Reality Fracture Vision Design Handoff, Part 2
Last week, I started sharing the handoff document that Reality Fracture's Vision Design team gave to the Set Design team. Part one talks about the goals of the set and paired cards. Part two covers the setting of Reality Fracture.
Hexhaven
Another important way to play up the what-if theme was to pick a setting that hit the theme loudly and in a way most players would get. After exploring different options, we settled on Hexhaven, an alternate version of Strixhaven. Instead of enemy-color colleges with a general college feel, Hexhaven has ally-color colleges with a military school feel. Because "Yachting," the previous set, takes place on Strixhaven, the audience will be familiar with it. The enemy-versus-ally contrast is loud (and fulfills a common request of the audience). To create some continuity with "Yachting," each college kept one color and shifted the second to make it an ally-color combination. (The bolded color is the constant between the multiverses.)
- Lorehold, the red-white history college becomes Forehold, the white-blue history college.
- Quandrix, the green-blue math college, becomes Theorix, the blue-black math college.
- Silverquill, the white-black language college, becomes Stingerquill, the black-red language college.
- Prismari, the blue-red art college, becomes Melodari, the red-green art college.
- Witherbloom, the black-green science college, becomes Everbloom, the green-white science college.
There were four options available to us. I'll use Silverquill as my example. In Strixhaven, it's the white-black college. We could keep white and add blue, keep white and add green, keep black and add blue, or keep black and add red. But once we made the decision for one college, it would force our hand on the other four colleges. So, here are the four options we had:
Option One
- Silverquill: White-black becomes white-blue.
- Prismari: Blue-red becomes blue-black.
- Witherbloom: Black-green becomes black-red.
- Lorehold: Red-white becomes red-green.
- Quandrix: Green-blue becomes green-white.
Option Two
- Silverquill: White-black becomes green-white.
- Prismari: Blue-red becomes white-blue.
- Witherbloom: Black-green becomes blue-black.
- Lorehold: Red-white becomes black-red.
- Quandrix: Green-blue becomes red-green.
Option Three
- Silverquill: White-black becomes blue-black.
- Prismari: Blue-red becomes black-red.
- Witherbloom: Black-green becomes red-green.
- Lorehold: Red-white becomes green-white.
- Quandrix: Green-blue becomes white-blue.
Option Four
- Silverquill: White-black becomes black-red.
- Prismari: Blue-red becomes red-green.
- Witherbloom: Black-green becomes green-white.
- Lorehold: Red-white becomes white-blue.
- Quandrix: Green-blue becomes blue-black.
There were a couple colleges that felt like they needed a certain color, Quandrix needed blue and Witherbloom needed green. Luckily, those two changes worked together. That eliminated options one and two. We looked at each of the colleges and what pairing seemed best. Option four felt slightly better than option three, so we went with that.
Two of the five Hexhaven names stuck, Theorix and Stingerquill. "Forehold" became Fatehold, "Melodari" became Konstrari, and "Everbloom" became Vigorbloom.
Unlike "Yachting," the colleges play a smaller role in "Ziplining." The set is not a faction set based around the colleges. Rather, the colleges serve as flavor for the ally-color draft archetypes. To reinforce this and to play up the military feel of Hexhaven, each college does not create its own "mascot" creature token. Instead, all five colleges create a 2/2 colorless Cadet token. Different colleges will interact with the Cadet tokens in different ways.
Everbloom Planetologist
2W
Sorcery
Create a 2/2 colorless Cadet creature token, then put a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the amount of life you gained this turn.
This became Germinate Recruits. Instead of adding X +1/+1 counters to a creature token, Germinate Recruits makes X creature tokens. The input of X, gaining life, stayed the same. The spell also changed from a sorcery to an instant.
Increased Patrol
2B
Sorcery
Target opponent discards two cards. If they discard fewer than two cards this way, create a 2/2 colorless Cadet creature token.
The "discard two" effect became Echoverse Garruk's ultimate and is in no way tied to the Cadets.
