Secrets of Strixhaven Cube Review Part 1: New Mechanics and Themes

Ryan Overturf begins his first impressions Cube review of Secrets of Strixhaven, going over the set's mechanics and themes! 

Transcript

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What's up gamers? Welcome back to 180 MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week marks part one of my two-part Secrets of Strixhaven Early Impressions Cube Review. If you haven't listened to one of these before, I do break these cube reviews down into two parts. Week one is looking at the sets, mechanics, and themes. So if you want to hear how I feel about new mechanics, keywords, ability words, everything I have to say about prepared the big new mechanic in Strixhaven is going to be this week. And then next week I just kind of look at individual cards that are more independent of the sets, mechanics, and themes that are just kind of individual cards worth looking at that don't really play into the set's broader themes. Whereas this week is going to talk about maybe if you're more interested in what the Strixhaven set does either aesthetically or mechanically, you'll get more of that. This is, of course, a return to Strixhaven. We've been here before. You have your five enemy colored schools of magic, any focus on instance and sorceries mattering across all five colors, where traditionally this stuff is a lot more focused on blue and red. So I love Strixhaven for that reason as a big fan of Prowess, so I'm excited to dig into this set. A lot of cards I'm excited to get my hands on and cube with here. So today I'm going to be talking about mechanics and themes, and of course, like most standard releases these days, Strixhaven, Secrets of Strixhaven, that is, does have a corresponding set of five commander decks. There is one for each of those two color enemy-colored schools of magic, and I will be lumping those in. There's not enough to talk about them as individual release. There's a few cards that I'm going to be just kind of lumping in. I'll mention when I'm talking about a commander card over the course of my review here. I will say that these commander decks do have a lot of stuff that is lower on the mana curve, stuff that would be reasonable to play in two-player games. They're not super focused on being commander only. There's no like true name nemesis, there's no just on-rate, incredible card that you will need to take note of from these commander decks. But if you are interested in the themes, the black-white deck is a cool enchantment and graveyards theme going on. If you're interested in that theme, definitely check out that deck. The blue-green deck has a cool X Spells Matter thing kind of going on that is also in the Secrets of Strix Haven main set, worth checking out there. The blue-red deck has a lot of instance and sorceries matter kind of stuff that you'll see. I think the highlights are actually in the main set, but there's more worth looking at if you want to go deeper into that theme, looking at that commander deck. The green black deck has some cool sacrifice stuff going on. And then the red-white deck has this Leaves the Graveyard theme that is also in the Secrets of Strixhaven main set that has a couple highlights. I will definitely be talking about a couple of the red-white cards in my cube review here. And that one's very much look worth looking into if you do like playing in the graveyard space. Leaving the graveyard via flashback is kind of a big thing in the main set that carries into the commander deck, and white is a color that historically does not do a ton with the graveyard. Red white is one of the toughest color pairs for graveyard sets, so some highlights there for sure. So these commander decks are worth looking at. I won't be spending a ton of time with them here though. But let's go ahead and dive right into the mechanics and themes of Secrets of Strixhaven, starting with Converge, an ability word that is a very natural follow-up to Vivid from Lorewind Eclipsed. Vivid, of course, cared about you controlling permanence of multiple colors, Converge cares about you spending multiple colors of mana on the same spell. So these are all spells that will have some of them have color requirements, some are fully colorless spells, and they give you some kind of effect that scales with the number of colors of mana that you spend on them. There's not a ton of Converge cards, there's nine. They're largely focused around these archaic creatures that are pretty central to the storyline for this set. There's two that I want to focus on. They specifically make use of tubrid mana with Converge, which is that mechanic where you either spend one colored mana or two generic mana to pay a cost. There's two cards from Secrets of Surseven that use tubrid mana to allow you to pay more mana to get more Converge if you have access to more colors, or as a baseline, they can be mono-colored cards with a smaller version of that effect. So let's look at these cards. The first is Magma Blood Archaic. This is three tubrid red mana. So you can either pay six generic, red, red, red, two red, red, or four and a red to cast the spell. As a baseline, it's a two-two avatar with trample and reach, and it has converged. This creature enters with a plus one plus one counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it. So if you used fully six colorless mana, you just get a 2-2. If you cast it for that red, red, red cost, you get a 3-3 because you get one plus one plus one counter, because you spent one color of mana red. I imagine most commonly red two, where you spend two other two non-red colors of mana, would be a very common way to approach casting this spell, where you then would get three plus one plus one counters, one for red, two for those other two colors. You'd have a five-five for four, which is pretty appealing, especially with trample and reach. And if you cast it for four red, you can actually get all five colors of mana there. So you'd get a seven-seven, you get five plus one plus one counters, which is a pretty nice reward for being five color there, and it's only a five mana spell. And then it has another line of text. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, creatures you control get plus one plus oh until end of turn for each color of mana spent to cast that spell. So your cantrips, your removal spells, whatever you cast to follow up your Magaloblood Archaic is then going to give all of your creatures plus one plus oh until end of turn for each color of mana for that spell, including the archaic itself. So you're often going to be at least a red deck. This can play in mono red. It looks like it's a very nice card for a three-color deck, and it pumps itself and it has trample. This is a big hitter, plays well in a prowess shell. It's just a nice card. Like the body, it sizes it really well. And mostly I'm just highlighting this use of tube bridge mana. I think this card is very cool. Any kind of three-color environment, I'm into it. If you're doing prowess and you're incentivizing going into three colors, if you play this in a Grixis deck, a Jeskai deck, four mana, five-five, trample reach that has this combat ability to really apply a lot of pressure. This card is strong, and this design is really cool. I really like this use of two brid mana. I haven't sold this in any cubes just yet, but this is a card that does really appeal to me. And then the other two brid converged card is Wild Growth Archaic, a 0-0 for two green tube brid mana. So it can be green green, it can cost four, it can cost a green and two, and then it has trample and reach as well. It gets a plus one plus one counter for each color of mana spent to cast it. So if you cast it on two for green green, you get a one-one. Not that exciting. Once you cast it for three mana, you get a 3-3 trample reach if you have three different colors of mana. So you put this in a Jund deck, a Naya deck, cast it for three different colors, you get a 3-3 for 3 with trample and reach. And then whenever you cast a creature spell, that creature enters with X additional plus one plus one counters on it, where X is the number of colors of mana spent to cast it. So this seems least appealing to cast on turn two because it's just a 1-1 itself. Also, it likely means that you're looking at a mono green or heavily green deck. So if you're just making a lot of green mana, then you're making creatures with one additional plus one plus one counter, which is fine. It can play in a hybrid uh hardened scales kind of space, and it does play there. It's reasonable to add this as some additional infrastructure there. But