Level Up Games Hosts Strixhaven Commander Party With Exclusive Promos in May

If you wanted exclusive promos just for playing Commander with the new Secrets of Strixhaven cards, Level Up Games gave you a specific window to earn them: May 1 through May 7, during the store's dedicated Commander Party tied to the set's release season.

The Atlanta-area game store built a full five-week event calendar around Secrets of Strixhaven, running from Prerelease Week on April 17–23 through a Store Championship that stretched from May 8 all the way to May 31. The Commander Party landed in the middle of that run, sandwiched between the Release Day Party on Friday, April 24, and the championship's competitive grind.

Level Up Games framed the Commander Party as the format's natural entry point into a new set: "It's the best way to experience the flavor of the new set while playing the Commander you already love!" The event carried the added incentive of exclusive promos, the only event on the calendar to specifically call them out with that language.

For players who wanted to start engaging with the set even earlier, Prerelease Week offered a more casual introduction. Participants built 40-card decks from a Strixhaven Prerelease Pack and competed for prizes, fitting the standard prerelease format that Level Up Games described as "the official kickoff celebration for a new set" where "everyone plays with the new cards for the very first time."

On the competitive end, the Store Championship ran as "a premier, competitive Standard tournament where players face off to prove their skills and earn exclusive prizes." Standard Showdown, the store's regular weekly event, continued alongside the release schedule, offering 60-card constructed play with rotating card pools and exclusive promo cards as prizes.

One logistical detail worth flagging: all product preorders for Secrets of Strixhaven were handled exclusively online. The store was explicit about it: "All product preorders for Secrets of Strixhaven are ONLINE ONLY. To ensure you get your preferred college's Commander deck or booster box, please visit our website. In-store preorders will not be available for this set." That applied across the full product range, which included Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, and the new Codex Bundles. Prerelease event sign-ups ran through Eventbrite, also accessible via the store's website.

The college-rivalry flavor threading ran through all of Level Up's marketing for the set, with the store encouraging players to "prove which college is the best" — a nod to Strixhaven's five colleges that defined the set's faction structure and the Commander decks built around them.