Secrets of Strixhaven marks the return to Arcavios, the setting for 2021's Strixhaven: School of Mages. Like the original set, SOS is built around five two-color Schools of magic, putting Magic: the Gathering's spin on the popular 'Magic School' genre of fiction ( like Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, or Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series).

Strixhaven was designed to present the already well-defined enemy color pairs from Ravnica (Boros , Golgari , Izzet , Orzhov , and Simic ) in a new mechanical light as The Colleges of Lorehold, Witherbloom, Prismari, Silverquill, and Quandrix). Much like its predecessor, Secrets of Strixhaven features a heavy focus on Instant and Sorcery spells.

I've been giving you these Top lists for casual play for decades, and then I almost always have played casual formats like Commander, Five Color, Highlander, multiplayer, Type Four and more. These lists feature cards that are primed for play in Casual formats, whether you're playing one-on-one or at a multiplayer table. That's everything from Commander and Five-Color to Type Four, Peasant, and even Pauper.

Cards are much more powerful than they used to be. So, here're some of the most fun, most broken Secrets of Strixhaven cards for casual players.

Best SOS Cards for Casual Play

If you're looking to build Casual decks that are lots of fun to play, then you should absolutely consider these Secrets of Strixhaven cards.

• 20. Moment of Reckoning
• 19. Ark of Hunger
• 18. Grave Researcher
• 17. Steal the Show
• 16. Zaffai and the Tempests
• 15. Choreographed Sparks
• 14. Dina's Guidance
• 13. Topiary Lecturer
• 12. Berta, Wise Extrapolator
• 11. Professor Dellian Fel
• 10. Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer
• 9. Wisdom of Ages
• 8. Together as One
• 7. Planar Engineering
• 6. Erode
• 5. The Paradigm Cycle
• 4. The Dawning Archaic
• 3. Vicious Rivalry & Withering Curse
• 2. Mana Sculpt
• 1. The Elder Dragon Cycle

20. Moment of Reckoning

Moment of Reckoning is a Silverquill Sorcery that costs seven mana to cast. The card has two modes and asks you to choose four times (repeats are allowed). The first mode destroys target nonland permanent. The second mode returns targets nonland permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

You get to do those two things in any combination up to four times, which is some pretty good value for one card. It's bonkers in Type Four where you have infinite mana but can only cast one spell per turn.

19. Ark of Hunger

Ark of Hunger triggers 'Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard.' When it does, it deals one damage to each opponent and we gain one life. Lorehold is all about having cards leave the graveyard, so this is a pretty solid bit of extra value for executing your normal gameplan.

On top of that, the Ark can also tap to Mill a card that you can play for the rest of the turn. Card advantage that triggers its own ability if you take advantage of it? Sign me up.

18. Grave Researcher

Grave Researcher is one amazing three-drop, and the first Prepared Creature on our list. It fits right on the mana curve as a three-mana 3/3, and during our upkeep we get to Surveil 1 (look at the top card of our library and put it back on top or in the graveyard). Then, if we have at least three Creatures in our graveyard, we can Prepare the Researcher and cast Reanimate to bring a Creature back from your graveyard for the small cost of and life equal to its mana value.

Note that Grave Researcher can Prepare to cast Reanimate every turn as long as the requirement of three Creatures in your graveyard is met. Three Creatures is a low bar to clear, especially if you set it up with Mill or something like Buried Alive. Bringing a Creature back from the Graveyard every turn is going to cause plenty of problems for your opponents, as long as you have the life to pay for them.

17. Steal the Show

Steal the Show comes with two modes and asks you to choose one, or do both. We can have target player discard their hand and draw that many cards, and/or we can deal damage equal to the number of Instants and Sorceries in our graveyard to target Creature or Planeswalker.

This is perfect for making friends while hurting your enemies in a Multiplayer format. Or you can use it to dig for Lands or whatever else you may need at the time. It's great for helping you, or helping you play politics.