then just as a rate card, just as a card that is reasonable to cast, I really like where this can shine in three and four color decks. I think it's pretty cool the implementation here, where if you can you can cast this for four mana, none of it green. You can spend white, black, blue, red, and you would get a four-four, and then you'd have that converge, and of course you have a bunch of different colors of mana, so your creatures will be entering with whatever number of colors you can spend on them counters. This card would still count as green. It is just green as color identity because of tubrid, but you could really make use of this in a four-color non-green deck. So it's this really kind of five-ish color card that plays in a monocolor deck. It seems to be the most efficient, probably the most at home in a three-color deck. One thing about once you get into four and five-color decks, often you're playing games of attrition, you're doing less casting creatures at attack and block. But in a John or a Naya kind of shell, even in a Bant shell, Bant has so many value creatures. It's not uncommon for Bant to be a blink kind of archetype. You can play these small creatures, but then if you control wild growth archaic, them entering with one or more plus one plus one counters suddenly turns into really real threats when it comes to combat. So a really cool implementation here. I like the Converge. There's not a lot of Converge cards in Secrets of Strixhaven, but these two designs I think are both strong and appealing, really cool mechanical texture to them, and they are cards that I do think will play in a pretty wide range of cubes. The main theme of Secrets of Strixhaven is, of course, that instance and sorceries matter. Each of the five two-color enemy schools of magic have their own ability word dealing with this, but this also does spread into colorless. There's a couple colorless cards I want to talk about before jumping into those school-based ability words. The first is the Dawning Archaic, actually number one in the card file. This is a 10 mana 7-7 legendary creature avatar, costs one less to cast for each instance and sorcery card in your graveyard, has reach, and whenever the dawning archaic attacks, you may cast, target, instant, or sorcery card from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that spell we put into your graveyard, exile it instead. So this is the kind of card where in most environments this is a little bit blue, red kind of coded, as those are the kind of the highest density instance and sorcery colors, but by virtue of being colorless, it can go into any deck. You can even just ramp this out with a bunch of lands that tap for a bunch of colorless mana. You can power this out with the grim monolith, whatever you want to do. I think mostly cards like Thought Scour or even just other cantrips, things that fill the graveyard quickly with instants and sorceries are going to make this card cheaper. As you get into the mid-game, it's not difficult to imagine casting the Dawning Archaic for five or six mana. Then you have a 7-7 with Reach that can allow you to cast spells for free from your graveyard. This is a pretty high power card. This is one that I wouldn't say the scales all the way to Vintage Cube. By virtue of being colorless, it's kind of easier to slot there, but Vintage Cube tends to have a lot of artifacts, matter stuff, and stronger stuff to cheat out than this. So this more falls into just generically strong. You'll know if your environment wants this card of card, I think. Playing in the graveyard, caring about spells, and having an appetite for giant creatures that can come down at a discount. The more you're explicitly cheating, the more you're casting in Tomb Reanimate, the less you're going to be into this. The more you are trying to just incentivize something that has just generic scaling, casting a bunch of cheap instants and sorceries and then getting to cast a pretty nice card for it without any massive payoff. This is just a creature that attacks and blocks after all. It's one that I don't have slotted anywhere, but I do see the appeal. It it's it's it's like a uh Telerian Terror, except much larger, and it generates value when it attacks. So it's one that I do expect to appeal to a number of cube designers. It just doesn't really fit any of my personal designs. And the other colorless card I want to talk about is because of the new artifact type. Artifacts can be books now, as evidenced by this one new book. Uh there's no cards in Secrets of Strixhaven that call out books in any way. Uh it's been mentioned apparently some older cards are going to be eroded to be books. It remains to be seen what the future of books are in magic, but for now we have one book card that is Diary of Dreams, a two-mana artifact book. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, put a page counter on this artifact. For five, you can tap it to draw a card. This ability costs one less to activate for each page counter on this artifact. So a turn over turn, one-sided howling mine, if you have the mana to get it going, in a deck full of instants and sorceries, you can make that ability go all the way down to zero mana. Just tap draw a card over time. This is the kind of card that I think is a really powerful payoff in a retail limited kind of environment. If you have something like a peasant cube, if you have an instant and sorcery theme going on there, as you reduce the cost of drawing extra cards, you almost run more the risk of drawing every card in your deck and not being able to win for that reason, more than this card not being strong enough. I think that this very much plays in the right environment. Once you're at a power level where you have access to things like planeswalkers and other turnover turn value, you have a lot of modern creatures that just come at really effective rates to end games. Cards like Diary of Dreams become less appealing, but I have played a lot of environments where I would happily pick a card like this very highly. I'm sure that there are a lot of cube designers who are excited for Diary of Dreams. And now moving into the five schools of magic. So every school of magic in Secrets of Strixhaven has a keyword or an ability word. They all care about instance and sorceries in some capacity. The red white payer, Lorehold, actually just uses a returning ability in flashback, which is kind of evergreen now, but it's less common to see it in white, so you don't see a ton of Bullrows flashback stuff. And then this does also kind of go into a space of just cards that care about cards leaving your graveyard, which flashing back a spell will trigger. There's no real standouts as far as red-white flashback spells that I see a lot of reason to focus on. There's some cards I like, but I mean flashback is something we've seen before. I guess the flashback card that I would most want to talk about is dual tactics, a one red mana sorcery. Dual tactics deals one damage to target creature, it can't block this turn, flashes back for one and a red. This is not on the level of cards like Firebolt, Lava Dart. It is a card that's going to go into multiple of my cubes because I do play in a lot of space where prowess is a thing that I like playing with. The tempo tube has a lot of one-toughness things, and so this will kill cards like Mother of Runes, and then it also really plays against the Tarmagoyf and the Death Shadow in that environment. So it really plays in some cubes that I like, that I personally curate, though dual tactics is not breaking the mold in the world of lightning bolts, lava darts, whatever. So that are a ton of reason to talk about dual tactics, and that's one of the stronger flashback spells in the Secrets of Strixhaven. But as far as leaving the graveyard, there is a pretty cool one from the commander decks I want to talk about. Which is Quintorious History Chaser, two red white for a five loyalty legendary planeswalker Quintorious. It has a static ability. Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, create a three, two, red, and white spirit creature token. It has a plus one, you may discard a card. If you do, draw two cards, then mill a card, and it has a minus four, which says spirits you control gain double strike and vigilance until end of turn. Also, Quintorious History Chaser can be your commander. So if you're in the commander cube, this can be a direction to take your Boros decks or lore hold decks, excuse me. This is a high loyalty format of Planeswalker. It doesn't impact the battlefield in and of itself in any meaningful way. That plus one, it's some good card selection. That milling a card that also can matter as far as flashing back, escaping cards. And this is a card that's gonna fill up your graveyard. It has high loyalty, so it'll stick around, but you really need to have other cards that are triggering that static ability. Stuff like Faithless Looting, things with flashback, things with escape. I think that Quintorious is maybe a little bit low on the power scale to play in the same cube as something like flage. You know, I say escape, that's maybe the card that comes to mind. That's like a card that is too strong for almost any non-vintage cube, and it's very repetitive play pair, and it's not very fun. But just anything with flashback, anything that exiles a card from your graveyard, maybe you have stuff that does that as a cost. If I have a death right shaman, it's pretty cool to be activating that with Contorious and like discarding and milling to fill my graveyard. There's a lot of things that can trigger Contorious, and it's cool to have a red-white card that plays so explicitly in the graveyard space. It is one of the more troubled colored paired for Spooky Cube. I haven't necessarily figured any red-white cards from Secrets of Squareshaven or the Commander deck that I am fully planning on putting in Spooky Cube, but Contorious History Chaser is one that really grabs my attention, and it's one that I would definitely be happy to see on some cubes. A static ability that makes creatures that there's all kinds of different ways to trigger. This is a cool build around. It's a card that I think plays really well in Cube, and as a planeswalker that requires you to build a deck around it. These abilities are good. I mean the plus one is good, the minus four is reliant on you doing the other things you need to do to make the static ability work, but it's a really cool static ability to have a planes on a planeswalker, and it's cool to have a red-white card that cares so much about the graveyard. So Quintorious History Chaser is a standout from the commander decks, and a standout for red-white in this full release when it comes to both cards that care about instants and sorceries and cards that care about the graveyard, which is the big theme for the commander deck there. Moving on to the black-white ability word, the silver quill get an ability called Reparte, which does something whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets a creature. There's some really strong standouts here. There's two cards I really want to highlight. The first is informed Inkright. This is a white creature for one and a white, a 2-2 human wizard with vigilance. Its reparte ability is whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets a creature, create a 1-1 white and black inkling creature token with flying. So this is kind of the white young pyromancer. It cares about instants and sorceries. The caveat being they have to be targeting creatures. You get an extra toughness, you get vigilance, but you do have to be targeting creatures. But the tokens you generate do fly, and that is quite meaningful. Also, if you're playing a singleton cube, you only get one young pyromancer. Informed Ink Rite really makes me think of modern pyromancer, kind of an old fan favorite Mardu deck that Jerry Thompson once made the finals of the Pro Tour with. And if you want White to be in this pyromancer kind of space, having this card that can make some tokens when you cast your removal spells, you can also trigger this by casting Ephemerate and Protection Spells. Anything that targets a creature with an instant or sorcery is gonna give you a 1-1 flyer with informed Inkright. Uh White kind of has this Jack of All Trades aspect to its slice of the color pie, where it's not going to be the best color, for instance, in sorcery's matter. It is harder to trigger repartee than it is to trigger prowess. It is harder to trigger informed Inkright than it is to trigger young Pyromancer. Serum Visions isn't gonna play here. Ponder Priordain, they're not gonna play. Gataxium Probe, not gonna play. But your lightning bolts, your swords to plowshares, you're going to get tokens for casting those spells. And a 2 mana 2-2 vigilant, this body can get in the way of 1-1 tokens. So informed Ink Rite, kind of in aggregate, weaker than Young Pyromancer, but plays in a lot of the same environments. This is one that I am very excited to slot informed Inkright into the Tempo Tubert, for example. And there are some other cheap creatures in that space with meaningful scaling reparte abilities, but the other big card I want to highlight is Conciliator's Duelist. This card is hard to cast. It costs white, white, black, black, so very restrictive for a four-drop, the full four pips there. It's a 4-3 core warlock. Whenever this creature enters, you draw a card, each player loses one life. And the reparte ability here, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets a creature, exile up to one target creature. Return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step. So Conciliator's Duelist, it enters as a 4-3, you draw a card, each player loses a life. That's going to accelerate the game towards its conclusion every time this enters, both because you're drawing cards, which gives you some velocity towards executing your game plan, and both players literally lose a life. So it becomes more difficult to execute on this one if you're behind. But at 4 mana, if your mana is working, which is tough with this restrictive casting cost, I want to be clear about that. But this card is powerful, it will impact the game. And this card's reparte ability plays pretty differently from the other reparte cards. You are going to get triggers that matter when you fire off your removal spells, your protection spells will save your creatures, but the big thing that this does, it makes it so let's say your opponent has no creatures. Suddenly, your only way to trigger repartee is targeting your own creatures. Well, this ability triggers when you cast them. So if I cast conciliator's duelist and I have a white mana up, and you try to kill the duelist with whatever, a sweeper, a removal spell, if I cast Swords to Plow Shears on my Conciliator's Duelist, Duelist, that's going to trigger it, which will allow me to exile the duelist. It doesn't say one other, it's up to one target creature. So the duelist can just exile itself and then it comes back at the beginning of the next end step. So it does dodge sweepers. So this is a card that allows you to get more mileage out of spot removal spells. It plays with the removal with the protection spells the way any other reparte card does, but this is a really serious build around that can allow you to draw extra cards, that can move the game towards a conclusion by making players lose life, and just is really resilient as far as threats go. This seems like a really powerful card for a blink style deck, and just kind of a standalone build around. This is the kind of card that's really gonna grab my attention. It's going to stand out when I see it in a booster pack. I'm going to be excited to try to build my deck around Conciliator's Duelist, and I'll be able to do it with a lot of just classically playable cards. Path to Exile is going to go into my Conciliator's Duelist deck. It's going to play with Ephemerate, and it's going to synergize with the same cards that Ephemerate synergizes with. I can put this in just kind of a remove fleet deck, maybe something in that Mardu Pyromancer kind of space. I can put it in a blink deck. I can just cast this because it's a format of card with a decent body that draws a card. And that reperte that repertay ability is going to come up and matter sometimes. Conciliator's Duelist, it's hard to cast, very restrictive casting cost, but as far as an appealing Orzov card that lets me build around a card and do something really unique and powerful, I don't see this as a vintage cube caliber card, but at lower power levels, I think I would say medium high power levels. At a very low power level, this seems like a card card that's like impossible to beat. If we're playing a low power level cube, this does seem out of bounds. This is a strong card, not a broken card, but it's the kind of card if you have a high synergy environment where you're trying to make cards stronger than some of their parts. This is maybe a little bit strong, but the restrictive casting cost does limit its power level some, because you do have to be able to cast it reliably and leave up the spells you want to cast on top of that. But I do like Conciliator's Duelist for a high power synergy driven environment. Very cool cube card. Moving on