Mark Rosewater posted his Strixhaven Teaser the other day and I wanted to share some speculations. I'm not going to go over every point because most of them are impossible to gleam just from the tiny bits of information we know about the set. However, there are a couple of ideas I had which I am fairly confident about.
MaRo said:
A white card with the rules text “draw three cards”
I this ability is probably tied to some sort of downside, either sacrificing some number of permanents as on
lorehold command or by being worded "you and target opponent each draw three cards as on"
Farsight Adept. I have a hard time believing that they would print a white
Concentrate with no strings attached.
MaRo said:
A planeswalker you know, but not as you know them.
An MDFC with the same card type on both sides that hasn’t been printed before.
While there are several Planeswalkers who could be the first character, I'm batching these two points together because I think that we will be seeing Rowan and Will,
The Royal Scions, sharing an MDFC.
Will and Rowan's mechanical space has always been "weird ways of mechanically linking two Planeswalkers together." Canonically, the Twins have to Planeswalk together as they were born sharing the same Planeswalker spark. On the cards, this has manifested as them being the first
Planeswalkers to use the "Partner With" mechanic and as them having
the first Planeswalker card with two subtypes and characters. Given the context, I think it makes perfect sense to make Rowan and Will different faces of a MDFC.
I have no idea wether or not the Twins were to whom MaRo was referring to with the first clue. However, I think it could be interpreted as supporting the MDFC theory. We could also be seeing a new Garruk card. After all, he is supposedly Planeswalking the Multiverse with the twins right now to keep them safe while they learn how to become Planeswalkers properly. Perhaps he will join the Quandrix school to finish his education and learn how to use Blue mana to summon Sea Monsters?
MaRo said:
A cycle of enemy dual lands finishing off a ten-card cycle.
WOTC has actually been pretty good about finishing Dual Land cycles the last few years, to the point where the "good" dual land cycles have already been completed. There are only a few un-finished land cycles at this point. I think there are 4 likely options that stand out above the rest.
First are the
Battle Lands. I think these are the most likely candidates. They are very popular budget fixing for commander, would improve the quality of fixing in the standard format without pushing it into imbalance (as they explicitly require basics to come into play untapped), and are generally reasonable cards with no major rules downside. Their status as fetchable duals that can theoretically come in to play untapped makes them slightly more interesting to people running non-budget mana bases compared to the other cards on this list.
Next are the
Shadow Lands. These lands are less likely to be the cycle of choice given their lukewarm reception during Shadows over Innistrad standard and are not played much in Commander. Unlike the Battle Lands, which have been printed multiple times in Commander products, the Shadow Lands had their original printing and have not been re-printed since. However, they have good synergy with the
Triomes and the
Snow Duals, making them good options for standard mana bases. While I wouldn't count on the Shadow Lands being the land cycle, I would not be surprised about their return.
The
Cycling Duals are unlikely to be in Strixhaven since we just saw cycling last year in Ikoria and the vastly superior
Triomes are still in standard, however, they are still worth noting. These lands are very powerful and playable, and I believe their cycle will be completed at some point in the future.
Finally, I'd like to draw attention to the
Storage Lands from Time Spiral. It is possible that MaRo's hint is a reference to an uncommon cycle of lands, and I think Strixhaven would be a great place to put a unique cycle of lands such as the Storage lands. The Storage Counters could be interpreted as storing knowledge to convert to mana at a later date. While unlikely, I think they are a great option.
MaRo said:
A futureshifted card (appearing for the first time in a premier set other than Future Sight)
There are several cards this could be, but fewer than one might expect. I think
Spellweaver Volute is the most flavorful option given what we know about strixhaven so far.
Blind Phantasm,
Yixlid Jailer,
Ghostfire, and
Thornweald Archer are all Plane-Neutral simple and enough that they could conceivably be on Arvacous.
Arcanum Wings could fit with a Wizard-themed world, provided the set has an enchantment element with Aura Swap. Finally,
Edge of Autumn could be in the set if cycling returns. This could be the case if the
Cycling Duals return as well. While a year between cycling printings is a little short, we did just have a one-year return with Sagas in Kaldheim returning exactly one year after Theros: Beyond Death. So it's actually a little more possible than I may have initially believed.
MaRo said:
A red sorcery that you can have as many copies in your deck as you want
Watch this be a
Scorching Spear variant.
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There are a bunch of rules text hints and creature type reveals in the post as well, however, I have no substantive speculations about any of those points. I would like to draw attention to the following creature type combinations:
MaRo said:
Creature – Turtle Druid
Creature – Frog Wizard
Creature – Eye Bat
I don't know what any of these will be, but I think I have an idea what the Eye Bat might look like:
Thanks for reading!
I didn't want to add MARO's teaser in here because I knew you would arrive with your thorough in depth analysis!
