When a set's vision design is finished and handed off for set design, the vision design lead creates a vision design handoff document. The purpose of this document is to explain to the set design lead and their design team the larger goals, themes, mechanics, and structure of the set to help them better understand our vision.

I frequently post these documents so that all of you can get a glimpse behind the scenes and see the document as it was handed off. Here are the ones I've previously shared:

As with all my vision design handoff articles, I am showing you the actual document. I often show off the ones I wrote, but today's document was written by the Secrets of Strixhaven vision design lead, Annie Sardelis. Everything you see is the actual document, except for the text in boxes, which contain additional context and information from me.

"Yachting" Vision Design Handoff Document

Vision Design Team

Annie Sardelis (Vision Design Lead)
Lauren Bond (Creative Lead)
Dan Musser
Mark Rosewater (Exploratory Design Lead)
Eric Engelhard
Daniel Xu
Ian Duke (Set Design Lead)

Exploratory design is usually led by the vision design lead or by me, sometimes together. I believe Annie was busy with the design of another product during exploratory design for "Yachting" (Secrets of Strixhaven's codename), so I led it. Note that this document will often refer to "Yachting" as YXX. To help us remember the three-letter code for our database, we just put XX after the first letter of the codename. The new alphabet cycle uses YY. It's interesting to note that this vision design team had all three design leads of the set (minus play design), with Annie, Ian, and myself.

Primary Drivers of "Yachting"

It's a Return to Strixhaven

Strixhaven is our magical school setting. We will be bringing back fan-favorite parts of the setting, including the colleges, tropes, and Mystical Archive bonus sheet. Our creative north star is "Field Trip … Gone Wrong," which showcases the students leaving campus and adventuring into other parts of Arcavios.

One of the most common requests we got from Strixhaven: School of Mages was to see more of Arcavios, the plane Strixhaven University is on. We normally name our sets after the plane they're set on, but because Strixhaven: School of Mages was so focused on the school, we named it after the school. The existence of the Omenpaths (a new development since our first visit to Strixhaven) and the connection to Lorwyn Eclipsed made the field trip theme especially attractive.

The Two-Color Colleges Are Back

Players identified with their favorite colleges, which showcased popular subjects like biology, history, and mathematics through mechanics and creative design. We are bringing back the same five colleges from Strixhaven: School of Mages and building upon their groundwork.

Strixhaven: School of Mages was a faction set, so we knew going in that we would make "Yachting" another faction set. The factions of this setting are the various colleges of Strixhaven University. While we could expand upon the colleges, it was key that we return to the factions that the players fell in love with on the first visit. Luckily, the flavor of school subjects is very resonant and let us explore new design space.

Instants and Sorceries Matter

Strixhaven is where instant and sorcery cards matter. We have more instant and sorcery cards in "Yachting" than usual, and ourmechanics allow you to play more of them in Limited. Our creatures showcase powerful spellcasters and care about including instants and sorceries in your deck.

The other core element of Strixhaven: School of Mages was a focus on instants and sorceries. It's the only plane built around spells so far, so we knew it was important to return to the theme. One of our rules in vision design is that the set only gets one "greedy" theme. A greedy theme is something that requires the entire set structure to be built around it. For Strixhaven, that's "instants and sorceries matter."

Here's the core problem. To make something matter in a set, the as-fan of it needs to be at a certain level. Normally, noncreature spells make up around twenty percent of a deck, which isn't a high enough as-fan (and that's assuming every noncreature spell is an instant or sorcery). That means we have to find ways to get more spells into the deck. This requires a lot of rearranging. There are a few solutions like token-making spells, which fill creature slots with spells, but in the end, you need mechanics that do the heavy lifting of getting more spells into decks. We'll get more into that later in the document.

A Straight Return-To

We have two different approaches for return-to sets:

Straight Return-To: This leverages the mechanical similarities of previous sets from the same plane. Both the mechanics and creative design will feel like a sequel. Innovations will largely tie into previous gimmicks of the plane. Recent examples are Dominaria United and Wilds of Eldraine.

Fresh Eyes: This leverages the creative of an existing setting and interprets it with a largely new mechanical approach. We don't see as many named returning mechanics and can use a new set structure as well. Examples are Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and Murders at Karlov Manor.

I think R&D now sees them as a spectrum rather than a forked path. When returning to a setting, we think about how much we should lean on the past and carve out new design space. That has a lot to do with a few key things. First, did the initial visit go well? What did players enjoy about the first visit? Are there things the players actively dislike that we need to avoid? Second, did the previous set play well? How good are the mechanics and themes that we used? Is there more design space in them? Are they things we want to bring back? Are there things we don't want to do again? Third, what are the expectations? What will the players assume is in the set? What intuition will the audience have that we want to meet?

