Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) Limited Primer — White

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) will hold its prerelease events on April 17, 2026, and officially launch one week later on April 24, 2026. Want to learn more about single-card ratings and recommendations in Limited? Then check out this SOS Limited primer series!

• For the mechanics, see this article: Secrets of Strixhaven Mechanics Breakdown

Rating Scale

5.0: Must-take, unconditionally; gives you a near-winning advantage
4.5: Must-take if you’re in the right colors; gives you a huge advantage
4.0: Worth a first pick, with excellent synergy with the color pair’s theme; can be the deciding card for splashing, switching colors, or moving into a color pair
3.5: The best uncommons and commons in the set and other cards of sufficient strength, with good synergy with the color pair’s theme; can be the key card for moving into a color pair
3.0: Important cards for a color pair’s theme and other above-average cards; you’ll want them in your final deck
2.5: Average, usually a decent curve filler
2.0-1.0: Below average; you generally prefer not to play them, but they can be filler when necessary (not too many)
0.5-0.0: Unplayable; basically never play them, as they will only help you lose

Ratings

Score: 3.0
Comment: Although the cost reduction has some conditions, in Limited it is roughly the same as a 2-mana unconditional removal spell.

Score: 3.5
Comment: Just making two 2/2s for 3 mana is absurdly strong in Limited, and later you can flash it back (Flashback) to do it again in an upgraded form.
Being able to make creature bodies out of non-creature spells is an excellent bonus in this set.

Score: 2.5
Comment: The body is a middling expensive flyer. The graveyard-exile ability is a bit subtle; it can certainly be paired with the many effects in red-white that trigger when your own cards leave the graveyard, or used to target the opponent’s flashback cards, but its efficiency and applications are very limited.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Support that works with many of this set’s mechanics. Since many Prepare creatures’ prepared condition is on entering the battlefield, the expected resources you can generate by re-entering them far exceed those of previous sets.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Support for the white color pair’s mechanics; it helps both black-white’s Repartee and red-white’s graveyard-leaving effects.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A card that makes two creatures with total power and toughness of 4/4 for 4 mana in Limited usually performs well, and one of them is a flyer, no less.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Essentially a cantrip spell that also helps Repartee work.

Score: 4.0
Comment: Honestly, a 3/3 with a 1/1 for 3 mana is already an above-curve creature. One card can turn the board from a disadvantage into an advantage. When you have it in hand and your life total is healthy, you can also consider holding it back appropriately to control the creature-count difference between both sides, then use it as the starting point to win through a resource war. In addition, if clearing the board is more urgent, you can also consider giving the 1/1 token to the opponent in exchange for the chance to immediately Swords to Plowshares their key creature.

Score: 3.5
Comment: The ETB value of replaying things is very high in this set, and the body is a decent baseline 2/2 as well.

Score: 3.0
Comment:

This card is easy to misjudge. Seeing it is a one-mana removal spell, people apply it to the usage scenarios of other one-mana removal spells and then feel that giving the opponent a land is an unacceptable side effect.

That reasoning is fine in Constructed, but in Limited, where removal is limited, you need to pay more attention to the removal’s range to decide where it belongs. For low-range removal like Shock, most of the time you’d indeed be spending it early on a two- or three-mana creature, and killing some unimportant small thing early in a game while giving the opponent a land is naturally an unacceptable side effect.

But with unconditional kill spells like Murder or even Swords to Plowshares, even if you have the mana you don’t throw it at just any target; you use it on a truly key problem, and by the time that problem shows up the opponent’s lands have usually grown to a certain number, so giving them one more land then really isn’t that costly.

Taking all of the above together, even though this is a one-mana removal spell, it’s not a filler to use casually early on; it’s what lets you, once the game reaches the midgame, keep casting your powerful curve creatures while removing the opponent’s key threats without losing much tempo.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Very strong when the Repartee package is complete enough, but when it isn’t it may be no better than a combat trick.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A 2/2 for 2 has a decent baseline stat line, and being able to produce a second one later is a very good bonus for a two-drop curve, and being able to make a creature with a sorcery spell is great.

