After a week of slow-rolling spoilers, we finally got to see the rest of Alchemy: Secrets of Strixhaven earlier today. A whopping 19 new cards dropped in this final reveal, bringing plenty of the usual Alchemy wackiness we’ve come to love. Wizards saved some genuinely great stuff for last, too, with a pair of excellent new Brawl legends and a fantastic board wipe to close things out.
Consumed By History
Pyroclasm has long been the gold standard for cheap board wipes in Magic, but Consumed by History takes it to another level. Three damage is a huge deal at two mana, and can easily deal with the majority of widely-played creatures these days. In Historic, especially, getting to sweep away pretty much everything in Yawgmoth and Mono-Red Aggro for just two mana is fantastic, and should earn Consumed by History a slot in best-of-three sideboards.
In other Arena formats, however, the card is less of a slam dunk. It should still do a fair bit of work in Brawl, but the added Unearth ability is a much bigger deal there, as opponents have more time to take advantage of it. In Timeless, wild as it sounds, a wrath like this is likely just too slow to matter.
Soovril, Patient Antiquarian
Rescuing cards from exile is a bit of a taboo subject in Magic design, which is why it’s always exciting to see cards like Soovril here that do so. While it’s a slow solution, since you need to wait two turns typically before you get your card back, it’s still a very powerful ability with a ton of applications.
Since the cards in question need to be exiled from your graveyard, you can use Soovril to turn graveyard hate like Agatha’s Soul Cauldron into virtual card advantage, allowing graveyard combo decks to fight against things like Surgical Extraction. It’s particularly nice with Escape cards like Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury, especially if you can untap it to grab back a couple of the cards you offered for the cost. Sadly, despite these applications, this card still seems too slow outside of Brawl.
Fortunately, there’s likely enough build-around material for Soovril to be a solid Commander in Brawl, and also a nice value engine for the 99. The card is a strong, interesting design, to the point where players are calling for a paper printing of it already. While this would technically be possible in paper, I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Wizards bridging the digital divide just yet.
Anina, Natural Parallelist
In a dedicated X spells deck in Brawl, Anina, Natural Parallelist solves two key problems in one card. Alongside ramping you towards big X plays, Anina also brings along extra bodies to help balance your board as you go tall. It’s particularly nice with Simic’s suite of Hydras, like Goldvein Hydra and Hydroid Krasis, in this regard.
Since Anina plays wonderfully with X-cost tutors like Nature’s Rhythm and Green Sun’s Zenith, it also makes a solid choice for a combo Commander. You can use the extra mana to keep a solid Midrange board around, then use it again to grab whatever you need on your pop-off turn. Untap effects can come in clutch here, rapidly ramping your mana and, therefore, your conjure payoff.
While Anina’s creature conjuring ability is unreliable at low X values, it actually gets pretty consistent the further up you go. 13 guarantees you Emrakul, the Promised End, for example, while 15 gets you either Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Earthquake Dragon, or Shadow of Mortality. Even lower down, where you have far less control, the possibility of bringing in creatures from outside your colors to shore up your weaknesses is excellent.
Best Of The Rest
As you’d expect, today’s Alchemy: Secrets of Strixhaven final dump also featured a bunch of interesting, but probably not playable, new designs. Some are cards that feel right on the edge for Brawl, like Expansive Reapplication and Grave Studies. The former is a slam-dunk in Anina decks and Simic tempo brews, while the latter is a great new grindy tool for Golgari, but neither feels like a must-run at present.
Other new cards feel a bit more experimental, like Honor the Past, a new reanimation spell that turns creatures into artifacts. This is great for bringing back engine creatures like Mirkwood Bats in a more resilient form, but its applications are honestly quite narrow. Glorifying Verse charts new territory, too, providing an ever-growing stack of Exalted enablers and Enchantress triggers as you target creatures with spells.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an Alchemy set without some outright nonsense, and Galathul Galecaller fills that slot this time around. Existing pretty much entirely to reference Magic’s long-running Storm Crow meme, this is a great hit for the fans, even if it likely isn’t playable even in Brawl. With everything these spoilers have to offer, Alchemy’s spirit of invention is alive and well in Secrets of Strixhaven.
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