Top 10 Strixhaven Cards for Commander

Strixhaven

Strixhaven, School of Mages is the Wizards of the Coast tribute to Harry Potter. There are magical students, crazed evil wizards, and even the game of 'Mage Tower' which is Strixhaven’s answer to Quidditch. It’s a fun setting, and one that offers a lot of space for creative design around the five colour-pair colleges, particularly when it comes to design space for new and powerful instants and sorceries.

Strixhaven is home to a host of beginner mages, but are there spells to be found there that can meet the power level of EDH? Let’s find out our picks for the top ten best cards for Commander from the brand new set.

Honorable Mention - Solve the Equation

Not quite cost-efficient enough to make our main list, Solve the Equation is nevertheless a good tutor effect in blue, and printed at uncommon to boot for EDH players on a budget. This will work particularly well in a spell-based combo deck to find a key piece, but can also be used to dig out answers when needed. It even compares favourably to staple blue tutors like Mystical Tutor, eliminating the card disadvantage by putting the card directly into your hand, as well as the ability for opponents who can interact with the top of your library to disrupt it (albeit it by adding two additional mana to the casting cost and sacrificing instant speed).

Despite its higher mana cost, tutors outside of black are always in high demand in Commander, and Solve the Equation will see EDH play for sure.

10. Body of Research

A library-size-matters card in a 100 card format? Sign us up. Yes Body of Research is probably more of a fun build-around than a genuinely reliable card. That’s mainly because, sadly, if you have ways to copy tokens they will copy the 0/0 base Fractal creature and not the dozens of counters on it. With that said, there are plenty of ways to abuse this in +1/+1 counter matters decks.

In combination with Simic Ascendency, this just straight up wins you the game on your next upkeep. With an Altar of Dementia in play, you can mill out any opponent out of nowhere at instant speed. And with the Ozolith, all of those counters are going to stick around to be redeployed to your other creatures in combat even if the token is removed. With a trample-granting effect like Garruk’s Uprising in play, this is going to be something like an 80/80 trampler that will just one-shot opponents who can’t answer it instantly. We’re sure there are other combos to be found out there, and Commander players with an appetite for janky brews will have fun building in this card as a combo piece or a fun massive finisher.

9. Harness Infinity

This might be the single most epic-feeling spell in Strixhaven, which is quite an achievement in a set that specialises in them. Harness Infinity sits relatively low on our list because it is very expensive and mana intensive to cast, and demands a very particular type of deck to be at its best. However, in decks that know how to make use of it, this card offers a unique and extremely powerful effect.

If you’re self-milling or dredging to any serious extent, Harness Infinity offers the chance to get your entire graveyard into your hand at instant speed. That gives you an entire turn with all your mana untapped to go off with any combination of cards in your graveyard, which in a dredge deck might be half your library! Even when you have to discard back down to hand size, you still get to keep seven of the best cards in your deck while putting key reanimation targets or cards that actively want to be in your graveyard back there. This makes this far, far better than a draw seven in a deck than can support it. And if you can pair it with a Reliquary Tower, enjoy your permanent 40 or 50 card hand!

8. Oriq Loremage

Did someone order a repeatable Entomb on a stick? Well you got it.

Oriq Loremage is a godsend for every reanimator deck in EDH, allowing you to repeatedly tutor your best reanimation targets into your graveyard turn after turn if your opponents don’t answer it. It gets a minor bonus if the target is an instant or sorcery, but this card’s real utility is in loading your graveyard with the best reanimation targets in EDH in a much more reliable way than the usual self-mill strategies. You can always find exactly what’s demanded in any situation, from Massacre Wurm to counter go-wide strategies to Griselbrand for massive card-draw.

Needless to say, this card works exceptionally well with Harness Infinity, at which point your opponents will suddenly realise that all those cards you tutored into your graveyard have simultaneously found their way into your hand!

7. Conspiracy Theorist

Red decks can sorely lack for ways to generate card advantage in Commander. They have plenty of looting options like Cathartic Reunion and Wheel of Fortune, but very little that puts them up a card. Conspiracy Theorist offers a great, cheap option to generate much more value from every discard you make, letting you cast any card you discard as long as you have the mana to pay for it. He’s even able to loot himself to trigger his own ability as long as he’s able to attack, and while a 2/2 ground creature isn’t exactly hard to block, he only needs to get in once to pay for himself, and if he can’t attack he can still just sit on the battlefield powering up all of your other discard effects.

This paranoid little guy works excellently with commanders that care about discard like Rielle the Everwise and Gavi, Nest Warden, but many red decks that aren’t on a dedicated discard theme will want this effect regardless.

6. Devastating Mastery

Devastating Mastery is part of a cycle of Mastery cards in Strixhaven that represent the pinnacle of magical study paying off in a single powerful spell. But as for most students who’ve ever been tempted to cheat a test, there are temptations to cut corners. All the Mastery cards can be cast at a reduced mana cost (in this case a very significant cut to 2WW instead of 2WWWW) but at a cost. With Devastating Mastery, that cost is allowing an opponent to return two nonland permanents to their hand before you destroy all permanents.

