Secrets of Strixhaven(SoS) is one of the few sets in Magic: The Gathering this year that isn’t part of Universes Beyond, and turns out it was a great set to break the trend with. Returning to one of the first sets that brought us the Mystical Archive and other guest cards with regularity is a great gimmick. There are many questions about the frequency, quality, and player interest in MTG sets, but SoS delivers an MTG set worth looking into.
Welcome to Strixhaven 101
The cards of SoS are a treat for the eyes. While some may roll their eyes at wizarding schools, I find that whenever guilds or schools are brought up, the visual variety is immense. There’s creativity in how Wizards lets Red be other things than angry, as we’ve seen in Prismari’s artistry. I especially find the art treatments very pretty, even the ones that won’t cost you a sizable down payment on a house. I can easily see players picking up SoS packs or cards even if they already have four-ofs of cards from previous sets; the pricey Japanese Force of Will variant and Preordain I managed to pull, I may want to get art printouts someday.
Magic: The Gathering’s Secrets of Strixhaven is here, but it also brings with it a slight refresh of the beginner MTG experience with Welcome Decks. These five different 40-card decks, one for each color, are great ways to introduce someone to MTG or play at a much more casual level. Containing cards from the Standard-legal Foundations set, the hope is that players will be able to jump into the Standard format with a couple of additions. I can’t say that’s particularly realistic, but it is true that players have to start somewhere. The two decks Wizards of the Coast sent out to me were Green and Blue. Green, consisting of life and nature, has old favorites like Llanowar Elves, Springbloom Druid, Pelakka Wurm, and Vizier of the Menagerie. Blue, committed to deceit and intellect, consisted of fun callbacks like Spectral Sailor, Think Twice, Arcanis the Omnipotent, and Sphinx of the Final Word.
As for gameplay, while I started off enjoying the set and trying the different schools as one does in a new draft format, I soon found myself outclassed. While I did try Lorehold, apparently, there’s a reason our pachyderm Planeswalker keeps reappearing through MTG – drafters were gunning for Lorehold so zealously, there were simply cards I never saw to even consider putting in my deck. It’s so interesting that Lorehold’s strange “exile matters” theme, which is fairly unique in both the color pair (think Boros) and in Magic: The Gathering in general. While I was able to house opponents with Practiced Offense, I never had such luck with Lorehold again. Color soup, as I like to call it, was a big theme for my opponents, which made Witherbloom and, in particular, Green overdrafted. You might think this would be for the Archaics or Emil, Vastlands Roamer, but matches would usually end with me groaning as I got hit by a full-power Together as One. If the damage didn’t screw me over, the card advantage did. Would you believe that mill is a real strategy, and it only takes one card? You should – Exhibition Tidecaller came in clutch for one of my more successful Prismari drafts.
I was also on the wrong side of this, as my opponent forced me to deck myself with Mathemagics. With how high the power level is in formats like Standard, it brings a smile to my face that Mill still exists, even if it’s in a microcosm. I tried to make Ancestral Anger work, as I figured others would be chasing actual new cards and not reprints. This didn’t work out for either my Lorehold or Prismari decks – I would think a set with Silverquill would be a bit more cantrip-friendly. This is definitely a format where, at least at first, players built up resources and stalled with the groan-inducing Procrastinate and Homesickness. Even if not those cards, others like Artistic Process, Additive Evolution, tended to end the game if I wasn’t ready for them. I did somehow get the perfect sealed deck where I was able to let Poisoner’s Apprentice do their thing for free, courtesy of Cauldron of Essence – while this cauldron is less obnoxious than one you may remember with a certain feline, it was backbreaking nonetheless. Learning to play with Library of Alexandria will take some getting used to on Arena, but I can definitely see how rewarding a player for having seven cards in their hand is absolutely broken. (Branford)
I had a pretty good time with Secrets of Strixhaven’s prerelease event, and while at MagicCon, I got to do a few more sealed drafts of the set, so I’ve been deep in the set for the last few weeks. Overall, I think the return to Strixhaven is a pretty good success. Secrets of Strixhaven managed to do what the original Strixhaven: School of Mages set couldn’t, and that was to make me care about a magical school setting. Aided in part by this is the fantastic new Prepared mechanic, where certain creature cards may feature powerful spells attached to them, that you can play as long as the card is “prepared”. How these cards work is that you might play a card that enters prepared, but once you use its attached spell, it becomes unprepared. Some cards may require another to prepare them once again, but others, like Emeritus of Ideation, can prepare themselves if you fulfill a requirement (in this case, if you sacrifice eight cards from your graveyard). A hefty cost for good reason, because its attached spell is the iconic Ancestral Recall that lets you draw three cards.
