Secrets of Strixhaven Set Review

The mechanics. The set. Let's go.

I think this set is a very cool one. Why bury the lede? Prepare is a great twist on the Adventure mechanic that fits in really well with a Strixhaven set. Repartee is probably the coolest BW mechanic since Extort, and possibly just as powerful. Increment does something really fun with the UG school, cementing it as the 'big mana' style of play colors. And the others, Flashback, Infusion and Opus all feel like they fit their respective takes on the color pairs (RW, BG, and UR respectively).

The introduction of the Avatars as the next Eldrazi style big bads is great, as it presents a nice mechanical counterpoint to the Eldrazi, caring a lot about color. 

 This set has me excited to play with it! 

Part of this is the mechanical overlap I'm seeing that reminds me of another set I really liked: Dragonstorm.

For example: Opus wants you to play spells, but if the spells cost 5 or more, you get an extra bonus. However, if you're slipping in a few Increment cards that also get bigger if you spend more mana, well isn't that just frosting? Or, if you have a deck using Flashback, isn't that pretty cool for some cards with a Repartee ability? 

I feel like WotC has been doing a very good job of presenting 3 color sets without making them 3 color sets, and it's definitely making for a more dynamic game. 

Let's talk colors. 

White
Interestingly, the White Emeritus is probably the weakest of the bunch. It probably doesn't matter much because there's some really good removal in this color and Stirring Hopesinger looks like an incredibly powerful effect. 

However, I should note that the Emeritus of Truce can also represent a swing in the boardstate if you're behind. That's not nothin'. 

In the meantime, there's cool things for Blink style decks, and possibly the strongest Lesson with Restoration Seminar? 

Blue
The hype machine that is the Emeritus of Ideation has got to be a thing, right? Five mana for that suite of abilities and the ability to Ancestral Recall? 

I know it's a terrible idea but I want to be the guy who makes the deck with Echocasting Symposium and Phage. Still, someone should live that dream!

I have a feeling that Encouraging Aviator will be a rockstar in limited. If I am reading it right, you should be able to attack with it, have it become prepared and in response to your declaration of attackers, cast Jump to give another creature you control flying. That's pretty strong.

I think Skycoach Conductor might have a place in my new Flash deck, and I really want to see how the Increment creatures go in my 1000 Shards deck. Future me actions. 

I think I like how Orysa Tide Choreographer can help dig players out of stalemates but I'm not sure it's good enough. Neat concept though.

Black
I feel like this color is the most consistently powerful in the set. It isn't incredibly flashy, but it feels very reliable. 

Even Ral Zarek, the planeswalker doesn't seem over the top. That's a good thing! (Also quite a character shift!)

It also seems like it has the most creatures that can re-prepare themselves, and that's interesting. And every Black creature with Lifelink just got a boost in their stock. 

Red
They are really trying to reward the '3 spells in a turn' deck happen, aren't they? Emeritus of Conflict seems like a fairly good reward. Add in Blue flying creatures and card draw for a little bonus and you can go a long way on very little mana. 

I'm very glad to see a card like Maelstrom Artisan. Land destruction isn't a popular strategy but non-basic land destruction should've been a dial WotC turned often. Keeping greedy manabases in check is a good thing. 

But aside from that card, like Black I feel like this color is reasonably consistent. I don't think they're doing anything new in Red, however developing its reach in the Instant and Sorcery area of the game is good. I also believe there's a nice balance between the creatures you want to run for payoffs, like Thunderdrum Soloist, and the spells you cast.

Green

While Green has a very strong Lesson-giving your creatures a permanent +2 every turn should end games rapidly-I feel like this color might be the underpowered one in this set. There's a lot of land searching, but having a bunch of mana for the Quandrix school is reliant on payoff cards and I don't see much in the way of big haymakers. Generating mana to cast spells to grow creatures means having spells to cast. Similarly, I count 3.5 ways to gain life in the color while I could 6.5 ways (I count pest tokens as a half) in Black. So how effective is it to build into Witherbloom?