Squad Leader
3R
Creature — Human Soldier
3/2
Trample
CARDNAME gets +1/+0 for each Cadet you control.
Whenever you attack, create a 2/2 colorless Cadet creature token that's tapped and attacking.
While Reality Fracture includes Wizard tokens named Cadet, it doesn't have any typal affects specifically for the Cadets.
Another way to create continuity between Strixhaven and Hexhaven is to reuse two of the mechanics from "Yachting" in "Ziplining," but in much smaller amounts. First, magecraft returns, used mostly as it was in "Yachting," but only in the three colors that have a "spells matter" theme: blue, black, and red.
Blood Mage
3B
Creature — Human Wizard
4/3
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, this creature gains lifelink until end of turn.
Titanic Thaumaturge
4RR
Creature — Giant Wizard
5/7
Trample
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, CARDNAME gets +2/+0 until end of turn.
Baral, Disgraced Authority
1U
Legendary Creature — Human Wizard
2/1
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, target player mills two cards.
1U, T, Exile CARDNAME: Return target instant or sorcery spell from your graveyard to your hand.
When this file was handed off from Vision Design, magecraft was still in Secrets of Strixhaven. That Set Design team decided to give each college its own mechanic. To do that, they ended up chopping magecraft into different subset mechanics. Since the last Strixhaven set didn't have magecraft, it felt odd to use it in Hexhaven, and it was removed.
Second, prepared spells return, but in a much more concentrated use. Each college has one prepared spell that shows up in a vertical cycle. The spell is a hybrid spell and is the same on every card. Here are the spells as of handoff:
Set Design decided to keep to one prepared spell for each college at common and uncommon but allowed themselves to make unique prepared spells on rare and mythic rare cards. One of the big reasons they did this was so that they could create colorshifted prepared spells (such as a red
Forehold Research
1(w/u)
Sorcery
Exile two cards from your graveyard. If you do, create a 2/2 colorless Cadet creature token.
White-blue makes use of the graveyard as a resource.
Fatehold ended up shifting from caring about the past to caring about the future, so we moved away from using the graveyard. As surveil interacts with the library, it does a better job of conveying caring about the future. The card still makes a 2/2 creature token.
Theorix Levitation
(u/b)
Sorcery
Target creature you control gains flying until end of turn.
Blue-black wants a cheap spell to help it play nicely with its "spells matters" theme.
Theorix went a completely different direction: caring about the graveyard (well, "Fatehold" wasn't).
Stingerquill Address
1(b/r)
Sorcery
Target creature you control gets +2/+1 and gains haste until end of turn.
Black-red is aggressive and cares about having larger creatures.
Stingerquill stayed the aggro archetype but shifted to damaging your opponent directly rather than buffing creatures.
Melodari Resources
2(r/g)
Sorcery
Create two Treasure tokens.
Red-green is the ramp archetype.
Konstrari mostly stayed the same. To help with ramp, Set Design made a new token, the
Everbloom Diagnosis
3(g/w)
Sorcery
Put two +1/+1 counters on target creature you control. You gain 2 life.
Green-white cares both about counters and gaining life.
The Vigorbloom spell basically stayed the same, it just shrank, granting just one +1/+1 counter and gaining 1 life. That did allow the mana cost to drop from
In the story, Jace has acquired a specific spell from the Mystical Archive on Strixhaven and brought it to Hexhaven. There, he will be able to cast the spell and overwrite the Magic Multiverse with his version, but it will take time. A group of heroes from our world have come to stop him. Jace's illusion army, the military students from Hexhaven, and doppelgängers of the invaders are trying to slow down the siege and give Jace enough time to cast the spell and enact his plan. This is how the colleges play into the larger story of this capstone event set.
I believe most of this stayed true.
Jace's Resources
The paired sheet represents the doppelgängers, and the cards of the Hexhaven students represent the military school. That leaves a way to express Jace's illusion army. The main way we are capturing it is with a new mechanic called empower Jace. Keeping with the what-if theme of the set, empower Jace takes the amass mechanic and tweaks it. Instead of creating an Army creature token, it creates a
The fact that this is exactly what Jeremy Geist proposed in exploratory design (with scry being swapped for surveil) is still shocking to me. It's not often we get all the numbers right on the first try.