to blue and red, the prismarity get an ability word called Opus, which honestly is mostly just weaker prowess. It does make a little bit of sense to give blue and red a less flashy ability when you're trying to make every other color care about instants and sorceries in kind of a compelling way. If you just give blue red the strongest thing, because they always are kind of the best at doing this, it can take the shine off of the other colors. Uh opus is just an ability that does something when you cast an instant or a sorcery, and it does more of that thing if you spent five or more mana on that instant or sorcery spell. There's really only one card that I'm gonna highlight here. This is Molten Core Maestro, one and a red for a 2-2 goblin bard with menace. The opus ability is whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you put a plus one plus one counter on your molten core maestro, and then if five or more mana was spent to cast that spell, add an amount of red equal to this creature's power. So this is kind of prowessy, except it's not gonna trigger off of your artifacts, enchantments is not gonna trigger off of your Mishra's bobble, for example. So there's gonna be some cards you would naturally put in a cube that cares about prowess that will not trigger your molten core maestro. Doesn't have haste like your Slit Shot Show-off does, but it can do some cool stuff. You're trying to do like a big mana thing, if you are trying to cast five plus mana instants and sorceries. Molten Core Maestro seems like it could be a good fit for something like Live the Dream Cube. Even though texturally this does a lot of what I'm doing in the Tempo Tubert, I don't really care about a 2-2 without haste. I'm never gonna be casting five mana instants and sorceries in that environment. So Molten Core Maestro, it just doesn't appeal as much to me as the other red twos in the Tempo Tubert. This is a card that I don't really personally intend to play with. It is the standout among Opus cards to me. But for the most part, for my money, the other colors are really what are doing more that matters more, that breaks the mold for instance and sorceries mattering when it comes to Secrets of Strixhaven. The blue and red cards, uh, there's there's not as much there for me this go-round. At least when it comes to the Opus keyword. Moving on to blue and green, the Quandrix get an ability called Increment. Increment meaningfully cares about any spell. This is not just instance and sorceries, this is going to care about any spell that you cast. So your creatures, whatever, they're going to increment, they're going to trigger your increment abilities, which say whenever you cast a spell, if the amount of mana spent to cast it is greater than the creature with an increment abilities power or toughness, you put a plus one plus one counter on that creature, and then they tend to do something that cares about being larger for whatever reason. So this is all creatures with increment abilities. The first one I want to talk about is Pensive Professor, one blue blue for a 0-2 human wizard. It has increments. As you cast spells, if they cost more mana than the professor's power or toughness, it's going to get plus one plus one counters. It starts at zero power, so most spells are going to grow it initially. And then whenever one or more plus one plus one counters are put on this creature, draw a card. So very fragile, 3 mana 02. This is going to be the kind of thing where if you have a lot of velocity in your deck, some cantrips, you know, a ponderer pre-ordained to get you going, and for the first couple times you cast a spell, you're going to be growing the professor, you're going to be drawing cards. This really is just the kind of card that is a little bit slow going, only cares about you playing magic, doesn't really ask much of you because it's whenever you cast a spell. So this card is not super thematic, it's not super powerful, but it gets large and it draws extra cards, so it's certainly one to take note of in Cube. Next up is a card that's getting a good amount of buzz. That is Ambitious Augmenter, one green mana for a 1-1 Turtle Wizard with increment. And whenever this creature dies, if it had one or more counters on it, create a 0-0 green and blue fractal creature token, then put this creature's counters on that token. So Ambitious Augmenter is a 1-1 with increment. It's going to get plus 1 plus 1 counters when you cast a spell with the mana value, first greater than 1-1, and then 2-2-3-3, etc. And when it dies, you make a creature that is one smaller than it because you'll make a 0-0 and put the counters on it. So you lose that base 1-1, but it does replace itself, assuming that you have resolved any increment plus one plus one counters or put counters on the card in any other way before it dies. So this is kind of like a scalable young wolf. The token it makes it smaller, but over time, presumably the ambitious augmenter is going to grow. This is one I do intend to try in the tempo tubert. Pretty common you'll be able to cast a two and a three mana spell, so your creature is going to get larger, the ability to replace itself is going to matter definitely in any kind of attrition game or damage race, which is what that cube is all about. I am somewhat hesitant to say this card's going to have a massive impact on Cube, because it's just kind of hard to imagine in a lot of environments being happier casting ambitious augmenter than something like Birds of Paradise, something like Land of War Elves, something like Noble Hierarch. Green is just so much better at accelerating mana and casting bigger spells than it is as at curving out and playing aggressive games. It takes kind of a specific cube environment to really push the green aggressive decks to be powerful. And creatures that attack and block, that's where a lot of the strength of newer cards have been coming in. So if you have a lot of high power, just two and three mana aggressive creatures, ambitious augmenter can be part of the puzzle with those decks. Though if you are looking at the strongest cards in those categories that they print recently, you don't really need a one-drop that only attacks and blocks to supplement them. You know, if you're talking about cards like broadside bombardiers, you don't really care about whether or not you have an ambitious augmenter to start things off. Admittedly, it's nice to have a creature to sacrifice it or replace itself, but it is replaceable in your deck list beyond that. So this is one that I think is for green beatdown decks, maybe at somewhat of a lower power level, somewhat of more of an aggressive environment. Certainly somewhere where green is slotted as a more aggressive color, and of course, counters themes are going to play well with Ambitious Augmenter and really any of these other increment cards, the ability to put counters on them outside of their own increment ability when they have these separate clauses that do something with counters. So Ambitious Augmenter under Bristly Bill. That's something I'm looking forward to doing in the Tempo Tubert, a safe place where you can put counters where you'll get something back when the Augmenter dies. So it's not a card that I think is going to make that huge a waves, but it is notable in the green beatdown department. So Ambitious Augmenter, I like it well enough, but I don't intend to queue with it a ton. Specifically the tempo tubert for this one for me. The next one I want to talk about is a little bit more specific. This is like a big mana kind of thing. If you're willing to spend three mana to get going, this next card can really be a huge mana generator for you. And that is Topiary Lecturer, two and a green for a one-two elf druid. It has increment, so you're gonna grow it as you cast spells that cost more mana than one or two. So many spells will be growing the lecturer, putting plus one plus one counters on it, and then it add it has a tap ability to add an amount of green equal to this creature's power. So the lecturer immediately is a three mana one-two, it can tap for a green. If you cast a two mana spell, you put a plus one plus one counter on it. Now it taps for two green mana and it just kind of scales that way. So even if you're just curving three to five or just three to four, you know, the three mana one, two, it will accelerate you in mana. If you make your land drop, you can cast a five drop the next turn. Any small spell will scale it. I think uh a bigger impact of the lecturer will be casting a two and a three of the following turns. So you get two plus one plus one counters on it immediately, and then