After weeks of hype, the official Debut for Secrets of Strixhaven has finally landed. Based on the cards revealed today, this new MTG set is looking like a powerhouse. It also looks to be one of the more complex sets we’ve seen recently in terms of mechanics, bringing a ton of new tech to the table. Factor in the usual suite of callbacks and cameos, and this is an expansion you may just have to study for.
MTG Prepare
Thanks to several rounds of leaks, we’ve known about the Prepared mechanic from Secrets of Strixhaven for a while. What we haven’t known is exactly how it functions, leading to much speculation on its power level. While the reality is considerably less busted than many hoped, this still seems like a very solid mechanic.
Essentially, permanents with Prepared come with a spell attached, on the right side of their text box. Once the permanent becomes Prepared, which can happen in different ways, a copy of the spell is created in exile. You can then cast that spell any time you normally could, at which point the permanent becomes Unprepared. The copy of the Prepared spell in exile disappears if the permanent attached to it leaves play, or the permanent becomes Unprepared.
For those trying to cheat their tests, Prepared doesn’t seem like a mechanic that’s easy to gimmick. The swap from Prepared to Unprepared happens on cast, meaning that you can’t stack up multiple instances of the spell. These cards also have the characteristics of their permanent side at all times, so you won’t be able to Cascade into Ancestral Recall, or return Emeritus of Ideation to your hand with an effect like Archaeomancer. You can, however, copy the Prepared spell itself, if you like.
MTG Paradigm
In Mark Rosewater’s traditional teaser article for Secrets of Strixhaven, one element mentioned was “A new mechanic that redoes an old mechanic without its drawback.” A number of players guessed that this would be a new take on Epic from Saviors of Kamigawa, and it turns out that’s actually correct. Paradigm is exactly that, offering spells that re-cast every turn but without the crippling downside.
As we can tell from Improvisation Capstone, Paradigm spells are exiled on cast, and you can then cast copies of them for free during each of your first main phases. This only works after you first resolve a spell with a given name, mind you. This means you can’t stack up multiple casts of a Paradigm spell over time, or via copy effects as you could with Epic spells. The fact that Paradigm doesn’t lock you out of casting other spells more than makes up for that, however.
According to the Debut, we’ll be seeing a full cycle of Paradigm cards, all sorceries, and presumably all mythics. They’ll also all come with the Lesson subtype, despite the fact that Learn has been confirmed as not returning in this set. This means you won’t be able to tutor up Paradigm cards in Limited, but you might be able to in formats like Pioneer.
MTG Repartee
Repartee is the new mechanic for the Silverquill school in Secrets of Strixhaven, rewarding you for getting interactive with your spells. To trigger a Repartee ability, all you need to do is target a creature with an instant or sorcery. This could be your own creature, targeted with a combat trick, or an opponent’s, with a removal spell.
This flexibility makes Repartee one of the more open mechanics we’ve seen in a while. Most constructed decks, Orzhov ones in particular, run a healthy suite of removal and interaction. With Repartee in the mix, you’ll get extra value for casting those spells as you would’ve done anyway. It also rewards you in decks like Heroic, where you want to be targeting your own creatures with buffs and such.
MTG Opus
If you’re planning to rep the Prismari school in Secrets of Strixhaven, then you’d best get familiar with the Opus mechanic. This is a tiered ability, offering two different effects in each instance. The first triggers whenever you cast any instant or sorcery, and the second kicks in if you spent five or more mana on it. As we learned from the Debut, these higher-tier effects will sometimes be additions on top of the original, and sometimes alternative versions of it.
Opus is a bit of a mixed bag of a mechanic, since the second-tier effects are quite hard to reach here. Even in Commander, instants and sorceries that cost five or more are seldom played. Since you actually have to spend the mana, you can’t cheat this with cards like Force of Will, either. For this reason, I expect Opus to live or die on the strength of its first-tier abilities.
MTG Infusion
Witherbloom gets one of the simplest new mechanics in Secrets of Strixhaven with Infusion, which really just cares if you’ve gained life in a turn or not. If you have, cards with the mechanic will get better in various ways. We’ve seen a couple of different examples so far, with Old-Growth Educator gaining an enters trigger, and Lumaret’s Favor copying itself.
There’s not a ton of nuance to Infusion, so whether it succeeds or not will really come down to how good lifegain is in Golgari colors. Things are off to a promising start in this regard with Bogwater Lumaret, one of the better commons we’ve seen from the set so far. Infusion also plays nicely with the Pests from original Strixhaven, so hopefully we see more of those this time around.
MTG Increment
Increment is a fun new take on the Evolve mechanic, buffing your creatures if you cast big enough spells. If the mana you spend on a spell is greater than the power or toughness of an Increment creature, it gets a +1/+1 counter. As with Opus, you can’t cheat this with free spells and the like. Unlike Opus, however, Increment cares about all spells, not just instants and sorceries.
This makes Increment quite a promising mechanic since it could, in theory, reward you just for curving out with creatures. The two Increment cards we saw in the debut, Cuboid Colony and Pensive Professor, can actually trigger themselves in multiples, for example. While the low curves of recent constructed decks could hold this one back, it still feels like one of the better mechanics from Secrets of Strixhaven.
MTG Flashback
That’s all she wrote on new mechanics from Secrets of Strixhaven, but we’re getting a couple of returning classics here, too. Flashback is by far the most exciting of these, being one of the most popular, widely-used mechanics of all time. If you’ve yet to encounter it, it’s very simple. Flashback appears on instants and sorceries, and allows you to cast the spell from the graveyard for its Flashback cost. Once this is done, the spell is exiled, preventing repetitive casting.
Flashback is the signature mechanic for the Lorehold school in Secrets of Strixhaven, tying in perfectly with its historical themes. While it’s a shame we won’t be getting new Flashback cards in every color, it’s great to have them back, even in limited supply. With how hard Wizards has been pushing rummaging and looting effects lately, it could be very meta-relevant, too.
MTG Converge
While Flashback is a callback most will appreciate, Converge is more of a deep cut. Outside of supplemental sets, we’ve only seen this mechanic in one set: 2015’s Battle for Zendikar. As a mechanic, it’s fairly simple, rewarding you for spending more colors of mana on a given spell. The payoffs for doing so vary, from drawing extra cards with Painful Truths, to dealing more damage with Radiant Flames.
Though it’s certainly had successes in the past, with Bring to Light being an archetype-defining card, Converge is a tricky mechanic to use well. Since it’s fully color-dependent, whether it works or not largely depends on the quality of mana bases in a given format. For this reason, it might not do a ton in Standard, for now anyway.
More To Learn
We’ve covered all of the main mechanics in Secrets of Strixhaven here, but this isn’t where the story ends. The full set will likely have even more to offer mechanics-wise, with the additional one-off cameos we’ve come to expect. We’ve already seen some of these, in fact, with the new cycle of mythic Elder Dragons.
On top of that, the Debut revealed that Book will be coming in as an artifact subtype. This will appear on new cards, and some existing cards will receive errata, making them Books as well. How this new type will function is unknown for now, but we can probably expect some cards that specifically interact with Books in the set. With so many core mechanics and small nuances to digest, Secrets of Strixhaven is looking like a very exciting MTG set indeed.
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