In two-player formats, casting this for its discounted cost will very often render it near-useless, allowing your opponent to save their two most relevant permenants while you lose everything you have in play. However, in Commander, that downside is much, much less crippling simply because you can choose the least threatening opponent who isn’t the player running away with the game who will be the main target of your 4 mana Planar Cleansing. If you’re very lucky, you may even be able to choose an opponent with one or no permanents in play or with tokens they get no benefit from bouncing to reduce the downside to almost nothing. The politics of the card are great fun too – you’ll have players queining up to offer you favours to let them save their two best permanents. And best of all, once you’ve reached 6 mana (assuming you can generate 4 white) this still functions as an unconditional all-permanents wrath. A great option for white decks looking for board-wipe options that are good both early and late.

5. Resculpt

When Kaldheim released, our top-10 blog included Ravenform as a card that mono-blue Commander players would want to seriously consider. That was because of its unique ability to permanently deal with artifacts in a blue-only deck. Well it’s not unique anymore – Wizards seem determined to add exiling artifacts (even if it is at the cost of granting tokens to the opponent) to blue’s repertoire.

This is likely better than Ravenform – it keeps its excellent flexibility and the total mana cost is lower. While it can’t be foretold, the ability to eliminate any artifact or creature permanently at instant speed is such a big deal and almost certainly pushes this above Ravenform as a removal option. Yes the token you’re handing out is much bigger, but it isn’t evasive like the 1/1 flier from Ravenform, and a vanilla 4/4 should always be far, far less of a problem than whatever you exiled with this. It even deals with indestructible threats like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger that would otherwise threaten to win the game on the spot.

Resculpt has a tonne of utility at common and is worth considering for sure in blue decks that need outs against key artifacts and creatures.

4. Tempted by the Oriq

“For each opponent” is one of the sweetest phrases a Commander player can read, and it is a genuinely big deal on Tempted by the Oriq. In a best-case scenario, you not only get to remove three opposing cheap creatures or planeswalkers, but permanently gain control of them. Even in games where all of your opponents aren’t presenting good targets, doing this to two opponents is more than good enough, and is a massive swing that can be pulled off quite early in the game.

Importantly, this even steals cheap commanders, and can absolutely hobble players who rely on consistent early advantage from their commander. Guaranteed to be effective, especially at losing you friends.

3. Wandering Archaic/Explore the Vastlands

Wandering Archaic is already proving divisive even before the set’s release. That almost always indicates a card that will be relevant and impactful in a lot of formats, even if it ends up being unloved!

Wandering Archaic is going to be at its most relevant in Commander, where not only can it be played in every single deck regardless of colour identity restrictions, it also applies a tax effect to multiple opponents in the same way that makes other tax effects like Rhystic Study so strong in the format.

It’s an incredibly significant effect too, even if it does come attached to a relatively expensive and easy to remove 4/4 for 5. While well known cards like Smothering Tithe (also a two mana tax) offer treasure tokens, or in the best case card advantage from a Rhystic Study, it is MUCH harder to ignore the effect of Wandering Archaic. Giving your opponent the ability to cast your powerful instants and sorceries for free retargeted is far worse than letting them draw a card. And for decks that rely on casting numerous cheap cantrips, this card is an absolute nightmare that can make a game borderline unplayable until removed.

As a colorless card with a powerful effect – even if its reverse side Explore the Vastlands is borderline useless – this card is bound to see EDH play. It will probably only be seen as a design mistake if it becomes completely ubiquitous, but expect to see it making the 99 in plenty of decks.

2. Galazeth Prismari

Elder Dragons are back! EDH is Elder Dragon Highlander after all, and nothing should get a Commander player’s blood pumping like a new cycle of Elder Dragons. Sadly the bulk of the Elder Dragons printed in Strixhaven don’t look incredibly strong, but Galazeth could be the exception in the right deck.

As your Commander, or even in your 99, Galazeth offers enormous mana fixing and ramp in Izzet arifact decks, which traditionally struggle to ramp reliably. Any artifacts will do, be they creatures, utility artifacts, equipment or simple treasures like the one Galazeth creates when he ETBs (which incidentally effectively discounts his casting cost straight away).

There are downsides here for sure – the mana generated must be used to cast instant and sorcery spells, but any Izzet deck worth its salt will hardly be short of those. With the right artifact or package, Galazeth offers a way to ramp quickly into some powerful X spells or card draw spells, and if run as a Commander will be very difficult to shut down short of mass artifact-busting effects like a kicked Vandalblast.

1. Double Major

So you’ve built your entire deck around your commander and the synergistic value they generate. Just imagine if you had two of them! Well there's no need to imagine any longer. Double Major can copy your Commander while it’s on the stack (or any other creature in your deck for that matter) for a mere two mana. It doesn’t even care about the legend rule, simply removing the Legendary keyword from the copy.

This card fully deserves our number one spot from the set, and will surely be run in huge numbers of Simic decks, particularly where the Commander’s ability stacks well in multiples. Some of those creature cards are legendary for a very good reason, and we look forward to seeing all the creative ways EDH players come up with to do broken things with their copies.

Card Crate Blog Team

Jonathan Widnall

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Apr 13, 2021
Jon Widnall

Top 10 Strixhaven Cards for Commander

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