suddenly you're untapping with a creature that can tap for three mana. So it scales very quickly, taps for a ton of mana. This is another live the dream cube style card. If you have mana curves or activated abilities that cost mana that go very high, if you can make a lot of use of a lot of mana, if you have a lot of mana sinks in your cube, the lecturer can be a slow starting, you know, three mana one, two, but a big payoff as far as mana accelerating. So Topiary Lecturer, it's not going in any of my cubes, but it does stand out among big mana accelerants. And the last increment card I want to talk about is Cubeid Colony. Love the name, and the art is delightful. It's a big cube of bees. It's blue-green for a 1-1 instect with flash flying and trample. It has increments, so as you cast spells, if they cost more than its starting 1-1 power and toughness, it's going to grow. Play this on turn two, play a 2-2 mana or a 3-mana spell next turn, it starts growing, and it's just this ever-growing colony of bees that can fly and trample over. Not much to speak of as far as a flash blocker, but it does play as a flash thread. If you leave up counter spells, other interaction, you can flash in the cuboid colony, it can start growing very quickly. Most spells are going to put plus one plus one counters, at least the first plus one plus one counter for two or more mana spells going to be a really easy ask for the cuboid colony. I don't have it slotted anywhere, but this is just a really cool card. This art, I think, is going to be pretty iconic in the cube space. I imagine a lot of people are going to like this card for that reason alone, and I like it at least for that reason. So I do enjoy Cuboid Colony, even if I don't currently intend to play with it anywhere. And then Green and Black, the Witherbloom have an ability called Infusion, which is just a text box where the card does more or it matters if you gained life this turn with the infusion abilities. So not really an instant of sorcery matters thing at all. Some of the card designs would put you in a space to cast spells or the R spells with infusion abilities, whereas the blue-green ability increment was only on creatures. This one can play maybe a little bit more in a spell space, but I am going to talk about first a creature that plays more in a sacrifice space. That is really what the Witherbloom Commander deck does. This is from the main set, but a lot of sacrifice stuff here. So it is not just all instants and sorceries all this time all the time. There's some other things going on here. Some life gain matters and some sacrifice payoff cards. The big one in the main set is going to be Mosio Vane's new dean. Two in a black for a 2-1 legendary bird skeleton warlock with flying. When Mosio enters, you create a 1-1 black and green pest creature token. With whenever this token attacks, you gain one life. Meaningfully, this pest is different from Strixhaven's original pests. Those were a death trigger. This is an attack trigger. So when you attack with that pest, you gain a life. That's gonna matter for this infusion ability, which says at the beginning of your end step, if you gained life this turn, return up to one target creature card with mana value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, where X is the amount of life you gain this turn. So if you have Mosio, you attack with that pest, you gain one life. Now with the end step, you can return a creature with mana value one or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. So Mosio is going to play in a sacrifice deck, and very meaningfully, this is going to synergize with blood artist type cards. Stuff that gains you a life when a creature you control dies. And the thing about attacking with that pest, it gains you a life. If your opponent is inclined to block it and you have a blood artist, it's gonna die, it's gonna trigger the blood artist. Now you've gained two life. Now you got yourself a stew going. You can return a creature with mana value two or less from your beverage of the battlefield. So this is going to scale with your life gain effects, with your sacrifice outlets, with your token makers that all kind of combine in a way where you're going to get a lot of resurrection, a lot of death triggers with Mocio Vain's New Dean. That pest contributes by gaining you one life when it attacks. The pest is going to be easy to block away, but mostly Mosio is going to synergize a lot with the kind of cards you would naturally want to put in a sacrifice deck anyway. So Mocio Vein's New Dean, a nice new tool for sacrifice decks. And the other infusion card I want to talk about is maybe a little bit more in the spells matter space. Withering curse, one black black for a sorcery, all creatures get minus two, minus two until end of turn, and then the infusion ability says, if you gained life this turn, destroy all creatures instead. So you have an Infest, just the exact rate, three mana, all creatures get minus two, minus two, something we've seen a lot of in the course of Magic's history, but if you have some way to gain life first, this does just become a destroy all creatures, a three mana full sweeper. And this is a kind of card that can play in a sacrifice deck. You have a number of ways to gain some life with creatures dying, sacrificing whatever, and destroying all creatures can be a way to get you a ton of triggers on your blood artist effects, and very commonly sacrifice decks will have some recursive elements to rebuild their battlefield as well, if you are not outright winning the game with uh blood artist effects. Withering Curse can just also play, like if you have something like tapped lands that gain a life, and you just play Withering Curse in a cube that has those as one of your land cycles, there's a lot of ways to turn this into a three mana sweeper. You can really make life gain matter in a way that's not just life total higher, opponent must do more work. This is a cool way to make it so caring about life gain can just give you more impact in games of attrition that can make your control decks do more. And this is this has a baseline of three mana in fest. So withering curse is a pretty appealing cube card. Not going in any of my cubes, but I fully understand a wide range of reasons why you might want to do cube with Withering Curse. And that's going to bring us to the biggest new mechanic from Secrets of Strixhaven. This is creatures with prepared spells. So this is something that's kind of in the space of adventure. These are cards that are inherently two or more for ones. Some of them immediately have the ability to cast some spell, others you have to jump through some hoops, some of them allow you to cast a spell multiple times. As a baseline, what creatures with prepared spells are? They are creatures that either start prepared, which is something with a rules text. If a creature is prepared, you can then cast their prepared spell, which will be on the card. Uh, you c you cast a copy of the prepared spell. So notably, you are casting a spell when you cast a prepared spell. And then creatures will either start prepared or have some condition by which they become prepared. If they are prepared, you can cast their prepared spell, and then they become unprepared. And then the either will have some way you can reset that. Maybe you have to blink them with some external offense. Some of them are by themselves just one-shots, but some of them can just kind of keep casting that prepared spell by some means. I'm not going to be talking about every creature with a prepared spell today, but I'm going to be talking about a lot of them because this mechanic is powerful. It is a big deal. It is largely a question of rate, similar to adventure, where the best rates were very strong. Some of the cards are unremarkable, but I'm going to be talking about some of the stronger ones and certainly some of the flashier ones. But let's actually look at a card to better understand the mechanic and then start talking about some of these individual cards and where they might fit into the world of Cube. Starting with Emeritus of Truce, one white white for a 3-3 cat cleric. When this creature enters, target player creates a 1-1 white and black Inkling creature token with flying. Then, if an opponent controls more creatures than you, this creature becomes prepared. So not inherently prepared, but it will become prepared if your opponent controls more creatures than you. Maybe you give them that 1-1 token to swing the balance, so you get access to this creature's prepared spell, which is Swords to Plowshares. You know it, you love it. One white