Empower Jace is a keyword action and, as such, can be used on any card type. The ability is primarily in white, blue, and green, but appears in all five colors. This includes an uncommon cycle that grants an extra ability to the token. The current version of the mechanic adds loyalty counters to any Jace planeswalker, not just the planeswalker token, but this is a switch that the Set Design or Play Design team could turn off if needed.
It was a switch that Set Design did turn off, probably with input from Play Design. The philosophy during vision design is that we would rather do the bolder version and indicate it in the handoff with a note that it could change. It's always easier for Set Design to pull something back than push it further, so I like when we're more aggressive during the vision design process.
Jace's Cancellation
1UU
Instant
Counter target spell. Empower Jace 1. (Put that many loyalty counters on a Jace planeswalker you control. If you don't control one, first create a blue Jace planeswalker token named Jace Echo with 0 loyalty, "-1: Surveil 1" and "-3: Draw a card.")
This became Countersculpt. The only difference is the added ability to behold a Jace to cast it for
Jace's Scorpion
1G
Creature — Illusion Scorpion
1/1
Deathtouch
When CARDNAME enters, empower Jace 2. (Put that many loyalty counters on a Jace planeswalker you control. If you don't control one, first create a blue Jace planeswalker token named Jace Echo with 0 loyalty, "-1: Surveil 1" and "-3: Draw a card.")
Other than becoming a Snake and getting a new name (Arcane Amphisbaena), this card didn't change at all.
Jace's Medic
4W
Creature — Illusion Cleric
4/3
When CARDNAME enters, empower Jace 2. (Put that many loyalty counters on a Jace planeswalker you control. If you don't control one, first create a blue Jace planeswalker token named Jace Echo with 0 loyalty, "-1: Surveil 1" and "-3: Draw a card.")
Jace planeswalkers you control have "-1: Target creature you control gains lifelink until end of turn."
The cards that granted Jace planeswalkers an additional loyalty ability got turned in as a cycle of creatures but ended up getting changed to the Way of enchantments from the echoed pairs cards. Each Way of enchantment is part of a pair of cards.
The last thing we tried to capture the flavor of an illusion army involved making a cycle of common "relentless" creatures. These are creatures that you can include any number of in a deck and mechanically care about how many you have. The cycle was pulled just before handoff but could be re-added if needed. This text isn't ready for you to see yet, but read on for more from behind the scenes of Reality Fracture.
This last sentence is about a future set, so I've redacted it. Stay tuned!
Relentless Dogs
2W
Creature — Illusion Dog
2/2
When CARDNAME enters, put a number of +1/+1 counters on up to one target non-Dog permanent equal to the number of creatures you control named Relentless Dogs.
A deck may have any number of permanents named CARDNAME.
Relentless Reptiles
1R
Creature — Illusion Lizard
2/1
2R: Creatures you control named CARDNAME get +2/+0 and gain haste until end of turn.
A deck may have any number of cards named CARDNAME.
Relentless Roots
1G
Creature — Illusion Plant
0/3
Defender
T: Add X mana of any one color, where X is the number of creatures you control named CARDNAME.
A deck may have any number of cards named CARDNAME.
This cycle ended up becoming a single card, Sphinx's Approach. We can only make so many "relentless" cards, so we'd rather dole them out one card at a time across multiple sets rather than use them all up in one set.
The Heroes
The paired sheets will represent our heroes, but we wanted a mechanic and at least one archetype to represent our heroes attacking to save the day. The mechanic we chose is called make history, and it's sort of a combination of landfall and raid. Make history is an ability word with the following text:
Make history — If a legendary creature or planeswalker you control entered or attacked this turn …
The ability currently shows up in all colors but is concentrated in white, red, and green. It can appear on any card type and is flavored as a spell of one of the heroes.
