![]() Ward might best be remembered as the Frost Titan ability, though it’s templated to function in a variety of ways-white, blue, and green function the same way that Frost Titan does, while black and red require life payments instead. Strixhaven introduces four new mechanics: Magecraft, Learn, Lessons, and Magic’s latest evergreen keyword, Ward. But rather than go too far down this speculative rabbit hole, there’s a more omnipresent throughline between the colleges: the set’s new mechanics. Interestingly, Silverquill and Quandrix both have +1/+1 counter themes despite not being easy colleges to pair-which suggests that (as is often the case with five-faction sets) there viable 4-5 color decks. Both black colleges reward sacrificing creatures, while both blue colleges reward large quantities of mana. There are some clear mechanical crossovers between colleges to enable three color play. So, if you’re Lorehold (RW), you’re looking to add either Silverquill (WB) or Prismari (UR). ![]() The easiest way to do this is to add one color to your college. With eight people drafting and only five colleges, there’s going to be pressure to take some courses in other schools. ![]() Once you know how each of the five colleges work, the next step is finding common ground between colleges. It rewards you for achieving a threshold of 8 lands and has subthemes of +1/+1 counters and what can only be appropriately described as “awesome mathy stuff.” Its mascot is the 0/0 Fractal (which always comes with some number of +1/+1 counters). It also has a spirits subtheme which likely hews a bit more aggressive. It uses the graveyard as a resource and rewards you for removing cards from your graveyard. On Strixhaven, it may well accommodate the most controlling playstyle. Red-white is almost always the most aggressive color pair in any set. Lorehold (RW) is perhaps the most novel reimagining of a color pair. Its mascot is the 1/1 Pest which gains you 1 life when it dies. It has subthemes of lifegain and aristocrats. Witherbloom (BG) is defined by lifegain, taking what’s always been a WB theme and turning it on its head. It has subthemes of tempo, treasure ramp, instants and sorceries in your graveyard, and yes, 5+ mana value spells. Instead, I think Prismari is about generating one Big Turn, where you cast an enormous spell or a combination of spells that wildly swing the game’s tempo in your favor. Prismari (UR) may be the hardest college to evaluate-it suggests that it’s about 5+ mana spells, but only two cards in the whole set reference them. It has subthemes of +1/+1 counters, going wide, flying, and aristocrats (getting value when your creatures die). Silverquill (WB) is the most aggressive faction. They have a variety of mini-themes between them (with the set’s new mechanics, Learn, Lessons, and Magecraft connecting them, but we’ll get to those in a minute) and a college-specific token that functions as its mascot. There are no faction-specific mechanics, so the edges between the factions aren’t as clear as “the Kolaghan clan uses Dash to play aggressively” or “Jump-start enables both controlling and tempo Izzet decks.” Instead, each of the five colleges is build around general playstyles and game feel. We’ve seen many worlds defined by five two-color factions, but Strixhaven embraces very different play patterns than what we’ve seen before with the Ravnica guilds (one of only two worlds in Magic which features five enemy-color factions). Strixhaven is an especially unusual set, which makes it harder to evaluate. As always, a new set release means that there’s a new Limited format to learn. Next week, Strixhaven arrives on Magic Arena and Magic Online.
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