"Yachting" is a straight return-to. Strixhaven: School of Mages's two-color faction-based gameplay was well liked and accessible. Its emphasis on "instants and sorceries matter" through the mechanics and bonus sheet were memorable and still have fruitful design space to explore. We held the following principals:

"Yachting" cards fit with Strixhaven: School of Mages cards. We took care not to have it be too mechanically different from Strixhaven: School of Mages so that the cards wouldn't clash when played together. We should match the expectation of how players experienced the colleges in Limited and in the five Commander decks.

This is an important metric that I call plane synergy. Players who enjoyed the setting the first time will be excited to return to that setting. It is natural to want to mix cards from the two different sets. We actively want to make sure they play well together. That doesn't mean we have to do the exact same thing, but it does mean we need to build in synergies between the two visits, especially within the same colors, in this case the colleges.

Instants and sorceries are our main focus. We took the best parts of Strixhaven: School of Mages that showcased instants and sorceries and brought them back: the magecraft mechanic and the Mystical Archive bonus sheet. When exploring new mechanical space, we focused on how those mechanics could get us to cast more and bigger instants and sorceries.

I explained in my preview article that Vision Design followed the design structure of Strixhaven: School of Mages with a few mechanics that stretched across all five factions. We explored alternatives to magecraft but realized it was the best tool to structure the set the way we wanted. When the structure shifted in set design, magecraft turned into a number of mechanics that were subsets of it that became faction mechanics.

What We Aren't Returning To

MDFCs: Previous MDFCs on Strixhaven expressed the duality within each college through the deans. Without a duality to specifically express here, we didn't feel a need to return to these.

One of the interesting things about Magic is how much sets change over time as you design them. Modal double-faced cards were the thing that got Strixhaven: School of Mages greenlit, but by the time the set saw print, they played a pretty minor role.

Learn: Strixhaven: School of Mages introduced the instant and sorcery subtype Lesson, which could be fetched from your sideboard using the learn mechanic. The amount of infrastructure required to make Lesson and learn work in the set was too high relative to how much the mechanic was enjoyed. There are also Standard implications with a neighboring set leveraging the Lesson subtype for different purposes (Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™). We are currently leveraging the Lesson subtype as a flavorful throughline for our extra credit mechanic (more on that below).

One of the biggest questions I've been getting about Secrets of Strixhaven is why we didn't bring learn back, so let me quickly explain the major reasons.

  • We included Lessons and learn in Strixhaven: School of Mages to solve how to structurally support "instants and sorceries matter." It was a hard mechanic to design for and even harder to balance. Having another set in Standard with Lessons would only make that more difficult.
  • The feedback on Lessons and learn was that players liked the concept more than the execution. They scored in the middle in our market research. Players didn't hate them, but they also didn't love them.
  • We came up with prepared, which we really liked. There was no way to have both prepared and learn in the same set. Not only were they serving the same basic purpose, but they would get in each other's way. Both would want access to the same type of effects.

We chose what we thought would be something novel and more popular and went with prepared.

The Colleges

We have the same five colleges as Strixhaven: School of Mages in the same colors.

Silverquill

Colors: White and black
Uncommon named student: Abigale
Style of gameplay: Aggressive evasion
Mascot token: 2/2 Inkling

Here is the Inkling token from Secrets of Strixhaven:

0007_MTGSOS_ToknBstr: Inkling Token

Silverquill is the college of eloquence. In Strixhaven: School of Mages, it was an aggressive strategy with small, evasive creatures. To express this in YXX, we introduced keyword counters (lifelink, vigilance, flying, and more) to add literal "words" to creatures. Whenever a card creates a 2/2 Inkling creature token, the card should also put some kind of counter on it. The instants and sorceries it leverages the most are removal spells and combat tricks to keep up the aggression.

The Vision Design team was enamored with a college that cares about words interacting with a mechanic that adds words to things. The cleanest and simplest way to do this is with keyword counters. This idea, while cool in concept, didn't mesh with other things in the set.

