cast a copy of that spell. Doing so unprepares the creature.

The rules that trip people up, all confirmed by the release notes:

You can't cast the spell half from your hand. In every zone except that exile copy, a preparation card is just a creature, with the creature's color and mana value. This is the big difference from an Adventure.
You pay for the copy. Casting it costs the spell's mana cost and follows its card type's timing, so a sorcery is main phase only.
It is a real cast. The copy is an instant or sorcery you cast, so prowess, Chandra's Emberling and every other "whenever you cast a noncreature spell" trigger see it.
Leaving the battlefield ends it. If the creature dies, is bounced or is exiled, the prepared spell is gone. A creature that "enters prepared" will enter prepared again if you recast it later.

How a creature gets prepared is what separates the good ones from the great ones. 17 cards enter prepared, 9 of them common: you get the spell once. Three uncommons re-prepare at the start of every upkeep if they aren't already, so you get the spell every turn: Paradox Shaper , Stingerquill Voxmancer and Woodwork Prodigy . Those three are much stronger than they look in the pack, because a cheap body that casts a spell every turn wins long sealed games. Hexhaven Dueling Arena , an uncommon land, can re-prepare a creature too.

Notice that the spell costs are hybrid. Peer Review is 2/, so a mono-white or mono-blue deck can cast it. That makes the common preparation cards easier to fit into a sealed deck than their gold-looking frames suggest.

Fatehold Chronologist ↗

A two-mana 1/2 flier that enters prepared with Peer Review: {2}{W/U} for a 2/2 Cadet and surveil 1. Two bodies and a surveil from one common.

Void Extrapolator ↗

A 2/2 for two with Omit Variables (mill three) ready to go, and it grows to 3/3 at threshold. The spell gets you most of the way there.

Konstrari Improviser ↗

Two mana, and the prepared Soul Tether makes a Heartwood token: an artifact that taps for {R} or {G}. Ramp stapled to a bear.

Stingerquill Voxmancer ↗

One of three uncommons that re-prepare every upkeep. One mana for a 1/2 that can spend one more mana to ping an opponent for 1 every single turn.

Surveil and Threshold

Surveil is on 43 cards in Reality Fracture, and the Jace token's −1 is a surveil on top of that. To surveil 1, look at the top card of your library and choose to keep it there or put it into your graveyard. It's a small edge on its own. What makes it a mechanic here is the set's payoffs for "whenever you scry or surveil," concentrated in white and blue.

Prudent Fateseer ↗

Creatures you control get +1/+0 the first time you scry or surveil each turn. The Jace token's −1 counts.

Desperate Futurescribe ↗

A four-mana 3/4 flier that pumps a creature each combat, permanently if you have scried or surveilled this turn.

Surveillance Phantasm ↗

A common 2/3 flying wall that can attack on any turn you have scried or surveilled. A Jace token turns that into most turns.

Proft, Consulting Detective ↗

Two mana: pay {2} whenever you scry or surveil to grow Proft and draw a card. A mana sink that is also card advantage.

Read the wording on each payoff. Several trigger "only once each turn," so a second surveil in the same turn adds nothing to Prudent Fateseer . Others, like Denzilore Fatehold , the white-blue Elder Sphinx at mythic, have no such limit.

The other half of surveil is the graveyard. Every card you bin brings you closer to threshold, which returns on five cards and turns on at seven or more cards in your graveyard. It's the blue-black reward: Void Extrapolator becomes a 3/3, Theorix Metamage gains flying, and Proft, Sinister Mastermind , a 5/5 menace for three, can only be cast at all once you're there. In a 40-card deck with surveil and mill, seven cards arrives earlier than it would in Constructed.

Legends and Echoes

This is the part of Reality Fracture that feels least like a normal set: 66 of its 109 uncommons are legendary. That's where most of the Echo variants live. Each character has an original version and an "echo" rebuilt in a different color, so a pool can easily hold a mono-green Ghalta the Unstoppable and a mono-white Ghalta the Immovable . Our set guide's Echo mirror pairs every original with its echo.

The legend rule works on names, and the names are different. "Ghalta the Unstoppable" and "Ghalta the Immovable" are two different legends, so you can control both at once. Two copies of the same card are still a problem: if a second Tinybones, Pocket Nuisance enters, you keep one and put the other into your graveyard.

A handful of commons check for the word legendary, so it's worth knowing which side of them your deck is on:

Ghalta the Unstoppable ↗

The green 8/8. It can share a battlefield with its white echo, Ghalta the Immovable, because the two have different names.

Icy Reception ↗

A common that counters a creature or legendary spell unless its controller pays {3}. In this set that covers most of what you would want to counter.

Wrath of the Bloodmane ↗

4 damage to a creature or planeswalker at instant speed, and it costs {1} less while you control a legendary creature.

Budding Insurgent ↗

A three-mana 3/3 that trades itself for an artifact or enchantment, and draws a card if the target was one of the legendary Way enchantments.

Fateshaper Aspirant , a white common five-drop, can return a legendary card from your graveyard to your hand. With this many legends in the uncommon slot it will usually have a target.

Returning Keywords and Tokens

None of these is new, and all of them are in the set in numbers you'll notice. The count is of cards that use each one.

The landcycling cycle deserves a second look when you build. Hexhaven Battalion , Undulating Witness , Apex Witchstalker , Awaken the Inferno and Vinelasher Adept are all common five- and six-drops with basic landcycling 2. In sealed, where you can't choose your curve, a big spell that becomes a land when you're short on mana is exactly the kind of card you want in the 23.

The Common Dual Lands

There are ten common dual lands, one for each two-color pair: the Annexes and the Commons, such as Fatehold Annex and Meticulous Commons . Each reads the same way: it enters tapped unless you control a planeswalker.

The Jace token is a planeswalker. So in a deck with a healthy count of empower cards, these lands often come in untapped from the middle of the game on. More importantly for the prerelease, because they're common you'll open a few, and they're the easiest way to fix a two-color deck or support a small splash for a bomb.

Tomorrow's part of the series takes all ten color pairs in turn: what each wants, which commons carry it, and how to read your pool for it. How to read a Limited pool →

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