I'm not saying that Green is bad; just that it seems like a great support color and not a main reason to go in a particular direction. 

Multi

This is where one would expect the set to shine, and it does. This is where I'm finding the support for going into GB-really a lot of glue for any color combination. I see this especially at uncommon, where a lot of these cards will be relevant in draft, however I'm excited for all of my enemy-paired Liege decks which should get some dynamite creatures to add!

Art/Colorless

The artifacts all fall in the 'workhorse' class for me; small effects you add to your deck to help smooth things out where your colors might be lacking. Nothing seems particularly bad nor exciting. 

The colorless creatures are, to me, all about teasing a future set. Yes, they're supposed to also be payoffs for a 4 or 5 color deck in sealed/draft, excepting The Dawning Archaic, which has some weird combo potential I'm only vaguely aware of right now. But what I really see them doing is taking another big bad slot as the Eldrazi did, as I mentioned before. 

So it's too bad that they aren't very exciting. I don't think they are awful, and they are clearly designed for Commander but...they also aren't very threatening and require a lot of setup for their rewards. 

Lands

I'm always happy to see dual lands of any sort get reprinted, and the new common lands function well for their ability. I think that Skycoach Waypoint is overcosted for what it does though: four (3 + tapping the land) to prepare an unprepared creature is taxing and honestly I think that if the cost had been reduced by one, you'd generate more excitement. 

Petrified Waypoint is obviously a niche card meant to help solve a problem I don't know we have, and Great Hall of the Biblioplex is unexciting as well. 

Still! I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this set. I think there's cool things to do, the limited gameplay looks interesting and there's already some cards I want to utilize in decks I already have. Really happy with this one!

260%

 I did not realize how many more Magic cards we were getting but the Professor lays it all out. 

It is...well it is just unhealthy for the game for us to get this many cards. I feel like we've been getting really lucky with sets lately, insofar as the cards seem interesting.

But I've also noticed physical mistakes-miscuts and the like.

And, as the Professor notes; the redundancy is going up, with cards doing nearly the same thing, set after set. 

That is inevitably going to make gameplay stale. It's going to burn players out. 

Sigh. I do not like late stage capitalism. 

Fast All The Time

So....I don't care about Merfolk.

What about this? 

4 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student
2 Kutzil's Flanker
3 Sigrid, God-Favored
4 Brineborn Cutthroat
2 Aven Interrupter
2 Merfolk Trickster

4 Fire Nation Occupation

4 Opt
4 Counterspell
4 Path to Exile
4 Consider

4 Tundra
9 Island
6 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Contaminated Aquifer
1 Sunlit Marsh

Flash decks can be a thing and I have seen some neat ones. They're usually UB but I'm wondering if WU with a little Black can work. 

Fire Nation Occupation is one of the obvious rewards but my real goal was to implement a deck that did nearly everything on my opponent's turn. It's a little underpowered: Brainstorm, Meticulous Archive, and Flooded Strand would probably all help. 

Still, a Tamiyo is apparently incredibly powerful, Brineborn Cutthroat is a scaling threat, I highly doubt anyone is goign to see Merfolk Trickster coming so let's see what can be done!

The deck's name is taken from a great track by Nylitia. 

How Long Does A Joke Last

 It's a legitimate question. 

Marvel Snap introduced "Arena Grande", a limited time game mode inspired by Deadpool's comic antics. With "wacky" pre-made decks to play, it became clear rapidly that the destroy deck (the one highlighting Deadpool) was the best deck to play. 

Ha-ha. You think you have options but it's really just Deadpool doin' Deadpool stuff.

Very droll, yes? 

But it isn't fun.

So I said so on Reddit. And was soundly rebuked for my take because I was "complaining about a gag game mode".  

