At MagicCon Amsterdam, Wizards of the Coast teased not only Magic: The Gathering‘s arc-concluding Reality Fracture a bit more but also detailed where players will be heading after. While there will be three Universes Beyond sets to come in 2027, the canonical Magic Multiverse set locations are some mind-blowing picks. Looking at the timeline to come, passionate fans of Magic‘s world-building and storytelling are in for some very wild turns.
As previously teased, Reality Fracture will bring the original Lorwyn Five Planeswalkers – the first of the card type in original Lorwyn – back together in the same set for the first time since. Additionally, they will serve as the main cast for Reality Fracture‘s story with Chandra, Garruk, Ajani, and a desparked Liliana battling their Echoverse selves to stop Jace’s attempt to replace everything with his grand designs. Each of these pairs uses color influence to create clever mechanical explainers about who these characters are.
Specifically designed to be reminiscent of the iconic Jace, the Mind Sculptor card in mana value and Loyalty cost, The Theorist is Jace at his highest and lowest. His static ability indicates he is working several steps ahead of the other characters, with the rest of his abilities working to control his opponents until he unleashes everything he knows with his -6. But in the middle of all of this are the illusory faces of Jace surrounding him.
The Theorist, Jace Beleren | 2 Colorless Mana, 2 Blue Mana
Legendary Planeswalker – Jace
+1 Loyalty: Create a 1/1 blue Illusion creature token.
-2 Loyalty: For each opponent, return up to one target artifact or creature that player controls to its owner’s hand.
-6 Loyalty: Draw three cards. Then put X +1/+1 counters on each creature you control, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
3 Loyalty
Jace is indeed a character of many faces. He has had his memory erased and his sense of self manipulated multiple times throughout the Magic story, from his childhood under an abusive sphinx mentor to his morally grey Mind Sculptor era to being the unwitting leader of the Gatewatch to his most recent time enthralled by Phyrexia. He’s a fractured man, and The Theorist highlights that he has to strip these fractures into their own illusions just to keep it together. Whatever happens in Reality Fracture, it probably won’t help his mental state.
However, we know that Jace isn’t going to win, and the Multiverse will continue without his manipulations. That’s where the even more exciting things are happening.
In Nauctis: The Sunken Realm, WOTC brings an underwater world to Magic. This is a setting that has long lived on the “short list’ of fan requests, and one only needs to look at Bloomburrow, Duskmourn, or Edge of Eternities to get excited. Wizards is on a hot streak with new planes in particular, and early art for Nauctis suggests another atmospheric home run. Nauctis may also be an indicator that WOTC’s storytelling through lines are improving, should the humanoid shark Keelhaulers from Aetherdrift turn out to be from the plane.
Liliana the Repentant | 1 Colorless Mana, 1 Black Mana
Legendary Creature – Human Warlock
Whenever another creature or planeswalker you control enters, mill two cards.
Exhaust – 5 Colorless Mana, 1 Black Mana: Return target creature or planeswalker card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Put a +1/+1 counter on Liliana. Activate only as a sorcery. (Activate each exhaust ability only once.)
2/2
Liliana the Faultless | 1 White Mana
Legendary Creature – Human Cleric
Whenever another creature or planeswalker you control enters, you gain 1 life.
1 Colorless Mana, Tap, Discard a card: Another target creature or planeswalker you control gains hexproof until end of turn.
1/1
Speaking of Aetherdrift, the rest of the in-universe sets for 2027 will continue to explore the fallout of March of the Machine. By the end of that event, New Phyrexia was replaced with the lost Dominaria region of Zhalfir, and the holes punched through the Multiverse evolving into Omenpaths that enable multiplanar travel for all.
Many sets show the planes dealing with Omenpaths in different ways: falling into them, monetizing them, colonizing empty planes, and more. But in Kamigawa: Titanbreach, Wizards is using a return set to explore the Omenpaths as a narrative designer, Neale LaPlante Johnson, calls an “existential threat.” That threat is another plane, the kaiju-filled Ikoria. What brings these two into direct collision remains to be seen, but “Pacific Rim but with Magic stuff” is a really strong pitch on its own.
Going even deeper than that, Ikoria and Kamigawa are both planes that find themselves interacting with their plane’s natural states in very different ways. Despite its modern technological evolution, Kamigawa equally co-exists and reveres its natural resources and spirit inhabitants.
Garruk, Veiled Butcher | 3 Colorless Mana, 2 Black Mana
Legendary Planeswalker – Garruk
If a creature an opponent controls would die, exile it instead.
+2 Loyalty: Up to one target creature gets -4/-1 until your next turn.
