With Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) entering its second week on MTG Arena, we can take a more informed look at where the power in the Limited format truly lies.

The Statistically Best Commons & Uncommons for SOS Limited

Last time, we looked at the early front-runners for the best cards in each color at the Common and Uncommon rarities. Did our early predictions turn out to be correct? Let's take a look at the best Limited performers now that SOS has had some time to breath on MTG Arena.

The Best White Common

The best performing White card outside of the Rares and Mythic Rares is actually a common. Elite Interceptor is a new spin on Thraben Inspector, with "tap or untap target creature" tacked on.

Lorehold () leads the pack, and its best decks tend toward aggression. Elite Interceptor fits that bill nicely as a one-drop that provides value later in the game. Sure, a 1/2 isn't much to write home about, but combat tricks abound, and Rejoinder is a nice bit of late-game reach. The fact that this card is so good says a lot about the shape of the format in general.

The Best White Uncommon

The best uncommon in White, currently, is Repel Calamity. It turns out that Hop to It, my pick for one of the best White Mystical Archive cards, doesn't really do what either of the White schools want to do. It's not a bad card, though.

Repel goes nicely in both Lorehold and Silverquill (). It's an efficient removal spell that kills big stuff, and that's never a bad tool to have. Lorehold arguably cares slightly more about getting a big blocker out of the way, but this is obviously very good with Repartee, too.

The Best Blue Common

Blue's best common, Run Behind, is a mere C+ according to 17lands. That's not bad, but it's nothing special either. It puts it about half a percent ahead of my pick, Essence Scatter and quite a bit behind the best uncommon. We'll get to that in a moment.

Run Behind is a pretty run-of-the-mill "top or bottom" card. It gets a bit of a bump up in this format, where there are quite a lot of relevant tokens. In some matchups, this is a situational Murder. The rest of the time this is a solid playable. The fact that it seems to be Blue's best common is illustrative of the fact that both Blue schools are among the worst-performing decks so far.

The Best Blue Uncommon

At least Blue mages sometimes get to cast Stock Up. This is one of the best card draw spells printed in recent years, so it's no real surprise to see it here.

In longer games, this amount of card selection is incredible, and the card's near 60% win rate when drawn proves it. If you're ahead, this puts the game out of reach. If you're behind, it draws you into the answers you need. You all know how good this card is: pick it accordingly.

The Best Black Common

Predictably, Last Gasp is the winningest Black common. While -3/-3 doesn't kill everything on its own, using this in combat can be devastating. Indeed, this card is so obviously good that I forgot to write about it at all in my previous piece. Oops.

Anyway, it's important to note that this is entirely deck-agnostic. It's great in both Silverquill and Witherbloom () and it's still great in multi-colored monstrosities.

The Best Black Uncommon

My pick from the original article, End of the Hunt, is the second Black uncommon by win rate. I'll take it. The best, much to my surprise, is Arcane Omens. Is a five-mana Mind Twist really that good? Apparently!

Multi-color decks seem to be very hit and miss, but Jund () is one of the better three-coloor decks. If this hits three cards, that is likely to wipe your opponent's hand at that stage of the game, so it's clearly a powerful effect. This seems like a total whiff against aggressive Lorehold decks, though, so keep that in mind.

The Best Red Common

I'm happy to be wrong this time. Rubble Rouser is a much more interesting card than Expressive Firedancer and it is significantly better in the format, it turns out. It's a lot like White's best Common, in that it does a little bit of everything, and really ties the room together.

A rummage on entering is always welcome, extra mana is nice, as is the ping that comes with it. The cherry on top, of course, is that this provides repeatable "leaves your Graveyard" triggers. It all comes with a hard-to-kill four toughness, too.

The Best Red Uncommon

Unfortunately, the best Red uncommon is far less interesting. Impractical Joke is so good that there isn't really much to say about it. The "up to" clause is vaguely irritating, because it means you have to click extra times on Arena. That's the main thing I've learned about this obviously excellent removal spell. It's hyper efficient and it even triggers a whole bunch of extra stuff in Prismari ().

The Best Green Common

Finally, I hit the nail right on the head with this one. Studious First-Year is the best Green Common and is one of the better Commons in the set, full stop. It's not amazing, though. With a win rate of 57.5%, it falls a distance behind the best Commons in other colors, and especially some of the gold cards.

Both of the Green schools are struggling somewhat right now. Multi-colored decks aren't doing much better, although the best of them are base-Green. I suspect that the format is just a little too fast for decks where First-Year is at its best. This is still a good card, but you need more ways to slow the game down than just a 1/1 chump blocker.

We'll just ignore my other pick (Oracle's Restoration) being an F with sub-50% win rate and move on to the Uncommons.

The Best Green Uncommon

Environmental Scientist looks a lot like its Common counterpart, but is somehow the best uncommon in the entire format. Yeah, I was confused at first, too, but it currently sits in A- on 17lands, with a whopping 62.4% win rate.

The difference between this and First-Year is that a 2/2 actually matters in-play and doesn't need to stick around in order to get value. Scientist just fetches you the Land immediately, and while it doesn't put it into play, you also don't need to spend more mana doing nothing to affect the board.

While this looks like it should be at its best in a Converge deck, it's still fine in a two-color deck and great at fixing your splash color.

Conclusion

Secrets of Strixhaven is looking like a relatively aggressive format. Lorehold is the best color pair by win rate and it is stifling many of the slower decks. Even Witherbloom with all its life gain struggles to get its feet under it before dying to the Red-White aggressive decks.

While a lot of the power in the set is at higher rarity, White in particular has incredible cards across the board. The likes of Practiced Offense and Antiquities on the Loose are obviously excellent, but Elite Interceptor isn't that far behind those Rares.

Lorehold isn't so far ahead of the pack that other decks are unplayable, but you should keep in mind that you need to answer their aggression. Get on-board early, even if it's just in order to block, and make sure you pack efficient removal. Blocking is rough in this format full of tricks, but you will just die if you can't at least throw something in the way. Being able to stabilize the board into a Stock Up or some other two-for-one is crucial, and you can do it without Rares.