16. Zaffai and the Tempests

Zaffai and the Tempests is a seven-drop 5/7 Legendary Creature in Prismari that can be a pretty nasty Commander. On each of our turns Zaffai lets you cast an Instant or Sorcery from your hand for free. Insurrection? Tidings? Searing Wind? Getting to cast any of those for free would be back-breaking.

I cannot overemphasize how good free stuff is in a game of Magic. Commanders like Kaalia of the Vast and Zur the Enchanter are busted for a reason.

15. Choreographed Sparks

Choreographed Sparks is up next. This two-mana Instant cannot be copied and it offers you to choose one of two modes, or both if you're able. The first mode is a Fork, copying target Instant or Sorcery spell you control and choosing new targets for the copy. The second makes a Hasted copy of target Creature spell you control, and that copy gets sacrificed at the beginning of the end step.

You'll usually be picking one of the two modes, since getting both requires you have an Instant or Sorcery spell and a Creature spell on the stack at the same time. For example, you could cast Solemn Simulacrum and then cast Lightning Bolt or Brainstorm while Solemn is on the stack. Then you get to cast this for a copy of Lightning Bolt and a token copy of Solemn.

You don't need to get both modes for this to be worth it, though. The flexibility alone is worth consideration.

14. Dina's Guidance

Dina's Guidance lets you tutor up a Creature and put it into your hand or graveyard, all at Instant speed. It's part Eladamri's Call and part Entomb.

An Instant speed tutor is already powerful on its own, and this is capable of quickly grabbing a Creature with Flash to answer something, like Mystic Snake or Necron Deathmark. You can put a Creature with card draw or a win condition into your hand, or set up for some graveyard recursion. The possibilities are endless.

13. Topiary Lecturer

Topiary Lecturer is a three-mana Creature that taps for Green mana equal to its power. It also has the Quandrix mechanic Increment, which means it gets a +1/+1 counter if the amount of mana we use to cast a spell is more than its power.

Unlocking the true potential of this Mana Dork doesn't fully rely on how many counters we can put on it. Lecturer's ability doesn't care about how many +1/+1 counters are on it, it cares about how big it's power is. So, if we can pump its power through other means besides counters, it can reward us just as well.

I like the option to build around this in few different ways. Flexibility and power will take you far.

12. Berta, Wise Extrapolator

Berta, Wise Extrapolator has my attention for a future Commander deck. This four-drop 1/4 Legendary Frog Druid gives you a mana of any color Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are placed on her. Increment makes another appearance to give you a natural way to grow Berta over time.

There's more to Berta than that, though. You can tap her for to create a 0/0 Fractal Creature token that enters with +1/+1 counters. That gives you a way to spend the extra mana generated from Berta, but it's also right at home in a deck trying to cast bigger and bigger spells as the game goes on.

11. Professor Dellian Fel

Professor Dellian Fel is four-mana, five loyalty Planeswalker with four abilities. His +2 ability gains 3 life. His 0 ability lets you draw a card and lose a life. The -3 ability destroys target Creature, and his -6 ultimate ability gives you an Emblem that says "Whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life.

Dellian Fel can protect himself, gives you card advantage, and his ultimate is a game-winning ability on its own. All of that adds up to an extremely appealing Casual card.

10. Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer

We have another Planeswalker up next in Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer. This three-mana, three-loyalty Planeswalker also has four abilities, and we all know how dominant three-drop Planeswalkers can be.

Ral can +1 to surveil 2. He can -1 to make any number of players discard a card, like Liliana of the Veil but you don't have to make yourself discard unless you want to. His -2 returns a Creature with mana value three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. All three of these first abilities work great together, helping you set up for some lovely graveyard recursion.

If you manage to hit his -7 ability, you have the chance at making target opponent skip some of their turns, but the real value is in those first three abilities.

9. Wisdom of Ages

Wisdom of Ages is next up, and it's a seven-mana Sorcery that returns all of the Instant and Sorcery cards in your graveyard to your hand. It also gives you no maximum hand size for the rest of the game.