-2 Loyalty: Each player sacrifices a creature of their choice. If you sacrificed a creature this way, create a 4/4 green Beast creature token with trample.
-3 Loyalty: Each opponent discards two cards. For each opponent who didn’t discard two nonland cards this way, you draw a card.
5 Loyalty
Garruk, Curse Breaker | 3 Colorless Mana, 2 Green Mana
Legendary Planeswalker – Garruk
Whenever a creature you control with power 4 or greater enters, draw a card.
+2 Loyalty: Untap up to two target lands.
-3 Loyalty: Create a 4/4 green Beast creature token with trample.
-4 Loyalty: Until your next turn, whenever one or more creatures attack one of your opponents, those creatures get +2/+2 and gain trample until end of turn.
5 Loyalty
Meanwhile, Ikoria’s humans are constantly at war with the behemoths that walk its lands, including casting out any human that forms a bond with a creature in the wild. The potential thematic and mechanical tension is high. Can this set really bring back mutate and ninjitsu? We’ll see.
The final in-universe set tackles that other consequence by returning players to Zhalfir in, well, Zhalfir. Fan favorite characters like Teferi and Karn were last seen here following MOM, and the set will give those fans a chance to check in on their lives post-desparking. Even more exciting is that WOTC can finally explore a diverse location that has spent an extremely long time stuck in a plot contrivance.
In a misguided attempt to protect his home region from a previous Phyrexian invasion, Teferi phased out Zhalfir from reality only to find he couldn’t bring it back. That means Zhalfir has continued to evolve and grow completely separate from not only Dominaria but the Multiverse at large.
No Plansewalker or cosmic interference. The potential is through the roof, in the familiar with Dominarian ties and the new with all the afrofantasy elements that could be introduced. It’s a culture study that most Magic players will never have had before.
One of the things that many players have concerns about in the Universes Beyond era is that Wizards of the Coast is losing touch with its own worlds and stories. This lineup of future sets, however, paints a more complex picture. Yes, in between all these sets are unannounced Universes Beyond sets. But it’s also clear that the creative and story teams at WOTC are all in on trying to build something special.
There’s a case to be made that Universes Beyond, with familiar brands and extra focus on collectability, creates a cushion for WOTC to experiment. In a world where each year for the foreseeable future has a Marvel set on the docket, why not get a little weird with it? Sure, a water world has long been on the short list, but it’s only now that the shot is worth taking.
Despite the context of the game’s history, Zhalfir is going to be an uphill battle to sell to pockets of players who are used to media (including card games) centering a white person’s experience. It’s not impossible to think that without the buffer afforded by Universes Beyond sets, Hasbro might be less keen to let Wizards explore such ideas.
Ajani Resolute | 1 Colorless Mana, 1 White Mana
Legendary Planeswalker – Ajani
Whenever you gain life, put a loyalty counter on Ajani.
0 Loyalty: You gain 1 life.
-4 Loyalty: Create a 2/2 white Cat Soldier creature token named Ajani’s Pridemate with “Whenever you gain life, put a +1/+1 counter on this token.
-10 Loyalty: You get an emblem with “Creatures you control get +2/+2.”
2 Loyalty
Ajani Unrelenting | 4 Colorless Mana, 2 Red Mana
Legendary Planeswalker – Ajani
Whenever you activate a loyalty ability, create a 2/2 colorless Wizard Soldier creature token named Cadet.
+1 Loyalty: Creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain haste until end of turn.
-2 Loyalty: Discard your hand, then draw a card for each creature you control.
-3 Loyalty: Ajani deals 4 damage to each creature except for tokens you control.
5 Loyalty
That’s what’s so exciting about this slate and why players should care. Contrary to doomsayers, Wizards of the Coast isn’t giving up on the Magic story, its brand, or its worlds. If anything, they’re trying to build it bigger, wider, and more welcoming than ever. These sets are exciting new directions that hopefully open even more wild and unexpected sets in the years to come.
Each of these pairs reflects the potency of the what-if concept Reality Fracture is employing. These cards ask questions about how much of the things that happen to these characters shape them. As we’ve said before, players who only somewhat know these characters vaguely now have an opportunity to see what shapes a part of their personalities. This is especially striking for Ajani’s cards, which have drastically different philosophies that even flip their mana values.
Despite not getting his own Echoverse version – check the card below; there’s no watermark – Jace’s Reality Fracture card is also very telling about his history and why he ended up like this.
Reality Fracture releases on October 2nd. Nauctis: The Sunken Realm releases on February 5, 2027, followed by Kamigawa: Titanbreach on June 4, 2027, and Zhalfir on October 1, 2027.