What I'm looking forward to in Historic with the release of Strixhaven.
April 12, 2021
Strixhaven is releasing on MTG Arena within a week and as an indoctrinated Historic player, I am very excited for the upcoming set release. Not because it is just a new set being introduced into the card pool, but because it is bringing cards from Legacy and Modern into the card pool. Good cards to.
For those unaware, Strixhaven boosters will have an additional card in each pack that is dedicated to a set of reprints dubbed the Mystical Archive. They'll function similarly to how the timeshifted cards did in Time Spiral except that they will not be Standard legal. They will however, be Historic legal. New standard set releases generally don't make large waves in Historic but do affect the meta. But with these cards on top of a full set release, Strixhaven will likely have the largest impact on Historic of any set or anthology released to date.
You can find a list of all the cards that will be available here and a list of cards new to Historic here .
Decks I'm excited to try out
As a long time Legacy player, I am a very big fan of Brainstorm. The first deck I'm going to start jamming with in ranked is 100% going to be a Brainstorm deck. While a lot of Brainstorm's power in Legacy and Vintage comes from the fact that fetch lands exist, Brainstorm on its own is still a very good card. There has been discourse on social media on whether or not brainstorm will be playable or not without fetch lands in the format, but the thought of a U/W Control deck responding with Brainstorm to getting Thoughtseized makes me shudder. Not to mention that Fabled Passage is a fetch land that already is played in several decks mana bases. It will be a pretty low cost to add some number to blue decks that don't play any already. Brainstorm certainly will not be the face of the format as it is in Legacy, but it definitely will become a staple.
The first deck I am going to try out after Strixhaven releases will be Izzet Phoenix. The deck relies an a bunch of cheap draw and burn spells to power out early Arclight Phoenixes and Stormwing Entities. It was one of the best decks in Modern before Faithless Looting was banned. Conveniently, Faithless Looting is also being printed in the Mystical Archive as well. I believe that some version of Izzet Phoenix will become a fairly popular deck in the format. Here's a version I made that I will be playing with on launch day:
Another deck that I'm looking forward to playing with is a Thassa's Oracle / Tainted Pact combo deck. The basic idea is that you play an entirely one-of deck (barring multiple Tainted Pacts) so that you can always get Thassa's Oracle with your first Tainted Pact, and then name a card not in your deck with your second Tainted Pact to empty your library and win on the spot with oracle. I like the idea of a clunky EDH like combo deck that can win out of no where. I don't think it will be very good, but I think it will be very fun.
Cards to look out for
There are plenty of cards being printed into Historic that are mechanically new cards, but of course not all of them will make an impact or see play. A few cards that I think will have an impact on the format in some capacity are: Inquisition of Kozilek, Lightning Helix, Ephemerate, Time Warp, Memory Lapse, Grapeshot, Brainstorm and Faithless Looting.
Inquisition is a pretty obvious one. Any deck that wants Thoughtseize #5 or #6 will certainly play this. Inquisition is arguably a better mainboard card for certain decks as well. It also has the upside of being the better meta choice if mono-red burn ever comes back in favour.
Ephemerate is extremely good and extremely fun. Historic doesn't have Eternal Witness in it to keep a loop going, but it still has good targets like Wall of Blossoms and of course, Yorion. I certainly will be playing with this card in the future although it will take a fair bit of iterating to figure out where exactly it fits.
Grapeshot is an interesting case. I do not believe that storm will in any capacity become a large part of the Historic meta, but I certainly think people will try their absolute hardest to make it work. I'm calling out Grapeshot specifically because between Birgi and Steam-Kin there is already a mana generation engine there. I'm not certain how your supposed to draw a critical mass of card's however.
The rest of the list all seem like cards that will slot fairly well into control decks. They may be dependant on the flow of the meta at times, but I believe all of them will be important in some capacity. Lightning Helix may even push mono-red towards R/W in the future as a mirror-breaker of sorts. A card that I could potentially even see in peoples sideboards in the future is Weather the Storm — dependant on how popular burn, aggro, or storm are at any given moment.
Closing thoughts
All of these cards are simply amongst the additional cards in Strixhaven. I haven't even really looked through much of the normal card spoilers, which I'm certain there are plenty of that will see play and shake up the meta in Historic. One of the things I notice for the Mystical Archive cards, is that none really look like they just slot into and immediately improve any top tier decks. The blue cards I talked about are probably the only ones that seem like they may be jammed into control decks. The numbers will definitely vary, and there may even be rifts in how control decks in certain colour combinations will be built. I have to hand it to WoTC, they gave us a very good list of cards.