A Lesson On Lessons In Cube | #92

In this episode of Powerful Nothing we take a deep dive in how you can best include Lessons and the Learn Mechanic in your cube, in what could be an awesome 5 colour package.

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/43dwudEIJk6hloaxnJl4IA

Timecodes:
1:05 - What is a Lesson?
5:34 - Cards with Learn
15:42 - Playable Lessons
30:18 - Where can we run this package?
38:24 - Other ways of supporting Lessons
48:28 - Final thoughts

Video Version: https://youtu.be/HPWhmAtXDnk

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg

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Transcript

0:02

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing this week? Are you good? Yeah, I'm pretty good. Pretty good is officially summertime in the UK. I have got sunburn, happy days. Yeah. We went well, it's officially an English summer. We were talking about how you've been burnt and then how it's 14 days of rain and coming up for us that, yes, the beautiful British summer is here. And as always, we have an awesome episode for everyone today. Today we're going to be doing a bit of a deep dive into lessons. Today we're going to be learning your lessons with Angus districts Haven being released, and also with the avatar set from last year. We've got a bunch of cool new lessons and we've been toying with how we can include them in our cubes before we get into that main topic. As a reminder, there will be time codes and a card gallery down in the show notes below. If you want to see the cards that we're talking about, or jump around to any of our specific ideas or topics for today while you're down there, please consider giving the podcast a thumbs up or a like greatly helps us out, but I think let's just start at the top here. Today, yeah, we're going to be doing a deep dive on lessons. But before we do that, James, what is a lesson? Yeah. So a lesson is basically just a subtype of instance or sorcery. It doesn't really mean anything on its own. Just being a lesson doesn't give it any intrinsic puff biz. But there are a bunch of other cards that care about lessons. So yeah, lessons. For example, we've got Environmental Sciences, one of the classics, two Class Manor, a sorcery lesson search library for the basic put it into your hand into life. Not super exciting on its own, but when it really gets interesting is when boy lessons combine with the learn mechanic. So learn was a mechanic, which we first saw in original strict seven and then says you may reveal a lesson card you own lesson outside the game, put it into your hand, or you can discard a card to draw a card. We just showed up on a bunch cousin original six seven, and it was a very, very sweet draft archetype, drafting mechanic actually, in that set, it lets you sort of build this whish board effectively, of like a little toolbox of effects that you're going to get access to from your main deck, but that live in your sideboard. And it's cool that you'll it's like a little sub game you're playing throughout the draft by sending you on a little mission for you want to get a nice little selection of stuff to get from your sideboard, and some of the more good lessons you got to put on your sideboard. A more powerful villain cards become. So some examples of cards that have learned on then, like ingenious inspiration is a pretty good one. Says to an event feel free 20 target learn. So if that's just deal free vomit because you don't have any lessons in your sideboard, fine. But not all that exciting. But if you have, say, 1 or 2 decent lessons, then yeah, you'll sign to get it pretty good for, maybe sort of about on the level of deal free drawcard, but that's pretty good for free manner. But in the very good case, where you really get there, you've got like a selection of 5 or 6 different lessons, which are all good in different scenarios. So this becomes almost like a little mini tutor attached to your free mana deal free. Then the cards really powerful, right? And so you, you're, you're drafting towards having that, that set of really powerful, fun of that optionality on your land cards. If I'm game and I'll see the more lessons you get from what you want to pick up more than cards, the molded cards get from where you want to pick up more lessons for your side because you have access to them all often and so heavily like dovetails really nicely. Yeah, I thought lessons were really fun. It was definitely one of the main like highlights of the first year. It's even set like those in like the Mystical Archives really kind of made a very cool draft environment. And yeah, as we say, kind of with the, addition to with the addition of some new lessons. And that's actually actually some quite powerful lessons if, if we're honest, from some of the recent sets. Definitely one reason why we wanted to look at it. In a bit more detail today. Yeah. Sean said. I've been sort of thinking about how you could get learn lesson to work in cube ever since it was a thing in six seven. I think it probably wasn't fair just for with original strict seven, because we'll get on some of the lessons wasn't super strong. But for with the new options we've got and and secrets district seven and avatar gave us tons of great ones. There's, some pretty interesting stuff, I think. Yeah, definitely. It really does. It's similar to thing like or for me anyway, when I'm thinking of, like, putting these in my cube is similar, like it's a similar mindset to things like conspiracies or like the draft Matters cards, which we kind of, if anyone is listen to this podcast for any amount of time, you'll know that I am. I absolutely love because it just adds more magic to your magic. Like it has this whole extra level of cool interactions and cool like deck building to your people. Like it makes the draft more interesting, it makes games more interesting. You just you have more choices that are interesting. And that's kind of a really fun thing with lessons and learn. Yeah. Another way of thinking about, cards with lesson and card and cards that learn is that effective? Like, it's kind of like a two card combo. But with like, but