What to expect from Magic the Gathing Strixhaven Prerelease

Magic the Gathering, prerelease, strixhaven -

What to expect from Magic the Gathing Strixhaven Prerelease

Firstly we know Strixhaven prerelease was last week but with all the restrictions going on in the world at the moment and in the UK we are unable to play in any game stores at the moment. The likelihood is that you have not had chance to fully appreciate the prerelease yet.

With Strixhaven’s official release tomorrow there are going to be a lot more options to play the game with the full range of products available. Magic the Gathering changed which booster boxes were available for prerelease. So going forward it will only be set booster boxes that are available at pre release, not draft booster boxes.

Getting back to the prerelease products. As we all know there are five colleges at Strixhaven, each with their own two colour combination and specialities. For those of you who don’t know what the five colleges are they are;

Lorehold

Magic the Gathering Strixhaven Lorehold

Prismari

Magic the Gathering Strixhaven Prismari

Witherbloom

Magic the Gathering Witherbloom Strixhaven

Silverquill

Magic the Gathering Strixhaven Silverquill

Quandrix

Magic the Gathering Strixhaven Quandrix

As you may have also noticed there are five different prerelease kits available, one for each of the college.

The one thing that you might not know is with a usual prerelease kit there are six draft boosters in which to build your limited deck from. In Strixhaven, this is a little different. In these prerelease kits you get five draft boosters and a theme booster of the chosen college. So if you chose Witherbloom, you would get five Strixhaven draft boosters and a Witherbloom theme booster. Also, usually you get a life spindown dice (D20) in prerelease kits, in the Strixhaven ones you get a dice that matches the chosen college’s colours. Something a little different. 

The idea with this is that you will build your deck around the college you have chosen. We did a prerelease last Friday, with Prismari vs Witherbloom. Both of us tried to draft away from the chosen college as some of the cards we opened encouraged us to do so. However with one of the boosters being very much one college focused the number of cards available were limited for the other colours. Unless you wanted to go for a three colour deck which we were trying to avoid.

The Lesson and Learn mechanics which are new in Strixhaven are also a bonus to building the decks. With Lesson and Learn you are able to draw a card from your side board to your hand, which is a big help when you are in need of a little something extra. If you are able to draft enough Lesson cards to make it worth while then we would encourage you to do this as it’s basically card advantage. Most of the spells with Learn on them do something else as well as Learn so it’s almost a two for one.

The other added bonus to the Strixhaven set is that there are no basic lands in the draft booster packs. The Mystical Archive cards have replaced that slot which means you get an extra playable card for the draft. In most circumstances everyone has enough lands if you have been playing the game for a while so this shouldn’t be too much of a loss for people. Plus if the lands are replaced with potentially a foil mythic Mystical Archive card, this is going to add to the value of each booster pack. Not really draft related but something worth knowing.

I hope this helps everyone out with a quick summary of what the prerelease kits are looking like and that you should know in which direction you want to draft before selecting the prerelease kit you want. It will make drafting much easier. I hope you all enjoy any prerelease you manage to play and enjoy Strixhaven.