Epic Finale Cycle

## Summary

The Epic Finale cycle is a five-card cycle of sorceries from Strixhaven: Ezza.

Each card in the cycle is a 9 mana sorcery representing one of the five colleges of Strixhaven, each with the Epic keyword, marking a return of the mechanic.

## Lorehold's Epic Finale

Lorehold's Epic Finale is the Boros card of the cycle, representing the Lorehold College.

When cast, and at the beginning of each of its casters subsequent upkeeps, each player mills three cards. Then, the caster may exile up to one instant and up to one sorcery card without epic from each players graveyard, copy those cards, and copy them without paying their mana costs.

Lorehold's Epic Finale became a very popular wincon for spell reanimator decks,, especially of the burn variety. By playing it for free from your hand or graveyard, it then could play more and more free spells each turn, effectively replacing itself several times over. Even against sideboard techs, the ability to mill its own cards and mill opponent's graveyards gave it an added degree of protection from things like graveyard hate and Leyline of the Void.

## Witherbloom's Epic Finale

Witherbloom's Epic Finale is the Golgari card of the cycle, representing the Witherbloom College.

When cast, and at the beginning of each of its casters subsequent upkeeps, each player discards a card, then all cards are exiled from all graveyards. Then, for each creature card owned by any player currently in exile, the caster creates a 1/1 black and green pest creature token with "When this creature dies, you gain 1 life."

While initially underestimated as simply a token generator and lifegain machine, the ability to force discards each turn, and the fact that dredge decks could consistently make 40+ tokens a turn, and hate against rival dredge decks made Witherbloom's Epic Finale a powerful commander finisher. While obviously still vulnerable to things like pillow fort and token hate strategies, with just a little bit of support on the battlefield before the spell was just, as counterintuitive as that was for an Epic card, it became a very powerful game-ending card.

## Prismari's Epic Finale

Prismari's Epic Finale is the Izzet card of the cycle, representing the Prismari College.

When cast, and at the beginning of each of its casters subsequent upkeeps, the next time each of the casters opponents cast a spell, the caster may copy that spell, and choose new targets for the copy. Then, at the beginning of each opponents next end step, if they didn't cast a spell that turn, they reveal their hand, and the caster may cast a spell from their hand without paying its mana cost.

Prismari's Epic Finale was generally thought of as an extreme win-more card. Typically, for it to be remotely worth it, especially with opponents having a choice, it would need to be cheated out ridiculously early in a game, and any effect that could do so usually had more powerful targets. That being said, when pulled off naturally in commander games, the card could be a ridiculously powerful hail-mary card, flipping games and, when hands ran dry, could basically copy each of your opponent's resources, making you three players at once and just about guaranteeing a win.

## Silverquill's Epic Finale

Silverquill's Epic Finale is the Orzhov card of the cycle, representing the Silverquill College.

When cast, and at the beginning of each of its casters subsequent upkeeps, the caster draws seven cards, then they may put a creature card from their hand onto the battlefield. If they do, it enters the battlefield on it with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the number of cards in the casters hand.

While not very popular as an epic card, with one free and powerful creature a turn simply not being worth the 9 mana and game-long restriction, many discard based decks or Mardu or Abzan aggro decks didn't care about the Epic keyword at all, and Silverquill's Epic Finale became a popular wincon, by either dumping seven cards at a time, or massively pumping one giant hasty trampling creature.

## Quandrix's Epic Finale

Quandrix's Epic Finale is the Quandrix card of the cycle, representing the Quandrix College.

When cast, and at the beginning of each of its casters subsequent upkeeps, the user creates nine 0/0 green and blue fractal creature tokens, then puts nine +1/+1 counters on each fractal creature they control.

While 81 power with the power to quickly triple was obviously a massive swing that would need to be quickly addressed, Quandrix's Epic Finale found itself unfortunately easy to counter. The lack of haste or any sort of evasion or trample made it less aggressive that it would appear at first glance, and made the deck unfortunately susceptible weak against token flood strategies, or even pillow fort strategies with just a few chump blockers up.