it's not kind of the same combo every time. It's kind of like this cool card combines with this cool card, and I think it would make sense if we kind of break down some of the options and the two different card types. So let's quickly go through the cards that learn, currently at time of recording, we've only seen cards with learn from original Strix Haven. I was quite surprised that kind of we've seen lessons come back twice since then in, Avatar The Last Airbender set and and Secrets of Strix Haven. But we haven't seen any new learn cards, so we are kind of working with the pool of cards that we've already got. There's about 21 of them, from original Strix Haven. If you're listening to this in the future, and there has been more sets printed where the learn mechanic has returned, that greatly helps this archetype. It really makes it more viable, just having more good cards with love, because as we go to kind of like like like the learn cards themselves, I'm not gonna say they played it safe, but like, with all of these, you have to remind yourself that they have the additional caveat of, like, I add a base level. They have rummaged, tacked onto them, but also they could be going in and just tutoring up a game winning spell for you when you cast them. That's quite strong as well. So kind of like like, James, I'm like, what are your favorite cards with learn? Yeah, I mean, there's a pretty big range and sense of power level, and you've got a few, which is just sort of like rate cards that effect, you know, even if you just have 1 or 2 things to learn from, it can be very strong. So something like, nulled for face, is two queen clean for five for trample. When it enters, you learn, so with this, I think a good midpoint right is imagine learn was just draw a card instead. Right. Like say you've got like two good, good lessons in your sideboard. Not much of a lead five. And you'll learn it's like drawing you one of those two cards each time. You've got a little bit of choice. But, but nothing huge. Even if that's not enough, that serves a very strong card by like five for mana, five for trample to our card is is is is fairly powerful. You need 1 or 2 good lessons to get it to that, that level. Because, you know, you might have better cards, you could fall on your deck, but also, you know, it's never hitting your land. So that's like, probably a good thing on set fall. But you also have a bunch of learn cards which really require you to have a little bit more choice, and you'll learn about that before they get good. So something like hunt for hunt for specimens is one that black for sorcery. Great. A11 green passed with. When it dies, you draw a card and learn. So with this one, if you if you said okay instead of learn, we're trying a card that's like an a medium card fight, that's like, it's an arbitration traditionally probably a bit worse actually being a sorcery, not a crab. But when you make this into I have like 4 or 5 powerful lessons in my sideboard in pretty much every scenario. One of those is going to be good. This is granting me a ton of choices. Whether it's on turn two or in the late game, it's going to be getting me something good for the situation I'm in right now. Then hunt for specimens is a very powerful card. And we've got, you know, even even some which looks very filler. Right. Like cram session is one and a black queen hybrid manner game for one. Sorcery. You don't want that if you don't have good choices. But yeah, we if that's a drawing me a very powerful card and gaining me for life to get me a better time to cast it, that's great. So, yeah, we've we've got tons of good choices here. We've got some nice interactive ones as well. Divide by zero, for example, three mana instant turner spell permanence. So in this hand, learn very good. Another one I think is way better than it looks actually is. The field trip. This is two in a green, circle like me for basic forest. Put it on for battlefield tap, then shuffle, and then, Sophie Manor vamp and go for bad vamp and go for then gets the forest. But if you just have one, the good five mana lesson to vamp into this is like a whole. That wraps up an acceleration, wraps up in one card, actually plays really nicely. So have you just have this in your opening hand? That's your turn. Free fall. You're setting yourself up fairly well. So, yeah, there's, there's some pretty good choices there. There's, Yeah, some some that are good. Good on some you have to like for a bit more. Yeah I agree, I think what, what you generally see with lessons is so so so think of your standard draft mechanics like like cards you would standardly see in draft. So like a pump spell, a ramp spell, a blue bounce spell, that kind of stuff. What, what we generally see is that kind of like what they did is like, I think we put learn on those type of effects. Maybe made them cost one, one more manner, like the ones that I'm generally kind of I would be okay playing or okay considering are the ones that learn straight away the the like, like all the ones James mentioned, you, you cast a spell and you get to learn there's cards like I which which is a single black for A11 flier that it has to die to learn. I'm not here for that. Like like like like if I'm going through the steps of putting this stuff in my deck, it's because I'm going to be putting some powerful, less lessons in my cube that I want to get straight away. I don't want to have to go through the whole thing of like, making this die, like like I need a sack outlet or anything like that. Kind of like I want to get my juice straight away, basically. So, so, so, so that's the base level of what I'm looking for from like like like if I was putting any of these lines, so cause would learn in my cube and the other one that I want to touch on that does see some cube play already, but for a different reason is first day of class. This sees play in like pauper and peasant cubes. It's and does quite well in poker as a format. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control this turn. But I put one counter on it and it gains hasten to the end of turn. And it has learn. So this is not so. This can get in the cube as a learn card. If you're doing the learn lesson combination. But also if you have any persist creatures you you're about to go infinite. It does the thing that you want from a persist enabler of the creature. Because I came with a minus one minus one counter. If you set it, this will trigger it and put it will null and void it. So you can then combo off. But that's, it's not a reason. But like, by itself isn't a reason to to just include this guy, but like, add some nice additional synergy and kind of like, I like cast overlap. I want cards to go in multiple decks. That is something cool you can do with that. So it's definitely, I think, worth mentioning. But James, like are there any other kind of I don't have other learned cards that kind of like are worth touching on before before we move on. That would be I think most of them fall quite nicely in the bracket that you want. They. Which is, powerful if you've, built around them and you have a bunch of good lessons to choose from. Not great. If you only have 1 or 2. Which is kind of nice, right? Because it means that if you're drafting the the learned lesson that you should see these cards. Yeah, that's actually not a ton of other players. Again, no one is because they will require a little bit of commitment in the drafting portion. And I, but now they're not getting better by themselves. Yeah, exactly. But like like if you take a card like pop quiz, this is the, two in a blue instant, draw a card with learn if that's in the same pack as like a ponder. The other blue player in the cube is going to take the ponder because it's a more efficient spell. But if you're doing something. But if the player is doing something with the lessons, then they're going to want this spell more because it's yes, it's three mana, to draw a card and then rummage in blue. Blue can do better than that. But if it's drawing you a specifically good card and and as James just touched on it, if it's becoming a tutor, then that's really good that that's where you're getting that extra bit of synergy. You're getting that extra bit of power. So those are some of the learn cards that we have. As we mentioned, there may be more printed in the future. I would not be surprised if there are some printed in the next couple of years. I think one reason why maybe they're playing it not safe, but like a bit close to their chest is that it's kind of like partner in commander in that once you start adding more card, just like you get so many more like exponential combinations. If that kind of makes sense. If you start printing a bunch of like, really powerful cards with learn, it then makes all the lessons exponentially better if that kind of makes sense. So it's a thing of like like I think we will see learn again in the future, but I think the power level will be more comparable with what we've already seen. They're not going to like modern. I don't think that they're going like modern horizons, learn cards because effectively, like maintenance, we're touching on this before the outside, but kind of like effectively learn and lessons right now is kind of like in a similar vein, not power level wise, but but in a similar vein to like Enter the Dungeon if they command a raised lesson and learn or more than Horizon Day, you would get the initiative, which might be fun for a bit, but then it might be too all encompassing and might be a thing of just like. But it's something they're definitely thinking about when they add or when they're thinking about adding more learn cards in the future. With that being said, let's touch on kind of like effectively the payoffs like like learn to learn cards are kind of like, vegetables. The the lessons are kind of like the cool payoffs for running the learns. And James, let's start in the first save set. What were the lessons like back then? Yeah. So this is how SOV then lesson got introduced. World right. And it wasn't really a thing in cube at this point because frankly, the lessons were not very good. And the invitational stakes haven't, power level wise. The, I mean, it worked for the draft environment, but you couldn't just transpose it really to a cube because the power level here was pretty low. So you had cause like Introduction to prophecy. This is three class man of a preordained. You had introduction to annihilation was very vivid, movable spells as a common lesson. This was, exile non and permanent. It's control. It was a card. That's for five mana. That's kind of tough. Even going up to value of a big. There was, mascot exhibition. I mean, it's like seven mana for you. Get a four for the two one flier. It's it's okay, but it's a mythic. James, you put some respect on. I will say that was the literal best cards you could open in original strict seven, because it meant in limited that God slash. Yes. And you, you had access to it every game, right? Because you had enough land. But so it was really cool for beast to draft didn't really scale up to pack you power level because these were just slightly too inefficient, really, for what to to justify spending your mana on in most cubes? The one I think is interesting. And that would certainly make it if I was doing land that's in in a cube is environmental sciences. So this is the two colorless mana. So slightly for basic put it in your hand in to life. This doesn't sound like an exciting card right. We have vamp and Clay for two man have that sort of basic interplay. That's way better. But this is colorless and this is actually a very important piece for a lot of the learn lesson decks because, you often going to be a lot of colors, right? You want access to the lessons in multiple colors you want access to for land cards and multiple colors? If so, if you're going down this route, splashing often makes sense. And this means that when you're building your mana base, you can kind of count. You'll learn cards in your base colors as sources for your for colors, and means that, you know, if your first, your first land card you'd fall might have to get the sciences that then sets up. You're fixing your subsequent land cards. It's one way sort of in the best rules. This isn't for a lesson use you get right? Because in your best class, you have your mana lined up and you can start getting your your gas straight away, but adds loads of consistency and it turns some dysfunctional falls into okay, twirls. So actually a really important piece, even though it doesn't look super flashy. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I remember this is being an absolute cornerstone of that draw form. Yeah. If I remember to suggest a banger, and then last year, with the Avatar The Last Airbender set, we've got a bunch more lessons. But the interesting thing with these lessons is that kind of a lot of them were just kind of like effectively functional reprints of good cards. We were kind of already playing or like vocal chords that were very close to cars that kind of like, we're already saying, play in cube. And James talked. Maybe I got some of the cards that you liked from Avatar The Last Airbender. Yeah, this set was a real game changer. On the lessons front because it just gave us good cards at a decent rate, you know, that were lessons. So where was the design approach failure taken in original strict save invite was these cards can be really inefficient because you're only getting them when you want them. You're only getting them when they're good and you're getting them kind of for free. So so we're going to attack a bunch of extra matter on them and it's going to cost you three mana. Hindsight, but it's not good for cube. This is where we become interested in and learn lesson as a cube mechanic, because now, learn cards of guessing is a choice of good on rate effects. So they just have efficient interaction and have for example, we've got things like I demonstration. This is one the read for sorcery lesson. You choose one deal, one for each creature your hands control deals for damage to target creature. Just super serviceable that removal. We've got things like seismic sense. This is green for lesson sorcery. Look at the top X cards where X is the number of lands you control. May reveal a creature lantern among them. Put vent your hand vessel on the bottom. So this. This is nice. You got an early and it's going to take you to a to a land or some action where you need to get it later. It's going to look at a ton of cards. And for just one mana, again, like pretty damn efficient stuff. Even things like abandoned attachments. This is a tormenting voice variant. One in the hive. It green and that, yeah. They're not always, like, the flashiest thing in the world, but they're giving you a ton of, like, pretty efficient options. But, yeah, abandoned attachments is literally it's literally an easier to cast thriller possibility. But the possibility is almost a card that I would run in my unpowered vintage tube. It's a card that would still be run in a lot of different cues, but like if you have a card like Shared Routes one and a green sorcery lesson, such a like B for a basic round card, put that, put it onto the battlefield, tapped and shuffle. That is just a functional reprint of rampant growth with with with less and tacked on to it. I run rampant growth in my most powerful cube. It is fine to run rampant like there is no like like that's kind of what we're talking about a little bit with this is like, it's like like they have just given us cards that we would already run or consider running in the common and uncommon slot, which just makes this whole deck more viable as saying, because we're not, but we're not having to run slightly off right spells we have on right spells now that that that we can build this wish for would build this wish board with and just make all these learn cards better. Like, like like like those learned cards we talked about earlier. The ones that are slightly like like take hunt for specimens that get so much better. And if that's one on a black, make A11 past and two to a copy of rampant growth to your hand. If you need the ramp in your in your deck, that's phenomenal. Like just having that flexibility is like that. That's way more appealing. Nowadays. Yeah. We have a very nice thing. Right. Is it. It gave us way better, way more optionality at decent rate. So like there's just a lesson disenchant for example. And origin of metal banding. I think it's called like it's not the thing you're getting every time. But if you just adding that one card to your lesson board, how much of a difference is that going to make when you play against the artifact stack. Because you're if you have like 4 or 5 learned spells in your attack, you have access, you have 4 or 5 ways to go and guess a disenchant. That means that that one card in your sideboard, you're going to have access to pretty much every game when you need it. That is going to be huge in some matchups. Similarly, things like, there's black cheap sweeper like and in fast, villainous water waterbending. One black, black. There's an additional costume water band for that's like paying for manual taps and stuff. All creatures get minus two, minus two inside of ten. You get some life if you watermen that whatever. Not like a super exciting card on its own, but if you play against the go wide white token stack and you have five ways to go and get in and fast out of your sideboard, that's going to make a huge difference to that matchup. So yeah, a lot of what we got here, like it's it's pretty efficient functional stuff, but it just it makes, learn package and I'll learn cards so much more powerful. It's giving us far that optionality. Yeah. Exactly. And like like one thing avatar was really good at is. Yeah. As I was saying, the set itself had all these good playable, like, functional draft cards that we want for a magic draft environment. But then there was also the like, additional supplemental purify. Like I don't think it was a command to set. I think it was like, let's say boost of fun. But effectively they gave us some powerful rares in those as well. So like there's a card like Reckless Blaze three Red, red sorcery lesson deals, five damage to each creature. Whenever a creature you can draw that dealt damage this way dies this turn, add a red