Lessons We Learned from Strixhaven

Magic’s next Standard-release set is Avatar: the Last Airbender, which releases on November 21st, and Card Kingdom’s presale starts today! We’ve already gotten a look at a significant chunk of the set, and I’m really excited about the return of one of my favorite mechanics – Lessons/Learn. 

The first and last time we saw this mechanic was in 2021’s Strixhaven: School of Mages, where it had a massive impact on Limited. In this article, I’m going to break down how the mechanic works and why I’m so excited to get a chance to play with it again.

LEARN/LESSON 101

Lesson is a subtype that (so far) we’ve only seen on Instants and Sorceries. It isn’t a mechanic that does anything on its own, but if you have Lessons in your sideboard, you can get them during the game using any card that says “Learn.” 

In other words, when you have a card that has a “Learn” effect, you get to look at your sideboard and select any card that has the “Lesson” subtype. In other words, you get to draw a card and you have a ton of control over what that card is.

You do also have the option of discarding a card and drawing a card instead, but that’s rarely the correct choice. Getting a known card out of your sideboard instead of a random one off of the top is typically better, and you also aren’t getting card advantage if you go the rummage route.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

If you’ve never played with this mechanic before, you’re probably not that impressed, and I can understand that feeling. I underrated the mechanic back in 2021. thought it was going to play a significant role in Strixhaven Limited, but it was actually format-defining. The quality of your deck was massively impacted by how many Learn/Lesson cards you had.

It’s easy not to feel overly impressed. After all, most of the cards with the “Lesson” subtype would be incredibly subpar as cards in your main deck. There simply aren’t very many formats where Expanded Anatomy or Elemental Summoning would consistently make the cut. But both of those cards ended up being among the best Commons in the set.

I think the power of Learn/Lesson becomes clear once you start to think of the “Learn” effect as a tutor. Sure, the cards you’re looking at in your sideboard wouldn’t typically be good, but when you get to take a look at 5 cards and choose the one that’s best for a given situation, you’re going to get the most out of each of those cards.

For example, getting Expanded Anatomy when your opponent is tapped and you have a great attack from it is amazing. Getting Elemental Summoning when what you really need is a body on the board is great too. In short “Learn” lets you draw an optimal card and cards with the keyword often give you some other effect on top of it. 

Once you think of Professor of Symbology as a 2-mana 2/1 that draws you a really good card when it enters, you’ll start to understand how good this mechanic is.

LEARNING IN DRAFT

I think Strixhaven is one of the best Limited formats of all time and that’s largely because of Lesson/Learn. There simply aren’t any other Limited formats where you actively draft cards for your sideboard. That results in a very different experience, one where every pick can truly matter.  While mechanics always have an impact on gameplay, there aren’t very many that completely change the way you draft like Learn/Lesson does.

The one thing that can hold Lessons back is how good the “Learn” cards are. In Strixhaven they gave us lots of cheap and/or powerful cards that allowed you to Learn, and that’s going to be necessary for the mechanic to shine in Avatar too. So far, we haven’t seen any of the set’s “Learn” cards, but I have to imagine that they’ll use their experience on Strixhaven to cost them correctly.

STUDY THESE LESSONS CLOSELY

There’s about a month until the Avatar pre-release, but there are some Lessons in the set that I’d like to draw your attention to. Both because they help further convey how good this mechanic is and because I have a strong feeling they are going to be important cards in the format.

Aang’s Journey is perhaps the most important of these. It’s a strictly better Environmental Sciences, and Sciences was perhaps the most important Common in all of Strixhaven. Both of these cards let you pay 2 generic mana to tutor up a basic land and gain 2 life. 

This means that every single “Learn” card in your deck now becomes mana fixing, and that’s not a small thing. It makes your mana absolutely incredible. The life gain even buys you the time you need to take advantage of your mana. Aang’s Journey goes one better because you can Kick it and also grab a Shrine, effectively turning it into a draw 2. If Avatar is even remotely like Strixhaven, Aang’s Journey is going to be a card you take highly.

In Strixhaven, every single lesson that generated a creature token – no matter how inefficiently – was a very good card, and Match the Odds actually has the potential to generate an incredibly efficient Ally token. The great thing is, you can grab other Lessons until you reach the point where Match the Odds is efficient, so you don’t have to worry about its bad early-game fail case.

This one doesn’t really have an analogue in Strixhaven, but it looks like a very strong Lesson. Typically, cards that are all in on buffing your board aren’t great because they’re so situational. If you can’t kill your opponent when you cast it, you end up going down a card for a dubious amount of value. But with How to Start a Riot, you can always get it when the board is optimal, and in a way it turns every “Learn” card in your deck into a mass pump spell when you need it to be.

CLASS DISMISSED!

I’m very excited to get a chance to play with this mechanic again. It’s powerful and makes both drafts and games interesting in a way that few other Limited formats can. What do you think? Are you excited about the return of this mechanic? Let me know over on X or Bluesky!