Lorehold and Silverquill Dominate The Early Strixhaven Limited Meta

Last updated on April 22, 2026

Eager Glyphmage | Illustration by Cristi Balanescu

With Secrets of Strixhaven finally here, it's time for first impressions and updated predictions. Being only one day into a format means that there really is no solid data yet, just personal experience and general consensus online, but these are good enough for forming a baseline understanding of what's going on. Having that understanding early on in a format is important, as it's more than enough to get an edge in your drafts.

Aggro or Soup

Hot Soup | Illustration by David Palumbo

For those of you that played a lot of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, you know that it ended up as a two-poled format, with one side playing greedy four to five color dragon soup, and the other playing some version of lightning fast red white aggro. There were more decks than these, and there's some nuance to it, but it's a good rough picture of how the format ended up. I have a feeling that Secrets of Strixhaven may end up playing out similarly with decks inhabiting one of two camps: four to five color converge soup, and Silverquill/Lorehold aggro decks.

It seems so far that black white especially can leverage its commons and uncommons to bring a game to a close very quickly. Its mechanic, repartee, is trivially easy to trigger, and it rewards you for playing cheap removal and tricks, something any aggressive limited deck already wants to be doing.

As for red white, it seems a touch slower, but makes up for it with functioning a bit better into the midgame, and its graveyard synergy themes seem to all function well.

For the soup decks, they are best when based in Quandrix. For this deck to function you need access to good fixing, such as Environmental Scientist, Studious First-Year and Shared Roots. It's on top of this foundation of fixing that you get to build your deck. You want to be playing for the late game towards payoffs like Snarl Song or Transcendent Archaic. There is no lack of things to dump your mana into in this format, it's really just a question of ramping and fixing, and of course actually getting to the late game, but once you do, this deck is very hard to beat.

The Big Turn

Time Warp | Illustration by Dominik Mayer

Sometimes things happen slowly and marginally. You get small advantages that add up over the course of several turns, and it's those small advantages that win games. And that will always be true in Magic. However, in Secrets of Strixhaven, you should be aware of how pivotal and explosive singular turns can be.

This is especially true in the Prismari decks, where early game is mostly taking hits and setting up for a big combo turn where you generate an insane amount of mana all at once and then spend it, although the converge soup decks will often play out in a very similar fashion.

Witherbloom or Witherbust?

Foolish Fate | Illustration by Danny Schwartz

I'm interested to see where Witherbloom falls in this format. It seems awkwardly positioned between the two nodes of aggro and soup right now, and its cards are overly reliant on lifegain synergy. In order to have enough payoffs and enablers, you are more or less forced to stay in black green and not splash. However, the other splashy green decks will be more than happy to poach all of your generally playable cards such as Grapple with Death. I feel like this all adds up to create a Witherbloom deck that doesn't quite get there, but that's just my prediction, and I hope I am proven wrong.

Wrap Up

Flashback | Illustration by Flavio Greco Paglia

Overall, this format is shaping up to be something special. The prepared mechanic is the secret ingredient, and I wouldn't be suprised if this set ends up being my favorite of the year. This format, like any limited format, will change and warp overtime, and to some extent it will self-correct, that's just the way things go. But until then, there's still mystery and chaos, and those are what make new Magic sets so much fun. So good luck in your drafts, and have fun.