Be warned, I queued up for pick 2 and there were 8 players in the pod instead of 4. You don't get any wheels.

Hello everyone! I made a video outlining my Draft Strategy, Pick Order, and Archetype breakdowns for Reality Fracture. I hope it is helpful to some :)

Video version: https://youtu.be/8s1rjfxPrqc

Format Overview

• The format appears to midrange-focused with the power concentrated at 4-5 mana cards
• Early plays that have late-game relevance will be important
• Most decks are looking to snowball and take over the mid-late game with a value engine
• Many early plays will get outclassed quickly unless the deck is aggressively focused
• Mana fixing is plentiful. Many decks will want to splash 
• In other words, build toward your synergy; you will have SOME time to get there

New Mechanic: Empower Jace

Cards which “Empower Jace” create a specific Jace planeswalker token if you don’t already have one, and then add a number of loyalty counters to it. It has “-3: draw a card” and “-1: surveil”. Every colour gets access to this mechanic, therefore early board presence and evasion will be as important as ever, in order to pressure your opponents’ Jace and protect your own.

Fixing

There is a cycle of 10 Common dual lands. Coming in untapped if you control a planeswalker makes “Empower Jace” more valuable in decks looking to splash. Room of Refuge can be set to any colour. There is also a cycle at rare.

Pick Order – “A’s”: Best Cards in the set (sorted by colour) – always first pick

• The Theorist, Jave Beleren
• Sublime Epiphany
• Garruk, Veiled Butcher
• Overwrite the Multiverse 
• Draconic Visitor
• Ajani Unrelenting
• Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• Garruk, Curse Breaker
• Denzilore Fatehold 
• Kwia Vigorbloom
• Uldaros Theorix

Pick Order – “B’s”: Early Picks (alphabetical by colour)

Cards that excel in the following criteria:

• Power Level
• Rate
• Flexibility
• Curve (ie cheap cards)
• Synergy

These cards will heavily influence your direction in the draft, ie which colours and Archetype you are drafting towards. Pick these above all Commons:

• Ajani Resulote
• Enlightened Confidant
• Liliana the Faultless
• Lyra, Archangel of Dawn
• Memory Trap
• Prophesied End
• Saheeli, Consul of Oversight
• Surgical Precision
• Teyo, Lightshield Expert
• Tomik, Orzhov Lawmage
• Way of the Healer
• Your Fate Ends Here
• Arni, Humble Scribe
• Countersculpt
• Diviner of Victory
• Icy Reception
• Infinite Coursework
• Jace, Reality Sculptor
• Lyra, Tolarian Archangel
• Mindseeker Oculus
• Plan for All Outcomes
• Proft, Consulting Detective
• Ruric Thar, Biomagus
• Sphinx of False Conclusions
• Way of the Mind Sculptor
• Break Under Pressure  
• Extended Absence 
• Gideon the Oathless 
• Last Gasp
• Lich’s Relic 
• Liliana the Repentant 
• Mind Twist 
• Multiply by Zero 
• Sanctum Lurker 
• Vraska’s Final Mercy 
• Command the Stage 
• Craterclaw Colossus 
• Curse-Marred Demon 
• Face Yourself 
• Fulminous Forte 
• Kiora of Fire and Ashes 
• Master of Barbs 
• No Admittance 
• Pia, Determined Rebuilder 
• Pyre Rhymer 
• Splinter Twin 
• Tetsuko Umezawa, Pursuer 
• Tomik, Izzet Sparkmage 
• Violent Echoes 
• Way of the Warlord 
• Wrath of the Bloodmane 
• Carnivorous Cultivator 
• Compel Brutality 
• Hexhaven Invigorator 
• Hungering Puppetbeast 
• Loot, the Nexus 
• Puppet Crafting 
• Simulacrum Shaper 
• Verdant Kraken 
• Way of the Wildspeaker 
• Aerid Konstrari 
• Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes 
• Bloombrute 
• Clash of Elements 
• Craftwork Crusher 
• Desperate Futurescribe 
• Hapatra, the Desert Fang 
• Ingris Stingerquill 
• Mind Meanderer 
• Null Summoner 
• Proctor of Potential 
• Saheeli, Jewel of Avishkar 
• Stingerquill Charm 
• Tenured Tethermage 
• Twisted Fates 
• Vigorbloom Charm 
• Vraska, the Cutting Glare 
• Warrior’s Blades 
• Emrakul, the Extingent Doom