I had particular fun with Witherbloom’s Infusion ability during my prerelease, a mechanic that forces you to carefully time when you play a card to reap a benefit if you gained life prior to playing said card. Quandrix’s Increment is a mechanic that was the bane of my existence during the prerelease, and it came back to haunt me when I drafted at MagicCon as well. Cards with Increment state that if the mana cost of a spell you played is higher than the power of a creature on the battlefield, that creature gains a +1/+1 counter. Considering that a lot of Quandrix cards feature the (X) mana cost, this means you’re usually paying a pretty high amount of mana to cast that spell, thus triggering Increment and buffing your creatures.
If there’s one thing working against the set, it’s that each school features its own unique mechanic, and I could see it being somewhat frustrating to draft if you really wanted to play a particular school but barely pulled any cards from it. During my time in Vegas, I was really hoping to have a Prismari or Quandrix-focused deck, but only drafted a handful of those cards and had to run decks featuring the other schools instead. A minor issue, however, since this only affects draft, and if you go out buying the singles to build a deck, you won’t encounter the issue. (Diego)
Five Schools, Five Playstyles
Secrets of Strixhaven isn’t a set to be shy about with its commander decks, featuring a staggering five precons each based on one of the five Strixhaven schools. My favorite of these surprised me, with the Silverquill Influence precon being one of the most fun precons out of the box that I’ve played in a minute.
I was initially hesitant about checking this deck out, because I’m not particularly crazy about the Silverquill repartee mechanic; I don’t think it’s bad or anything, it’s just not a mechanic that excites me much. I hadn’t realized, however, that the Silverquill commander deck doesn’t feature that keyword at all, and instead is an enchantment deck that cares about you playing a lot of enchantments, which makes sense considering the deck features a staggering twenty-six enchantment cards.
Part of what I love about the commander format is that table politics is part of the game. Convincing other players to play along with whatever you’re scheming, or to team up against another player, is all part of the experience. Silverquill Influence is all about table politics, as it’s filled with cards that aid your opponents, but only if they attack someone other than you. Three cards that I immediately fell in love with were Breena the Demagogue, Firemane Commando, and Combat Calligrapher. Breena is a simple 1/3 creature that states if an opponent attacks someone other than you, and that person they’re attacking has more life than them, then they get to draw a card. Breena’s great for encouraging someone to attack another player at the table who’s got more life and, in turn, is “the real threat”, and you’ll get a card draw out of it too! It’s an easy idea to convince someone of, and if they go for it, Breena lets you put two +1/+1 counters on a creature of your own. So not only are you not getting attacked that turn, but you’re also buffing your creatures. Combat Calligrapher is another interesting card, which gives an opponent two 2/1 Inkling creature tokens if they attack someone other than you. The catch? As long as Combat Calligrapher is on the field, they can’t attack you with those Inklings. There are a lot of cards in this deck that are easy sells to your opponents: attack someone other than me, and you get a little treat. These sorts of methods are great, but are lacking in a good finishing punch to land on your opponents after they’ve worn each other down, which is what the other half of this deck is for.
Being an enchantment-focused deck, there are a lot of benefits to attaching enchantments to your creatures and attacking with them. Two cards in particular gave me such an insane board state that I had to actually hold myself back or else I’d have won the game in no time: Archon of Sun’s Grace and Ajani’s Chosen. Both create a 2/2 creature token when an enchantment enters the battlefield, and considering what kind of deck this is, you’re gonna be generating a lot of tokens. Songbird’s Blessing was instrumental in ramping this strategy up, which states that anytime an enchanted creature attacks, you start drawing from your deck till you pull an enchantment card, which you can play for free straight onto the battlefield. It’s an insane card that allowed me to play so many enchantments for free.
