Much Abrew: I Beat My Opponent with Math (Secrets of Strixhaven Standard)
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week we're heading to our new Secrets of Strixhaven Standard format to play one of the most interesting cards from the set: Mathemagics! While its mathy wording, drawing 2^x cards is a bit weird, Mathemagics actually has the potential to be incredibly broken, because if we can cast it for x=6 or more (which amounts to 14 or more mana) it literally kills our opponent on the spot by making them draw more cards than are in their deck. In a lot of ways today's deck reminds me of the 2026 Standard version of the infamous Academy combo deck from the late 90s which would kill by forcing the opponent to draw more than their deck with Stroke of Genius, except Academy needed something like 50 or 60 mana to do this, while Mathemagics can do it for just 14! How absurd is Mathemagics in Standard? What about the other busted-looking Izzet cards like Resonating Lute? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Mathemagics
The Deck
When Mathemagics was first spoiled it looked like a fun challenge card. Sure, you could cast it for a bit of mana to draw a few cards, but in this mode, the sorcery is pretty inefficient. The challenge of Mathemagics was getting enough mana that you could use it as a win condition by forcing your opponent to draw more cards than are in their deck. In most situations, this means casting Mathemagics for x=6 or more, which requires at least 14 mana. I thought this would make Mathemagics pretty safe because 14 mana is admittedly a lot, but then Wizards spoiled a card that is my early pick to be the most broken card in Secrets of Strixhaven...
...in Resonating Lute. The new four-mana artifact is absurd, doubling your mana for instants and sorceries by allowing your lands to tap for two mana of any color, but only to cast those card types, and for some reason, it also has Library of Alexandria's card draw mode thrown in as a bonus. What this means in practice is that if we can get a Resonating Lute on the battlefield we only need a total of seven lands in play to win the game with Mathemagics, which is way more realistic than getting to 14 lands. In some ways, the combo of Resonating Lute and Mathemagics reminds me of a janky version of the old Wilderness Reclamation / Expansion // Explosion combos. It's a bit safer since Resonating Lute doesn't untap your lands, which means if you tap out to play it you won't get value from it until the next turn, but once a Resonating Lute hits the battlefield it becomes super easy to win the game with Mathemagics.
Resonating Lute also makes all of our other spells so much more powerful. Traumatic Critique, for example, seems like a good card even without Resonating Lute, but with double mana it can deal a ton of damage, potentially working like a backup finisher if we can't win with Mathemagics while also doing a pretty solid Abandon Attachments impression for two mana. Splatter Technique is also interesting, either being a five-mana four-damage sweeper or a five-mana sorcery speed draw four, but with a Lute on the battlefield we often have enough mana to draw with Splatter Technique and then still cast multiple other spells in the same turn which is pretty wild.
The rest of the deck is mostly control stuff. We've got removal like Torch the Tower, Prismari Charm, Vibrant Outburst and Aetherize, and plenty of additional card draw in Consult the Star Charts and Stock Up, but the most important card is likely our single creature North Wind Avatar. The Dragon lets us tutor a card from our sideboard when it enters, assuming we cast it, which means we can use it to find a copy of Mathemagics, or even a Doppelgang (which also works super well with Resonating Lute), but maybe my favorite card to snag with North Wind Avatar is Wisdom of Ages, which returns all the instants and sorceries in our graveyard to our hand, which should give us more than enough interaction and card draw to set up the win! Of course, it can also just grab boring stuff like a sweeper, removal, counter, or graveyard hate, given the situation.
Wrap Up
I don't put any weight in the records of decks from early access day since, at least in theory, people are trying out new things and playing untested brews, but the deck crushed it. We went 7-3 with the deck, and more importantly, the deck felt pretty busted. I played a ton of Resonating Lute during early access, and I think the card might actually be broken. We'll have to see how the card performs in full Standard once the set releases, but having double mana is just as broken as I remember it being with cards like Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Fires of Invention and Wilderness Reclamation.
The other new Izzet cards are also very, very good, which is pretty funny since Izzet had a very strong argument for being the best color combination in Standard before Secrets of Strixhaven released and now it adds a new sweeper, upgraded removal and more. If you were hoping that Secrets of Strixhaven was going to dethrone Izzet, you might have to adjust your expectations, because my biggest takeaway from not just this deck but from early access as a whole is that the new Secrets of Strixhaven Izzet cards are really good and we're going to be seeing a lot of them in Standard moving forward.
The good news is if you want to kill your opponent with math by making them draw their entire deck, it ended up being way easier than I expected it to be! If you like playing the control role while also having a combo-style finish to close out the game in one big turn, keep Mathemagics in mind, I wouldn't be surprised to find that some sort of Resonating Lute Control deck was very real in our new Standard format!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
