Spoiler Highlight: FoW, Vampiric Tutor & Library of Alexandria on Timeless

The Mystical Archives from Strixhaven gave us a bunch of staples that dominated Historic before getting banned, and they're now part of the Timeless ecosystem. Brainstorm and Dark Ritual are the two biggest examples, but Lightning Bolt and Faithless Looting also originally came from those slots.

The new batch in Secrets of Strixhaven looks like it'll hit just as hard as the first one. Force of Will and Vampiric Tutor are confirmed, and the set is also adding Library of Alexandria exclusively to Magic Arena as a craftable card in the Special Guest slot.

Before we get into those three bombs, we need to talk about another recent addition from the platform's Cube update.

Survival of the Fittest got banned in Legacy when Vengevine turned the archetype into an overly consistent aggressive toolbox. Vengevine isn't on Arena, and neither is Basking Rootwalla—though we do have Blazing Rootwalla as a stand-in. Without those cards, it's hard to see a toolbox deck emerging that can keep up with the format's power level.

Force of Will might change that equation to some extent. If the Timeless competitive scene slows down, more fair strategies could pop up, especially in color combinations that can support both FoW and Force of Negation in the first few weeks. Survival of the Fittest can find any blue creature for to pitch to those forces, while also enabling a dozen other possibilities and interactions—similar to how some archetypes use Birthing Ritual and Neoform in Modern to cheat on the cost of Abhorrent Oculus.

Finally. The most requested card for Timeless since the format solidified is coming to Magic Arena with Secrets of Strixhaven, and it could substantially change how decks are built.

Force of Will is the answer to a Metagame dominated by combo strategies that make it very hard for fair Midrange or even Tempo decks to exist. Just look at Legacy and Vintage to see how much an unconditional free spell helps keep degenerate combos in check. Decks like Delver have historically served as the police for those environments, and as many say: "a format where Delver is the best deck is a healthy format."

We might see strategies with Cori-Steel Cutter and Hydroponics Architect, and maybe even a heavy Tempo build with a full set of Delver of Secrets. But Delver won't be the best Timeless archetype right away. Reanimator might take that spot.

After all, what's better than an efficient Delver deck? A Delver with a built-in combo win. As we saw for months in Legacy, the combination of Reanimate with Grief and Atraxa, Grand Unifier in a Tempo shell is powerful enough to warrant a ban, especially with Psychic Frog still legal in the Metagame.

What happens next depends on how the rest of the format adapts to a Reanimator deck with access to the full Force of Will package and how much blue-based archetypes become the dominant force in the competitive scene. Timeless is a much more degenerate environment than Legacy, and combinations like fast mana, Strip Mine, Necrodominance combos, and others might prove too strong for Reanimator to become Tier 0.

Control and Combo decks also benefit. Belcher gets another free backup spell. Show and Tell is one of the archetypes that runs Force of Will in Legacy. And Up the Beanstalk plus Quantum Riddler—while too fair for the current landscape—could find homes if the full combo environment becomes less dominant.

But what happens to the current Tier 1 with Force of Will around? It depends entirely on how easy it is to adopt the new card into degenerate strategies involving Grief—as we said, Reanimator has an easy time with that—and how much Tempo decks can mix free win lines into their main plan.

One reason Energy decks have been growing in Legacy over the last few months is that their matchup against Dimir Tempo or Delver tends to be good because it revolves around creating positive trades. In Timeless, the Lurrus of the Dream-Den builds would definitely fit that category. However, Energy struggles against "combo-win" lines paired with a fair backup plan, as it can't handle both at once without just trying to race.

But for all the relief Force of Will offers, a bigger concern might be on the horizon.

Vampiric Tutor could be a problem. Demonic Tutor is restricted in Timeless because it adds too much consistency, and ideally Vampiric Tutor would get the same treatment before launch.

If it doesn't, Force of Will will be even more necessary to keep the Metagame in check alongside Force of Negation—and it still might not be enough. Every combo deck will be one black mana away from setting up the perfect hand and winning out of nowhere at the end of the opponent's turn.

That's a very risky place to leave Timeless, especially right after banning Necropotence for adding too much consistency to black-based combo decks. But we also expected a preemptive restriction on Strip Mine; it never happened, and the format managed to adapt and build an ecosystem around not getting locked out. Maybe Wizards will let Vampiric Tutor run for a while for the same reason.

The "Power 10" card, Library of Alexandria, is coming to Magic Arena as a digital-exclusive Special Guest. This is the hardest card to evaluate in this batch of announcements because there are very few playable precedents for it at current power level standards. Library was already banned when Legacy became a format and has been restricted in Vintage for decades. Unlike Strip Mine which has Wasteland as a cousin, there's no successor to give us any reference for how it might affect the Metagame.

Library is infinitely better on the draw than on the play, especially in an environment where you expect to dump half your opening hand in the first few turns off fast mana or free spells. The current nature of Timeless isn't very favorable for running many copies of this land because of that resource dynamic. But what if the environment becomes so much fairer that value-based archetypes can actually thrive?

Cards like Up the Beanstalk, for example, generate resource parity with Force of Will and Solitude. Treasure Cruise can easily become Ancestral Recall with fetch lands and cheap spells. And let's not forget there are plenty of other efficient card advantage engines in other colors for fairer archetypes, once Tempo strategies have the checks and balances to shut down the "free win" buttons from the rest of the Metagame.

The mystery surrounding this card makes it the most interesting addition to Timeless, because we don't know exactly how it will be used. In the worst case, it goes into many decks, and being on the draw becomes a huge advantage if it's in your opening hand—helping to balance out opponents who start explosively on the play. In the best case, we'll discover that the "Power 10" no longer compares to the current power level of Magic's card pool.

Beyond these cards, other Secrets of Strixhaven additions are worth noting, like Smallpox in the Mystical Archives and Sylvan Library in the Special Guest slot. And there are still plenty of Archive spell slots left to be revealed, with more surprises that could be even more impactful for Timeless.

Either way, I have a hard time believing there's a more relevant set with more powerful additions for the format than this one. So get your mythic wildcards ready, because depending on Wizards of the Coast's decisions on Vampiric Tutor and Library of Alexandria, you're going to need a lot of them.

Thanks for reading!