Secrets of Strixhaven Vision Design Handoff, Part 2
Last week, I started showing off the vision design handoff document for Secrets of Strixhaven. Today is the second and final part of that document. Everything here is the actual document as it was handed off except for the text in boxes, which is my commentary on the document. We pick up today with Annie Sardelis, the vision design lead, explaining the set mechanics.
Set Mechanics
What sets Strixhaven's two-color strategies apart from Ravnica's is the way they leverage the same mechanics for each pair. The way each college uses their keyword differs based on the college's strategy.
As the person who oversees vision design, I like when we can create different structures for different worlds. I really enjoy that Ravnica: City of Guilds and Strixhaven: School of Mages took unique approaches to how they crafted a set of two-color factions. But in the end, a set playing well takes precedence over it being structurally unique. The two settings have such different flavor and play patterns that no one's going to confuse one for the other, so leaning on a time-tested execution is not so bad, even if the design purist in me prefers the structural differences.
Prepared Spells
Creatures "prepare" a spell when a condition is met. The spell is listed on the card and is an actual instant or sorcery when it is cast. This synergizes with magecraft and boosts the number of spells in your deck. Using existing spells nets us appeal and should be used at a higher rarity. Lower rarities can "invent" spells for appropriate costs and effects. There's opportunity for fun storytelling between the creature and the spell. When we invent a new spell, we should be sure to carry forward that flavor. Below is an example of an existing spell and a new one, both on common creatures.
Other details: A prepared spell can be cast once each time it is prepared. You cannot "stack" the prepared spell multiple times on the creature. You have to use it before you can prepare it again. The prepared spell can only be cast when the creature is on the battlefield.
Passionate Gardener
G
Creature — Elf Druid
When CARDNAME enters, prepare SPELLNAME. (A prepared spell can be cast once. You still pay its costs.)
\\
Rampant Growth
1G
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land card. Put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
1/2
Pep Squad
3W
Creature — Human Performer
When CARDNAME enters, prepare SPELLNAME. (A prepared spell can be cast once. You still pay its costs.)
\\
Rejuvenating Cheer
2W
Sorcery
Return target creature you control with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield.
3/3
Several readers have asked why all the prepared spells aren't existing spells. That's where we started. There's a lot of novelty in using existing Magic spells, but we found that prepared spells needed to be simple. There's not a lot of room for text, and having a second spell on a card adds complexity. We wanted to keep them as simple as we could. So, we made a card with a basic effect in mind and looked for that spell.
Often, that spell just didn't exist. Yeah, we had some similar effects, but they had riders or the templating was off because we've changed how we do the effect. We found ourselves constantly adding extra text or having to change the card because the effect didn't match what we needed. Also, the inability to sometimes make up what we needed (especially for the mana costs of the prepared spells) caused endless headaches. We decided that we would be happier if we removed the restriction of it having to be an existing spell. We could still make prepared spells with real spells when we could, but it just let us be more robust when designing prepared spells.
Annie used this section to clearly showcase the different ways prepared spells could be used and walked through a mechanical limitation we built into them (not being able to bank prepared spells).
Extra Credit
Extra credit — If this isn't the first spell you cast this turn, [BONUS].
Extra credit is a mechanic to incentivize casting multiple spells in a turn. As prepared spells count as a spell and some magecraft triggers can be more interesting when they trigger twice in a turn, we felt it was a good, simple fit. They use the Lesson subtype to further capture the flavor of an assignment.
Field Study
1G
Instant — Lesson
Mill three cards. You may put a permanent card from among the milled cards into your hand.
Extra credit — If this isn't the first spell you've cast this turn, you gain life equal to that card's mana value.
We spent a lot of time working on mechanics that cared about instants and sorceries being played, but we also spent some time on mechanics that went on instants and sorceries. This mechanic specifically was inspired by an ability word made during the third Great Designer Search called "rhythm," created by Ryan Siegel-Stechler. Here's an example of how it was templated:
Rhythm 2 (This spell is on beat if you cast it as your second spell in a turn.)
Draw a card. If this spell is on beat, draw two cards instead.
"Rhythm" told you what number spell it wanted to be. As we playtested "rhythm," we learned it just wanted to care about the spell beyond the first, so we locked that in.
Vision Design was eager to name a mechanic "extra credit," as we loved the idea of a mechanic that felt like you were doing homework. Once we realized it was the perfect name for the tweaked "rhythm" mechanic, we changed it and never looked back. In the end, restructuring of the set led to us removing "extra credit." Basically, there wasn't room for it as a separate mechanic and it didn't feel right as one of the college mechanics. I do like this mechanic and hope one day to find a home for it.
Drone Token
0/1 Artifact creature tokens with "Sacrifice this creature: Add
Drones are a new kind of creature token to help promote casting larger spells with the additional mana. This token could be replaced with Treasure, though the 0/1 body can help hold down the battlefield in the slower strategies. Any color can create this token. Prismari and Quandrix strategies can use it for the ramp, and Lorehold may use it due to it being an artifact. Creatively, as the students explore the grounds outside Strixhaven in the rest of Arcavios, they have these little creatures to assist them.