eye. That's a very strong card. Just be able to tutor up when you need. Like like like like if you cast your learned vote early, you can get your ramp if you need it later. Like if you guys did late, you can get a board wipe. That's incredible flexibility just have available to you at different points of the game. But that kind of does bring us nice down to like like touching on like rares and powerful cards. That brings us on to the most recent set at time of recording, which is Secrets of Strix Haven. And here we got the, the paradigm lessons. James, talk us about these because these are kind of five splashy cards is the best way to say it. Yeah, they certainly are. And these actually feel sort of filled are really nice. But gap in the, the lesson board we could build in quickly, I think, the one thing we didn't really get from avatar, I was the big end for game lessons. And that's exactly what these are. I know the game right away, but they give you inevitability because of that paradigm mechanic. So if you haven't seen that paradigm says, then exile this spell after the first after you first resolve a spell with this name, you may cast a copy from exile without paying its mana cost at the beginning of each of your main phases. So this is kind of like epic, but without the downside. You're just guessing the spell again for free every turn for the rest of the game. Kind of insane. And on any decent spell that's giving you an advantage that will win a long game, right. So an example of some of these, as we've got one in each color. They're not tons, but they're super high impact. So for example, the green one is germination fact. In fact, to assume it's I'm going to say that I want to say to come. Yeah I think that might be what it is actually. Filth James. Filth spell damnation. Filth. It's three green. Green for a sorcery lesson. It says plus two plus one plus on counters on each creature you control. And it has power down. So you're going to do that every turn of getting of your main phase for the rest of the game. Essentially, if you have any sort of board that sticks around, this is going to win you the game very, very quickly. Similarly, stuff like Improvization, Cat Stone five, Red Red seven mana exile cards, tough your life into you, exile cards for the amount of five for greater and better. Cast any number of spells from among them about paying your bare mana costs. Bearing in mind this is, you know, you can hit a seven drop and still cast it with this effect, right? Or you can hit a free drop. Then it will keep going. Then you exile a five drop. This is a ton of card advantage for a ton of mana every single turn. You will eventually run out of cards, for exiles cards, but if you don't cast them, they can go on the bottom of your tax. So you do have to bear that in mind. But this will win you the game pretty, pretty damn quickly. If it doesn't, you kind of built your attack wrong. So, Yeah, these these lessons give us this huge late game inevitability, and just having access to one of these in your sideboard means that basically all of your lessons, all of your learn cards, I can be fairly good top decks into the late game, because they're all gonna give you access to that long, long game inevitability effect you need. Yeah, definitely. Like these. Like, the paradigms are awesome because they are they are the big splashy things that that we want to get. Like it is the top end that we're kind of after. The paradigms I think are really cool cards, but like, I don't think you can just run them in a cube if you don't have lessons because that I'm way more up for them. If I have multiple ways of getting them from my deck, like, like for me to want to run one of the paradigm cards, I really want like 2 or 3 lessons. But like once I have that, it means that I'm going to be able to get them every game. And that's really nice. It means, but it means it's not just going to be a mythic in my deck that I will see two games out of six or something like that, or two games out of eight. If I have the ability to consistently two to them, they become way more potent and way more reliable. And I really like that. Yeah, for sure. I have a few a few good LAN cards. This can be kind of your late game plan, right? Most of them don't literally win the game on their own. As in you need some other creatures or something like yeah, the green one plus counts on stuff for three long coffees. A creature for white one returns permanence from your graveyard, so you need something else to work with. The vending a lot, right? You're casting that spell every turn it. You don't need tons else to win the game. So, yeah, these are, decent level, expensive. All, you know, they're not they're not always going to catch you up from behind super efficiently. So there maybe wouldn't be cards you would just put in your deck by themselves, but as a as an option to get with your land cards later into a game. These are phenomenal. Awesome. So I think this kind of a good overview of the types of all of the kind of card pool that we're working with when we're thinking of building this as like an archetype or a package, I think it's probably a good point. I was going to touch on, like, what power level of cube do we think we should see playing? Because Lessons and Learn hasn't made, splash as of yet in the highest power level of cubes. But like, and that's and it's primarily because, in things like the make of minted cube, you can't really run cards that just aren't the most on rate cards possible, if that makes sense. Like, like all the learn like like as we touched on with the learn cards, they're all effects that we want, but they're all like a manner or two more than we would normally want to pay for them. We can't do that in like the most powerful of cubes, but in any slower cube and in any kind of more. But what we kind of touched on is, like, we spoken about this a few times when we talked about cubes. There's the cubes. I just try to win as quickly as possible. And then there's the cubes that are trying to do a thing, and there's still a bit of game afterwards. If we're trying to work towards a big paradigm