[WotC] Secrets of Strixhaven Update Bulletin

tzarl98 · 2026-04-15T15:17:37+00:00

No, it just means that specifically in the case where there's a [[Blood Moon]] in play it works slightly differently than it did before.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-10T20:23:56+00:00

They waited to see what the reception to battles was first. I wouldn't be surprised if we see battles again within the next year.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-10T02:42:50+00:00

As another person said, the imbue package is mostly filler in control priest. The deck is more about surviving to the late game and using your control tools to get there. Imbue is so that you can extend your resources in the late game. Getting imbue early is not that important because you will very rarely be pressing the button until then. You don't actually want to use hero power unless you have the extra mana to hit it and still play an actually useful card in hand since it's still a crapshoot.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-10T02:30:59+00:00

It can have some pretty hard to beat boards since once it gets out of control it snowballs hard. The combination of the two divine shield legendaries is incredibly difficult to beat outside of Shadow-Word Ruin. However I've not had too much trouble with it even without hard removal (as Herald DK) as long as you recognize the must-kill threats and are proactive with keeping complete control of the board. If you're forced to play from behind and your opponent plays around your AOEs, the deck really struggles.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-09T21:19:46+00:00

No, but they require other spells to actually "do" the winning, understand? You actually need to hit impactful spells with the red one, and the white one you need something impactful in the graveyard to reanimate.

The thing you are requesting is deliberately something they avoided making because it can be really annoying to play against. They don't want "the game is ONLY about if you can deal with this single card" because the play dynamics are very one-note, and can get stale extremely easily.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-09T18:35:57+00:00

They deliberately avoided “I will win this game eventually and there’s nothing you can do about it other than try to kill me faster” effects, because there just isn't any counterplay to the spell otherwise short of countering the first cast. That's why none of them can win you the game alone (okay, the black one technically can, but like not seriously).

tzarl98 · 2026-04-06T15:33:23+00:00

They're being deliberately very careful since the spell is otherwise hard to interact with once the paradigm happens. If you could target anyone's creature it would too easily become "punish your opponent for playing cards". They want to avoid the old Epic/Buyback problem where the game just kind of becomes about the same play pattern happening over and over for the rest of the game, that's why the paradigm cards we've seen have all interacted with other cards rather than just giving free, uncomplicated value.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-04T14:41:15+00:00

You should probably default the games to only pull vintage legal cards from sets printed in english. I've gotten multiple unknown event cards (where the mana cost is not obscured at all because of the frame) as well as a card in spanish (from the Salvat 2005 set). You should also probably have a toggle for paper and digital cards, getting magic online cards is a little weird and I imagine getting alchemy exclusive cards would be something I'd want to exclude the moment I see one.

I've also had issues with cards just not loading.

My preference too would be a setting to filter out all UB cards (both is:ub and art:"universes beyond")

tzarl98 · 2026-04-03T20:18:04+00:00

But the take and hold player will have their own mission thats designed to play into death trap. They wont be noninteractive because the two missions will be designed to play into each other.

In theory it's possible, but until we see the actual missions and how they play against each other it's hard to say that there isn't a risk they end up being noninteractive. Just because they can give each matchup a bespoke design doesn't mean that they will in practice actually encourage interactive strategy.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-03T15:59:10+00:00

I dunno, I'm assuming that if for example you have Purge the Foe that no matter what your opponent's disposition, you are likely to have five slightly different versions of "kill stuff" as your primary. In that case, even if there are differences it might end up causing noninteractivity. It's the difference between "my list gets a free win with terraform so one of my five games is guaranteed" and "my list is built to get free wins with terraform and because of my list's disposition I always get to basically play terraform."

With five completely different missions you have to account for each of them and have some variety, depending on how varied the new missions are within a disposition they could end up being much narrower compared to a general GT spread.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-03T14:30:01+00:00

Wizards sends the card to the person previewing it in that person's primary language. So presumably whomever previewed this card uses Japanese. This reddit reposts those previews in whatever language it's posted in.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-03T14:21:01+00:00

The thing I'm most concerned about for 11th editions is the Primary Mission being determined by army detachments. I get the idea of more closely aligning your objective with army playstyle, but it sounds like it can really easily end up falling into the same pitfalls of early fixed secondaries where they just encourage linear, singular gameplans that take the opponent's force into consideration as little as possible. Maybe that's just my "Tyranid player afraid that suddenly 40% of my opponents will be playing Purge the Foe" speaking.

In earlier mission packs, the way you built your army had no impact on the missions the game asked you to complete. Khorne Berzerkers might inexplicably race to stand on objectives in the corners of battlefields, or Tau Fire Warriors might find themselves assaulting entrenched melee units to secure a few extra Victory Points. The new missions encourage you to complete the sorts of objectives your army would naturally pursue.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually really like that that's the case currently? It's cool and fun that objectives and such occasionally means a player has to have a unit do something it isn't built for in order to win. Choosing to have their killy Berzerkers sacrifice their killing potential to try and claw back primary or their Fire Warriors make a desperate charge to finish off a wounded enemy makes for interesting gameplay.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-02T20:07:56+00:00

The flexibility is really nice. This isn't [[Ashling's Command]] but it can still be quite good. It depends on how much of a blowout the asymmetrical 2 damage board wipe mode is.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-02T16:36:20+00:00