It self-exiles itself, like many other splashy recursion spells (Restock and All Suns' Dawn come to mind). But that recursion sets you up so nicely for the rest of the game.

8. Together as One

Spot number eight is taken by Together as One, a Colorless six-mana Sorcery with Converge. Converge cares about the number of colors of mana spent to cast the spell, giving you an increased effect for your trouble. So, the goal with this spell is to cast it with mana to draw five cards, burn any target for five, and gain five life.

Of course, this will work fine in four or three-color decks, but the real sauce is casting this for all five colors of mana.

7. Planar Engineering

Harrow is one of the original Ramp spells and it continues to be one of the best to this day. It let you sacrifice one Land to search your library for two basic Lands and put them into play untapped. It was good in case someone wanted to target your Land with a Stone Rain, or just as a way to increase your Land count. But it wasn't card advantage like Cultivate for the same cost.

Planar Engineering is a Sorcery speed double Harrow. It sacs two Lands and then ramps out four basic Lands. Now that is card advantage. Two Harrows for four mana in one card.

6. Erode

Erode is a new take on Path to Exile that lets you destroy target Creature or Planeswalker. The downside is that the controller may search for a basic Land and put it onto the battlefield tapped.

Now, Erode destroys the target rather than exiling, and this also hits Planeswalkers. So, it's like a color-shifted Hero's Downfall. Being able to target your own stuff to ramp is great in White and will often be more useful than the life gain you'd get from Swords to Plowshares. And since Erode's target isn't exiled, you can even use recursion to bring it back later.

That's a lot of options for a one-mana spell.

5. The Paradigm Cycle

I've been calling these the new Epic Sorceries, a cycle originally printed back in Saviors of Kamigawa. Those spells would exile themselves and then cast copies of themselves at the beginning of your turn, which sounds great! The downside was you couldn't cast any other spells for the rest of the game. Not so great.

The Paradigm spells fix this by simply removing the part about not being able to cast other spells (with the caveat that you can't have duplicate Paradigm spells going at the same time). You still get a copy of the Paradigm spell (at the beginning of your first main phase), but you get to play the rest of your game as normal. They're less powerful than the Epic spells, but you aren't sacrificing your ability to keep playing the game.

These are also Lessons if you care about that because of the Learn mechanic. The copies also count for Storm.

Germination Practicum is in Green and costs five mana to toss two +1/+1 counters on all of our Creatures. That should get out of hand pretty quickly casting it turn after turn.

Improvisation Capstone is Red and costs seven mana to exile cards from the top of our library until we hit spells with total mana value four or greater. We then get to cast those spells for free, even if the total value is more than four. For example, if we exile a Lightning Bolt (one mana) and then the next spell is an Insurrection (eight mana), we get to cast both.

Decorum Dissertation is the Black entry, and also costs five. In this case, target player loses two life and draws two cards. Sign in Blood every turn is pretty good.

In Blue, we get Echocasting Symposium, which creates a free token copy of one of our Creatures for six mana. Progenitor Mimic is a great Casual card, and this fits a similar bill.

Finally, we have Restoration Seminar in White which resurrects one non-Land permanent each turn for seven mana. This one is my favorite. Ever since Living Death was printed, I've adored this kind of card.

4. The Dawning Archaic

The Dawning Archaic is ten-mana Colorless 7/7 Legendary Creature with Reach. It costs less for each Instant or Sorcery in your graveyard, and Whenever it attacks, we get to cast an Instant or Sorecery from our graveyard for free. The card we cast gets exiled, which is great for the Lorehold effects that care about cards leaving our graveyard.

3. Vicious Rivalry AND Withering Curse

I adore mass-sweepers in multiplayer since they provide so much card advantage. These two Black Sorceries are excellent additions to the Wrath of God roster.

