Arcavios' Strixhaven is the multiverse's best school for mages. Split across five different colleges, budding witches, wizards, and mages come to learn their craft, no matter which way they want to take their magical potential.This strive for magical perfection is captured in Magic the Gathering's Magecraft mechanic. Introduced in Strixhaven: School of Mages, it's an incredibly powerful and versatile ability, but what is it and how does it work? Here is everything you need to know about Magecraft.
What Is Magecraft?
Magecraft is a triggered ability that a permanent (usually a creature) can have. It's triggered whenever the permanent's controller casts or copies an instant or sorcery.
We've seen some cards with similar non-permanent spell triggers, such as Spellgorger Weird's +1/+1 counter ability, but Magecraft is useful because it triggers both on the cast and also if that spell is copied in some way. This gives Magecraft a boost, as spells that are copied usually aren't cast, they are simply placed on the stack, meaning effects non-creature cast abilities like Spellgorger Weird's won't trigger.
Magecraft's effects vary depending on the card. Sometimes it's small effects, like Eager First-Year getting +1/+0 until the end of the turn, to the absolutely ludicrous like Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios letting you reveal the top card of your library and play it for just one mana.
How To Use Magecraft
Magecraft can fit into almost any kind of deck, as long as that deck uses enough instants and sorceries to make it worthwhile. Witherbloom Apprentice, Witherbloom Pledgemage, and Sedgemoor Witch fit nicely into lifegain/gain-and-drain decks, while Dragonsguard Elite is a great +1/+1 counter creature. Storm-Kiln Artist is an incredible creature that uses Magecraft to create Treasure tokens, giving red some much-needed mana ramp.
However, there are decks where Magecraft will pop off far, far more. For example, Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios is a great combo deck Commander because of her Magecraft ability. Veyran, Voice of Duality has quickly become a go-to Izzet (red/blue) spellslinger or Storm Commander, as she doubles any Magecraft (or similar) trigger.
For obvious reasons, any decks that don't use a lot of Instants or Sorceries may not want to invest as heavily into Magecraft. One or two are nice (particularly Storm-Kiln Artist in an Artifact deck), but creatures with Magecraft tend to have higher mana costs to account for their ability. If you're not getting the value from them, don't bother.
What Colour Is Magecraft?
Strixhaven had a major enemy colour pairs theme, meaning there are very few mono-coloured Magecraft cards. Out of the 28 cards that have Magecraft so far, there are only 12 that are mono-colour: blue is the most common with four, white has three, black and green have two, and red has just one. There is also one colourless Magecraft card, Spell Satchel.
The rest are two-coloured. Five are Prismari (red/blue), three are Quandrix (blue/green), there are two each for Silverquill (white/black) and Witherbloom (black/green), and only one for Lorehold (white/red).
Interestingly, there is also one card that is Mardu, or white/black/red; Estus, Oriq Overlord. As an aside for MTG story fans, Extus is the main antagonist of the setting who was cast out of Strixhaven and its five two-colour colleges for his attempts to summon the demonic Blood Avatar. The fact the expelled Strixhaven student breaks from the two-colour model of the school by having three colours makes for both a very powerful card and a thematic win for the setting.