Fireworks, Calliopes, and Clowns

First, to check in, I'm going to be playing the top 1200 tournament thing this weekend. I don't know what it's called. I'm pretty sure that I'm just going to play the list that I've got written on the sidebar, but could potentially make some small changes. I didn't play in the Historic Challenge thing this weekend, but my friends who did say they saw a lot of Gruul and other aggro decks. If that's the case, then I like where the list is.

Let's go over some Strixhaven cards. The Mystic Archives are definitely the major hitters for this set, but there are a lot of cool things that could turn out to be good.

To start, let's look at this thing. The lesson/learn mechanic is cool, but you need two things for it to be worth playing: the cards with Learn being good enough, and the cards with Lesson being good enough. Professor definitely checks the first box. It's a big creature that draws you a semi-useful card, and that's solid enough on its own. The problem is the Lessons themselves, so let's take a look.

These are the standouts, and they aren't that great. There's a Disenchant, a Planeswalker removal spell, a big value token creator, and a small defensive roadblock type thing. I don't hate it, but it kind of seems like a worse version of a Karn wishboard, which I've seen from time to time. I'll certainly give it a shot, but I think it's too slow.

The easy thing to say here is that Valentin breaks up Witch's Oven stuff, but there's a lot more to it. First, I'm not super comfortable with my metagame call Jund Sacrifice hoser being a one tougness creature. Secondly, it shuts off our own Chevills and Sarulfs. On the plus side of this one, you can get some value out of it if you have some mana lying around, whether you're playing Jund Sac or any other creature deck, and if you draw a Chevill or Sarulf, you just cast a 4/4. Lisette is a good backup plan, but also works pretty well with Ooze and kind of with Chevill, which is nice because those are the two cards that don't work with Valentin. 

Jund isn't always going to be about looking at the spoiler and finding the busted cards and going "Oooh Aaahh". When I look at a spoiler list, I'm looking for tools with which I can win matches, not do explosive stuff. Blex exemplifies this.

This is the perfect recipe for a good green and black card. Whether or not it's good enough for the format is a different question, but it helps you play the two different roles you're trying to play in your matchups. In almost every matchup, you're either trying to make trades and keep your life total high, or you're using your unpressured life total to gain card advantage. I'm excited about this one. It might just turn into another Griffin pet card, but whatever.

This card is neat and versatile like Blex, but just a little worse at everything. However, maindeckable graveyard hate is a good thing to have, so there's certainly a case for playing this, depending on the meta.

Sedgemoor Witch is a more narrow creature than the other ones we've seen but has a lot of power. Something I want to try out is this, Magmatic Channeler, and possibly even Young Pyromancer in a deck with lots of discard, removal, and Abundant Harvest. Sedgemoor Witch costs a mana more than Young Pyromancer does but all the abilities on the card are built for winning races and you get a lot of strength out of that extra mana. So far it seems like this clearly gets there on rate in Historic, the question is whether it fits any decks.

I usually stay away from exile effects because of Chevill, but we're not actually tied to playing Chevill. If it makes sense we can just cut it and play more exile effects. If that's something we want to do, is this going to be better than Vraska's Contempt or Eat to Extinction? I think the answer is yes, but the drawback for the discounted price on this card is tougher on midrange decks than it might be for other decks. But, like a dual face card, more options is a good place to be for something like this. I hope some day that someone targets a Thassa's Oracle with this while the Oracle's trigger is on the stack and the opponent has an empty library.

This card is pretty sweet. Instant speed is fantastic, it's cheap, and it can hit small creatures early and big creatures late, which is exactly what you'd hope for. It's going to go really nicely in a deck with discard spells as well, you know, like Jund. I can't say right now if I think it's better than Eliminate, but there's a lot to like here so it's worth a shot.

Mortality Spear is like a better Baleful Master. It hits anything, which is nice because of stuff like hardcast Shark Typhoons and Search for Azcanta, or The Great Henge or whatever. Plus, gaining life is something you have a little control over when you play Scavenging Ooze, but also Chevill and Klothys can make this cheaper from time to time. Like with all potentially playable removal spells, being better than Maelstrom Pulse is a big ask.

I'm a big fan of cards that are good against small creatures. One of my favorite cards in Modern is Shadow Guildmage. The reason isn't that Shadow Guildmage kills every card in your opponent's deck, it's that it kills enough of their small stuff that you can save your removal spells for their bigger stuff. I've certainly lost games where I Lightning Bolted my opponent's Noble Hierarch and Thalia, then died to Mantis Riders. Culling Ritual won't hit your opponent's biggest stuff, but it does stop smaller creatures and lets you save your Bloodchief's Thirsts and Maelstrom Pulses for the Questing Beasts and Mayhem Devils of the world. The mana bonus is nice here too, since you can cast it and wipe away their small creatures and also Pulse something big on the same turn. I think this might be the best Wrath effect for a deck like this, but the question is whether or not we want a Wrath effect at all. So far I haven't missed them, but the fact that this thing also hits stuff like Food tokens, Treasure tokens, Witch's Ovens, and Trail of Crumbs, plus every Aura and creaturein the Auras deck, means it's certainly worth looking at.

It's innocuous, but this is the single card that I'm most excited for out of the Strixhaven main set. The thing you have to remember with Strixhaven is that Faithless Looting just got printed too, so graveyard hate is going to be important. Go Blank doubles as a perfectly fine Mind Rot to board in against control decks while also serving as graveyard hate. It's an incredible card against stuff like Arclight Phoenix or Dreadhorde Arcanist decks, where you're playing a card advantage game but they also have graveyard synergies. I love opportunities to condense sideboard space with cards that are useful against multiple strategies. Plus, Mind Rot effects tend to be good against decks that have some incidental graveyard interactions anyways, so you get to shut off stuff like Torrential Gearhulk and Commit/Memory just as a bonus. I think this takes the spot of Davriel in the sideboard as soon as it's printed, not that it's better than Davriel straight up (although it's close) but it has a ton of effect across the whole format.

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I would post a way-too-early Strixhaven decklist to think about, but I think that a lot of these cards are going to require their own research. I think that a lot of cards from this set look like they are close to playable, but we have to remember that, with every set that's released, the minimum power level of a card to be included goes up and up, especially after something like Mystical Archives. My prediction is that most of these are good but just miss the cut, but certainly would not be surprised to be wrong. Anyways, I'm planning on streaming the Historic tournament this Saturday on Twitch if you're interested. Thanks for reading.