card, like a paradigm card doesn't end the game on the spot. There's a there's some turns afterwards. That's where I kind of see this package working. It's like kind of make sense. So in a more in a cube where if you, if you use the word midrange to describe it, I think this could see play in something like my Treat Yourself cube, where I want players to build an engine and do a thing. This is literally building an engine and doing a thing. It seems kind of perfect is it's something I should definitely look at adding to that in the future. I kind of like, would would you go along with that? Just like like from your ride? Kind of like, where do you see lessons, lessons and learned popping up and kind of what can you do, do you think, as a cube designer to kind of like, get the most out of it and like, like really like like like it? If you want to showcase it, what do you need to do as well to, to really showcase it? Yeah for sure. This isn't one for your high power level cubes. Just because of the base of the cards by and, You've got to have time to be able to get the engine going, but it's also you're asking your players to to jump through quite a lot of cubes, right? To get this going, you're asking them to draft, spend a bunch of draft picks on lessons, which are cards that don't go in bad back. So they need to make sure they still get enough playable and get some land cards and draw and be able to cast those land cards to get the lessons going. There are some hoops to jump through here, like for that to be worth it, they have to really feel like they're doing it when they get it all working, you know? And if there's a bunch of cards in the cube which are just as powerful as this stuff that don't require the set up, then people are just going to play those cards and, and ignore for land mass and stuff. So yeah, you've got a picture of the right power level of cube where this actually feels like the for this to actually feel like something that's worth doing from a player's point of view. But yeah, I think, I think if you are in that spot and, and your cube does give your player some time to set up, then, and it's kind of an interesting thing to look at, you know. Yeah. I think another reason why we just haven't seen it up to now is just kind of like there's been plenty of, like, cool mechanics there, or cool mechanics or archetypes that have been limited to a limited to like one set and hasn't really gone much further. I'm thinking like mutate from Korea, really cool. But like, it's hard to support Mutating cube because it only existed on like one sect. And there's a limited amount of cards. Lesson and learn has kind of been that kind of like the new lessons have really given us the possibility of adding it to a cube, but like, like, like the like, I said, yeah, there only being 21 cards with LAN is definitely like a hindrance to, how far I can go in terms of power level anyway. Like, would you agree with that? James? Yeah, in terms of power level. And, it is certainly a challenge you need to solve from the cube building point of view. They of, it creates for a potential for feel bad if you don't have enough LAN cards in the cube fight because it. But you don't want to have happen if people spend a bunch of picks on lessons and end up with a couple of LAN cards and it kind of feels like what, you know, why did I spend five packs on building this great lesson? But when I have two ways to access it and you could kind of trade back your draft a bit to get that right, I do think there are like ways you can look to address that. But but it's certainly a it's certainly a challenge. But, yeah, there's 20 to you. It kind of means you can probably need to play most of them. And there's a couple in there that aren't great. As we mentioned, looking at UI, Twitch and. You know, it's one that's like it's a combat trick. Like it's fine. It's things like three mana plus v plus one trample to a creature and learn like it's okay, but it's also, you know, you'll learn that probably isn't a beat down that, you know, it's probably a five color soup deck because you want access to, to all the different colors and then kind of lends itself to that naturally. Because because it can get you can it can fix your mana. So I kind of don't want to have to run the stupid, enthusiastic study, and I've, I don't want to end up having fight this terrible combat check in my five car attack. It doesn't make sense to me. And then if you have any, if you start cutting too many of the LAN cards, then the numbers are really getting kind of sketchy, right? Yeah, exactly. I one thing that is very helpful with the cards, like abandoned attachments, which is the ease which is the effectively a thriller possibility. And with shared routes, which is a rampant growth. Is that the nice thing about those cards is that they can if you draft them, they can still be played in your deck. If you don't get the learn cards. So that's one way of addressing it. Just if your lessons are playable by themselves, it negates the need of always having to have them be in the sideboard. You can just run these cards in your deck. That's it's something worth considering as well. But like, hey, that is a nice back up that they are just magic cards. You can just run them in your deck. The other part of that as well, James, is, the size of the cube. Like it's very much a thing of like once you go apart, like at a 360 cube, you need less redundancy than a 540. 