Vicious Rivalry lets you spend X life to destroy all Artifacts and Creatures with mana value X or less! That means you can take out all tokens for four mana and no life. Say goodbye to all your Treasures. For a single life this handles problem permanents like Sol Ring, Skullclamp, Birds of Paradise, and Mother of Runes easily.

If Toxic Deluge is any indication, you should have enough life in 20-life formats to get value from this. And in Commander with 40 life, you won't even sweat. Giving you the option to save your best stuff from being destroyed by this is the extra icing on the cake.

Withering Curse is always going to be at least an Infest (-2/-2 to all Creatures). But if you gained just one life this turn? Now it's a Damnation instead. Gaining one life is easy, so this basically going to be another Damnation, which is always welcome.

2. Mana Sculpt

Mana Sculpt is a three-mana Counterspell that counters anything. It's basically Cancel, but with the added benefit of being a Mana Drain if we control a Wizard.

We don't need a Wizard deck for this to be an all-star. Just having a Wizard Commander will be enough for this to be Mana Drain enough of the time. And at worst its still Cancel, and that's a great worst case.

1. The Elder Dragon Cycle

At the top of list, we have the cycle of returning Elder Dragons. These Elder Dragon Legends founded the five Colleges of Strixhaven and each of them is a massive Flying body that gives all of our Instants and Sorceries some kind of additional ability.

Silverquill, the Disputant is a four-mana 4/4 with Vigilance and gives all our Instants and Sorceries Casualty 1. For the low cost of sacrificing something with one power or more, we can copy any spell we cast.

Witherbloom, the Balancer is a 5/5 with Deathtouch for eight mana, but he'll almost always be cheaper since he has Affinity for Creatures. Oh, and he gives all of your Instants and Sorceries Affinity for Creatures. Holy smokes, that powerful.

Prismari, the Inspiration is a seven-mana 7/7 with Ward - Pay 5 life to protect itself. It gives all of your Instants and Sorceries Storm. The Storm Scale is called the Storm Scale for a reason, and giving every Instant or Sorcery you cast Storm is absolutely broken in half.

Quandrix, the Proof is a six-mana 6/6 with Trample that Cascades when it Enters, and... gives all of our Instants and Sorceries cast from our hand Cascade! That's just so much extra value, I don't even know where to start.

Last but not least, we have Lorehold, the Historian, a five-drop 5/5 with Haste that gives all your Instants and Sorceries a Miracle cost of . If that were it, Lorehold would be great, but he also gives us a free rummage (discard and draw) during each upkeep which gives us four chances to trigger Miracle every turn cycle in Commander.

Yeah, I think the power level of these five Elder Dragons speaks for itself. Wizards of the Coast definitely wasn't messing around making sure each of these was at the very least extremely playable.

Honorable Mentions

Of course, there are many more cards worth talking about from Secrets of Strixhaven (several more lists, in fact!). Here are some honorable mentions that sit just outside this list of the top Casual cards from the set.

Splatter Technique

Splatter Technique is a five-cost Prismari Sorcery that lets you choose to either draw four cards for Tidings cost, or burn every Creature and Planeswalker for four damage. Whichever mode you choose, you're getting a good deal. The flexibility to choose what you need when you cast it makes it even better.

Resonating Lute

Resonating Lute is a bonkers four-drop Prismari mana rock. It makes it so all of your Lands tap for two mana of any one color to cast Instants and Sorceries. It can also tap to draw a card if you have seven or more cards in your hand, like Library of Alexandria. That's a lot of power on one Artifact.

Borrowed Knowledge

Finally, we have Borrowed Knowledge. This Lorehold four-mana Sorcery lets you choose between discarding your hand to draw cards equal to the number of cards in an opponent's hand, or discard your hand and draw equal to the number you discarded. Since many players adore having huge hands of cards in Multiplayer, getting to dump out your hand and then refill with this isn't too much of a stretch.

It's also great if we have a hand full of stuff we want in our graveyard.

Wrapping Up

There we go! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of the most exciting Casual cards in Secrets of Strixhaven. Until next time.