The folks at Magic: The Gathering have just dropped the big Debut video for the upcoming mainline expansion, Secrets of Strixhaven. Clocking in at a hefty 35 minutes and kicking off with a gorgeous, extended CG intro setting up new events in and beyond the hallowed halls of Strixhaven’s campus, there’s a heap to learn about the new set here.
The best thing you could possibly do is watch the video in full, which is right below, but scroll down a bit further if you’d prefer to see a very brief rundown of what was shown:
What’s new in Magic: The Gathering Secrets of Strixhaven?
Dragons, Mascots and Planeswalkers, oh my!
It’s hard to go past a good Dragon in a game like this, and Secrets of Strixhaven is bringing the school’s five founding Elder Dragons back around with five incredibly powerful 2c cards:
The two new Planeswalkers are equally formidable. Professor Dellian Fel‘s focus on life gain and loss is useful at the entry point, particularly bothersome at the top end where you can potentially gain an emblem that causes an opponent to lose as much life as you gain at any point. Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer looks even more debilitating, his 7-counter-cost ability asking the controlling player to flip five coins and forcing their target opponent to skip subsequent turns based on the number of heads that come up.
The school’s various mascots have also returned, this time as full-fledged creature cards, some including the unique mechanics of their relevant colleges:
New mechanics
Secrets of Strixhaven introduces some quite interesting new headline mechanics, starting with one that takes a bit of explaining – Prepare.
It starts with creature cards that include two-part frames, the left describing the creature and the right describing a sorcery. The official release is quick to assert that these are always the creature depicted on the card, and never the sorcery, for the sake of effects that might target one or the other.
So, to cast the attached sorcery, you simply have to “prepare” the creature either according to its conditions, or by another Prepare effect, at which point a copy of that sorcery goes into exile and ready for you to cast. Should your creature become unprepared or leave the battlefield, your opportunity to cast that sorcery also disappears. Casting the spell will also unprepare the creature.
Naturally, you can expect all sorts of playcrafting around this with abilities to prepare/unprepare yours or your opponents’ creatures or otherwise game the system, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the creature/sorcery combinations on the way. One example used is Studious First-Year, a 1/1 green Bear Wizard that can cast the iconic Rampant Growth sorcery.
Paradigm is the other big one, a keyword on applicable sorcery cards which states that, once said sorcery’s effect has resolved, you’re then able to re-cast that same sorcery from exile once per turn on every one of your future first main phases. Without paying its mana cost. That seems pretty gnarly, especially when you consider that there’s no punishment for not casting your allotted copy or having it countered or interfered with in some way, you’ll always have the opportunity again next turn.
Finally, each of Strixhaven’s distinct colleges will have their own unique mechanic, including the return of Flashback in Lorehold’s repertoire. I won’t go over all of them here, but you can read about those and all of the new mechanics in WotC’s official post.
Card treatments
There are a number of really neat-looking card treatments to collect throughout Secrets of Strixhaven, and based on the previews so far some truly excellent card art.
Special Guests cards, of which there are 10, depict lectures from some of the most revered scholars Strixhaven has to offer, and you can hope to pull some Borderless Planeswalkers, Dragons, Field Notes and Lands along the way.
But for most the highlight will be the Mystical Archive cards that appear both in Play Boosters (at least one in each) and Collector Booters (at least three in each), which pull together some powerful spells from across Magic history. I’m extra-keen on the special Japanese Mystical Archive variants, which will appear in Japanese-language Play Boosters, and Collector Boosters of all languages.
And while I don’t like my odds of pulling the serialised Emeritus of Ideation, one can only hope, right?
Magic: The Gathering Secrets of Strixhaven is up for pre-order right now, and hits shelves on April 24 with pre-release events kicking off on April 17.