540 cube. You need less redundancy than a 720. I think what we're basically saying is, like, you will struggle more to make lessons and learn work in a 720 cube. A 540 cube might be doable, but I feeling like, 360, 20 cards, also like 18. Maybe if we got the bad ones, that seems like 18 lesson cards in a 360 cube. That seems doable to me. That seems like a perfectly solid package. Yeah, that seems totally fine, right? Because, so, like, everyone is going to be trying to do villainous and things ever learn lesson cards should end up with like, quality drafters. I think, yeah. Naturally this lends itself towards being attacked for plays. Quite a lot of colors. So they should then be pretty easy way. I have 1 or 2 players who end up getting like 5 or 6, maybe even seven cards, and that's great. That's loads. If you get and if you go down to 540, you know, it's still manageable. If you've done like 15, 19 of them. But yeah, you do. You do have to run most of them. 720 it seems really tough, I agree. No, definitely. I kind of like like there are some other things that kind of I've been thinking of that you could do to make it more incentivizing is like like, for example, where we've seen lessons and learning strict seven. That is a spells matter set. If you're pushing spells matters and like spell slingers like these cards will go great with a V that kind of stuff. Like if you you're if you have other bits of synergy, other cores that care about you causing instant or sorceries, these become better like like like mascot exhibition makes a bunch of tokens. If we can double that or triple that, or storm it with a card like thousand year storm, that becomes quite a bit more interesting. It becomes you get that extra bit of synergy. That's quite nice. Yeah. For sure. Anything that just cares about you casting instance, the sorcery spells. Because let's turn up for LAN cards. Our instance, the sorcery is when you're going getting an instance of sorcery. So you've kind of got two triggers wrapped up in one card. That's fairly nice. Yeah. I think, it lends itself, yeah, to a bit of that stuff. And I'd say more for big instance and sorcery matter that it's not really one for like a lean power stack, I would say, because, it's more of a card advantage mechanic than a tempo mechanic in general. And, the. It's also just pushing you towards playing a lot of colors, which again, is sort of leading your way from that aggressive power mode to more towards for let's cast something giant mode, because you will end up, you know, you're not necessarily going to get your, you know, five really good lessons and five really good land cards, all in two colors. So I think it will push you towards flashing. But the lessons give you really good tools to splash, so that should be fine. But yeah, it, it is pushing it very much towards that, that big attack. Right. Also because the, lessons you're going to end up playing and there can be some be best, kind of for more late game ones a lot of the time, not necessarily just for big expensive ones, but also for interactive ones, but as a thing with lessons that, you know, if you consider something like for an things life lesson, yes, it's good, it's fixing, but vamp growth is a card that is best. On turn two, you're basically never casting it on time to buy because you there just aren't really one mana LAN cards you're going to play very much like, sure, you can cast an eye twitch on third one and a lightning bolt set that it doesn't seem like it right into your plan, and it doesn't seem like a super realistic scenario. Yeah, it was the kind of, hey, if I was thinking about trying to learn lessons for cube, how I could imagine trying to do it would be I have a bunch of two color art archetypes and then learn lesson is kind of a five color option. For like spicy five color, deck for. Net connect stuff together a little bit. You know, I think that could be quite cool. And obviously not to say you're going to be literally five colors every time you draft it, but it's, you know, it's the multicolor option. I wouldn't limit it to just 1 or 2 colors because then you're not going to have enough cards right? No. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely seems like, TMA ish, like at least two splashing a third color addition deck. But that's where cards like like environmental sciences, as we've mentioned earlier and also, I guess NGS journey, which is a similar type of effects to to environmental sciences and journey to generic sorcery lesson with Kika for two. So join me for basic LAN card. If it's was Cate instead of racing lines out and a shrine card reveal those cards, put them into your hand and shuffle and you gain two like so. It's actually a functional environmental sciences just having multiple of those colorless effects as the first thing you go and get is quite nice. Yeah, this is really disappointingly strictly better. But Environmental Sciences is still is still cool like a shrine synergy baby. Let's go. What's the best thing you can get with that shrine to to because it's a shrine. A creature type. Oh, you want nice and no, it's enchantment type. No, we can't boo. I don't think you can get changelings with. But no, we can't. Okay? It's like they thought about that, damn it. But yeah. Either way. Yeah, yeah. Just having multiple of those colorless go get your next land drop seem very good, but yeah. Awesome. And I think the final thing I want to touch on is, one thing we also saw in avatar, and we'll probably see again in the future, is cards that incentivize us for running lessons that aren't necessarily learned. Cards, James, like, talk to me about cards like Gran Gran and like Iroh. Grand Lotus. Yeah. So some of these will be quite familiar to anyone who's played standard in the last six months. Is it lessons being, being a powerful deck father? So Van Grand, for example, commonly known as Vaca gran, I believe. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's very good. Well done. Magic players. Dragon is a single blue mana for one two. Legendary creature. Human. Peasant. Ally. Apparently. It says whenever Gran Gran becomes tap to draw a card, then discard a card and non creature spells you. Cass has one less to Cass, as long as you have three or more lesson cards in your graveyard, just for a common bit of text in that avatar set. Was having three free lessons in your graveyard to to get a pay off. So one of the best payoffs is accumulate wisdom, which is one instant lesson. Look at the top three cards your library. Put one into your hand that's on the bottom. So and anticipate. But if you have three or more lessons in your graveyard, then you put all three of them in your hand. So yes, that's that's much of it. Yeah. That's actually quite good. Really. That's very strong. Yeah. Yeah yeah. So that and this works