Prior to the Prerelease of MTG: Reality Fracture I didn’t pay too much attention to the set outside of looking for Blue/Green for my Antman deck, mono white for Heliod, or artifact creatures I tend to have an affinity. I didn’t find too many that sparked my interest.
However, after playing in our local shops’ prerelease events I have to admit, more cards have been added to my chase list.
Rather than trying to judge the set card-by-card, this review is based entirely on my first experience actually playing with it. Which cards performed better than expected? What disappointed me? And, most importantly, did I actually enjoy playing the set?
What I Played
My first event played Green/White and performed really well considering I put zero effort into building. I found the color pair that I had the most of, mashed my cards together and hoped for the best.
Blossom Blessed Angel, Rescue Girl, Titanbones
Rescue Girl was probably in the top two favorites I played. Rather than a “one and done” with the prepared abilities, she allowed me to reset my prepared cards for another volley.
This allowed me to use Blossom’s ability multiple times which in turn helped Titanbones live up to his name. Emergency Phytomedic and Vigorbloom Vanguard helped as well.
However, for my existing decks, one card stood out to me above the rest.
Guiding Hydra is absolutely nuts. As this article being written prior to official October 2 release, you can buy this card for less than $1.00.
While it does look pretty goofy, the ability itself is insanely good. Rescue Girl was very helpful resetting Hydra’s ability for another volley as well. As the turns progressed and my mana pool grew, so did my Hydra, so did my everything!
I have a mono-white Heliod Commander deck that I adore, the best thing about this card is that as long as I can gain life in my Commander deck (which isn’t that difficult) I can stack more +1/+1 counters onto Guiding Hydra to continuously beef up the rest of my board and prepare for the final blow.
My Final prerelease playthrough is a bit foggy. It was late and I have already been up since 4:00am for work. However, two cards that performed really well was Stingerquill Voxmancer, and Arni Humble Scribe.
What I enjoyed about Stingerquill was his continuous prepared ability. In a sealed format where you only have 20 life to begin with, Stingerquill turned out to be a great problem for my opponent. Especially with some of the creatures that included the prowess mechanic.
Likewise, the Humble Scribe along with Murmuring Volume (As a reader, I highly recommend this book.) both allowed me to filter my deck when I had too many spells and not enough lands, or too many lands versus spells. With Arni, and Stingerquill paired up I can use Arni’s draw ability and untap for my combat phase.
The set itself has a lot more to offer than these few mentioned cards but overall it felt like it was a pretty well designed set. While the set is primarily centered around Empower Jace cards and planeswalkers, I didn’t get too many chances to play with that synergy though I admit, like many of you, I am eager to finally build a Super Friends deck thanks to the Precon giving me a jumpstart.
Conclusion
Overall, I went into Reality Fracture without much excitement outside of finding a few cards for my existing Commander decks, but I came out of prerelease pleasantly surprised. Prepared ended up being more fun to play with than I expected, several cards that I originally overlooked quickly found their way onto my chase list, and there are still plenty of mechanics and interactions I didn’t get the chance to explore. I wouldn’t say a couple prerelease events are enough to judge the set as a whole, but Reality Fracture definitely made a better first impression on me at the table than it did during spoiler season. Now I just need to track down the cards I want—and apparently start building that Superfriends deck.
My Favorite Pulls
Leave a Reply