The only learn card I don't usually play is First Day of Class , but everything else should be a priority. This comes down to draft preferences, but a lot of this is now accepted as truth between many top Limited players. Strixhaven has five different key color combinations that can be drafted, and naturally some end up performing a bit better than others. Blue is the best color, and white is the worst.
This leaves Prismari and Quandrix at the top, with Silverquill and Lorhold at the bottom, while Witherbloom is somewhere in between. The blue cards naturally provide more card advantage, whether through straight-up card draw, or big-mana spells like Elemental Masterpiece that end up creating multiple threats in a single card.
This is going to create a late-game advantage. Normally the way to beat card advantage is to go under those decks with aggression. However, this is simply not a very aggressive format. Typically you see white-red decks being purely beatdown, but here we have cards like Reconstruct History , Lorehold Excavation , or even Quintorius, Field Historian.
These are not aggressive cards, just the opposite. They can provide card advantage, but then oftentimes your deck becomes disjointed, trying to be aggressive and have a good late game at the same time, and things start to fall apart. The blue decks usually have enough stuff to win in late games, even if you try to be a slower white based deck. I think most players are taught to draft decks with about creatures and noncreature spells. Throw that completely out the window, especially when drafting blue in Strixhaven.
I have had successful decks with as few as 3 creature spells in this format. Part of the reason for this is that you have more cards with payoffs for having lots of instants and sorceries, like Symmetry Sage or Quandrix Apprentice. It is very possible to draft around cards like Serpentine Curve that really want the majority of your deck to be instants and sorceries. Also, we have many ways to generate tokens, whether they be Pests, Fractals, Elementals, or something else.
While players often won't include token generators when counting their creatures, there is no reason not to.
Perhaps the biggest reason why the ratios are so off in this format is that you can go search up Summonings out of the sideboard to generate creatures with your learn cards. All of a sudden your Pop Quiz or Field Trip is actually a creature as well. Beyond this, there are also some bombs that basically kill the opponent without needing many actual creatures like Crackle with Power or Mizzix's Mastery. I'm not used to drafting in a format with so many different cards of such varying power levels, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
This is a format where you can actually run into straight-up Lightning Bolt , Counterspell , or Swords to Plowshares , to name a few classic cards that seem like they don't exactly fit in with most of the Strixhaven stuff. These are generic good cards, but they are very much a part of the draft format.
Part of what the Mystical Archive cards do besides adding to the power level of decks is create an additional layer of complexity to the games themselves. There are way more cards to try to play around than in a traditional format. Whether you are getting blown out by Mana Tithe or getting your board swept by Crux of Fate , there are a lot of unusual things that can happen. This makes the format more fun, but also difficult to play. Definitely do your homework, and know the cards that can be opened from the Mystical Archive.
This is a format where I'm not just happy splashing—playing three or more colors is relatively normal. Even five-color decks can be successful. While I'm usually looking to be a two color deck going into the draft, it doesn't always work out. Oftentimes you get pushed into adding additional colors to your deck, because you have to fight with other players for your main school, or because you simply open some easily splashable cards.
Why yes, they do! One section, in fact, to cleanly wrap things up. So, what are some reasons to play 15 or fewer lands? As always, the wonderful Frank Karsten has written an excellent piece examining the potential of very land-light Limited decks in great detail. One particularly damning thing to note is this chart:. This table shows that with 7 Swamp and 7 Plains, you will have the required Plains to cast a turn-3 Territorial Hammerskull only So Well, there are two possibilities to consider, both of which reference relatively recent developments in Magic.
Both of these formats featured cycling as a primary mechanic, which was heavily featured in each color. Ikoria actually took this a step further by having cycling on so many different commons, meaning that decks focused on the cycling mechanic could play lots of cards that were effectively just blank cyclers.
With so many cheap spells available, Ikoria allowed deckbuilders to reach levels of greed previously thought impossible. Week 1 Ikoria frequently had players on 14 to 15 lands, but this eventually gave way to the land minimum you see here.
The second nod in favor of playing 15 or less lands is the aforementioned BO1 algorithm which I touched on briefly in the land decks bit. You actually want half or more of your Limited deck to be lands? This sounds insane at first but can basically be attributed to certain Limited formats having strange rares that greatly reward playing absurd amounts of land.
A similar gimmick could be employed in Dark Ascension Limited thanks to this memorable piece of draft trash. With a deck of 39 Forests and one Lost in the Woods , you could employ a formidable cheese strategy. Basically just aggressively mulligan into a Lost in the Woods and slam it on turn 5.
And since you likely mulled to at least five cards if not lower, as a mull to two in this deck is basically the same as keeping 7 cards, you should be behind your opponent in the decking game too.
You could try boarding out a land on the draw in all sorts of decks, including and land decks. As logical and likely tempting as this may sound, be careful doing this, particularly if you have to jeopardize vital colored mana sources. And finally, how about the reverse: should you ever be boarding in more lands? This format has plenty of instant-speed cards that can punish you for not being cautious. Vexing Gull eating your Transcendent Envoy for free on turn 3 can be especially brutal. Does this format have cards like Pyroclasm or Infest , especially at uncommon?
This is similar to the earlier point with flying and reach creatures. This applies to removal spells that deal damage as well. How good is Shock in the format? In Onslaught Draft, everything revolved around morphs.
For that reason, Shock was an absolute all-star, because you would always have plenty of targets to trade your 1-mana spell for their 3-mana creature. All the scenarios that we just talked about are pretty much going to happen in some degree in every matchup. Sometimes it means that you want to board in 2x Return to Nature because your opponent has a couple of bomb artifact rares. That one is easy. Obviously this scenario with 6 Turtles is extreme, but you get the idea. The same is true for the defending player.
Sideboarding and the size of creatures is incredibly important.
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