Quintorius's Spirit Grasp
3W
Enchantment
Make history — This spell costs 2 less to cast if a legendary creature or planeswalker you control entered or attacked this turn.
When this enchantment enters, exile target creature an opponent controls until this enchantment leaves the battlefield.
Ral's Reckless Experiment
1R
Sorcery
Exile the top two cards of your library. You may play them this turn.
Make history — If a legendary creature or planeswalker you control entered or attacked this turn, create a Treasure token.
Dina's Energizing Brew
2G
Sorcery
Make history — Choose one. If a legendary creature or planeswalker entered or attacked under your control this turn, you may instead choose both –
• Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
• Create a 2/2 colorless Cadet creature token.
Most of the things in this document made it all the way through to print. Others were scaled back but still showed up in some number. "Make history" is the first element handed off that was completely removed. The main reason for this was that the set was divided into two parts: the echoed pairs, which include the heroes of the story, and Jace and Hexhaven. The latter had prepared spells and empower Jace. We wanted some mechanical identity for the former.
The problem was twofold. One, there just wasn't any space. The echoed pairs wanted to have the freedom to be their own thing without having to tie into the larger set structure. Two, the echoed pairs and empower Jace ate up all the complexity of the set, so we needed to scale everything else back.
In addition, the rise of legendary's as-fan in new sets, due mostly to Universes Beyond sets, raised caution around how many "legendary matters" cards to make. This mechanic played well, but I understand why the set was better without it.
The Rest of the Multiverse
Per feedback from March of the Machine, we made a conscious decision to reign in the story. While Jace has made a brand-new multiverse, the majority of the set occurs on one plane, the alternate Arcavios. We do want to give the audience a small peek at the other worlds to see how else Jace has changed things and to allow for a little what-if fun from other worlds. There are two ways the file currently shows off the other worlds.
First, many alternate versions of the legendary creatures on the paired sheet will be characters from "Multiverse J." As almost of them are from specific worlds, this will give us a chance to give players a small peek. Second, we have a number of Sagas that tell the story of the alternative multiverse. These Sagas make use of a variant we are calling turning point. Here's how it works. Each Saga has one chapter (which chapter can vary) that has two different options. When you reach that chapter, you choose which version of the chapter happens. The Sagas are roughly a cycle, but the file currently has an extra green one.
We ended up showing other worlds mostly through the echoed pairs.
History of Innistrad
4B
Enchantment — Saga
Turning point (Choose IA or IB.)
IA — Vampiric Aristocracy — Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It's a Vampire in addition to its other types.
IB — Lycanthropic Dominion — Each opponent sacrifices a creature, then loses life equal to the greatest power among creatures they control.
II. III. Target player mills two cards.
History of Tarkir
4RR
Enchantment — Saga
I. II. CARDNAME deals 2 damage to any target.
Turning point (Choose IIIA or IIIB.)
IIIA. Fate Reforged — Create a 4/4 red Dragon creature token with flying and haste.
IIIB. Khans Remain — Choose three colors. Add two mana of each of those colors.
History of Eldraine
1G
Enchantment — Saga
I. II. Create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.")
Turning point
IIIA. Founding of the Realm — Whenever you gain life this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on up to one target creature you control.
IIIB. The Gingerbread Empire — Target Food you control becomes a 4/4 Golem creature with haste in addition to its other types.
The Sagas mostly fell victim to the same thing as "make history." The set needed a little less stuff in it, and the things that remained needed to be simpler. The "turning point" Sagas are cool, and I hope to find a good place to use them one day. The other strike against them was they weren't quite telling a singular story. They were blending two different stories, how each plane worked out in each multiverse, and it didn't quite ring true with the top-down quality we like for our Sagas.
I had a lot to say in this document, so we're not quite done yet. I want to know what you think about today's article, Reality Fracture, or any of the pieces of the set I talked about today. You can contact me through email or social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).
Join me next week for part three.
Until then, may you imagine what your favorite plane looks like in the Echoverse.