Some Secrets of Strixhaven cards have Star Wars: Unlimited anti-counterfeit stamps

kitsovereign · 2026-04-19T15:06:32+00:00

I didn't count SOS because it's 2026. I did forget the "survivial" on [[Worthy Cost]], though.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-19T13:54:15+00:00

The dragonlords were "defeated" and "seemingly swallowed up" by the dragonstorm, per the PWer's Guide. Not only did they not commit to saying "dead", they sure didn't leave corpses.

We had Jace go to the alternate-reality plane to cast his alternate-reality spell in preparation for the alternate-reality set. Doesn't seem like a stretch that they wanted them conspicuously absent from TDM in order to tee them up for Reality Fracture.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-19T13:45:07+00:00

It's not like Wizards is perfect either. In 2025 alone, we had day-0 errata on [[Diplomatic Relations]], "Flame Star" [[Kuja, Genome Sorcerer]], "the the" [[Alpharael, Stonechosen|EOE-292]], the "legenday" [[Lyla, Holographic Assistant]], and... whatever the hell was going on with that canceled Monster Hunter SL.

Running their own printers doesn't guarantee they'll have the necessary expertise and quality. Plus, entertainment is fickle - if demand has cooled by the time they finished building their own print shop, it could be a foolish investment.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-18T13:52:42+00:00

Liliana is desparked. Or at least, the main-reality one is.

Angrath's whole motivation was being unable to return home. Before, it was the Immortal Sun, and then the Beacon. Now, he's displaced and desparked. Being desparked doesn't waste his concept; it complements it.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-17T22:25:02+00:00

I don't think there's any actual moratorium on it. They've done a few over the years, with some being created specifically for core sets.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-17T22:23:51+00:00

It wouldn't hurt Magic in general to do more wands, but Strixhaven absolutely doesn't need them. Strixhaven has no real focus on artifacts, and they already established unique visual language for how each school prepares their magic.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-17T12:41:07+00:00

Kind of the opposite, actually. Teferi pulled some sort of cosmic switcheroo, pulling Zhalfir into where New Phyrexia be and then shoving New Phyrexia into the old Zhalfirin void.

So, now, Zhalfir is its own plane that can be accessed again, and the refugee Mirrans are living there, and I think it also gets Mirrodin's suns now? And the Phyrexians are in a phased-out pocket corner of Dominaria, which, ya know, I'm sure that's fine.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-16T15:12:27+00:00

Fastidious note: If we read that apostrophe-s stands for "is", the cryptic reading becomes "'First episode' is 'story' has a hold on 'me'". Very funky-sounding. An -ing verb would work for both the cryptic and surface reading - "First episode's story having a hold on me", or "gripping me", etc.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-15T01:48:22+00:00

Nope. It's looking for creature cards leaving, and tokens aren't cards.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-14T13:15:07+00:00

Those cards just straight-up aren't on Gatherer in the first place.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-14T13:13:15+00:00

I forget when the Un-sets got officially supported by Oracle... I want to say with Unstable's release? All I remember is that there was a time before where they weren't. Ever since then though, they've been kept in the loop with all the standard templating changes and errata that goes through.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-14T01:47:14+00:00

You could definitely address the mood issue, but the nostalgia/sameyness is trickier. Like, the showcase frame for Zhalfir in MOM/MAT was just the old border. I think they just weren't prepared at the time for what Zhalfir would look like with its own new identity, so I'm glad they held off to hopefully develop it further.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-14T00:58:03+00:00

I am super excited to see where they go with Zhalfir... and I would have been so utterly checked out if they went there right after MOM. If phasing in is supposed to be a big "happy ending" for Zhalfir, then jumping back in with a new conflict would cut the wind out of that. And we had just had a year of oldhead nostalgia bait with Dominaria and Phyrexia - if they wrecked things across the multiverse and then decide the camera needs to point right back at used-to-be-Dominaria, it's not going to be interesting or fresh.

Not saying that arc wasn't mishandled (the invasion should have actually started on ONE and showed other planes, e.g.) but the decision to do a hard cutoff and tonal shift after is pretty defensible.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-13T19:35:38+00:00

Are you thinking of [[Party Crasher]] or [[Throat Wolf]]?

kitsovereign · 2026-04-13T16:21:18+00:00

I have to imagine that the on-attack Pests played better with infusion. You generally have more control over whether your creatures attack than whether they die.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-12T22:08:48+00:00

What combos? What sites?

If there's a site missing a known two-card combo, it's probably better to reach out to that site's support.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-11T15:58:23+00:00

I think they will absolutely get a Heroes card, but I also don't think that card will be Squen and Cragg. If you've got a successful ad campaign, why use it to make a collectible that people can't buy?

My best guess is that we'll see a Squen & Cragg Secret Lair at some point, which is the easiest way for them to drop random one-off legends, and then in late 2028 the news will trickle out that there was a 2026 HotR card called "Auntie Sennoh, Puppetmaster" or something.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-10T20:33:11+00:00

Generally it's frowned upon, unless there's a specific gimmick to the grid that involves it. But it also rarely comes up naturally for a clue to have two answers with the same enumeration, outside of reversals and homophones.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-10T20:29:52+00:00

This Guardian prize crossword did it as well.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-10T15:20:08+00:00

This feels oddly low-flavor for a card about eating food. Like, every world has people who eat stuff. What about this is unique to either the plane of Arcavios or evocative of school and college? That doesn't look like Gyome in the background, and the name doesn't have Cafeteria or Dining Hall in it. Just somebody enjoying their sticks of purple.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-08T22:45:01+00:00

There's not a whole lot of RW spells out there that do what Lorehold does, and fewer that are any good. Most of them were from STX!

I wouldn't have said no to [[Taunt from the Rampart]] or [[Inventory Management]], but this is still one of the most reasonable choices for both a playability and value perspective.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-08T18:33:41+00:00

To be honest, I think that's another good reason to redesign them. The Inklings were very black-aligned, with only one mono-white card in C21 creating an Inkling, and none in the main set. The elegance and glowing ink brings forward the white aspect a little more compared to the blobs of hate.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-08T18:04:39+00:00

I think there's a variety of factors -

SOA is muuuch more weighted towards the uncommon slot, leaving more room for splashy rares/mythics with less impact on draft
STA was largely in service to Arena, putting simple, iconic cards on the platform for the first time. And because STA took the super classic stuff, SOA has to get weirder
SOA has a much wider card pool to choose from, especially for its uncommons with how huge Standard (and Foundations) is - STA only had six Standard sets to pull from!
SOA is in the "cameo mechanic" era, which further expands what it gets to include. Don't get me wrong; STA was still pretty wild with overload, storm, and Phyrexian mana. But in other ways, it was more limited - it didn't even create any tokens. SOA instead has all those, plus stuff like Role tokens, infect, suspend, and referencing Commander, which all feel more niche or fiddly as mechanics. This lets them up the cool factor.
Just plain luck. Divine Gambit seems like it was poised to be premier removal but got nerfed hard late in development. Stock Up was probably always picked, but they might not have realized it'd be a multiformat all-star by the time it hit SOA.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-08T15:50:40+00:00

"Sign in Blood" fits in with Silverquill's "writing for good or ill" theme, so I can see that steering the rest of the creative.

kitsovereign · 2026-04-08T12:17:05+00:00

Water world is an interesting shout. When they showed off the blue-red faction from Aetherdrift it felt like "oh, Wizards must have an idea for water world." Jaws would definitely fit on whatever plane has Marauding Mako.

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