mana instant. Exile target creature, its controller gains life equal to its power. Literally, just swords to plow shares. Meaningfully, when you cast that spell, you are casting it. That's going to trigger your prowess abilities, whatever cares about casting instants and sorceries, because you are casting the copy. If you just copy a spell, it doesn't trigger prowess, doesn't add to storm count. But my understanding, because this rules text here says you cast a copy of the spell, you are casting a spell. That makes these pretty powerful as synergy pieces for a lot of potential packages. As far as Emeritus of Truce, 3 mana 3-3, this is fine. Sometimes you give your opponent the flyer because you have to give them the extra creature so that you actually become prepared, so you can cast the Swords of Plowstairs on their stronger creature. I don't see that being very strong in 2026 magic. This is the kind of card where there's a part of me that's interested in this for the original SP Tube, but ultimately I just think that the rate is not really there unless you're behind, which is maybe fine if you're already ahead on the battlefield. This card doesn't have to be strong because you are just winning, but games in that cube can really escalate quickly. There's a lot of really high impact, four, five, six mana spells, which, you know, I'm maybe talking myself into it, it can matter there. The big thing that Emeritus of Truce does that I like is this is a card that is powerful or it does its thing best when you are behind. If you are able to make the 3-3 give yourself the 1-1 flyer, and it still becomes prepared if your opponent just outnumbers you by more than two creatures, and then you get to Source of Plowshares their best thing, and the 3-3 and maybe the 1-1 both better in combat, then this is a really strong catch-up card. It's not the kind of thing that you're almost ever going to be casting on turn three. You want to be able to cast the Source of Plow Shares right away. You want to try to leverage it in a way where the creature does come prepared, which is uh conditional on your opponent controlling more creatures than you. So it's not really a 3 mana spell in the sense that you will want to just cast it on turn 3, but you can. And it's 4-4 worth of stats if you do just do it. I think I convinced myself I like this card a lot, actually. Yeah, I think I gotta pick up an emeritus of trues for the original recipe too, Bert. I think this card is quite appealing for mid-range, medium, high-ish power environments. I think that it's not going to be the best thing you could be doing in a vintage cube, but I wouldn't be surprised if you can play okay there. Really, this is just a great example of a card that is powerful when you're behind and can swing the balance pretty meaningfully in your direction. And there's a lot of cards that they'll put in white that do something if your opponent has more creatures, more lands, draws more cards than you, but they're only playing at all when your opponent is just doing something really strong, and you have this card that is conditional, not very strong. Emeritus of truce is actually a pretty solid rate that is really strong in a game about creatures when you fall behind in the creature race. So I I like this implementation here. Emeritus of Truce, really cool, pretty powerful catch up card. I I have convinced myself I like Emeritus of Truth a lot. Which brings us to a card which is not for me, more firmly not for me, Emeritus of Ideation. 3 blue blue, 5 5 human wizard with flying, and ward 2. This creature enters for. Just automatically. Whenever this creature attacks, you may exile eight cards from your graveyard. If you do, this creature becomes repaired, so you can re-prepare it after casting its prepared spell, which is ancestral recall. One blue mana instant target player draws three cards. And when it comes to this card, this is something that's going to beat you over the head in any low power environment. It is such a non-starter to give a player a five mana five-five flying ward 2 that can cast at least one ancestral recall. If you expect the game is normally supposed to go over many more turns, this just ends the game too quickly. It's body, it's just too large and evasive. It has ward 2, so it's hard to kill. And drawing 3 cards for 1 mana is so strong. If you're worried your opponent can kill it, you wait till you have access to 6 mana, 3 of which blue, so you get to ancestral right away, and you still have a 5-5 flyer with ward 2 that threatens to ancestral recall again. If we're in Vintage Cube, you can just like cast ancestral recall. I was trying to put together how I feel about this and similar cards, and what I landed on, the way I like to describe it, is that this card is too strong to be this weak. Like, this is not going to break the mold in Vintage Cube. There is such a long roster of busted blue cards. If you want to make the game a little bit more about creatures, a meritus of ideation technically does that, but even then, it is still mostly about casting ancestral recalls. It will close the game by attacking, but it'll also close the game by overwhelming your opponent with cards. This is the kind of card, if you put it in the original SP tube bird, it's just game over every time it shows up. You could put it in a legacy cube, I guess. Like it is cool that it shouts out Ancestral Recall. That aspect becomes less cool if you're playing a literal powered cube, because again, you can just cast real ancestral recall. Likely to show up in standard in some capacity. I don't know about any other constructed format, because uh that five mana, that's that's a really high bar. Like it's too expensive to cast in a lot of constructed contexts, and standard you can get up to five mana, certainly with your badger mole cub decks, but then you get into pioneer, definitely to get into modern, like five, you need to be able to alternate cast it in some capacity. And if you're already cheating creatures into play, you want more than five mana's worth. But I guess repeatable ancestral recalls, like, I don't know, I'll take a trax over this, but this card does something that's pretty bonkers. But I don't know. Ultimately, for me, this is just a weird power level where it's asking to be in Vintage Cube, but then it's replaceable in Vintage Cube. So I won't be thrilled to see Emeritus of Ideation in any non-vintage cube, and I'll play with it in some of my Vintage Cube decks, but for me, this is kind of a card that's at a weird power level that makes it hard for it to find an appropriate home. So I'm not a huge fan of Emeritus of Ideation, but I will say it's a it's aesthetically loud in a way that I do understand the appeal there, and this is gonna be a hell of a commander card. And now for a much more lovable card, we're gonna go to Skycoach Conductor, two in a blue for a 2-3 bird pilot with flash, flying, and vigilance. And this creature enters prepared, and the prepared spell is all aboard, a one blue instant that says exile target non-pilot creature control, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. So Skycoach Conductor is essentially the blue restoration angel. Meaningfully, it's a pilot, so all aboard cannot be used to blink your Skycoach Conductor. You don't just get free spells as many times as you can cast them. But if you have a blink type of archetype in your cube, the Skycoach Conductor plays in a couple ways. 3 mana, 2-3, flash, flying vigilance, these are really real stats, but you get the all aboard as a blink effect there, so it does add a blink effect to your cube. So Skycoach Conductor fits really seamlessly into any kind of blink shell, and just a pretty good rate, just a solid creature for any kind of mid-range environment. Certainly one I'm gonna think about for the original recipe tubert. Next up is Grave Researcher, a 2 black 3-3 troll warlock that says at the beginning of your upkeep, surveil one. Then if there are three or more creature cards in your graveyard, this creature comes prepared, so it doesn't start prepared, but it gives you some card selection surveilling every turn, and then once there are three or more creature cards in your graveyard, Graves Researcher can become prepared every turn at your upkeep, and its prepared spell is reanimate. One black mana sorcery, put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control, you lose life equal to that card's mana value. So this is not classically busted and explosive in the reanimator shell where you're trying to cast in tomb and reanimate and get something on the battlefield as early as turn one or two, but Grave Researcher