Exclusive: Magic Designers Reveal the Evil Math Behind Reality Fracture — See 3 New Cards

Theorix’s epic spell has a strong combo with a Secrets of Strixhaven creature

Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming set Reality Fracture is the culmination of a three-year plot arc and the 19-year story of Jace Beleren, the mind mage who has become one of the game’s most iconic characters. Now calling himself The Theorist, Jace has decided to reshape reality in his image, creating a parallel multiverse called the Echoverse. Reality Fracture’s designers have come up with numerous ways to make sure Jace’s influence feels ever-present, and Polygon can exclusively reveal three cards that showcase his conflict with the other Planeswalkers of Lorwyn as they try to save the world.

Francis Tneh illustrated the Booster Fun version of the blue sorcery Cruel Calculations with a new frame called Sculptor’s Stronghold, which will appear on a total of 25 cards in the set. Executive producer Mike Turian tells Polygon the treatment is meant to demonstrate how Jace is watching over the Echoverse. The card is closely tied to the Theorix school at Hexhaven, the Echoverse’s twisted version of Strixhaven, which the Theorist uses as his base.

“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,” Reality Fracture narrative lead Meris Mullaley tells Polygon via email. “The best Theorix students can learn to bend reality, but for every elite student, there are many peers who failed their tests.”

The card is meant to synergize with Omit Variables, a prepared spell found on Theorix cards like the uncommon Paradox Shaper, which mills three cards for one black or blue mana.

“Flavorfully, the card was designed to be an epic Theorix spell,” principal game designer Yoni Skolnik tells Polygon. “Placeholder names for the card 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), and the design of Theorix cards is in many ways a love letter to those players.”

Beyond working well with Reality Fracture’s self-mill archetype, Cruel Calculations is likely to see play in constructed decks that focus on milling opponents.

“Balancing the card, we found 2U to be an aggressive but reasonable cost, as it requires another card to enable, and a two-card combo that doesn't impact the board is usually easy for the metagame to counter,” Skolnik said. “In testing current Standard, Exhibition Tidecaller from Secrets of Strixhaven was the card that most impressed me in enabling Cruel Calculations, but being creature based had us feeling confident the strategy had vulnerabilities.”

Empowering Jace

One of Reality Fracture’s core mechanics is Empower Jace, a riff on the amass mechanic introduced in War of the Spark. It adds loyalty counters to an existing Jace token or creates a blue Jace planeswalker token with the ability to spend one loyalty to surveil 1 and three to draw a card.

“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. Because it was such an important part of the set (it helped have Jace’s presence felt throughout limited play) we chose to put Empower Jace in all five colors, but the most in blue, Jace’s color. Obviously, as it leans into blue’s strengths, blue has access to Empower Jace at a better rate.”

Polygon can also exclusively reveal the red instant Violent Echoes, which deals six damage to a creature or planeswalker and adds loyalty tokens to Jace based on the excess damage.

“Empower Jace certainly introduces a lot of card advantage and selection into the environment,” Skolnik says. “Having it in all colors provides a solid foundation of smoothing that all limited decks appreciate, while also directly enabling control decks focused on protecting Jace, and allowing players to assemble combos that leverage the unique designs on the echoed pair sheet. While those strategies are powerful, the opponent having the chance to attack your Jace and disrupt your plans makes for a unique limited environment that echoes the story of the set.”

Rosewater says Reality Fracture will include a total of eight Planeswalkers: The Theorist, Jace Beleren; both regular and Echoverse versions of Ajani, Chandra, and Garruk; and one that has yet to be revealed. Empower Jace allows players who aren’t lucky enough to open a mythic rare to have their own planeswalker, with blue/green cards unlocking new powers they can spend loyalty on. Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes gives an ultimate ability that adds a +1/+1 counter to a creature for each land you control, and Skolnik said other blue/green cards will allow Empower Jace to generate creature tokens.

Polygon can also exclusively reveal a borderless version of the red sorcery Face Yourself, which further emphasizes the set’s focus on planeswalkers. The color-shifted riff on the Khans of Tarkir sorcery Clone Legion generates a token copy of each creature a player controls and gives them haste, though the tokens are sacrificed at the end of turn unless you control a planeswalker.

“We’ve been expanding red’s design space a little, and part of that is allowing it to have temporary stealing effects where the duration is longer than a turn, but still unknown, giving it a chaotic feel,” Rosewater says.

Together, the three cards show how thoroughly Jace has reshaped Reality Fracture: He looms over its artwork, powers its central mechanic, and turns even familiar faces into weapons.