Do you still love the Harry Potter franchise but absolutely can’t bear to support its amazing author? If, Magic: The Gatheringthe latest card set, Strixhaven: School of Mages, maybe something for you.
More than a simple card game played to demoralize your friends, Magic: The Gathering has its own story, with each new card set set in magical realms called planes. Recent aircraft have incorporated the Viking theme Kaldheim, the fairytale Eldraine, and now with Strixhaven, publishing house Wizards of the Coasts Hogwarts-ifying is his popular card game.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Strixhaven is a school for magicians founded by five mighty dragons, each with their own disciplines and personalities. They have divided their school into five different colleges, with each college dedicated to the ideals of their founders. Magic published one short, cute blog about each of the colleges. Strixhaven sounds very much like a real university with math, science, history and literature, each with their unique magical flair.
I love Magic: the gathering, but I was always more attracted to the characters on the maps than the worlds they occupy. I identified with black characters such as Kaya and safe and highly respected characters like Ashiok, despite the misery they always caused me their card materialized from my opponent’s hand.
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With Strixhaven, I am very excited to learn more about the world. It seems so nice – in sharp contrast to Magic‘s usual stories from war or survive in monster infested environments Strixhaven It seems like they’re just kids learning and having fun, and that’s a nice change of pace-Magic could use a little levity. It can’t be Nicol Bolas tries to take over the world all the time, right?
Here is my brief summary of the schools.
Witherbloom is the school for the bio-nerds who like to poke at living or dead things and certainly have a collection of taxidermied pets. Quandrix is the school that somehow managed to make magic boring by adding math to it. Prismari is the school for the stage children – at least one person can sing ‘Seasons of Love’ at any time of the day. Lorehold is the college of history and is completely populated by children who read during lunch, recess and on the toilet. Finally, Silverquill is for literature nerds who think wearing black is a substitute for having a personality.
Along with a standard set of cards, Wizards will release pre-made Commander decks for each of the lectures. I personally choose Lorehold because I’m a history nerd who prefers to play white mana decks and … I was one of those kids who read at lunch, recess and on the toilet.
Strixhaven: School of Mages won’t come out for a few more months, but you can expect more maps and hopefully more of the story as we get closer to the release date.