plays really effectively as a value plan, and this is one that's at that power level where I do think it's really pushing towards vintage cube. This is one that I think does slot into the powered cube level reanimator deck, largely because you need to be doing something in the games where you are not turn one in tomb reanimate. Grave Researcher gives you a creature that just plays 3 mana 3-3, so decent stats for attacking and blocking. Surveilling every turn gives you some card selection, and there's going to be games where getting multiple reanimates off can be very powerful. A lot of the creatures that you bring back with the reanimate effect could be something that gains life. Especially in a game, maybe reanimate something like a solitude just to stay into the game, and then the lifelink allows you to get some more life as you surveil and try to find some bigger threats. Really is going to play well in a mid-rangey kind of deck. I think if you get into lower power levels, especially if there's a lot of life gain, especially if there's not great aggressive decks, the easier it is to reanimate multiple times, the more easily you can pay the life, the more busted Grave Researcher is going to be. The rate here is just really strong. You know, it's not on the level of actual reanimate as far as putting Gristlebrand and Atraxa on the battlefield, but that is one of the concerns that I would have when it comes to approaching creatures with prepared spells for mini cube environments. These cards can do the same thing multiple times, and some of these things are so strong that they will easily take over games, and it'll just be kind of the writing will be on the wall, it'll be pretty loud what's happening, a player can feel powerless, the player controlling the grave researcher could be totally in control of a game. So you want to be careful with this one at lower power levels. This is one I'm gonna look at for spooky cube, but I am somewhat concerned that even in that cube where there's not giant creatures to reanimate, I do think that grave researcher might be too much in a cube full of sacrifice outlets and butt artists. It might be a little bit too repetitive, it might be a little bit too easy to close games and set up big turns and play over the course of multiple turns, knowing you're going to have access to a reanimate every turn while shaping your graveyard in a graveyard centric environment. So Grave Researcher I think is at a more reasonable power level than the Ancestral Recall casting prepared creature, but reanimating every turn is something you want to be careful with. Grave Researcher is maybe not the strongest card when it comes to powered cube reanimated decks, but it is a card that I think is strong enough to fit into those decks and those highest power environments, and is one that I would approach with caution for any lower power environment. Next up is Maelstrom Artisan, one red red for a 3-2 minotaur sorcerer with haste. This creature enters prepared, and the prepared spell is rocket volley, one and a red for a sorcery, destroy target non-basic land. So you have to have an appetite for some land destruction to play with this card. I really like that just on ray tier, 3 mana, 3-2 haste, good body to get busy attacking with, love a little land destruction in the right context. This is the kind of card where I think that rocket volley is a little bit too weak to really put this card over in like a powered cube, but in a legacy cube environment, especially if you're trying to make certain non-basic lands matter, if you have like a field of the dead deck, it's good to make it so like the red decks both can race those kind of decks, and a little bit of land destruction so you have an answer to them. And notably, you're going to want to play your maelstrom artisan on turn three. So the deck that's trying to control some strong non-basic lands, or if you are just destroying a non-basic land in just a mid-range or it's a normal, a fair deck, that deck's gonna have a turn to answer the maelstrom artisan. And if it's showing up and destroying a land on turn five, that's pretty modest. I mean, honestly, like I'm into the idea of sealing song out maelstrom artisan to cast it and destroy the non-basic land on turn three. And this is the kind of thing where I do think Maelstrom Artisan is exactly the kind of thing that I want to play with in like a modern or legacy cube level power level. A little bit of land destruction is something I like now and again. It's an acquired taste. I have moved fully off of this kind of thing in the original recipe tubert. I mostly want players to be able to cast our spells, but the stronger those spells are, the more I want people to be on notice, the more I'm interested in making it so your lands aren't necessarily safe. And it's just, it's dope. Destroying a land feels awesome, and it's something you don't get to do too much in modern magic. So Maelstrom Artisan is a card that really does it for me, even though it's currently not going into any of my cubes. That brings us to Emeritus of Abundance, two and a green for a 3-4 elf druid with vigilance. This creature enters prepared, and whenever this creature attacks, if you control eight or more lands, this creature becomes prepared. So automatically when it enters, you'll have access to the prepared spell regrowth, one and a green sorcery, return target card from your graveyard to your hand. Regrowth is a card that has been welcome in high-powered cube environments now and again over the years. It's a card that was once restricted and vintage constructed, and that's really where I want to look at emeritus of abundance. I think that this card can play fine in lower-powered environments, but it's really cool, I think, the way that this can play in a vintage cube. Because if you get up to eight lands, then this is just another way to loop infinite time walks, time warps. Use regrowth, get your extra turn effect, cast it, attack when you control eight or more lands, emeritus of abundance becomes prepared again. This is just a self-contained way to get infinite turns with a time walk or a time warp style effect. All of that stapled on to a 3 mana 3-4 with vigilance, a really good body on rate. This is the kind of thing I wouldn't want to put this in a cube where I'm really concerned about a creature having repetitive play patterns, really similar to getting reanimate every turn or every couple of turns. Emeritus Abundance can just make it so the game is about one thing, the extreme example being literally taking all of the turns and winning the game without ever giving your opponent another turn. So I don't think it's at a power level where this is like vintage cube only, but you want to be mindful that Emeritus of Abundance naturally lends itself to a play pattern where you one player, the player who is casting the Emeritus of Abundance, is going to be able to do the same thing turn over turn. If you give them a time walk, they're going to try to take all the turns. And then the vintage cube, that's welcome, that's encouraged. I want you to do something busted. I like time vault, so I'm very happy to see Emeritus of Abundance in something like a vintage cube. And this is the kind of card where I probably wouldn't mess with it in anything less powerful than like a legacy cube, but I really like the idea of this card in those high power environments. It's a little bit fragile. You know, it's a 3-4 creature, it has to attack to get going, but you automatically get it prepared. It enters prepared, you automatically get that regrowth. So Emeritus of Abundance seems like an awesome cube card for high power environments. And that brings us to Vastlin's Scavenger, one green green for a 4-4 bear druid with death touch. We love a giant creature that also has death touch, and Vastel's scavenger enters prepared, and the prepared spell is bind to life. 4 and a green for an instant, mill seven cards, then put a creature from among them onto the battlefield. So this is kind of a cheaty creature, something you would put in like a through the breach sneak attack style deck, and then the rate for the creature here, 3 mana 4-4, also as death touch. These are just good stats. This card honestly bores me a little bit, because I think it's just like transparent. If you have this much stats and then you have an upside, this card is, of course, playable. Little bit of variance in the creature cheat department there. You can absolutely put this in any cube where you are trying to cheat giant creatures onto the battlefield, and by milling seven cards, that's a lot of looks to try to find a big