Prismari

Colors: Blue and red
Uncommon named student: Sanar
Style of gameplay: Slow big spells
Mascot token: 3/3 Elemental with flying

Here is the Elemental token from Secrets of Strixhaven:

0003_MTGSOS_ToknBstr: Elemental Token

Prismari is the college of elemental arts. It likes casting more expensive spells, and we carried that through in YXX. Strixhaven: School of Mages leveraged Treasure tokens for additional ramp, but YXX is trying a new kind of creature token called a Drone (see more below) to produce that extra mana. YXX also cares more about the exact cost of the spell being five mana or greater. Its Elemental token is still the largest of the five so that spells that create it can be on the more expensive side.

Because we were using the Strixhaven: School of Mages structure in vision design, we had some extra space to do things like keyword counters or a new artifact token. When Set Design shifted over to faction keywords, that made it harder to support some of this smaller stuff (and it was less needed). The theme of caring about spells having a value of 5 or more would evolve into the opus mechanic.

Witherbloom

Colors: Black and green
Uncommon named student: Lluwen
Style of gameplay: Life gain tokens
Mascot token: 1/1 Pest with "Whenever this attacks, you gain 1 life."

Here is the Pest token from Secrets of Strixhaven:

0009_MTGSOS_ToknBstr: Pest Token

Witherbloom is the college of essence studies. In Strixhaven: School of Mages, it had life-gain and sacrifice themes. In YXX, we want to make it more aggressive by moving the life-gain trigger of the Pests from a dies trigger to an attack trigger. The strategy still uses life gain but paired with a go-wide tokens strategy. Witherbloom gets rid of its tokens by recklessly attacking with them rather than sacrificing them. As this college features biology, a bunch of creatures swarming the board felt appropriate.

One of the things we like to do is look back at choices we made on the first visit. The original Pests gaining you life when they died allowed for a more defensive play style. Blocking with Pests not only stopped attackers but also gained you life. We looked for a way to keep the tie to life (Witherbloom is the college that cares about biology) to promote more proactive gameplay. The fact that this token stayed shows that it was a good solution to the problem.

Lorehold

Colors: Red and white
Uncommon named student: Kirol
Style of gameplay: Slow "leave the graveyard" and reanimate
Mascot token: 2/3 Artifact Spirit with "Whenever this creature attacks, exile target card from a graveyard."

Here is the Spirit token from Secrets of Strixhaven:

0011_MTGSOS_ToknBstr: Spirit Token

Lorehold is the college of archaeomancy. It has a graveyard strategy that checks when a card leaves the graveyard. To give this strategy more legs, we introduced an artifact angle to its reanimation. Both white and red can interact with artifacts in the graveyard slightly better than a regular creature. To help give cohesion to the new artifact creatures of the faction, we also added the artifact type to its mascot. The mascot also has a new attack trigger to help trigger the "leave the graveyard" abilities. It may be this additional text is not needed to get the amount of enabling the archetype needs. Flavorfully, this college uses the graveyard as a way to "explore the past."

The tie to artifacts was a nice nod to archeology, and we often use artifacts in the game as objects of the past (like the historic batch, which includes Sagas, artifacts, and legends). The extra text on the Spirits was useful but wordy. In the end, neither thing proved necessary, and whenever you can pull out complexity, you do, because the set had a lot of other elements where the complexity was needed more.

We did have a lot of conversations about Lorehold's graveyard theme. It was the biggest challenge of Strixhaven: School of Mages, but also one of the things players liked the most about the set. When we go to uncharted realms, there are difficulties. We don't normally do that thing because the resources aren't there to easily do it. But sometimes we need to stretch ourselves, and the Vision Design team spent a lot of time figuring out ways to allow red and white to play into the graveyard theme in an organic way.

Quandrix

Colors: Green and blue
Uncommon named student: Tam
Style of gameplay: Big creature ramp
Mascot token: 0/0 Fractal

Here is the Fractal token from Secrets of Strixhaven:

0005_MTGSOS_ToknBstr: Fractal Token

Quandrix is the college of numeromancy. To play up its enjoyment of math, we introduced a minor " costs matter" theme. This theme plays well with the natural ramp of the colors, as you can dump as much mana in an -cost spell as you like. The Fractal mascot has not changed, as it lent itself well to the -cost strategy and was the most novel of the five to start.

Ah, the allure of " spells matter" for a math theme. I'm happy a little of it made it to print. We made a conscious choice to change all the mascots (i.e., the creature tokens made by each college) to help give the return a fresh feel, but Fractals were already so adaptive that we didn't feel like we needed to change them.

We're out of time for today. We made it halfway through the document. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it on today's article, any part of the vision design handoff document, or on Secrets of Strixhaven as a whole. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for part two.

Until then, may you enjoy declaring your major.