MTG Salvation

This is reminiscent of Stroke of Genius where folks would play this in Tolarian Academy / High Tide decks, generate a ton of mana and force your opponent to draw 40+ cards and mill them out.

However, in a 40 card limited format, this essentially is a 12 CMC "I win the game" with draw 32 and it's relatively easy to get there with something like High Tide / Mana Flare or heck even with something like Thran Dynamo.

It also has a very good floor with 2 Blue -> Draw 1/ 2 Blue + 2 Colorless -> Draw 2

What a fun design! Love the mathy feel of Quandrix, and I’m excited to be returning to Strixhaven. I enjoy cards that are generally useful, and also introduce a real possibility of an alt win condition like mill.

I think the math on this card incentivizes a long game plan. This card is below rate as a UU cantrip or a 2UU Divination. It’s quite solid as an 4UU Opportunity. It’s an outstanding above-rate draw spell at 6UU or 8UU. And it’s an immediate finisher (targeting your opponent) at 10UU or higher. If you cast this with either of the Tutelages in play, you can knock at least 2 mana off of the cost of the Mathemagics mill win by targeting yourself.

If this were an instant, I think I would slam it into my cube. Blue decks tend to want options, like leaving open a counterspell or a flash creature. As a sorcery, Mathemagics is a tougher sell. This card reminds me of the charming Multiple Choice from original Strixhaven, which I was excited about during spoiler season, but ended up cutting from my cube.

Cute idea but card seems terrible compared to draw spells made now like stock up

Quote from schummcube »

Cute idea but card seems terrible compared to draw spells made now like stock up

I think of this more as a win-con that occasionally can double as a mid-game draw engine.

If I'm playing a UG ramp or other big mana deck, I want both card draw and wincons and this pulls double-duty. It feels absolutely silly to say, but I'm sincerely keeping an eye on this card.

Quote from Blue_Oneironaut »

If I'm playing a UG ramp or other big mana deck, I want both card draw and wincons and this pulls double-duty. It feels absolutely silly to say, but I'm sincerely keeping an eye on this card.

I remember three years ago I was play testing various blue-combo decks:

- High Tide / Palinchron + Time Spiral
- Urza, Lord High Artificer / Tolarian Academy
- Hullbreacher / Draw-7 Decks
- Displacer Kitten / Coveted Jewel

My experience was these decks were surprisingly consistent at assembling their combo with all the blue card draw + control enablers but they struggled with winning the game.

Thus, I decided to test the decks with Blue Sun's Zenith and I've found it significantly improve the Displacer Kitten / Hide Tide shells, especially as it allows you to shuffle the card back in. However, it was somewhat restrictive and I've opted to cut it from my cube.

Quote from steve_man »

Even with High Tide in the mix, this would be a niche card within a niche archetype for me. None of the decks / archetypes in my cube would want this, would rather just play Sea Gate Restoration. Blue is stacked to the brim and already has a ton of great scaleable cards that are infinitely more versatile like Occult Epiphany / Wan Shi Tong, Librarian / Shark Typhoon / etc. This card doesn't start being worth its mana until 6UU for 8 cards.

I'm more interested in this Stroke of Genius that can be used to target the opponent to win the game OR used as a Sphinx's Revelation.

I can't imagine wanting to add this to one of my cube decks, personally. It looks extremely inefficient. If it were an instant, then maybe, but even then, it's still almost assuredly a no.

Maybe in some sort of combo themed cube with Mana Doubling Effects, if you needed some redundant card draw effects.