Yes. A gag game mode they expect people to play for two days, with a reward track, in an environment that is deliberately skewed and unfun.

So: I don't care if it's supposed to just be a joke. The joke goes too long.

I don't care if it's free. Free means that it doesn't eat my time.

I don't care if it's easy. Easy doesn't equal good. 

I don't care that other people don't like my take. 

I care that they fucked up the one thing this game is supposed to do before all other things: Be fun. 

Jokes only last until the punchline. No punchline lasts 48 hours. 

Late To The Party: Psychonauts 2

Sure, I'm 5 years behind but the game was free...

Is Pyschonauts 2 good? Yes.

Is it worth your time? No.

Because there are two things that make Psychonauts feel very out of date: first is the story, which is far more haphazard than it should be. Raz, the main character, is mocked and beat up by his classmates who, mysteriously, all show up to bail him out in the final scene. 

There's no setup for that; Raz's interactions are almost entirely with the adults who have created a mess. That story is pretty solid! There's an interesting progression of showing how well meaning adults have their plans go bad and how that inevitably impacts the future-and how trying to bury that history always leads to someone trying to exploit it.

However, the game is just too damn long. EVERY single level is going to require three things; three librarians, three seeds, three whatevers. The repetition gets pretty dull, and there's no reason for things to go this long. The player isn't rewarded with extra story content, and Raz doesn't get notably stronger. Once he has all his abilities I didn't feel like I was able to use them in new ways to do odd things, nor become a powerhouse that made the game easy. 

It was fine. Really! I enjoyed much of my time with Psychonauts 2. 

But it wore out its welcome and I don't ever want to pick it up again. 

The Diversion

It started, as these things often do: hey that's neat!

And it turned into a project.

Because as it turns out, people have made actual versions of this format in paper. Some of them going all out, with a cabinet that has every card, but others with a more manageable idea. 

Which is what I did! The results of which turned into a 17 page document. My guideposts for my Momir Vig Basic format? For mana values 1-6, I kept the format Pioneer legal, after that in order to fill things out I needed to make things Legacy legal. But who doesn't want to see a Bringer at 9 mana??? Energy, pirates, and minotaurs, cards with activated abilities, with the occasional 'does nothing' card. I mostly avoided cards that added mana or drew cards and I included a little recursion-the online format creates tokens but here I wanted the occasional Gravedigger to be useful.

And that got all messed up when I saw this video and was informed that unless players were willing to skip activations of Momir, anything above the 7 mana value slot would be out of reach!

Still, I'm going to get this sleeved up soon and see what happens. I'm psyched for this one!

Swim With The Fishes

 Last year I started working on the merfolk deck I had, only to realize that there would probably be some cool new merfolk released in Lorwyn Eclipsed. That suggested I should table Piranacon until that set came out and then see what I could do with iit.

Now that Lorwyn Eclipsed is out....the merfolk are a whole lot of meh. 

I've tried some different configurations of the deck and the big problem is none of them feel good. I'm just goldfishing and the deck doesn't do anything. 

And it has me wondering if there's something I can do to change that.

2 Lord of Atlantis
3 Tidal Courier
2 Galina's Knight
3 Merrow Reejerey
1 True-Name Nemesis
2 Svyelun of Sea and Sky
3 Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom
3 Deepchannel Duelist
1 Deepway Navigator

4 Plumes of Peace

4 Counterspell
2 Emergency Eject
2 Opt
3 Shelter

3 Plains
3 Wanderwine Hub
4 Tundra
13 Island

2 Sygg's Command

I'm considering just retiring the idea. In part because as a person who's been playing this game for thirty years, I feel like I should have a merfolk deck instead of enjoying the play patterns. 

Which is a pretty silly way to go about it, isn't it? 

Maybe this would be an excellent deck to translate into Commander: I could make it WUG and have access to a lot more shenanigans without having to feel 'serious'. 

The cards I'm thinking of for that commander would be Brenard, Amareth or Morska.