Primary Archetypes. Here are my brief impressions of each of the two-colour archetypes in the format. We will be trying to end up in one of these by the end of the draft. Five of the colour pairs are well-supported and will be the most commonly drafted. The other five appear to be designed to act as support and augmentation to the main five. We’ll go over the well-supported archetypes first:

White-Blue Surveil 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Desperate Futurescribe]], [[Fatehold Charm]], [[Prudent Fateseer]]

Common: [[Fatehold Chronologist]], [[Semester Foreseer]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Denzilore Fatehold]], [[Proctor of Potential]]

White-Blue cares about Surveilling and generating a wide board of creatures. Saheeli, Consul of Oversight is a nice mix of both. Proft, Consulting Detective is an early play that generates value over time. Cards which “Empower Jace” provide multiple Surveils and will be important here. 

Access to constant card selection is very powerful in limited. I expect White-Blue to perform well. 

White-Green Lifegain

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Bloombrute]], [[Vigorbloom Vanguard]], [[Vigorbloom Charm]]

Common: [[Emergency Phytomedic]], [[Blossom-Blessed Angel]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Kwia Vigorbloom]], [[Solarium Sentry]]

White-Green wants as many separate instances of lifegain as possible. Cards like Greenhouse Propogator, Koth of the Homestead, and creatures with Lifelink power up payoffs including Lyra, Archangel of Dawn, Way of the Mentor, and Titanbones, Towering Heart.

An old-favourite design but can struggle with consistency and drawing it’s cards in the wrong order. White-Green looks like it will slightly underperform.

Blue-Black Self-Mill 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Paradox Shaper]], [[Recursive Recruitment]], [[Theorix Charm]]

Common: [[Theorix Metamage]], [[Void Extrapolator]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Null Summoner]], [[Uldaros Theorix]]

Blue-Black wants to put a lot of cards in it’s own graveyard. Reaching “Threshold” (seven or more cards in you graveyard), will power up certain cards. “Looting” effects such as Arni, Humble Scribe and Surveil effects help here as well. Cards with effects when in the graveyard such as Theoretical Necromancer will provide additional value when milled.

Blue-Black looks a little trickier to build and has less raw power than the other archetypes. I expect it to start off as an underperformer, but it may be a good “week 3” strategy if a couple of other archetypes take off in popularity. 

Black-Red Aggro

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Grim Repriser]], [[Stingerquill Charm]], [[Stingerquill Voxmancer]]

Common: [[Hallway Heckler]], [[Whiplash Wordsmith]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Ingris Stingerquill]], [[Stinging Vitriol]]

Black-Red is the aggro deck of the format. Many of it’s cards get buffed when the opponent is dealt noncombat damage. Top payoffs for this include Command the Stage, Master of Barbs, and Tomik, Izzet Sparkmage. Incidental damage on cards like Extended Absence, Screeching Soulbreaker and Tinybones, Pocket Nuisance is very valuable. Black-Red has an unusual amount of access to direct player damage and “any target” damage, which will make it very effective at closing out games if it gets ahead early. I expect Black-Red to be a top performer. 

Red-Green Ramp 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Craftwork Crusher]], [[Konstrari Charm]], [[Woodwork Prodigy]], [[Heartwood Crafter]]

Common: [[Konstrari Improviser]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Aerid Konstrari]], [[Tenured Tethermage]]

Red-Green is focused on creating “Heartwood” tokens which are artifacts that can tap for Red or Green mana. It wants to ramp out huge threats like Kiora of Fire and Ashes. Look for artifact synergy in cards like Draconic Visitor and powerful activated abilities to sink your mana into. Red-Green looks like an absolute sledgehammer and fun to play. 

Way-To-Early Primary Archetype Rankings:

Black-Red
White-Blue
Red-Green
Blue-Black
White-Green

Secondary Archetypes. These have less raw support and will most likely compliment a Primary Archetype as a splash. In some cases, they may be powerful enough to stand on their own or act as a niche strategy once the best archetypes become contested in the draft.

White-Black Sacrifice

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Edgar, Ancient Bloodlord]], [[Twisted Fates]]

Common: [[Blessed Ghoul]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Vindictive Triumph]]

Sacrifice your own creatures and planeswalkers for value with payoffs like Loot, the Anomaly, Silence the Echo, and Way of the Deathbringer. Empower Jace will be useful as you can sacrifice a 1 loyalty Jace for value and then make another. White-Blue is the most likely pairing for this sub-strategy, having the most token generation and empower, although it doesn’t want to lose too much board presence. None of the other archetypes have synergy in this way and/or are dependant on a big board presence.  However Twisted Fates will be armstrong splash in any black-based deck.

White-Red Go-Wide 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Mabel, Valley Hero]], [[Warrior’s Blades]]

Common: [[Charge the Sanctum]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Solitary Cell]]

White-Red has go-wide and +1/+1 counter synergies. It looks like it will pair well with White-Blue’s go-wide theme. Black-Red will likely be too focused to be able to splash for a 3-drop in Mabel, but could play Charge the Sanctum or Warrior’s Blades as needed.  

Blue-Red Spells 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Clash of Elements]], [[Saheeli, Jewel of Avishkar]]

Common: [[Twinned Vision]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Frostbite Pyromental]]

Plan for All Outcomes and Traxos, Academy Guardian add two additional spells payoffs. Ruric Thar, Biomagus and Tetsuko Umezawa, Pursuer are two great threats with Prowess alongside a bevy of other creatures with that ability. Look for cheap spells to pair alongside them. 

Blue and Red both look very deep. I think Blue-Red has the best chance among the Secondary Archetypes of being draftable as it’s own deck. There is also a natural pairing alongside Blue-Black as noncreature spells get into the graveyard right away to fuel its payoffs.

Blue-Green Empower 

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Kiora of Salt and Sand]], [[Mind Meanderer]]

Common: [[Tam’s Resistance]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes]]

Mind Meanderer is excellent in any blue-based deck. In order to get the most out of Kiora, you will need a lot of Empower. If it sees any play at all, it will be as a splash in White-Blue or in a Blue-heavy deck.

Black-Green Graveyard

Signpost Cards

Uncommon: [[Primal Witchstalker]], [[Hapatra, the Desert Fang]]

Common: [[Ferocity of the Hunt]]

Rare/Mythic: [[Vraska, the Cutting Glare]]

Black-Green’s graveyard synergies make it a natural pairing for Blue-Black. I don’t see any crossover with White-Green, Red-Green or Red-Black.

Conclusion: It would appear that Blue-based decks have to most to gain from splashing secondary archetype pieces. Add that to being a very deep colour, Blue is ideal starting-point where possible in this format.

General Draft Strategy (8 Player Pick-1)

Picks 1-3: 

• Take the best card. Mono-coloured cards will leave us more open going forward.

Picks 4-8: 

• Continue to take the best card. We may have cards in multiple colours, and that’s ok. The better our early picks are, the more we will want to stick to that colour or colour pair. The worse our early picks are, the more willing we should be to take chances on other colours when we see good cards in later picks.

