Sit down at the back! Class is now in session…

In recent years, you can’t mention ‘magic’ in popular culture without thoughts turning to a certain scholastic establishment in which a scarred young wizard is taught and trained. It was only a matter of time before Wizards of the Coast jumped onto the bandwagon and the fruits of their labours are here for us to experience at last on the plane of Strixhaven. 

Strixhaven is a guild-style set akin to Ravnica in which we see five different colleges based on the enemy colour pairs  - Silverquill (WB), Prismari (UR), Witherbloom (BG), Lorehold (WR) and Quandrix (UG) - each with their own Elder Dragon founder and a number of mechanics spread throughout. 

The first of those mechanics is modal double-faced cards, making a return from Zendikar Rising and Kaldheim. These come in two flavours - most represent a creature on one side and a powerful sorcery on the other but there is also a cycle of college deans, powerful legendary creatures on each side representing the heads of each college. 

In Limited, these cards offer flexibility and options depending on the current board statewhile in Constructed formats, they get around the inherent risk of running multiples of a particular legendary creature by allowing the player to cast the other side if they have already have one of the two halves on the battlefield. 

The next new mechanic is one all of our students should be taking very seriously - Learn. Learn is a new keyword ability that allows the player to either reveal a Lesson card they own from outside the game (typically, the sideboard) and put it into their hand, ordiscard a card to draw a card. These cards play like a fixed version of the original cycle of Wish cards printed in Judgment, instead only drawing the player one of a particular subset of cards with the subtype Lesson from outside the game. 

Learnappears on creatures, artifacts, instants and sorceries in Strixhaven. The ability to draw extra cards inMagic should never be underestimated but most of the Learn and Lesson cards are more expensively costed to account for the extra flexibility they provide.In practical terms, these cards will have a greater impact on the Limited metagame than Constructed but should be prized highly in those 40 card formats.

One of the keywords most maligned by players in recent years is Hexproof. Magic is fundamentally a gameof interaction and negating that can lead to board states that are, at best, unfun and frustrating. Wizards of the Coast has listened to player feedback on this and their attempt to fix Hexproof leads us to the next new mechanic in Strixhaven - Ward. Rather than simply being unable to target an opposing creature with removal,Ward adds a tax onto that spell. Typically this will be in the form of paying extra mana but there are also examples in the new set where the opposing player will have to spend precious life points if their removal spell is to resolve. Giving a creature some form of shield without making them entirely impervious feels like a far better solution that the all-pervasive Hexproof players have come to know and hate. 

Finally we have Magecraft which is the name for a triggered ability which goes on the stack whenever you cast an instant or sorcery. Strixhaven is a set dense with instants and sorceries and many of the creatureson this plane feed off this magical energy. Magecraft introduces a new way for creatures to influence the battlefield, providing repeatable incremental value in Limited. In Constructed formats, new combos with the mechanic (cough Chain of Smog) have the potential to warp even the likes of Vintage and Legacy.

On top of this, we have something new for Strixhaven - the Mystical Archive. In every booster of the Strixhaven there will appearone illustrious instant or sorcery reprinted from throughout Magic’s history in a brand new showcase art style, similar to the Masterpiece series seen in previous sets. These 63 cards are all legal in the sets the original printings are legal in but if you open them at the draft table or in your sealed pool, sleeve them up because they are playable in Strixhaven Limited and represent a broad cross section of some of the most powerful spells in the history of the game.

And now with this cram session complete, you are furnished with the knowledge to take the next step in your Magic: the Gathering education. Pick up your Strixhaven boosters and Commander decks here at Chaos Cards now!