both as a lesson to go and tutor for life. You know quite late in the game you might have learned a couple of other times, Cass, that a couple of other lessons and then your third learn could go and get this. You have to you have some lessons in your graveyard already and you can draw free, or it could also push you to just put some lessons in your deck, because then you get them into your graveyard earlier and you can get this online earlier. So kind of works quite nicely the way or say something like, I though Grand Lotus is a really nice sort of laser game. Payoff for this stuff. This is three and a timer. So six mana total, five five firebending, two during your turn each non lesson instant and sorcery card. And your graveyard has flashback flashback e4 twist mana costs. But your lessons have flashback for a single manor. So if you have a bunch of lessons in your graveyard to pay, play this. You can then just cast your lessons for single mana. You can. You can go pretty hard for this card. Also like not completely terrible. If you don't have tons of lessons in your yard, fix it as flashback you other stuff. So yeah, this is cool. Invite it gives you some more things to do. If your lessons outside of just learning for them, you might end up. If you have enough of this stuff, you could maybe put some of your lessons in your main deck and some in your side for to learn, for and just so you get those lessons in your graveyard a little bit quicker, I think. I think that's actually a really nice way of taking it. Like like if we can make a splash and standard without any learn cards. And that's a really nice, I'm just looking at, that standard deck, a card like combustible technique seems quite good in that, in this kind of build as well, where you just trying to run as many lessons as possible and one on a read instant lesson. It deals damage equal to two plus the number of lesson cards in your grave up to target creature effect, which you would die this turn exalted instead. So it goes nicely with. Yeah, just having more lessons like it becomes a could become quite a decent removal spell. Again, just rewarding you for having more of them. And that's actually quite a nice. Yeah way of, of getting bonus synergy. Basically, it's not just the learn cards where you're getting synergy from. If the lesson cards are now playing into each other and rewarding you for having more of them than that's just it's yeah, that that's really nice. Like like like like I'm it means you're not going to be as ruined if you don't see the, the learn cards. Basically, you can still build it and still have redundancy that way. Exactly. Yeah. I think for me this is the approach I would take to try and, don't give Amber to to compensate for the fact that we can't put like 30 LAN cards in the cube is you make the lessons interesting, like whether or not you have a bunch of good learn stuff and, yeah, players might put some in their main, some in that board if I might put all in that board to learn for by my side, if I don't care about the learned stuff and just put them all in the main because they have some cool payoffs for that, I think all of those things are interesting. I actually kind of like it sometimes when there's a little bit of tension in the deck building like that, I think that can add. That can make it quite interesting to, yeah, I, I quite like some of these payoffs. I think that's very good. Nice. Yeah. I'm definitely here for those. They seem quite fun. And also, I love the fact that a card called Grand Grand is wrecking standard. Maybe, maybe universe is beyond isn't so bad after all. Yeah, you can't be mad about it. Even when they universe is beyond. Hey, take on thematic vanguard and can they? Yeah, I do feel like I've learned a lot today, James. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't get booed. I'm all right. I'll take it. Right. Yeah, but that's going to do it for today. That was kind of two paths to be other sleep. I. I'll be checking them out when he's down to do that. Right. Thank. Yes thank you James. But yeah. Yeah I thought that was quite. Yeah I thought I was really good conversation and yet it's definitely something that I want. Yeah. Hey me something I want to try at some point. I think everything we've gone over like. Yeah, the combination of getting the learn cards that are good and like, playable in your cubes stuff at the Null Professor, combining that with cause like activated wisdom. Like, that's my main. Like, I did not see this card before. I missed this one completely, but just a a card that rewards you for number of lessons when that's combined with just playable lessons, like the rampant growth and the thrill of possibility that we touched on that becomes like, that's doable. That's that is a testable package. That's really nice. And kind of you can really you can it can be a light touch or you can really just, really go into it by cramming as many cards. It learns as you think you can run, and then just all the good payoffs for it in the lessons. I think it could be a lot of fun in the right cube. Yeah, I think I think it's a really interesting thing to experiment with. I'm quite excited to see it in some cubes. You know, I think it's got to be the right cube for it. You can't have a power level too much feverish. You've got to give it a little bit of time to get going. I think it could be very sweet. Awesome. That's where we're going to leave it for today. James. Pleasure, man. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, it's a pleasure. Nice one. Oh, I just want to thank you all very much for listening. Do make sure you like, share, subscribe, all that good stuff. Give the podcast a five star review. Tell a friend, especially telling a friend. That's like the main way we get more views. So that would really help us out. If you're in a cube group, tell the other seven people players, let's open WhatsApp right now, the length. Oh, do it, do it, do it now the main thing is thank you for listening. We do really appreciate you all being here. Until next week. Goodbye from me. Goodbye from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.