On to the lessons! Since my color wheel is WBUGR, it's going to look a little wonky as far as Strixhaven includes are concerned. Looking at the colored lessons, there are definitely some very situational ones there. Before I go into individual cards though, there's one
very important thing to realize.
Lessons being situational is extremely fine! The important thing, when considering whether you want to include these cards, is if the learn spells are on rate for your cube. If they are, lessons are basically a free include! Of course they take up real estate in your cube, and cutting cards is hard, but think about the draft experience for a minute. Two of the best card types, historically, to pick up during a draft are lands and conspiracies. The reason is because neither of these take up a precious slot in your maindeck. Well, lands technically do, but they're not one of the ~23 nonland cards that form the core of your deck. Lands and conspiracies increase the density, or percentage if you will, of drafted cards with impact you can play. Consider a drafter who picks up only nonland, nonconspiracy cards. At the end of a draft, they will be able to include roughly half of their drafted cards (~23 out of 45) in their deck. Now consider someone who picked up five on color lands (mana fixing or utility) and two conspiracies. Suddenly you're looking at ~30 cards you can include, or 66% of your draft pool. Basically lands and conspiracies are free real estate for a drafter, since neither of them eat into your precious nonland slots. Now look at lessons, and see how similar these are. Again, it's important that the learn spells are on target for your power level, because these are the cards you need to include in your maindeck. In other words, these need to be part of those precious ~23 nonland slots in your draft deck.
Lessons though don't. They sit in your sideboard, patiently waiting until you play a learn spell and their effect is situationally good. And if they aren't, you can always loot instead. You don't
need to fetch a lesson. I think the learn/lesson mechanic is wonderful, and though I apprehend having to find the appropriate cuts, I am sure these cards will play so,
so well.
Both of these seem conditionally great. Remember that all of the white learn spells fit into an aggressive shell;
Academic Probation allows you to hit an additional time through a big, beefy blocker, without fear of retalliation.
Reduce to Memory is a super flexible removal spell. Yes, you are giving your opponent a creature, but the spell exiles, so the thing you're removing is well and truly gone, and remember,
free real estate. You might even be able to upgrade a useless trinket, say a Treasure token, of your own.
Again, I like both of these. I've actually tested P/T setting effects before, most recently
Startling Development. While I found that these effects are in fact a bit too situational for maindeck inclusion, buffing a ninja to get in an extra saboteur trigger or force an awkward block was in fact a pretty sweet play.
Mercurial Transformation has the additional option of shrinking an opponent's creature, and while it's a sorcery, that still may be useful.
Teachings of the Archaics I find very interesting. The precondition looks a bit awkward, but I think this will be really great in tempo-oriented decks that run a lot of bounce effects.
I run a mere 7 planeswalkers in my cube, and only two of those are black. I do, however, run four of the five Magic Origins dfc planeswalkers. It looks like there's not a lot of targets for this spell, but let me reiterate, lessons are free real estate! You can include this in your sideboard as a silver bullet to fetch when you do encounter one (or want to reanimate one yourself), and not feel bad about it at all!
Necrotic Fumes is kind of a reverse
Reduce to Memory. Instead of giving your opponent an extra creature, you are removing one of your own. Obviously it targets only creatures and planeswalkers as well, but this is a nice little option from the sideboard.
Illuminate History is a solid 3/2 that cycles away unneeded cards in the late game, and
Start from Scratch is another narrow removal spell that you'ld feel bad about running maindeck, but love to tutor for if your opponent happens to have a juicy target.
Hey, green lets you tutor for a tutor! I love the little life gain attached to this spell as well.
Containment Breach is another narrow removal spell that will feel great to fetch from the sideboard if you need it.
You'll notice I included only three of the four, but the only reason for that is that I don't run
and
in my cube. All five of these are great fetch targets, though at different times in the game. Like
Elemental Summoning,
Fractal Summoning is a lesson you tutor for in the late game once you're ready to deploy a big, dumb body. As I said before, Simic is a ramp color pair in my cube, so while Fractal Summoning looks underwhelming on the surface, I could easily see this making a 5/5 or bigger in the late game, and we all know beefy beatsticks can sometimes just win you the game.
Inkling Summoning and
Spirit Summoning on the other hand are superb follow-ups for the cheaper learn spells in white and black that let you curve out another threat on the next turn. I love these. While I can't run
Pest Summoning, it too is a great early lesson to tutor for, though defensive in nature rather than aggressive.
All of these are good. That's right.
All of these are good! At first I was thinking
Expanded Anatomy was too situational, but the thing is, there is no such thing as too situational for a lesson. You tutor for them when they're useful, and they don't take up any space in your maindeck. As long as there are going to be board states where two +1/+1 counters are going to make a difference, Expanded Anatomy will sometimes be the correct card to tutor for, and guess what, those board states do occur! Likewise,
Introduction to Annihilation seems like a very inefficient removal spell. It even has your opponent draw a card! It's colorless though, so even
will be able to play it, and again, it doesn't take up any space in the maindeck. It's a concept that's hard to wrap your head around, but these really are free includes. From there on it only gets better, as
Introduction to Prophecy is an expensive
Preordain, but Preordain is a very,
very good card, and it's still worth it at three mana and no maindeck slot.
Environmental Sciences fixes your mana and lets you make your land drops. Lastly,
Mascot Exhibition is just a solid 9/7 in stats across three bodies. It's quite horrendous as a maindeck card, but perfectly fine to tutor up in the late game. I truly love all of these!
I am going to test the heck out of these (once my testing software can cope with this mechanic
). If it plays anywhere close to as good as I expect it to be, I definitely want to expand the Summoning cycle to my other two guilds,
and
, so I might as well include them in my testing! Here's to finding good summoner art!
Whew! These are long! I will have to find time to write up a post about the other potential includes another time. It's Easter after all, so I want to spend some time with my family
