The Top 20 New Cards in the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander Precons

Secrets of Strixhaven, releasing April 24, features five Commander Precons: Lorehold Spirit, Prismari Artistry, Quandrix Unlimited, Silverquill Influence and Witherbloom Pestilence. Within those precons are 60 brand new Commander legal cards – but which are the best? We look at the Top 20 New Cards in the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precons.

SECRETS OF STRIXHAVEN COMMANDER

Secrets of Strixhaven is our first return to Arcavios, the planar mage college established in the original Strixhaven set. We’ll once again be experiencing the story from the perspective of the five colleges of  Lorehold, Prismari, Quandrix, Silverquill and Witherbloom. Alongside the main set, we have five new Commander decks, making this one of the biggest Commander releases of the year.

While the precons are stacked with some impressive reprints – looking at you, Land Tax! – we’re all about looking at the new cards today. If you want to check out the full decklists, you can do so over on the main Wizards site.

Before we get started, a quick Honorable Mention to the expansion of the unfinished bicycle land and tango land cycles. With the addition of UR and WB versions, these cycles have now finally been completed. You can find the RW and BG ones first printed in Edge of Eternities Commander Precons, and the UG ones printed in the Lorywn Eclipsed Commander Precons. They should hopefully see more printings going forward.

Without further ado, let’s have a look at some of the great new card designs from the SOC precons.

TOP 20 SECRETS OF STRIXHAVEN NEW COMMANDER CARDS

TURBULENT LANDS

First up, we simply have to talk about these new dual-typed lands. One in each enemy colored pair, the Turbulent lands enter tapped unless your opponents control eight or more lands. What that means in relative terms is that they’ll come in untapped for those going third and fourth in turn order from T3 onwards, and untapped for the first and second players from T4 onwards. 

It’s a really sweet design, and gives the enemy color pairs more fetchable dual-typed lands. Winner winner, chicken dinner.

KILLIAN, DECISIVE MENTOR

Killian, Decisive Mentor is without a doubt my favorite new design here – and potentially the best value precon, given the amazing new lands and reprints included. Killian gives you goad as an enchantress trigger, and gives you one card on any turn a creature attacks and it’s enchanted by an Aura you control. This gives you a somewhat aggressive aura based go-wide deck that also controls the board politically which is really… cool. Okay? It’s cool. 

GORMA THE GULLET

I don’t usually get excited by Golgari creatures that slowly get bigger, but Gorma, the Gullet is bucking that trend by being genuinely cool in the ‘zone. Having one of these effects in the CZ means you’ll get extra value out of playing selective wipes and removal, and figuring out the puzzle of what nontoken creatures to play that can benefit from repeated deaths in the turn is a fun deckbuilding challenge.

EXCAVA, THE RISEN PAST

Excava, the Risen Past is sweeeeet. It’s a flying hasty Sun Titan adjacent Spirit Horse. It doesn’t even need Shadowfax to show it the meaning of haste! Bringing stuff back as a 1/1 Spirit with a finality counter isn’t the absolute best rate for this effect – especially compared to my favorite Redemption Choir – but it’s still really good with haste from the CZ. Besides, you’re in RW. You can flicker away those finality counters with ease.

ZIMONE, INFINITE ANALYST

It’s genuinely hard for design to interest me with a UG card these days, but with Zimone, Infinite Analyst? They seem to have managed it. Just like the Mathemagics of Quandrix, you’re going exponential with value when it comes to X spells in Zimone. Honestly? I’m into it. It’s a strong Commander.

CEASELESS CONFLICT

Ceaseless Conflict is a great wrath for any deck that is focused on Spirits or making tokens – or indeed, doing sacrificing of creatures – because it’s one that you’re not afraid to cast when you’re at parity or even ahead on board, in order to solve problems. If you simply must wipe the board, you can do so while netting yourself a cadre of 3/2 Spirit tokens for your troubles.

EIGANJO DYNASTORIAN

Eiganjo Dynastorian is Replenish, however many times you want to cast, provided you keep attacking with at least two creatures. This is pretty dang easy to do, and giving Enchantress decks access to a repeatable Replenish might even be better than just playing Replenish itself. Putting this on a three drop with Vigilance seals the deal. 

EXPANSION ALGORITHM

Expansion Algorithm is as many Proliferates as you want, which is… absurd, for so many decks. If you enjoy tinkering with Planeswalkers and counters, this is the card for you. It’s gonna be a way to help get those weird finicky little multi card engines online, which is going to excite a very specific subset of the playerbase. You know who you are, with your craft beer. Enjoy.

LEITMOTIF COMPOSER

Leitmotif Composer is a fresh approach to go-wide draw for blue decks – this time, for blue decks that cast big mana instants and sorceries. Even without the activated ability, this would be interesting. With the unblockable option, though? You may well end up with a board full of card drawing musicians. Smarter folks than me will build an entire deck around this one.

