Magic: The Gathering‘s latest mainline set, “Secrets of Strixhaven,” will be released later this month and Variety has this exclusive reveal for a pair of new cards from the collection.
Available for prerelease April 17 and set for tabletop release April 24, “Secrets of Strixhaven” marks Magic: The Gathering’s return to its magical university, comprised of five colleges: Witherbloom, Prismari, Quandrix, Silverquill and Lorehold.
The first Strixhaven set, “Strixhaven: School of Mages,” was released in April 2021 and quickly became a fan favorite IP with the Wizards of the Coast community. The return to Strixhaven has garnered much excitement among players amid players who remain interested in Magic’s original storylines, as more “Universes Beyond” sets — featuring outside IP like Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sonic the Hedgehog and “Avatar: The Last Airbender” — are released.
In the images below, readers will see two new “Secrets of Strixhaven” cards, each in two different styles: “Dina’s Guidance” and “Postmortem Professor.”
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
See below for Variety’s Q&A with “Secrets of Strixhaven” senior game designer Reggie Valk and senior worldbuilding game designer Lauren Bond about what to expect from the new set.
What did you approach differently for Strixhaven’s sophomore set compared to its freshman one?
Reggie Valk: The first Strixhaven needed to establish and justify itself as a new plane that was distinct from the rest of the Magic multiverse. With a return visit, particularly when we know the plane was well-received, it’s easier in a lot of ways. We get to take a look at all of the elements of the set and examine what worked, what didn’t, what’s necessary, and from there figure out what new twists we wanted to add. In this case, we knew we wanted to return to a set with a focus on instants and sorceries, we wanted the same five colleges, and we wanted the Mystical Archive. We decided to explore other directions for an overarching instant/sorcery mechanic; Prepare instead of Learn/Lesson, and decided to give faction keywords to all the schools.
How do you decide on which cards get picked for the mystical archive?
Valk: We’re looking at a variety of factors; we want iconic, powerful instants and sorceries from throughout Magic that showcase the breadth of Magic’s history. We’re also looking at color balance, limited playability/themes, and to an extent what concepts will be the most awesome in this art style, or who would be an awesome character to see casting an iconic spell for the first time.
There’s a lot of lore about the plane in general, but comparatively few non-school focused cards. Are you planning on doing more with Arcavios than just sticking to Strixhaven? What about from the Blood Age, before the school was founded?
Lauren Bond: Revisiting Strixhaven was an opportunity to expand further on the setting – and it was clear from early focus group conversations that players were excited to know more about the world of Arcavios. It’s also been a relatively short amount of time within the plane since our last visit, so rather than make dramatic changes to the schools, our goal was to showcase the vastness of the Vastlands while carrying forward what players know and love about Strixhaven in the schools.
With the omenpaths open, and more travelers from around the multiverse coming to Strixhaven, are we going to see cards that reflect the introduction of ally color pair mana to the plane?
Valk: Not this time! We felt the enemy colored colleges were an important part of what made Strixhaven special and decided to commit to that direction, with other assorted nods to the open omenpaths like the guest professors in the commander decks. We’ve certainly heard the feedback that folks would like to see ally colored colleges at some point though, so we might explore that direction in the future.
Will we be seeing the first-year students who found themselves on Lorwyn?
Bond: Yes, the five first-years are all in the set as two-color uncommons with Prepared spells, serving a similar function to STX’s cycle with Zimone and Quintorius.
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