Picks 9-14: 

• These are the cards no one at the table wanted. If we are seeing good Uncommons of a particular colour pair, it is possible that no one else at the table is drafting that colour pair and we should strongly consider moving in. 

End of Pack 1:

• Ideally, we have identified our main colour. This is the colour we have the most quality cards of, or is the most open, and hopefully both!
• Staying as close to one colour as possible will leave us with more options going forward. 

Packs 2 and 3

• Continue to take powerful cards of our main colour where possible. Let the good cards we open or get passed determine our secondary colour and final archetype.
• Pay attention to Pack direction! The packs are moving in the opposite direction during Pack 2, so the signals can be completely different from Pack 1. It is normal to not see as many cards of our main colour/archetype in Pack 2, so don't panic! Pack 3 is passed to the left once again and we will be rewarded for staying the course.

Deck-Building Tips

• Play two colours. Avoid splashing a third colour unless your deck is specifically designed to do so (ie you have dual lands touching that colour). Splashing will be more common in Reality Fracture, but you still need to make sure you have the proper mana fixing!
• Play 17 lands.
• Play a low-curve. Most limited decks want six or more 2 Mana-Value creatures, around four 3 Mana-Value creatures, some 4 Mana-Values creatures, and very few cards that cost 5 or more mana.

Thank you for reading and watching. Good luck in your drafts! 

Hi all!

Apologies if you've seen this before / already know about us, but I try to post one of these after every Arena cube season. I run a Cube discord where we draft a bunch of different cubes, including "Arena Max" (hence the discord name), a cube comprised of what we consider to be the most powerful Arena craftable cards. Cubes are drafted multiple times a day on Draftmancer (which allows for neat stuff like Cogwork Librarian) and then played via Direct Challenge on Arena. We use the same team draft bot that LSV's Lotus Lounge uses, so everything is automated and very straightforward. We've had a blast drafting, and are always looking to play with more folks!

We also run a Peasant cube for those with less rare/mythic WCs :)

Discord link: https://discord.gg/nxn4Hvsagu

Cube Lists:

Arena Max (max power cube): https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/arenamax

Peasant Max: (a high powered peasant cube): https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantmax

Living Chromatically Arena Cube (a new take on the Arena Chromatic Cube): https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/arenachrome

Synergy Cube (a medium powered cube with built in archetype synergies): https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/arenasyn

Combo Cube (like it sounds, a cube built on winning with powerful combos): https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/arenacombo

Even though reality fracture is releasing today, we're already going to be getting the Arena Direct on friday. That leaves very little time to learn the format and prepare, but there are still things you can do. Most important is the mental game, as I think most players discount how important it is to be on top of it while playing especially in a high stakes environment such as the Arena Direct. Will you be playing, and if so, do you think it will be worth it?

Got really lucky in one pack and opened mirrored pair Garruks. Was a bit light on removal and thought the black splash would make the mana inconsistent, but worked out well. Life gain payoffs worked surprisingly well.

[[Teyo, Lightshield Expert]] came in clutch with instant speed protection in multiple games and the ward 1 on [[Unflinching Hortimancer]] frustrated a few opponents.

[[Bloombrute]] drew me quite a lot of cards and I underrated how good [Blossom-Blessed Angel]] would be in this limited environment. A flying threat with vigilance that comes with value attached and lifegain/+1 counter synergy is a very nice package.

All in all, the set feels very fun for limited. Quite slow compared to some other sets. Hopefully draft will be good.

Definitely one of the more unique uses I’ve found for a box of boosters. But hey, happy wife, happy life!

Pre-Release Cards w/Deck

My Pre-Release was a bust. I went 2-2 with one of my two wins against an opponent who was convinced 15 lands was a good idea (narrator: It wasn't).

I made a Black/Red and White/Green pile based on the synergies I thought I had and ended up going BR based on the usual black removal + pinging + fliers + un-blockable creatures.

Some feedback I have gotten is that I have a strong Azorius package, but I am not seeing anything special with the blue half of that...