creature, and you won't be too disappointed to have this giant blocker that is both larger than small creatures attacking you, and that death touch allows it to trade with many things attacking on the ground. And then of 3 mana 4-4, sometimes you'll just get busy and end the game attacking with the scavenger. This is just a really strong card on rate, though it's not necessarily the best at anything that it does. If you are just trying to be an aggressive deck, you'll want something maybe more focused with what's going on in your deck. You maybe don't want to play a double green card. And if you are trying to cheat creatures into play, a Vassal and the Scavenger is most certainly not the most powerful way to do that, but it kind of just does all these things. It's a card you can pretty easily justify putting into decks that can cast it, because the stats here are just so good. And that's some of what's going on with prepared. Some of these cards are just strong, similar to Adventure, where you get a creature, you get a spell, two great tastes that taste great together. As long as the cards are fine, you're happy to play these cards. I'm not planning on putting Vastel and the Scavenger into any of my cubes, but it's one that I would expect will show up in some of the digital powered cubes, just because on rate is a card you can just put in decks. So Vastel and the Scavenger, just kind of solid, something you can put somewhere, but it's a little less focused than what I prefer for my cube environments. And there's a number of other prepared creatures with varying power levels, varying reasons why you might want to cube with them, but there is just one more I want to talk about that does something very unique that will open up some specific space for cube design. So I want to talk about Luin Exchange Student. Two black green for a 3-4 legendary elf druid. Lewin enters prepared, and then you can exile a creature card from your graveyard to have Luin become prepared, activate only as a sorcery. The prepared spell here is pest friend, one green black hybrid mana for a sorcery, create a 1-1 black and green pest creature token with whenever this token attacks, you gain one life. Now, importantly, as I understand it, when a creature is already prepared, there's no reason it can't become prepared again. Prepare its entire attacks as well as prepared, you can cast a copy of the prepared spell. It won't necessarily do anything to prepare the creature again, but my understanding is that you will always be able to exile a creature card from your graveyard at sorcery speed, and if Luin's not repaired, Luin will become prepared, but you still can just activate that ability, even if Lewin is already prepared. So you can continuously exile creatures from your graveyard. That's going to trigger things like that Quintorious Plantswalker. That would be a four-color deck, but you can make a bunch of 3-2 spirits with these zero mana activations. The big thing this opens up, just more easy access in Golgari, something that I experimented with a little bit, but I couldn't quite make work on the cube I was using it with, is a card like Insidious Roots. That card makes a plant token and grows all your plants whenever a creature card leaves your graveyard. So with Luin, it's a sorcery speed activation, so when you activate it the first time, your opponent will have a window to interact with some removal. But if you pass that removal check, then you can just keep exiling all of the creature cards from your graveyard and trigger insidious roots a bunch of times, or anything that cares about a card leaving your graveyard. So Luin is a really effective way. You have this zero mana, just static ability to exile creatures to trigger other effects. Cool build around. As far as what the card does, it's not that exciting. Like it's a 4 mana 3-4, it makes more 1-1s. That's fine. You can choose for your graveyard. You really have to have these synergies to want to play with Luin, but it plays quite well in this space. If you have multiple things to synergize, and then it is just a huge payoff with Insidious Roots. So Lewin Exchange Student, it's not that strong in the space of just generic value prepared spell, but it does open up some specific synergies and things that I know other cube designers are likely trying or maybe working with. If you have an Insidious Roots deck, Lewin Exchange Student seems like the perfect card for that kind of archetype. And then there is one more new mechanic in Secrets of Strixhaven to go over. This is actually the five card cycle. Every color gets one of these. These are the only lessons in the set. Every lesson in Secrets of Strixhaven has the ability Paradigm, which is a riff on Saviors of Kamagawa's Epic, except you get to continue casting spells and otherwise playing the game after you resolve one of these. So if you're not familiar with Epic, what Paradigm is, when you resolve a spell with paradigm, you then exile the spell, and then you may cast a copy of it from exile without paying its mana cost at the beginning of each of your first main phases. So I'm going to go over all these. The white entry is restoration seminar, seven mana, sorcery lesson, return target non-land permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Then henceforth you're going to be casting another copy of this at the beginning of your first main phase. The blue entry, echoing, symb Echo Casting Symposium, 4 Blue, Blue, Sorcery Lesson, Target Player creates a token that's a copy of target creature you control, then it paradigms. Black is decorum dissertation, three black black sorcery lesson. Target player draws two cards and loses two life. Paradigm. The red entry improvisation capstone. Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile cards with total mana value four or greater. You may cast any number of spells from among them without paying their mana costs, and then paradigm. And finally, Germination Practicum. 3 Green Green Sorcery Lesson. Put 2 plus 1 plus 1 counters on each creature you control, and then it paradigm. So all these you will then cast at the beginning of your first main phase. Every turn, henceforth, you'll be casting a copy of these, assuming that the first spell resolves. So if I was concerned about prepared creatures leading to repetitive game patterns, that is all that paradigm spells do. You will be casting this card again every turn of the game. These are not necessarily as extreme as the epic cycle from Saviors, which all tried to end the game in their own way. These ones try to be a little bit smaller effects, like Germination Practicum is like kind of weaker overrun, but it's really gonna threaten to eventually end the game. These all are going to accelerate the game towards its conclusion. Restoration Seminar is really similar to some other 7 mana effects. Like 7 mana reanimate a creature every turn is something we've seen a few different iterations of. So Restoration Seminar is not breaking the mold in terms of what it does on its own. It is meaningful that these are lessons, which means if you want to play with some learned cards in your cube, you can have these in your sideboard, and then eventually you will just have access to them over the course of a game. If you want to use lessons in cube, this is a pretty cool way to have a big payoff, but again, you are going to look at a lot of games that will be ending in the same way, or games that while they are continuing are just kind of gonna have the same thing happening over and over, which might not be the most fun thing, but don't let me yuck your yum. If you were into these cards, these are big dramatic effects, especially if you want to play with less and learn, if you want to do a Strixhaven focused set cube, that kind of thing. These are big dramatic spells, they can be fun in their own way. I would just caution that some of the games are going to feel very samey within the game, and then with if these are consistently the top end and with lesson and learn, a player is going to have very high access to these cards, you run the risk of a lot of the games feeling like they're concluding in the same way. And that's gonna do it for part one of my early impressions cube review for Secrets of Strix Haven, breaking down the mechanics and themes today. And next week I'll be back for part two, looking at individually appealing cards for Cube that don't fit, don't have any of these new mechanics, don't necessarily fit into the sets themes explicitly, just cards that play a little bit more broadly. So thank you for listening this week, and I'll be back next week talking more cube. Later gamers.