At a point, I had ten pegasus and ten cat creature tokens, and I then exacerbated this by timing a perfect Inkshield, which gained me eight Inkling creature tokens. It was honestly a little silly how quickly I pulled all this off, so I almost felt bad. I should also mention that Archon of Sun’s Grace gives all your pegasus tokens lifelink, so at one point, I had nearly 100 life.
And mind you, let me stress that I was doing all this without having the deck’s commander, Killian Decisive Mentor, out of the field. Killian makes it so that anytime you play an enchantment, you can tap an opponent’s creature and goad it, which makes it attack a player other than you each turn it’s able to. On top of that, anytime one of your creatures that is enchanted by an aura attack, you can draw a card. So not only is it a great card draw engine, but it also fuels some wonderful table politics as your opponents begin to argue who should attack whom.
Witherbloom Pestilence was the other commander deck I got to play with. While it didn’t immediately hook me quite like Silverquill Influence did, I still had a lot of fun with it and am already thinking of upgrades to do to it. Featuring Dina Essence Brewer, this deck is all about sacrificing creatures to either gain you life or +1/+1 counters. Dina herself functions as a simple card draw engine, letting you draw a card anytime you sacrifice a creature. Her most important ability, however, is that you can sacrifice a creature to gain life dependent on that creature’s power, but you’ll also be able to slap +1/+1 counters on another creature dependent on the sacrificed creature’s power as well. It’s a really powerful ability if used right, like when I used it on a Mycoloth, which I had built up to a 12/12, which gained me a ton of life and buffed a creature at the same time.
Cards like Jadar Ghoulcaller of Nephalia and Nether Traitor also make it so you always have a creature available to sacrifice to keep the deck’s engine roaring. Then you have cards like Wight of the Reliquary, which gets a +1/+1 counter for each creature in your graveyard, or Zulaport Cutthroat, which states whenever one of your creatures dies (which they’ll be doing a lot), each opponent loses one life, and you gain one. I think if I had one issue with the deck, it’s that it can be a bit of a slow roll to start building out your combos. A simple board wipe from an opponent can set you back turns, as you’ll no longer have creatures you were setting up to sacrifice. Regardless, it’s still a pretty solid precon for any Witherbloom fans out there. (Diego)
Final Word
As an avid drafter, you can bet your last dollar I drafted until I couldn’t anymore. While I know some felt the TMNT set wasn’t a great draft environment, I found it very fun and less bomb-based than the few formats before it. Sadly, despite Secrets of Strixhaven being about five different schools and offering prerelease packs to boot, I found many of my opponents just playing their most powerful cards in what I like to call color soup. The set mechanics aren’t strong enough for players to pick a school and try to play to their strengths. It makes for an uneven drafting experience, where spells that have Paradigm (as you may have guessed) need to be immediately countered or handled, or the game is over. While I imagine Local Game Stores will be much less cutthroat than Magic: The Gathering Arena’s drafters on average, I have to say I enjoyed TMNT’s more. Mana Sculpt found its way into my Arena Brawl deck as it’s absurd, even if its banned cousin Mana Drain is better. Daze and Library of Alexandria were other cards that SoS brought to Arena, and I’m thankful for them. (Branford)
Wizards of the Coast continues to impress with Secrets of Strixhaven being another fantastic set after Lorwyn Eclipsed and TMNT. I admittedly wasn’t the biggest fan of Strixhaven: School of Mages, but there’s just something about SoS that made it click for me. Where the original Strixhaven set felt a little too “Harry Potter” for me, SoS expanded the setting beyond the school of Strixhaven, making it feel like a more lived-in world. The teasers for the upcoming Reality Fracture set have been fun to explore in this set. I love the new Prepared mechanic, and the precons have been a blast to play around with. (Diego)
