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5 years in the past, Strixhaven: Faculty of Mages confirmed us Magic: The Gathering’s unique tackle the wizard faculty style, which covers every part from Discworld’s Unseen College to A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin—although clearly Harry Potter is the elephant within the room.
However no. As an alternative, Magic is returning to its personal setting for Secrets and techniques of Strixhaven, a sequel set that checks in on the scholars and college a number of years and one multiversal warfare later to see how they’re doing. And, although I’ve loved Magic’s crossovers like Center-earth and Warhammer 40,000, I am glad they’re taking a break from them this time.
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Strixhaven has rather a lot to advocate it over Hogwarts. For starters, it teaches topics aside from magic. Whereas your historical past professor would possibly summon a ghost to ship a visitor lecture on occasions they lived by means of and your biology instructor may be an precise druid, Strixhaven’s lessons embody mundane topics from artwork to zoology. You are going to come out extra rounded than somebody who has experience in Protection In opposition to the Darkish Arts and Potions however has by no means taken a math class of their life.
It is also a college reasonably than a highschool. The scholar wizards are all younger adults reasonably than largely kids, which makes the actual fact they find yourself in thrilling magical peril on the common a bit extra OK. After e book after e book of the Hogwarts employees pushing their college students into life-or-death conditions, it is troublesome to see Dumbledore as a kindly previous avuncular fuddy-duddy, reasonably than an incompetent legal responsibility who ought to have been fired years in the past.
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The age distinction additionally makes the 5 faculties, Strixhaven’s equal of Harry Potter’s homes, appear much less merciless. Every faculty represents a broad subject of examine, like Prismari’s deal with utilizing elemental magic to boost the visible and performing arts, and importantly they’re chosen by the scholars themselves at first of their second 12 months reasonably than being character designations arbitrarily assigned by one magical bonnet.
There is not any quidditch both, and the equal sport of mage tower, which is about enjoying keepaway along with your opponent’s mascot, has a scoring system that is not paper-thin absurdity. However at this level I am nitpicking. Actually, the explanation Strixhaven is a extra enjoyable tackle magical faculty tropes is that it is self-aware sufficient to make enjoyable of the entire concept.
If you begin studying Harry Potter it seems like a parody of the British boarding faculty system, one thing shut in spirit to the good murderer faculty bit in Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids, however the longer the collection goes on the extra apparent it turns into that Harry Potter is definitely a celebration of boarding faculty nonsense—it simply learn like parody as a result of it appears unthinkable somebody may very well be in favor of separating kids from their households to make them endure an authoritarian proving floor to organize them for the category system.
The very fact Strixhaven wasn’t created by a transphobic nutbar is admittedly only a bonus. Secrets and techniques of Strixhaven can be out there in Enviornment from April 21, and on tabletops from April 24.
