Whispers or hoofbeats? Sorry Colorstorm Stallion. It ain't you.

Ancestral Recall... For five six? In this economy? About as preposterous as it sounds.

Resonating Lute... Is a card that has been kicking my butt all over MTGA Leagues. Sadly. I mean, let's dwell on this card for a moment. Is it Wilderness Reclamation come again? I initially gave the very-not-Legendary Artifact a lot of side-eye when my opponents tapped out for it on turn four. But because it's usually paired with Lightning Helix and a now even more ridiculous Jeskai Revelation, the Lute version of "shields down" seems a lot different from everyone else's version of "shields down." Still, as far as Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven went, this Secrets of Strixhaven card did not crack the Top 8.

So, it seems like the secret is out!

The Top Five Secrets of Strixhaven Cards at Pro Tour: Secrets of Strixhaven

Shockingly, only five new cards cracked the Sunday barrier. One of them cracking not only the aforementioned barrier, but the earth, and the scale.

Let's go.

5. Petrified Hamlet (one copy)

Found In: Azorius Aggro by Zevin Faust

First there was Strip Mine.

That card's long-ago Standard career went from 1) four-of in the best decks to 2) Restricted in Standard [you can only play one copy in your seventy-five] to 3) replaced by Wasteland.

Strip Mine is an interesting one. It's "just" a one-for-one, but if you either drew more Lands than your opponent or they just had a light draw, it could result in some un-fun non-games, especially in an era with less friendly mulligan rules. Wasteland was in some senses no better. Yes, its potential targets were by definition fewer, but the swap didn't inherently fix the non-games problem with Strip Mine, especially for decks of mostly or all nonbasic Lands.

In the current design space we have cards like...

... Which create interesting sub-games. "Basics check" is a term you'll hear from time to time... Standard-legal Demolition Field theoretically removes a problematic Land from the battlefield, but can actually help fix your opponents' colors (unless they don't play any basic Lands).

Volatile Fault (still Standard-legal) goes a step further. Will players accept a downgrade from "basics check" for themselves in return for a one-mana discount on the activation cost?

The #5 Standard card from Secrets of Strixhaven goes a step further. No mana activation cost at all! It doesn't destroy anything, so it's kinda sorta less effective than Demolition Field, but is also more inherently card advantageous than Volatile Fault.

But is that all? It turns out the answer is no. One Petrified Hamlet can mess up all the cards of a single name, not just one. So, even though it's not destroying anything, you can actually prevent not only the Ba Sing Se that is already on the battlefield from making any relentless 2/2 attackers, but all future copies of Ba Sing Se. In a Top 8 that was all about Landfall triggers at the top end, turning a Fabled Passage into essentially a Desert might save you 50% of incoming Mightform Harmonizer damage.

It seems kind of dorky at first glance, but because Petrified Hamlet can itself tap for mana, Faust could just play it and tap it for his Aven Interrupter on-curve to really slow the opponent down. Imagine you had grudgingly kept the dreaded-but-slow double Fabled Passage hand... High upside, but you might not get going until turn three. Well, turn three is now a pipe dream thanks to Petrified Hamlet.

4. Flow State (three copies)

Found In: Izzet Spellementals by Maxx Kominowski

There's two things about Flow State. First, this is the most hyped card in Secrets of Strixhaven. For formats other than Standard, it is likely to see extremely wide play. Heck, for Standard, the card has an incredible ceiling. Most of a Stock Up for only two-thirds of the mana? Where can I sign up?

Second, players have already been joking that this card creates a two-card combo deck.

One Instant?

One Sorcery?

Either or both dig up or draw into the other? Bang! Flow State is now online. Prismari Charm (a card we'll get into in a second) is conceivably a one-card combo for these purposes. When you Surveil 2 with that card, you can bury a Sorcery; Prismari Charm itself will put an Instant into the graveyard. Did I say "bang" yet?

So, the big question is why only three copies?

Leading up to Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven we saw a fair number of aggressive Izzet decks that played three, and maybe sideboarded the fourth. The reality is that the card can be great once you're already online with your strategy, but is probably less efficient at setting that strategy up. Or, it's good at holding a lead, but you might as well just use your Opt + Sleight of Hand to get the lead for the same mana. This is especially true for a deck that rewards the volume of Instants and Sorceries you have in your graveyard.

