Magic: The Gathering is heading back to Strixhaven next month, bringing players to the magical university for the first time since 2021. The new set, Secrets of Strixhaven, will include regular booster packs alongside five prebuilt Commander decks. We've obtained an exclusive look at the blue-red Prismari Artistry deck and spoke with Senior Game Designer Daniel Holt about the philosophy behind its construction.
The Prismari color pair has a long history in Magic tied to instant and sorcery casting. The original Strixhaven explored how each color pair could leverage those spell types, and the first Prismari Commander deck focused on high-mana-value spells. For the new iteration, the design team took a different approach.
"What does the uncommon Legend from the previous set look like now as the face of this deck?" Holt explained, describing his guiding principle. "It's been a couple of years, there was a whole Phyrexian invasion, and these returning students are now much more powerful."
The new face of the deck is Rootha, Mastering the Moment—an upgraded version of the previous Rootha. The new design copies large spells while also generating creature tokens, addressing one of the core challenges with high-mana-value decks: closing out games.
Building Around Big Spells
Constructing a functional deck around expensive spells presents real constraints. Players must consistently hit their land drops and accelerate their mana, or aggressive opponents will overrun them before the powerful late-game payoffs arrive. Spellslinger decks traditionally struggle with defense, which is why Rootha provides board presence alongside the spells themselves.
"Players need to take advantage of treasures, mana rocks, and other mana discounts in the precon to get to their high-end spells faster," Holt said. Cards like Blasphemous Act illustrate this principle—while it carries a mana value of nine for deck-building purposes, Commander's larger format often allows it to cost just one mana when circumstances align.
The reprints and new cards in the deck reflect careful consideration of flexibility. Magma Opus returns with strong flavor while offering a two-mana alternative cost. Treasure Cruise can be cast for just the cost of discarding cards from your graveyard. Volcanic Salvo and similar effects provide ways to recover if the game isn't going according to plan, while cards like Mana Geyser and Rousing Refrain accelerate toward those explosive turns.
"Flexibility and variable costs were probably the biggest factors when choosing reprint and new spells for the deck," Holt explained. "The bigger spells need to help you at different stages in the game."
The deck includes several reprints with entirely new artwork, such as Faerie Mastermind and Chain Reaction, alongside returning cards like Sol Ring and Command Tower. New creatures from the main set, including Prismari Pianist and Renegade Bull, round out the threat suite.
The mana base features a notable addition: Turbulent Springs, a new dual land cycle designed specifically for Commander. Holt shared that the cycle was built around the number eight—the threshold required to enter untapped. In typical multiplayer games, this means players sitting in the third or fourth seat in turn order can cast it untapped on turn three, a meaningful advantage that doesn't break the card in faster formats.
"The goal was to create a dual land that played well in Commander and supported several mana base configurations with the land subtypes included," Holt said. The cycle currently appears in the five enemy color pair decks, with Holt confirming that the allied color pair versions are in development.
Secondary commanders in the new Strixhaven set are legendary mascots of each college, making Muddle, the Ever-Changing an elemental in the Prismari deck. The card also happens to be a Shapeshifter, and its artwork features an otter—a choice Holt made when the art came in.
"The typings on this card were kind of a happy accident," he explained. "Then the art came in, and I LOVE otters, so I asked creative if we could get that in there too." The card's creature types make it particularly useful for recent Commander strategies built around otters and elementals.
The deck also introduces prepared creatures that work differently than those in the main set. One cycle features two-color cards that prepare new instants or sorceries, like Inspired Skypainter, which pairs well with the tokens Rootha generates. A second, more ambitious cycle features mono-color cards designed as professors from other planes visiting Strixhaven. Dirgur Focusmage, for instance, allows players to cast Braingeyser—a historically powerful spell—potentially for the first time.
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