Vision Design liked the Drone token because we found it had a lot of uses. It was obviously inspired by the 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn creature token from Battle for Zendikar. R&D has speculated a lot on whether we should make those again or if Treasure should produce
Magecraft
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery, [BONUS].
Magecraft is a returning mechanic from Strixhaven: School of Mages. It is a straightforward and well-liked payoff for casting spells. Colors that don't historically care about instants and sorceries can get a few novel designs.
Shadow Wizard
1B
Creature — Shade Wizard
Instant and sorcery spells you cast cost {1} less to cast.
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, you lose 1 life.
3/1
The main reason magecraft isn't in the set is because we chopped it up to create some of the faction mechanics. In general, "___fall" (as R&D likes to call this type of effect) has deep design space, works as good structural glue, and is popular.
Bonus Sheet
We'd like to do a redux of the Mystical Archive from Strixhaven: School of Mages. The throughline of instants and sorceries was resonant and added to Limited variety and replayability. Ideally, we would not use the same cards that appeared on the previous sheet. If more options are needed, we could choose a handful of iconic spellcasters (creatures with the Wizard, Cleric, or Warlock types) that play well with instants and sorceries.
I remember when I had my very first discussion with the product architect for Secrets of Strixhaven and asked if we were planning to do another bonus sheet. They said, "Absolutely!" The plan was to basically run back what we had done last time except with new spells. Annie made a suggestion here just in case there weren't enough spells to fit the needs of the bonus sheet.
Card Cycles
Land Cycles
The set has two cycles of enemy-color lands.
There are five common tapped dual lands. They have "
Normally, the common dual lands, if the set has them, are tap lands that have either a small enters ability or a more expensive activated ability that's the same across all the cards in the cycle. Strixhaven: School of Mages made the red-white college the history college, but that color combination, especially in red, doesn't interact with the graveyard that much. Also, white is notorious for being bad at filling up the graveyard. This land cycle helped us fill a gap we had. I think we also discussed an enters surveil 1 effect.
There are five rare dual lands that enter tapped unless you have an instant or sorcery in the graveyard. The specifics of these may change, but we plan to have rare enemy-color lands here.
The rare dual lands, if a set has them, are almost always decided by Play Design. Vision Design will always take a stab at them because sometimes we come up with something really cool and they stay (such as the Pathways from Zendikar Rising). Normally, they're decided not by the needs of the set but by the larger needs of the environment at the time of the release.
Common Cycles
Similar to the Pledgemages from Strixhaven: School of Mages, we have a cycle of hybrid mana creatures with magecraft. These are the college's respective mascots to give additional visuals and mechanical expressions of those creature types (Inkling, Elemental, Pest, Spirit, and Fractal).
Witherbloom Mascot
1(b/g)(b/g)
Creature — Pest
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, CARDNAME gets +1/+0 until end of turn. You gain 1 life.
2/3
Hybrid mana has crossed the barrier from being deciduous to evergreen. It's an important tool for Limited, so most sets will have a cycle or two of hybrid mana commons and/or uncommons. We thought it was cute to have a cycle with the colleges' mascots.
The printed version of the set used hybrid mana a bit differently. It's on an uncommon multicolor cycle where the hybrid mana is the second pip, meaning the spell requires both colors of the college and a second color of one of the two colors.
Uncommon Cycles
There is an uncommon cycle of legendary students. Our narrative will follow the story of these five new characters, not unlike how we followed our previous students (Quintorius, Rootha, and their cohorts) in Strixhaven: School of Mages. Each two-color uncommon legendary student has a prepared spell with a prepared trigger that speaks to the general strategy of their corresponding college.
Tam
2GU
Legendary Creature — Gorgon Wizard
Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, prepare SPELLNAME. (A prepared spell can be cast once. You still pay its costs.)
\\
Square Roots
1(g/u)
Sorcery
Target creature has base power and toughness 4/4 until end of turn.
2/4
This cycle did make it to print. In fact, parts of the sample card made it into the final set. We knew at this time that these five characters would play a role in the Lorwyn Eclipsed story.
The previous five students are each given a signature uncommon spell that references them by name. These are generally appealing multicolor cards.
Rootha's Whirlwind
3UR
Sorcery
Return target creature to its owner's hand. Create a token that's a copy of that creature. It gains haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.
We didn't end up making this cycle but did put the original students in the Commander decks as the face commanders.
Rare Cycles
To further showcase the Elder Dragon founders of Strixhaven, we have created a legendary multicolor artifact for each of them. Each has an enters ability and drives home the mechanics of the college. Since Strixhaven's two-color strategies are seen less frequently across Magic's history and are less supported, we think powerful multicolor artifacts will help boost their popularity.
The Trowel of Lorehold
RW
Legendary Artifact
Whenever CARDNAME or another artifact enters under your control, mill three cards.
{W}, {T}, Exile a card from your graveyard: You gain 3 life.