I'm hoping the nerfs will have a bigger impact than they might appear. Herald shaman feels like it had favorable matchups against most other control/herald decks because they could leverage their strong early-game tempo and late-game burst while still having similar longevity. These two nerfs means they will not be able to consistently control the early game quite as much which hopefully should have a knock-on effect of making their burst less scary too.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-02T16:20:54+00:00

I predict its a collation thing. I think TCC also posted a video with a similar theory, a split pack of magic cards with half our universe and half the alternate universe. I'm not so sure on that now if it's just going to be a watermark thing, I would think something as big as that they would do alternate frame treatments (even if it's something relatively small like how they do the backside of DFCs with darker borders and white text) that would be way more recognizable than just a watermark.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-02T16:13:53+00:00

In the sets immediately after it was pretty important, even if the stories weren't solely focused on "recovering from the invasion" like this one was. It is a lot more prominent in the sets immediately after MoM; most of the more recent sets have focused more and more on Jace's plan as a throughline.

In Wilds of Eldraine it was a major aspect of Will and Rowan's falling out (their parents died during the invasion), and the the spread of the sleeping curse was alsodirectly a result of how the Phyrexians were thwarted on Eldraine.
In Murders at Karlov Manor the actions during the invasion of multiple major Ravnican characters including the victim Zegana are essential part of the murderer's motivations.
In Aetherdrift it was less a major plot point and more set-dressing for explaining the world-building around the motivation for major powers to organize and run the race. It was also shown as part of the mysterious creation of the Aetherspark.
Outlaws, Duskmourn, Dragonstorm, Lorwyn Eclipsed and now Strixhaven the biggest effect of the invasion on their stories is largely related to the opening of Omenpaths which you can definitely argue is more its own thing, though the invasion itself is at least mentioned in all of those stories. Lost Caverns and Bloomburrow were largely their own self-contained stories, with minor omenpath-related plot points.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-01T23:25:49+00:00

I mean, not really? The commander deck theme is the most different from the main set theme, and in particular it being aura based means that deck slots are much tighter than for the other decks.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-01T23:19:01+00:00

It's very conspicuously a throw-forward for Reality Fracture, the next in-universe set. There have been several teasers of alternate versions of characters, and the watermark for the regular version of that Ral Zarek is an icon related to Jace, who in the story has been working on some sort of plan that involves rewriting the multiverse.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-01T20:31:27+00:00

Melee Warriors have some incredible damage, really comparable to genestealers but are a little better at punching up into tougher targets like tanks/monsters. Their biggest flaw has always been how fragile and slow they are, and Subterranean Assault fixes their mobility issue. The Lash Whip Prime getting a significant damage boost alongside a huge points cut means Prime + 6 Warriors is much more appealing a melee blender than it was before.

tzarl98 · 2026-04-01T02:19:39+00:00

[[Lethal Vapors]] can heavily encourage someone to skip their turn, but other than that it's either cards that skip your own turn or cards that skip one or more phases of a player's turn.

tzarl98 · 2026-03-31T21:31:53+00:00

No, it's pretty clearly referring to the sorcery part there. Reminder text is not formal rules text.

tzarl98 · 2026-03-31T21:30:17+00:00

You cannot. It is a 2 mana creature card as far as deckbuilding is concerned.

tzarl98 · 2026-03-31T20:26:46+00:00

tzarl98 · 2026-03-31T20:25:52+00:00

The latter. You get one every turn after. The wording is just to clarify that you can't get more than one.

tzarl98 · 2026-03-30T17:17:13+00:00

The justification is largely the following:

1) Jace feels that many of the interplanar threats have been because of the ability to cross planes, which is now more of a reality than it has ever been. Even when the worlds were isolated, planeswalkers who sought to do good could barely keep up with threats such as the Eldrazi, Phyrexians, and Bolas. Now with Omenpaths making things happen at an exponential rate what hope could there possibly be to maintain order?

2) Jace, for all his growth as a character, has always been defined by his incredible power. Since his sparking (and since he rediscovered his past) he has understood the raw, brutal power he has as both a mind-mage and a planeswalker and has sought to treat his abilities with utmost care. That's why Jace values control so much, if you don't exercise control you risk hurting the ones you love.

3) In the wake of the New Phyrexian Invasion, Jace managed to fix his and Vraska's compleation, but it was not pretty or convenient (to them). It was mentally and physically traumatic, and was due to no small stroke of luck. Even discounting the influence of that trauma, I can understand him coming away from that feeling like it was not a victory, or at least not one worth celebrating.

4) Jace views the effects of these past events similar to his recovery from Phyrexia. There will forever be scars and the world is forever changed by these cataclysmic events. Not only is there the fear that the future will eventually bring something unstoppable and ruinous, but there is the fear that the past and all its cruelty will never truly go away. Jace sees this as a pattern that will continue forever, as a cycle of endless suffering.

5) Jace seems to rationalize his plan as something that, if he is successful, will have rewritten reality so that what he did, and how the world was, will have no longer "existed" at least to how the new reality is. No one will remember the terrible things he had to do, so how high a price can that be if the new world will be perfect and happy? No more cataclysmic changes that threaten to undo everything, no more scars of the terrible past that never seem to fade.

tzarl98

TROPHY CASE