Magic: The Gathering’s newest set, Secrets of Strixhaven, sees the denizens of Magic return to Arcavios, the plane that houses the grand university of Strixhaven and its five colleges: Silverquill, Prismari, Witherbloom, Lorehold, and Quandrix.
Fans were surely eager to return to the setting that first appeared in 2021’s Strixhaven: School of Mages expansion, and while some cards will clearly hold up in value and become staples across a variety of formats, others have already fallen flat.
Let’s take a look at four SoS cards that probably won’t live up to the prerelease hype and lofty evaluations that surrounded them before the set came out.
Note: All prices come from TCGPlayer and are subject to rapid changes due to market fluctuations.
Here are the Secrets of Strixhaven cards that are currently overhyped
Market Price: Under $3 each
First appearing in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow from 2021, this cycle of dual-colored nonbasic lands enters untapped as long as you control two or more other lands.
While each of the enemy-colored slow lands—Deathcap Glade, Dreamroot Cascade, Shattered Sanctum, Stormcarved Coast, and Sundown Pass—received a borderless treatment in SoS, none of them are expensive cards right now.
The most valuable is the Golgari (black/green) land Deathcap Glade at $2.98, while Simic’s (green/blue) Dreamroot Cascade is the least valuable at $2.01. Why aren’t these hot commodities? They were unveiled fairly recently in 2021, and most of them have seen some sort of reprint in the years since. Also, they'd look better with artwork by MTG luminary Pete Venters.
Market Price: $0.48
While this three-mana Human Wizard does go infinite in a number of ways—most notably with a fully leveled-up Wizard Class—the increment mechanic doesn’t seem to be making huge waves across any formats just yet. That has left this card sitting well below a dollar.
This creature certainly turned some heads and looked like an intriguing piece of tech during spoiler season for Secrets of Strixhaven, but a three-mana 0/2, even with tremendous upside in the form of repeatable card advantage, just doesn’t cut it by today’s standards, especially in Standard.
Market Price: $3.06
A Day of Judgment for one colorless mana and two black mana? In this economy? If you can activate this card’s infusion trigger by gaining life, then, you are indeed able to destroy all creatures for only three mana. Of course, that’s easy enough in the right decks, but the card isn’t quite as overpowered as it might look at first glance.
Players seemingly understand that, as the card’s value has tanked since the release of SoS. The standard version has dropped consistently since release, while the Extended Art version saw an uptick from May 1 to May 4 before dropping again in recent days. Perhaps a mythic rare Infest isn’t a chase card after all.
Market Price: $5.37
Part of an enjoyable collection of Magic cards that share names with game mechanics, this one-mana utility spell has seen a slight uptick in value as May has rolled around, but ultimately, it isn’t the dominant finisher that Past in Flames is, which grants all instants and sorceries in your graveyard flashback while also having flashback itself for repeat usage.
Recoup is another similar card, though it only hits sorceries in your ‘yard. For me, this card not having flashback itself is a huge flavor fail from Wizards of the Coast, and despite its overall power level and utility, I can see this card falling off in favor of a better option down the line, especially when another set highlighting the flashback keyword eventually drops.
Sometimes new cards are revealed, everyone loses their mind, and prerelease values go sky-high. Then, after the set is released and the market cools off, those cards hit the cellar.
That doesn’t mean Secrets of Strixhaven is short on real hits. The paradigm cards (such as Decorum Disseration, which might one day qualify as one of the best black sorceries of all time), Mathemagics, Erode, and a few other obvious standouts should hold value better and find homes across multiple formats. These four, though, look more like cautionary tales than chase cards.
While some of them might see notable upticks, they are likely to continue decreasing in value, especially as they’re reprinted in future sets or stronger cards with similar effects appear down the line. Either way, the smart move is usually the boring one: let the hype machine burn itself out before deciding whether a specific card is actually worth chasing.
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