OWLIN SPIRALMANCER

Owlin Spiralmancer feels like what happens when someone with a Zaxara precon decides they want to study at Strixhaven. Joining the Quandrix college, they studied how to turn those hydra producing X-spells into even more X-spells. This card is gas for X-spell decks, and one I’d actually be quite frightened of seeing in play, especially in Sultai, where it might copy an Exsanguinate before y’all are ready for it. 

COERCIVE IMPETUS

Coercive Impetus is one of the better goading auras, which we’re seeing black get more and more of these days – a decision I am super okay with. It’s a clean and simple card draw source here, and will be bread and butter for decks like Killian. 

DEFILING DAEMOGOTH

Halfway between Wound Reflection and Sanguine Bond, Defiling Daemogoth also comes strapped up with a way to trigger that lifegain and Menace. Now, obviously the Daemogoth’s trigger isn’t your ideal trigger here, but it’s nice to have. Where this’ll shine is in Witherbloom, Abzan and Orzhov lists that do a lot of life gain. It’s essentially another copy of Wound Reflection in those decks with an extra hoop to jump through.

OMINOUS HARVEST

Liliana’s Standard Bearer is a card I have a lot of time for. Ominous Harvest seeks to pick up that flag and run with it, putting basically the same effect onto a sorcery with Gravestorm. It’s limited by being a sorcery, sure – meaning you need to be the one killing creatures off – but it makes up for it by being lethal in the same way as Monumental Corruption. You can point this at opponents to finish them off, which is awesome. Pair it with a Vein Ripper? Magnificent. 

FATEFUL TEMPEST

Fateful Tempest is a solid draw spell for red decks, and an improvement on other options at similar mana costs. While voting will usually give opponents the “least bad” option, this one will overperform in RB and WR decks that use the graveyard as a main part of the gameplan – whether you’re playing Chainer or Quintorious. 

RELIC RETRIEVER

Relic Retriever hits the sweet spot for a mana producing creature; two mana, untapped treasure, and possible to trigger on more than one turn in a turn cycle. While it’s more or less made for Quintorius, it’s going to be great in reanimator decks, and might be sweet in the likes of Hofri, too. Don’t underestimate the cheeky 2/1 First strike stat-line, either. It makes Direfleet Daredevil more annoying. 

SPIRIT OF RESILIENCE

Spirit of Resilience is one of my favorite designs in the Commander products for Secrets of Strixhaven. It’s perfect for any R/x reanimator deck, a deck that casts from different zones, or a deck that uses triggers like persist. It’s also got great flavor text and art, so yeah. I love this one a lot. 

PEST RESCUER

Ophiomancer has long persisted as a mainstay in Commander, especially for decks that like to sacrifice tokens all through a turn cycle. While you lost out on deathtouch here, you do get to gain life, which can trigger a bunch of effects. Oh, and you get a little more life than usual, too. With all of the token doubling in green, Pest Rescuer ends up pretty good. 

YAVIMAYA BLOOMSAGE

I *think* Yavimaya Bloomsage isn’t straight up busted, but it’s close. Getting to cast Channel in Commander is a hell of a drug, and thankfully it’s gated behind a three drop that then needs you to have a power seven or greater creature, and then have that three drop (and you!) survive a full turn cycle. It’s that last part that balances it out – even if folks don’t have removal, they can run at you, depleting the resource you’d use to Channel.

Still, it’s a knock-your-socks of fun splashy Timmy card, and going to see a lot of play.

IMMORAL BARGAIN

This removal spell is sweet. You can feed it your creature tokens and mana dorks – after tapping them to cast the spell – and then selectively pick off the permanents that are pissing you off. This selective removal improves upon aristocrat strategies so much, as it means you’ll be able to strip out cleanly exactly what the problems are without going overboard with multiple edicts, turn after turn, until people run out of resources.

BRASS INFINISCOPE

A four mana rock is a hard sell unless it’s Thran Dynamo or Nyx Lotus, so what does Brass Infiniscope offer? Well, it says that if you spend your mana on an X spell, you get to draw a card and gain life equal to half of X, rounded down. Excuse me… what? That’s actually really good, and well worth playing. Even if you don’t have anything to trigger by gaining life, passively gaining life and drawing cards for playing your deck is awesome. 

END STEP

Today we looked at the top 20 Best Cards from the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander Precons – in our opinion, of course. Whether you’re interested in Lorehold Spirit, Prismari Artistry, Quandrix Unlimited, Silverquill Influence or Witherbloom Pestilence (or you’re just after some cheeky singles to upgrade another deck), we hope this list has been helpful. 

Secrets of Strixhaven released April 24, with prereleases running the week of April 17.