Score: 2.0
Comment: Giving the opponent a flyer as a side effect of removal really is a bit too much.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A 3/3 first striker is strong in combat in Limited, and the Prepare spell costs only one mana, which is flexible and also triggers Repartee.

Score: 3.5
Comment: A 2/2 vigilance for 2 is a nice baseline, and a single Repartee trigger is a big win; it can be a one-person army.

Score: 3.0
Comment: Solid creature stats and strong trading ability in combat.

Score: 2.0
Comment: This is the score of an ordinary combat trick that doesn’t gain cards, but it still has some importance in a Repartee aggro deck.

Score: 3.0
Comment: This is entirely the score of a 2/2 first striker for 2; don’t worry about the Prepare side, as after losing tempo on the cost you don’t gain card advantage either.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A standard three-mana flying common for the curve; nothing flashy, but not unplayable either.

Score: 3.5
Comment: Given that the board has been successfully developed, it can create very large pressure, and it even thoughtfully comes with Repartee support.

Score: 3.0
Comment: As long as there is a 3-mana creature in your graveyard, think of it as a five-mana small creature that draws a card; that’s actually not bad. When it matches your theme, it earns a fair amount as a resource engine, though the precondition for using it is a bit troublesome.

Score: 3.0
Comment: The Repartee archetype has many pump-style plays, so a 2-mana 1/1 double striker can be an efficient base to grow.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A usable cantrip with Repartee support attached.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A practical standard template for a three-mana ground-force curve creature; a 3/3 vigilance is a very good baseline, and the growth condition isn’t hard to meet.

Score: 4.5
Comment: Seven mana is a bit heavy, but once it lands the opponent can probably never catch up in the resource war, and if the game can drag on to 7 mana, it has probably entered the resource-war stage anyway.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Artifacts and enchantments aren’t the focus of this set, so the bonus from this ability isn’t obvious.

Score: 3.0
Comment: Hard-cast for five mana it’s a mini Serra Angel with decent combat ability, and being able to make it for three mana for tempo is very powerful.

Score: 2.5
Comment: The Prepare ability is strong, but the number of cards that can make tokens in this set is actually rather subtle, so this card depends heavily on how many token sources you open in your pool. I’d want at least 4 token sources before I’d dare to play this one.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A range-limited removal spell common in white in Limited; usable, but I don’t recommend running too many.

Score: 4.0
Comment: Once the snowball rolls even once, the board is about to spiral out of control.

Score: 2.5
Comment: It can support some mechanics that trigger when cards leave the graveyard.

Score: 3.5
Comment: In red-white, with plenty of loot effects and effects that trigger when cards leave the graveyard, this card’s active recursion ability supports them very well. In addition, a four-mana 4/3 vigilance is itself a decently strong body for trading, and it can trade endlessly and then recur. The tempo is clumsy, but its card-advantage ability shouldn’t be underestimated; once the game drags into a resource war, an opponent without exile removal should be driven to despair by trading with this.

Conclusion

The mechanic themes of the white color pairs this time are black-white’s Repartee and red-white’s Flashback, though Flashback’s emphasis is really on the red side, while white focuses more on Repartee.

Honestly, Repartee is rather hard to score, because in practice it leans toward a high-synergy aggro style of play. Each card on its own may not look impressive in power or versatility, but when the package is complete enough it can produce strong burst in the early turns, and some combat tricks you’d normally overlook get completely different scores under this archetype.

Although Repartee is a lot more flexible than mechanics like Heroic and Valiant that can only pump yourself (removal thrown at an opponent’s creature triggers it too), the need for frequent spell support doesn’t change, so if you plan to pick cards around Repartee as a theme, pay special attention to whether you can keep the trigger frequency up. Even if you aren’t specifically drafting around Repartee, as long as you’ve invested in Repartee cards, it’s still worth paying attention to how strong your trigger ability is. For many Prepare creatures, as long as the body itself is decent, even if the Prepare spell’s effect isn’t very important, being able to support Repartee is enough to be an extra bonus.