Fans Unsure How To Feel About Reality Fracture Spoiler Card “Invoke Tolerance”

THE INTERNET – Buzz has been expectedly loud around new cards that premiered at MagicCon: Amsterdam over the weekend, including cards from the highly-anticipated in-universe set Reality Fracture.

Based around alternate versions of Magic: The Gathering characters and spells we know and love, Reality Fracture had some surprising reveals including color-shifted planeswalkers and a big version of a tiny guy. But none of the reveals was as surprising as the reveal of Invoke Tolerance, a new powerful white sorcery.

Invoke Tolerance is a 4-mana enchantment for 1WWW that reads “Whenever a player casts a spell that shares a color with a creature you control, you and that player draw a card.” The art depicts five hooded humanoid figures holding flowers in a swirling mist, a play on the art and abilities of banned enchantment Invoke Prejudice.

Fans have been vocal about the card since it’s spoiling, going to various social media sites to try and explain their feelings. One Reddit user by the name of u/MsChif43 was stunned, stating “Wow: on the one hand it’s pretty shocking they’re referencing that KKK card they keep censoring everywhere; however, holy shit this is gonna go so hard in my Ms. Bumbleflower deck.” Another, named u/88isGr8, lamented that the card is “more woke nonsense, but at least they gave Harold McNeill another art credit.”

Though Wizards of the Coast banned a number of cards on the Culturally Reserved List, there is no rule against printing references to the cards.

“The game designers found that they had some new creative avenues when dealing with a different reality,” WOTC spokesperson Trent Darby made clear in a post on his Tumblr blog, “and remaking problematic cards is one such avenue. Yes, we have banned a number of cards for their cultural insensitivity, and yes we are on our way to banning skeletons and homosexuality altogether to please our future Chinese shareholders. But we can’t let these be hindrances; as our game designers know, restriction breeds creativity.

“We don’t have to completely ignore the sins of the past, but we can sure whitewash them and make money printing new versions! While I cannot fully spoil anything else yet for the set, we might just be getting non-gay versions of a few planeswalkers so we can make them more marketable, and a few race-swapped characters. We hope players who lamented the loss of certain racist or culturally insensitive cards can enjoy this nod to our somewhat-regretfully-checkered past. We know we’ll certainly hear from them on Twitter regardless.”