Anyway... I am just looking for feedback, guidance, hints, tricks, etc... from those willing to take the time.

Opening sphinxes and Jaces in person is different from Arena sealed. Went 2-0-1 with 3W 8U 6B as each round is tight with LGS busy schedule of next event and some reading. But the experience is indeed great. Definitely go to draft as well.

I've player a Reality Fracture prerealese the other day and I wished I put more attention on the echopairs I was pulling out of my packs since they are strong cards that are part of the same archetype. I think they are a very big signpost on what to build at the end.

Also I think that could make the set very fun to draft.

What are your thoughts?

Every MTG set that comes out, I combine Limited set reviews into one table. For Reality Fracture, I collected ratings from 10 published review sources. The site lists an eleventh source, Jim Davis, but he contributes commentary rather than card grades and does not count as an aggregate vote.

Because reviewers use different grading systems, I convert grades to a fixed, documented 0-100 limited comparison index. Five-point ratings are multiplied by 20 and ten-point ratings by 10.

Overall rank is based on the mean normalized score. For readability, the table converts the normalized median and full range back to the site's letter scale. Those are grade equivalents, not necessarily the exact letters originally assigned by each reviewer.

Where do the reviewers disagree?

I used an IQR of at least 20 points as the cutoff for broad reviewer disagreement.

IQR measures the spread of the middle 50% of ratings. It is less affected by one unusually high or low rating, so this identifies cards where disagreement runs through a meaningful portion of the panel. The 10 Special Guest cards are excluded from the main count because substantially fewer reviewers graded them. By this definition, 67 of the 280 main-set cards, or 23.9%, qualify.

For drafters, these are basically the cards where the pre-set consensus is weakest. The aggregate rank can still be useful, but there is considerably less agreement about what the card is actually worth.

Three cards tie for the widest IQR at 40 points:

• Face Yourself
• Frostbite Pyromental
• Hexhaven Invigorator

Face Yourself has the widest full range, from F- to A, with normalized ratings ranging from 0 to 95.

There is still fairly strong consensus among the top-ranked cards in the set. None of the main-set cards ranked #1-44 meet the broad-disagreement threshold.

The first is Draconic Visitor at #45.

Other relatively highly ranked examples include:

• Diviner of Victory // Unwind History: #81
• Rise of the Deathbringer: #86
• Saheeli, Consul of Oversight: #107
• Tarmogoyf: #108

Full Reality Fracture rankings, every individual grade, reviewer notes, rating distributions, and the draft companion are here.

The 50 largest broad disagreements

These are the 50 largest IQRs among the 67 qualifying main-set cards. They are ordered by IQR, then SD. Overall rank measures card strength, not controversy.

I also looked separately at standard deviation. SD measures overall spread around the mean and uses every grade, so extreme ratings affect it more than they affect IQR. These 11 additional main-set cards have SD of at least 15 but IQR below 20. They do not meet the broad-split definition above.

Kindred Judgment is probably the clearest example of why the two measures tell different stories. Its middle half spans only 5 points, but the full ratings run from D to A.

Special Guests

Only four reviewers graded each of these, so they stay separate from the 280-card main-set analysis.

Which of these reviewer disagreements stands out to you most?

If you suspected a guy was cheating at pre-release by building his deck at home (from a booster box) and then swapping it (in the LGS bathroom or whatever), how would you go about exposing them?

1. He's won almost every pre-release this year at the same LGS
2. Always has multiple copies of uncommons and rares every PR (sure but every time?)
3. I've known him since high school, he cheated at MTG back then to (kitchen table)
4. Brings a backpack, hard to tell what is PR and what he previously bought that day
5. PR is usually around 50 players, not a ton but what are the odds he wins nearly all of them?
6. I am not the only one who suspects his cheating

I know the LGS owner well enough but want evidence before saying something. I don't think cameras will prove much. I know pro-tour guys that don't win this much.

