Avatar’s New Lessons Crushed World Championship 31

Last updated on December 9, 2025

Gran-Gran | Illustration by Arou

So who's idea was it exactly to print Ancestral Recall into Standard and make it an uncommon? That's what it felt like watching (and probably playing in) last weekend's World Championship event, where Izzet Lessons was the breakout deck.

Seth Manfield took down World Championship 31 with the deck, and while I love to brag about how I once beat Seth Manfield at a Grand Prix, here he is winning the most imporant high-stakes tournament of the year while I'm simply writing about it, so credit where credit is due.

I also often skip the part where he was stuck on two lands for a 7-turn game of Sealed.

Uncommons Rule the Day

Accumulate Wisdom | Illustration by Gemi

While Lessons was a pretty well-known factor going into this weekend's tournament, and it proved itself at the highest level of competition, perhaps the most astounding part of the deck is how much of it is driven by mere commons and uncommons. Take a look at Manfield's first-place decklist.

There are 12 non-land rares in the deck, full playsets of Stormchaser's Talent, Artist's Talent, and Monument to Endurance. Everything else is common and uncommon, with another 13 rares in the manabase.

Some versions are even leaner on higher-rarity cards, with Top 8's Derrick Davis foregoing Monuments and Artist's Talents for Eddymurk Crab, Stock Up, and additional copies of some of the lessons.

The heart of this deck is Accumulate Wisdom, a 2-mana draw 3 that's really not that hard to enable, and becomes literal Ancestral Recall with Gran-Gran online, who also had a breakout performance this weekend. The deck's just a pile of cheap interaction and card draw, with players quibbling over their actual wincons, whether that be Eddymurk, Monument, or Granny beatdown.

It also helps that this deck is loaded with cheap burn to counteract all the Badgermole Cubs people were expecting in this tournament. Seven copies of Badgermole Cub snuck into the Top 8 across two participants' decks, and even those decks were packing full playsets of Boomerang Basics, given that card's incredible synergy and combo potential with Stormchaser's Talent.

The lessons package looks incredibly strong right now, but it might be beatable with the right combination of graveyard hate. It's hard to imagine the deck putting up such a strong performance in the face of Standard-legal cards like Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void, should it ever become too dominant.

Not Exactly Budget Material

Boomerang Basics | Illustration by Tubaki Halsame

Having a highly competitive deck consist of majority commons/uncommons is usually a good thing, since it means more people can invest into it and play at a high level without spending as much, but this isn't your Gran-Gran's Pauper deck.

According to MTGGoldfish, the cheapest version of the Izzet Lessons deck featured at the World Championship still clocks in at $300, and that's the version running Eddymurk Crab over Monument to Endurance. Playsets of that artifact plus Artist's Talents easily add another $200 to the price of the deck, so consider Derrick Davis's version the budget option. Seth Manfield's winning deck is currently priced at $527.

On top of Talents and Monuments, which we've seen aren't necessary to be competitive, the land base isn't doing you any favors, with playsets of Multiversal Passage, Riverpyre Verge, and Spirebluff Canal totalling up to roughly $140-150. This is one place where you probably can't compromise if you want to play this deck seriously in a tournament circuit–good mana is essential to long-term success. Starting Town shows up in a decklist or two, but it's not exactly a budget alternative at almost $12 a pop.

Source: MTGStocks

To cap this all off, some of the essential lessons have skyrocketed in price too. Accumulate Wisdom‘s over $4 each thanks to its tournament success, and Boomerang Basics exits the weekend at just under $4 each, proving itself in a variety of different decks.

Wrap Up

All of this sends up some BIG red flags about Secrets of Strixhaven next year. With lesson returning in Avatar: The Last Airbender, speculation points towards the return of learn next year, but can they really bring the mechanic back with the lessons being this powerful? Imagine how much better cards like It'll Quench Ya! and Iroh's Demonstration get when you don't even need to put them in your mainboard to have access to them. Time will tell on that one.

For now, congrats to Seth Manfield for his World Championship win, and to the rest of the field for being there in the first place. Special shout out to Ken Yukuhiro for landing a sweet Sultai reanimator deck in the Top 8 midst a sea of otters and lessons.