Obviously, Spellementals (the deck that actually played Flow State) falls into this category with Eddymurk Crab and Hearth Elemental, but so might a whole generation of Gran-Gran players who haven't gone to school yet.

2. Prismari Charm and Skycoach Conductor (tie - four copies)

Prismari Charm is featured in Izzet Spellementals by Maxx Kominowski.

A moment ago we talked about how Prismari Charm can help set up Flow State. But the reality is, it is just fast at putting Instants and Sorceries into your graveyard for just one card / two mana. Sometimes you'll put three into your graveyard and that's like a Black Lotus for purposes of casting your Eddymurk Crab.

The card is also just super flexible. Part Fire // Ice, with some Boomerang DNA; Prismari Charm's Swiss Army Knife-ness helps to not only accelerate a deck whose threats sometimes cost one-two mana but have retail costs in the seven-nine zone... It can help to keep a Spellementals player alive, sniping double Llanowar Elves or bouncing a Monument to Endurance with Artist's Talent's trigger on the stack.

Skycoach Conductor is featured in Azorius Aggro by Zevin Faust.

Skycoach Conductor does everything that the Azorius Aggro deck wants out of a Creature.

First, it has Flash. Azorius loves passing the turn, knowing that the opponent can and will inevitably play into Aang, Swift Savior or Aven Interrupter. These are pseudo-Counterspells and put the opponent on a clock while forcing them to take the same turn over and over.

Skycoach Conductor is just another Flash Creature. Did the opponent do nothing? Okay, you can deploy a 2/3 flyer without wasting the text box on one of your "Counterspell" Creatures.

But those same Aangs, and Interrupters, (and Beza and Drowners and Riddlers)? All of them have incredible 187 (enters the battlefield) abilities that you might want to get a second use out of. Skycoach Conductor is here for that value, at a potentially low cost of , once you've paid the initial cost. And of course, this card is hell on removal.

Did you just try to The End my Quantum Riddler? I also have four mana open. You are not going to like this.

1. Erode (eleven copies)

If it looks like the first four cards in our Secrets of Strixhaven Top Five are all from the same two lists... It's because many of the Top 8 decks were re-runs of previous strategies. There was an Izzet Lessons deck that played no new cards, and multiple looks at Mono-Green Landfall. You need to add that extra color for little birdies and monstrous Hydras to go to school, I guess.

Three Pro Tour Champions played Erode to the Las Vegas Top 8: Matt Nass in an Ouroboroid deck, plus Finalist Christoffer Larsen and eventual winner Nathan Steuer in their nearly identical Selesnya Landfall. Nass played it as a sideboard card (his Brightglass Gearhulks preferred Meltstrider's Resolve and Seam Rip for one mana removal) but Erode was much more central to the Landfall decks' strategies.

First and foremost, this card is a Path to Exile. Yes, you miss out on the actual "exile" effect of a Path to Exile, but the additional targeting to Planeswalkers is a nice bonus on the card for the same mana cost. You'll see a variety of decks playing Erode outside of the Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven Top Eight, including ones that don't care how many cards they give to the opponent. In the past they might have grudgingly run Get Lost. Well, Get Lost might give the opponent two extra Lands, and Erode costs half as much mana.

No, you don't want to Erode a first-turn Gene Pollinator very often. But the card is flexible and cheap, both. If you have the initiative (not The Initiative) in a game, you might keep it long enough to win if you're Eroding the opponent's proposed big blocker and getting in with two 3/4 Chocobos before they can stabilize. The opponent is about to kill you with a Lumbering Worldwagon? The extra Land they search up might not work out exactly how its paired Mightform Harmonizer imagined.

The "Real" Secret of Strixhaven

But the real secret? The secret of Strixhaven itself? You can Erode your own stuff. I think top players are Eroding their own cards almost half the time. There are obvious times you might want to do this (an Inevitable Defeat or Lightning Helix is about to give your opponent life) and less obvious ones. Remember when I said Erode is central to the Landfall strategy?

When you Erode your own Land with Earthbent +1/+1 counters, a number of things happen. First of all, your land comes back because that's how Earthbending works. But you also get an extra little search. For a deck with Sazh's Chocobo, Mightform Harmonizer, and Earthbender Ascension, the interaction with Erode turns the card into a tactical Giant Growth (or more), especially when you are attacking with multiple Landfall Creatures.

See? I told you you had to go to add White to go to school and learn the secret!

LOVE

MIKE