Do you still love the Harry Potter franchise, but can absolutely not afford to support his great writer? If so, Magic: The Gathering‘s latest card set, Strixhaven: School of Mages, can be for you.
More than just a simple card game to demoralize your friends, Magic: The Gathering has its own story, with each new set of maps taking place in magical areas called airplanes. Recent aircraft included the viking theme Kaldheim, the fairy-tale-inspired Eldraine, and now with Strixhaven, publisher Wizards of the Coasts, is Hogwarts’ favorite card game.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Strixhaven is a school for wizards founded by five powerful dragons, each with their own disciplines and personalities. They divided their school into five different colleges, with each college devoted to the ideals of their founders. Magic published a short, cute blog just about every one of the colleges. Strixhaven sounds a lot like a real university with maths, science, history and literature departments, each with their own unique magical feel.
I love Magic: the Gathering, but I was always more attracted to the characters on the maps than the worlds they occupied. I identified with black characters like Kaya and Teferi and deeply respected characters like Ashiok despite the misery they always caused me their card realized from my opponent’s hand.
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With Strixhaven, I’m very excited to know more about the world. It looks so much fun – a stark contrast to Magicordinary stories of war or survive in monster-infected environments. Strixhaven it seems like it’s just kids learning and having fun, and it’s a nice change of pace—Magic can use a little liveliness. It can not be Nicol Bolas trying to take over the worlds all the time, right?
Here is my brief summary of the schools.
Witherbloom is the school for bio-nerds who like to sting things alive or dead and definitely have a collection of taxidermy pets. Quandrix is the school that somehow managed to make magic boring by adding math to it. Prismari is the school for the drama children – at all times of the day at least one person can hear ‘Seasons of Love’ sung. Lorehold is the college of history and is entirely inhabited by children who read during lunch, recess and on the toilet. Finally, Silverquill is for literary nerds who think that wearing black is a substitute for the fact that they have a personality.
Along with a standard range of cards, Wizards will release pre-made Commander decks for each of the colleges. I choose Lorehold personally as I am a history nerd who prefers to play white mana decks and … I was one of those kids who read during lunch, recess and on the toilet.
Strixhaven: School of Mages will not be out a few times months, but you can expect to see more maps and hopefully more of the story as we get closer to the release date.