A Look at Strixhaven Limited

Early Access recently ended for Secrets of Strixhaven on MTG Arena. For the first time in a while, I can't wait to get back to playing it.

Some of the latest Limited sets have been a bit tame, or I knew I'd quickly burn out on them after playing a few times.

Strixhaven, however, is an absolute banger. We once again have our bonus sheet fully intact, and on top of that, we also have a set that's as soupy as you can get— good fixing, good card draw, solid creatures, and a solid suite of removal.

Converge is present in almost every deck, and I've been very happy with the converge cards I've come across. Because of treasures, various green ramp, and a plethora of lands, the fixing is great.

The set feels deep. I was often struggling to find cuts rather than playables, unlike a set like Lorwyn, where you'd often have to play a few stinkers because the commons were very weak. This isn't the case with Strixhaven.

While I only had a few drafts under my belt, my early assessment is that there's only one strong aggro deck—Orzhov. Orzhov's game plan is to snowball effects that trigger when you target a creature with a spell. This means removal or any random combat trick will generate more value on its face.

I often tried to draft streamlined two-color decks, but they always turned into multicolor super decks.

Let's take a look at a handful of my decks from Early Access.

Prismari Converge

As you can see, this was a normal Prismari deck until I opened a Together as One, which made me want to splash more cards, and I picked up a Snarl Song and a Quandrix.

Because of my access to powerful converge spells, I played a Fields of Strife instead of a mountain to support larger convergence.

Colorstorm Stallion was impressive. I thought it would be weaker than the common removal I passed up, but I realized its strength the first time I drew it with Rapturous Moment. I triggered it multiple times in the same turn, creating an entire battlefield of massive horses and one-shotting my opponent. This sequence will likely be common and is one to watch for.

Prismari is one of the frontrunners for my favorite archetype. It has access to a lot of card advantage, and nearly all gold uncommons are premium. Additionally, it supports converge incredibly well, with access to card draw to find mana sources, as well as Seize the Spoils and Goblin Glasswright providing treasures to juice up converge costs.

Quandrix Converge

Quandrix may be the archetype best suited to converge. It has access to Shared Roots out of the bonus sheet and to Studious First-Year, one of the best commons in the set.

Most converge cards are strong if supported, even though they are not all equal.

This deck had the option of playing three Transcendent Archaic. I could have reasonably gotten away with it, which is a wild thing to say about a seven-drop. Regardless, I was getting the card during the last pick. I'd prefer not to play more than one copy, but in the absence of other good card draw and top end, it does the trick if you can reliably ramp to it.

Noxious Newt is solid but not as good as Frog Butler. Providing only one color of mana is a worse starting point in a set like this, where you want to splash around.

Archaic's Agony is one of the worst converge spells, and one you want to hit all five mana colors on or else its playability drops off a cliff. You can play it for four but not happily.

One card that surprised me was Fractalize, the last card I included. Fractalize plays well as a combat trick that can make their creature into a 1/1 in combat for a single blue mana, but it also scales into the game and can be used as a Fireball, making an unblocked creature deal damage equal to the amount you can spend on it. While I hate combat tricks, I feel like I'll lose to Fractalize out of nowhere in spots or use it to steal games.

This deck was propped up heavily by its rares. Even though it was good, I would have liked it much less if I lacked a couple of the rares, like Quandrix. It's worth noting that both green dragons I played have anti-synergy with converge, and it comes up more than I'd like. While I did not cascade into Archaic's Agony with Quandrix, my opponent did, and it likely cost them the game.

Witherbloom Converge

Most of the decks I drafted touched on converge in at least some manner. Here's another example of that. I finished this draft in its entirety because it was the last deck I drafted in early access and managed to get all seven wins.

Studious First-Year is a stellar common. When you get a few, you can go crazy with how you want to approach the draft.

This deck started as Quandrix, but Witherbloom ended up so open that I was pushed into it after tabling a lot of cards. This draft was very informative, as I learned how strong a few cards were.

First, the deck's MVP was Arcane Omens. It was obscene in every game, even against aggro, because I ramped it out early for a large amount with Studious First-Year. I ramped on turn two, made a meaningful play on three, and then boom, they had no hand.

My cheap creatures, like Postmortem Professor and Teacher's Pest, were cheap plays that got me on the board and triggered infusion for my Follow the Lumarets or Old-Growth, Educator, though my deck wasn't fully focused on infusion. I thought Professor might end up being pretty bad in this deck, but I convinced myself to play it because it could be used on defense in conjunction with Strixhaven Skycoach. Professor and Skycoach overperformed. My previous experiences with Skycoach were that I had too few creatures to crew it, but it wasn't an issue.

A solid interaction I discovered was Applied Geometry on Strixhaven Skycoach. Skycoach finds you the mana to cast Geometry initially, and then you get another land to continue making land drops. The best part is you don't usually have to worry about them having removal for Skycoach since it's a vehicle when you target it, but you get a permanent 6/6 flyer that draws you a land. You can always target a land with Geometry to avoid these things, but having the flying and the extra land in hand has a lot of value.

Witherbloom, the Balancer has been a big disappointment. It's playable, not that exciting, and the affinity effect was a downside because it ruined converge on multiple occasions. I will play it if I can cast it, but I'm not going to take it over a good common removal or anything.

I was impressed with Follow the Lumarets in this archetype. I worried that it'll be tough to trigger infusion reliably in a soupier deck, but its fail case isn't bad. I'm happy to play two copies in a deck like this if I can trigger infusion occasionally.

Strixhaven is my favorite Limited set that's come out since Final Fantasy. Some of the formats that have come out since have been fun, Strixhaven is incredibly deep. While decks will often look similar and soupy, there are so many cards to explore that it makes every draft feel different. I suspect I'll like this set even more than Final Fantasy when all is said and done.

I'm prepping hard for the Pro Tour, so I plan to dive deep into every archetype and Standard deck, and I will update on all that as soon as I can.

If you were on the fence about playing Strixhaven because Lorwyn and TMNT weren't your thing, Strixhaven is the polar opposite of Lorwyn, so you should enjoy it quite a bit.