Quick Hits

• Reality Fracture's debut stream is live: Jace Reawakened anchors the new Empower Jace mechanic, revealed alongside a new Emrakul and five elder sphinxes. Mark Rosewater is leaning all the way in, calling it "the most Jace set ever" and defending the Empower Jace-heavy opening day of spoilers.
• Story finale tomorrow: MaRo confirms the final two Reality Fracture story episodes both drop tomorrow, September 11, after the preview-schedule article appeared to shift.
• Baleful Strix is up 972% over Labor Day weekend following Gavin Verhey's Secret Lair unban announcement, per Draftsim.
• Modern's Energy decks have lost the throne: Quiet Speculation's August metagame update charts a dramatic shift, though the author suggests it may be more a question of taste than power level.
• Hexhaven Invigorator, a colorshifted Reality Fracture mythic, is being flagged by Draftsim as a card that "absolutely breaks land strategies."

Set News

Spoiler season is officially rolling for Reality Fracture — the first in-Multiverse set after back-to-back Universes Beyond releases, where everything Jace Beleren has been scheming finally comes to a head. Draftsim has full debut coverage, including a new Emrakul and the five elder sphinxes.

The headline mechanic is Empower Jace, a planeswalker-centric riff on WAR-style Amass in which cards tack an "Empower Jace" rider onto their effects. Not everyone loved the table-setting: one Blogatog asker complained that day one was stuffed with "overcosted card, generic effect, plus Empower Jace" designs. MaRo's response: they deliberately opened with the mechanic the team is most excited about, and he thinks "when you get a chance to play with it, you'll like it." He also notes the preview order comes from an elaborate, carefully built calendar — and separately confirmed the last two story episodes arrive tomorrow.

Elsewhere in the spoiler wave: Draftsim calls Hexhaven Invigorator a colorshifted mythic that breaks land strategies wide open, and dug into the weird Empower Jace interactions already lurking around an underplayed Jace card. Meanwhile, r/magicTCG is speculating about a Dack Fayden appearance, wondering whether Jace's new-multiverse shenanigans could recreate the greatest thief in the Multiverse, who died in War of the Spark without ever getting a Standard-legal card. For pre-release homework, EDHREC's "Road to Reality Fracture, By the Cards" reviews the sets leading into it.

Commander Corner

The Hobbit's commander output keeps flowing: MTGStocks surfaces Hidden Gems for Thranduil, the Elvenking decks, while EDHREC serves up a Dáin of the Ancient Halls dwarf-equipment primer for the Boros patriots. Also from EDHREC: a guide to building Modern's Cosmogoyf in Commander following its Pro Tour moment, and a new "Trimmed Thefts" budget take on Marchesa, the Black Rose. Skunk fans, take heart: asked why the game has only two skunks, MaRo replied — referencing odor-counter commander Olinda the Oblivious — "I have faith we'll make more Skunks."

Competitive Scene

Quiet Speculation's August metagame update reports that Energy has lost its dominance over Modern after a dramatic month — though David cautions it may not last, framing the shift as largely a question of taste. In Pauper, Joe Dyer runs down the Zeta Set downshifts over on MTGGoldfish. And for the nostalgia crowd, this week's Against the Odds ventures into Premodern with a Distorting Lens deck using Dystopia as a color-hosing kill switch — peak Saffron Olive chaos.

Finance & Market

The story of the week is Baleful Strix: the budget bird skyrocketed 972% over Labor Day weekend after Gavin Verhey announced it was being unbanned in Secret Lair play — a reminder that legality news moves thin printings fast. For the old-school collectors, MTGStocks checks in on Power Nine and dual lands pricing. And if you want a palate cleanser, Draftsim ranked the most expensive basic lands in the game — proof that even Islands can be portfolio pieces.

Design & Lore

A busy day on Blogatog. Asked whether red could complete the Mirage tutor cycle by finding planeswalkers or battles, MaRo said no to planeswalkers — battles' slice of the pie "hasn't been defined yet." On poison, he revealed R&D has designed cards granting "resistance to poison," raising the lethal counter threshold rather than removing counters. His reaction to dubbing the D&D sets "Universes Adjacent"? A pointed "Hmmm." He also added a designer-mindset-vs-player-mindset podcast to his "short" list, pushed back on the idea of a Universes Within Standard set divorced from the main story ("I'm not sure the majority of the Vorthos would want that big a gap"), and answered a critique that Modern design produces rate monsters with a classic one-liner: "There are still rares that suck in limited."

Finally, with Jace discourse running hot, one asker told MaRo this is the most interesting Jace has ever been — and MaRo credited Alison Lhurs with writing both of the Jace stories people keep praising. Windmill slam that story summary before tomorrow's double-episode finale.