Secrets of Strixhaven spoilers are still full steam ahead, with yesterday showing us what the Quandrix college has to offer. Turns out, Strixhaven’s Simic-styled school is packing serious heat this time around. We’re getting new combo enablers, potent Prepared pieces, and one of the more out-there Paradigms yet. Throw in a new piece of land-based land disruption, and this is one of the best preview batches we’ve seen for the set so far.
Planar Engineering
We’ve seen sacrifice-based land ramp before, in Harrow and Entish Restoration, but Planar Engineering takes the concept to new heights. Putting four lands into play at once is huge and opens up some seriously explosive plays with Landfall cards. With Tifa Lockhart, in fact, this sets you up to swing for 32 Trample damage on turn four in Standard. Add Llanowar Elves on turn one, and this is a three-card turn three kill.
Similar Tifa combo lines are possible in the format already, with pump spells like Titanic Growth alongside Fabled Passage. Those combos typically have you swinging for exactly 20, however, which isn’t a guaranteed kill if blockers are involved. They’re also much softer to remove, whereas Engineering still leaves you two lands up in that case.
Planar Engineering is more than just a great pairing with Tifa, mind you, offering a generically great Landfall enabler for all kinds of decks. Mono-Green Landfall is a top-tier deck in current Standard, and may end up running this for its efficiency alone. It also seems pretty great in Commander, especially in four-to-five color decks where it can fix your mana single-handedly.
Petrified Hamlet
On the surface, a land-based Pithing Needle effect on a land sounds pretty absurd. Utility lands have gotten much better in recent years, and this offers an easy way to shut them down. Unlike previous similar effects, like Ghost Quarter, it does so without putting you down a land yourself, too.
There are some significant downsides here, however, which harm Petrified Hamlet’s potential. For starters, you choose a land to hit with an enters trigger, which gives opponents a window to respond. This lets them crack Fetch lands already in play before you shut them down, meaning you need to guess what fetches they’re on ahead of time to attack those. Hamlet also has no effect on existing mana abilities, which means some of the biggest lands in Commander, like Gaea’s Cradle and Ancient Tomb, don’t care about it.
While it doesn’t seem great in Commander, Petrified Hamlet could have potential in older MTG formats. In Modern, for example, Amulet Titan decks can run it to protect against Boseiju, Who Endures in the mirror. Further back, it can block Wasteland in Legacy Lands decks, and keep Dredge players from popping off with Bazaar of Baghdad in Vintage.
Harmonized Trio
Harmonized Trio is one of the more intriguing Prepared creatures we’ve seen so far, offering a big upside at a steep cost. A one-drop that can potentially cast Brainstorm repeatedly is obviously interesting, but it’s also heavily format-dependent.
In Standard, without the Fetch lands and shuffle engines that make Brainstorm so good, the card likely isn’t worth it. While it looks like a potential add for Izzet decks in the format, it doesn’t synergize well with their current plans. Those lists want to be attacking with their creatures, after all, not tapping them down.
Where Harmonized Trio could do work, however, is in older formats. In Commander, this feels like a fantastic typal card draw one-drop for Merfolk decks. In Modern and Legacy, this is an easy way to flip Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student in Dimir shells. It’s also just quite solid in general, since Fetch lands make Brainstorm a pseudo-Ancestral Recall in many cases.
Emeritus Of Abundance
Despite the initial hype, the Secrets of Strixhaven Emeritus cycle isn’t actually looking great so far. Ideation is expensive to cast, and Conflict tricky to Prepare. Fortunately, Emeritus of Abundance is a step in the right direction, being a solid, if unremarkable, new creature.
At baseline, a 3/4 Vigilance for three that comes with a repeatable Regrowth is pretty solid. The extra mana investment required here means the card is no Eternal Witness, however, and is likely too slow for constructed formats. Happily, Emeritus of Abundance does seem like a slam-dunk in Commander. Elf and Ramp decks will naturally get the most out of it, but it’s also just a generically good value engine in the vein of Six.
With enough mana dorks, Emeritus of Abundance can even go infinite alongside extra combat spells like Full Throttle for instant wins. While it’s not revolutionary, this is the kind of card that pretty much any green deck in Commander can play, and I expect many of them will.
Echocasting Symposium
Blue’s member of the Paradigm cycle is, unfortunately, probably the weakest so far. Six mana to copy a creature you control is obviously hugely inefficient, meaning you’ll need to get a few extra copies before it’s worth it. Unlike the red and white Paradigms, which offer value in a vacuum, this one also relies on you maintaining a board presence, which makes it much riskier as an investment.
That said, there are still some funky lines available here if you’re willing to think outside the box. Since Echocasting Symposium can create tokens under any player’s control, you can use it to give out creatures with downsides. If you can get them out safely yourself, cards like Leveler and Phage the Untouchable can serve as win conditions this way. Beyond this fun novelty strategy in Commander, however, I don’t expect Symposium to make a ton of impact.
Mind Into Matter
Of all today’s Secrets of Strixhaven spoilers, Mind into Matter is probably the most fundamentally Quandrix. You’re getting a green/blue Braingeyser at a baseline here, which is honestly pretty solid in itself. The ability to cheat out a permanent is where things get really exciting, however, especially with low X values.
No matter how much you pay, you can always drop an extra land with Mind into Matter. You can also use it to cheat out permanents with no mana cost, like Lotus Bloom or Sol Talisman. Lines like this have serious potential in Modern Tameshi Belcher decks, which already use Whir of Invention to cheat these out to start their combos.
While these shenanigans are where Mind into Matter will likely shine brightest, it’s also totally fine when played fairly. In Commander, it’s a great scaling mana outlet that doesn’t leave your board undeveloped while you draw. In Standard, it’s a potential addition to Four-Color Ouroboroid lists, as an outlet that can cheat out many of its best threats. While it’s not particularly flashy, I could see Mind into Matter being one of the biggest multi-format workhorses in Secrets of Strixhaven.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew!