This Monday I entered a Magic: The Gathering – Secret of Strixhaven pre-release. It is the first organised sealed tournament I joined since Urza’s Saga (1998).
My Magic History
I have been playing Magic: The Gathering since my 13th, somewhere end of 1995. The 4th edition did release an introduction packages and Ice Age/Homeland were in stores. I played regularly with a group of until 2002, we all started studying in different city. In 2012 we started playing again, once or twice a year we organise a weekend and do a sealed with the latest set.
Of course, I also play sometimes on MTG Arena, which I will be streaming soon on Twitch.tv/Freakenstein.
Secrets of Strixhaven
The first Strixhaven set, School of Mages, was released in 2021. I did not play the set, but understand it is a fan favorite and that’s why many people were looking forward to the return to the plane of Arcavios. The sealed event I joined was fully booked, the organiser mentioned that this hasn’t happened before.
I’m not gonna explain all the mechanics, you can read the at Wizards.
The Deck
The sealed was with 6 boosters, in contrary with the pre-release package where one of the boosters is replace with a booster of one of the 5 houses. I didn’t draw any epics or extra rares, but was able to build a fun deck:
1x Ambitious Augmenter
1x Brush Off
1x Chase Inspiration
1x Cuboid Colony
1x Divergent Equation
1x Fractal Tender
1x Geometer’s Arthropod
1x Giant Growth
1x Growth Curve
1x Hungry Graffalon
1x Hydro-Channeler
1x Mindful Biomancer
1x Pensive Professor
1x Pterafractyl
1x Quandrix Charm
1x Sleight of Hand
1x Spellbook Seeker // Careful Study
1x Stock Up
1x Strixhaven Skycoach
1x Studious First-Year // Rampant Growth
1x Tester of the Tangential
1x Textbook Tabulator
1x Wild Hypothesis
9x Island
8x Forest
Some highlights
The deck is blue/green, Quandrix. The ability related to this house is Increment, powering up existing critters when playing bigger critters. Imagine playing these four in a row.
At that moment my opponent made me discard the rest of the cards in my hand, which had two cards that could pump up the volume a bit more:
However, Tester of the Tangential works great with Pensive Professor and I could fill my hand again.
On of the best openers I had was Ambitious Augmenter and Growth Curved, which means you are able to attack with a 5/5 in turn two, auch.
Quandrix Charm turned out to be a great finisher. Since it changes the based power and toughness, the unblocked critter with several +1/+1 counters becomes an massive beast.
The results
The first game I won 2-0. The second I lost 2-1, in the final match I kept drawing land… The final game wasn’t played fully, because my opponent had to leave.
The biggest result was, you guessed it, having fun!
Did you play Strixhaven already?
