Reality Fracture Weekend or Reality Fracture Month

This weekend was the long-awaited start to the newest in-universe Magic the Gathering set, called Reality Fracture. The set premise was pretty simple: without going into the details too much, a powerful character in the Magic universe created his own dimension, or reality, and rebuilt things in his own vision. This new dimension brought back characters and places, both old and new, and shifted them into new ideas and creations. This new idea is seen in the named characters, for example, Samut. Samut in this new set has two new unique printings, one in red and one in blue. This is seen in many characters, like the new Lilliana. Additionally, the set brought us a new mechanic in Empower Jace, a mechanic I thought going in would be useless, but how wrong I was. The new Empower Jace mechanic allows for a huge card advantage, with little tricks you can do allowing you to draw multiple extra cards each turn. For example, during the prerelease, one trick I used and abused was sacrificing a Jace planeswalker token to its ability, drawing a card or surveilling, then casting a card with Empower Jace, creating a new token that I could then use the abilities of. This could double or triple your ability to use Jace planeswalker token abilities, and in a limited format like a prerelease, this ability was a huge deal. Using this ability along with an Izzet Prepared deck, I was able to make my way up to the champions table, where I inevitably lost to a Jund control deck. The prerelease started Friday, and many people have been going to multiple since the start, like the guy I lost to in the finals who had been to four, and won three, by the time I had done my first. The set also brought about a new wave of players, with the prerelease being sold out weeks in advance where I play, something that a couple of years ago would never be seen, and a big reason for that is I believe the universes beyond sets. However, despite the new popularity the universes beyond sets bring, there truly is nothing like good in-universe Magic: The Gathering, and hopefully Wizards will see how popular they can be and release more of them. That, however, may be just a pipe dream as looking forward on the timeline of Magic: The Gathering sets, there are mostly universes beyond sets coming out in 2027.