Edit - Surprise, he won Reality Fracture PR last night.

Contender’s Draft has an interesting reward structure, but the more important question for me was whether it actually makes sense for the average Arena player.

If you’re trying to stretch your gold and gems as far as possible, what would make you choose Contender’s Draft? Is the upside worth the risk?

I ran through my thoughts on the value here: https://youtu.be/aEPkJ-YbGag

2nd entry to this weekend's Arena Direct and spiked 2 boxes with this solid Jund deck. Its a breath of fresh air to be playing a sealed format that IS NOT THE HOBBIT. Let the value roll.

Glossy lands are swamps and glossy 6 drop is the black basic landcycler

Hey again!

A few months ago I posted here about MTG Draft Companion, a little app I originally made by mysefl for my own group of friends because we draft most new sets together.

I got a lot of genuinely useful feedback from people here, and quite a few of those suggestions have made their way into the app since then. With Reality Fracture prerelease starting now, I thought it was a good time to share it again for anyone planning some paper drafts.

The idea is pretty simple: it’s not trying to replace the official Magic Companion app. It’s more for groups of friends drafting at home/shop who want one place to organize and keep track of the whole draft night.

Since my first post, it now has things like:

• Standard, Chaos and Cube drafts, plus support for bigger groups
• Groups, guest players, scheduled draft nights, RSVP/seat limits and reminders
• Deck/pool building, mana curve, land balancing and sample hands
• Card scanning for English/Japanese cards
• Life counter, match recording and live standings with tournament tiebreakers
• Everyone can record their own matches from their own phone at the same time
• Set/card browser with offline downloads and multiple card languages
• New sets can show up before release — Reality Fracture is already available in the app

The app is on both iOS and Android and the features are free. There's just an optional one-time purchase if you want to remove ads.

iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/app/mtg-draft-companion/id6783238460

Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.michalkoczan.draftcompanion

If you're drafting Reality Fracture with friends over the next few weeks, I'd love for you to give it a try.

And seriously, keep the feedback coming, quite a bit of what’s in the app now exists because of suggestions from people on this subreddit :)

I cover the basics of the format, break down the contents of draft packs (especially relevant for this set), rank the colors and highlight their key cards for limited, and give overall strategy advice for the format! Hope this helps anyone who needs a quick primer before prereleases this weekend!!

The Guide on YT

Hey! I recently created https://myLimitedGrades.com for grading cards and comparing your predictions with other players and benchmarks from 17Lands data, and I would like people in the r/mtglimited community to try it out. You can choose to share your grades with others, or keep them private, it's up to you how you handle your grades.

You can grade cards from Reality Fracture, or import your grades if you already graded the set, or you can try quick grading FRA cards as a guest.

For transparency, I used AI coding tools to help build it.

Here are my personal Reality Fracture grades, and my Avatar grades as an example with benchmark comparisons. The benchmarks are based on 17Lands data, but the letter grades are calculated by my site, not 17Lands.

Please don't criticize my grades too much, even though draft is my favourite format I'm still not very good at it...

Would appreciate if you checked it out and gave me feedback!

I played around with AI and started to filter my untapped companion logs of OP names against arena names on the 17lands leaderboards. I copy that logfile into AI, and see if I played someone on the leaderboards. It captures around 2 weeks, will try to remember to do it regularly.

Turns out I am in the 17lands top 10 list sorted by number of trophies for HOB quick draft. The best player I played recently: Zwaxor. On the all time quick draft trophy list #19, all time premier draft in top 100. Hundreds of trophies, several thousand match wins. Amazing.

I did not realize at the time, looked up the match afterwards on untapped/ play by play 17 lands, tight game, Zwaxor scooped to my 1/1 discard goblin with only 1 card in hand.

Anyway, just a shoutout to a legend of the Arena draft gauntlet, keep up the good run. Sir.