As part of the game's most recent reveal stream, Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven mechanics were on full display, and an exciting new one in the form of Learn and Lesson cards looks poised to inform deckbuilding decisions in interesting ways. Magic: The Gathering is the popular tabletop and digital card game from Wizards of the Coast, and its steady rise in popularity has seen it expand its reach from its own decades-old universe into other popular IPs like The Walking Dead and The Lord of the Rings.
MTG Strixhaven is an upcoming set that re-imagines the popular fantasy trope of a wizard school, separating promising mages into different colleges that correspond to mana color pairs in the game's design. Sets with separations like this tend to be popular among players because it is easier to identify with a certain design element of the set that's associated with a specific college, but Strixhaven also features alternate art cards in the Mystical Archive that will allow players to express themselves even more by choosing from wildly different but aesthetically eye-catching artwork.
As far as MTG Strixhaven mechanics go, a few were revealed during the stream, but the one that may change the way players build Standard decks (and deck construction in other formats) is Learn and Lesson. Learn was showcased on the Pop Quiz card, which lets players draw a card before also Learning - which is either discarding a card to draw a card, or fetching a Lesson from "outside the game" (in play, this means the player's sideboard). Lesson cards seem to have niche but useful effects, with Confront the Past looking like an early standout thanks to the flexibility it has with both planeswalker strategies and removing opposing planeswalkers that might be causing issues.
The concept of Learn and Lesson hearkens back a little to the Magic: The Gathering Companion idea from Ikoria, although that mechanic ended up so powerful it needed to be reworked entirely. Learn and Lesson, like Companion, allows players to accumulate resources from outside of their main deck, although it's not an effect that has never existed within Magic: The Gathering - usually, it's called a "wish" effect. For "wish" cards historically, however, the entire card effect was built around getting the card from a players sideboard. Here, MTG Strixhaven is stapling on the "wish" effect for specifically Lessons and providing players with alternatives on the Learn cards if they don't want to grab a Lesson at all.
MTG Strixhaven's new mechanics look like they're working to reduce the variance for players somewhat by giving them options, and Learn and Lesson cards are a good example of that. While tough to balance, what little has been shown so far looks immensely promising and conducive to intriguing, complex gameplay - if the rest of the Learn and Lesson cards are this interesting, MTG Strixhaven looks set to make a major, entertaining impact on the card game later this year.