{1R}, {T}, Exile two cards from your graveyard: CARDNAME deals 2 damage to any target.
This cycle didn't end up making it to print. During vision design, we like to suggest a bunch of different rare and mythic rare cycles for the Set Design team to consider. Some make it to print and many don't, but it's nice to give the Set Design team some things to consider.
There's a cycle of "Club Practice" spells that point toward the three-color crossover between the colors. They have a monocolor cost, with two bonuses in the textbox for using additional colors to cast it. Flavorfully, this is where students from different colleges come together for club activities.
Drama Club Practice
2R
Sorcery
Exile the top three cards of your library. Until end of turn, you may play cards exiled this way.
If you spent {W} to cast this spell, until end of turn, those permanents cost {1} less to cast.
If you spent {U} to cast this spell, until end of turn, those instant and sorcery spells cost {1} less to cast.
Vision Design spent a little time looking at the crossover space between two colleges. We liked that this cycle was playable by two factions but might encourage someone in a draft to mix the two colleges together with a three-color deck.
There is a cycle of rare Classes. We shifted the flavor of Classes from a type of job as seen in Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Bloomburrow into classes you'd take in college. Each is a multicolor card and should be a flavorful top-down design.
Principles of Medicine
BG
Enchantment — Class
(Gain the next level as a sorcery to add its ability.)
When CARDNAME enters, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. You gain 1 life for each creature you control.
{3(b/g)}: Level 2
Whenever you gain life, put that many +1/+1 counters on up to one target creature.
{7(b/g)}: Level 3
When this class becomes level 3, you gain 20 life.
Of all the things that got cut in set design, this is the one that hurts the most. Including Classes, the enchantment subtype, as actual college classes seemed so good. The Commander decks did manage to include two of them. But in a set about instants and sorceries, so much of your noncreature space has to go to instants and sorceries that noncreature permanent slots get squeezed pretty tight.
We have a cycle of multicolor prepared spell creatures that showcase existing iconic spells. They are capped at doing the spell once per game, and using an iconic spell is critical to their appeal.
Trustworthy Teacher
1BGG
Creature — Demon Wizard
Trample
Whenever you control four or more creatures, prepare Demonic Tutor. This ability triggers only once per turn.
//
Demonic Tutor
1B
Instant
Search your library for a card, put that card into your hand, then shuffle.
5/5
This cycle turned into the Emerituses with a couple changes. They became monocolor cards and we took away the once-per-turn restriction. In its place, we made hoops that are hard to repeat but not impossible. We knew as soon as we came up with prepared that we wanted some high-rarity cards giving you access to powerful cards from the past. This was also a cool way to access cards we couldn't straight up reprint.
Mythic Rare Cycles
There is a mythic rare cycle of Elder Dragons from Strixhaven: School of Mages. Each adds a returning named mechanic to your instants and sorceries.
Headdragon Witherbloom
5BG
Legendary Creature — Elder Dragon
Flying
Instant and sorcery spells you cast have delve. (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting the spell pays for {1}.)
5/5
This cycle made it to print, although not with delve. Figuring out what mechanics to use was pretty fun. We liked that it tied to instants and sorceries and the cameos got to be pretty splashy, one of the things you look for on mythic rares.
In Conclusion
"Yachting" is an awesome opportunity to return to a fan-favorite setting. Strixhaven: School of Mages had a solid creative and mechanical foundation. There was tons of space to design cool instant and sorcery spells as well as cards that make those spells look even cooler. We intentionally didn't want to stray far from Strixhaven: School of Mages's original strategies as players have grown to enjoy their quirks, even if some of them struggled more than others. Our time was spent shoring up these shortcomings so that players' favorite colleges can all go toe to toe with one another.
The next step for the set is to make sure the college strategies have diversity among them. This means drafting any single college shouldn't feel too "on rails" and that there are viable decks that use three colors for Limited. The intersections between two-color pairs (like white-black and red-white) should have individual cards that help bring the deck together.
The Worldbuilding team also had a late creative pivot that we will need to give adequate attention to at the card-by-card level. Although I do not go into depth about the creative changes in this document, feel free to reach out the Lauren Bond for any information you may need.
Feel free to message me any time with questions about the set.
—Annie Sardelis
"Return to" sets can often be trickier than one might assume. Yes, you have a lot to build off of, but you also have paths set for you that you're obligated to follow that you can change from your first visit. (I'm looking at you, Lorehold.) Hats off to Annie and the team for discovering a whole bunch of new tools to revisit Magic's favorite magical university.
Also, because I know people will want to know, the "late creative pivot" has to do with Reality Fracture, so it isn't something I can talk about right now, but when we get to Reality Fracture previews, I'll talk about it.
And with that, we are done. I hope you enjoyed this peek into the early process of making Secrets of Strixhaven. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it on today or last week's articles, any part of the vision design process that Annie and I talked about, 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 when I talk through the history of making something that took a long time to see the light of day.
Until then, may your classes go smoothly.