Countdown To Magic Spotlight: The Avatar - Lessons on Izzet Lessons
With competitive Standard firing off on all cylinders following Magic: The Gathering World Championship 31 we’re here to showcase some of the most popular and interesting archetypes of the metagame we’ve seen so far. Whether you’re gearing up for locals at Friday Night Magic, or even practicing for the Standard main event at the upcoming Magic Spotlight: The Avatar in Lyon, we hope you enjoy this showcase of Izzet Lessons, a powerhouse of the current Standard metagame.
Alex Kivitz
Course Syllabus - Breaking Down The Deck
For those of you who watched the Magic: The Gathering World Championship 31, we saw Izzet Lessons piloted all the way to victory. If you’re new to Magic, at first glance it seems a bit odd that a deck with such few creatures could find a way to win. Izzet Lessons is a deck in what we call the spell-slinger archetype. Its primary focus is to cycle through Instant and Sorcery spells to gain value, churn through their deck, and use key Creatures, Artifacts, and Enchantments to extract value from the many spells you cast. Let’s take a look at Seth Manfield’s deck that he used to win World Championship 31 and breakdown the key elements, how the deck functions, and what makes it work.
Art Lessons – Just Keep Drawing
As the archetype name suggests, the focus of Izzet Lessons is to utilize the many low cost Lesson type spells from Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender to churn through your deck, extract high value from synergies, and find quick and easy answers to whatever problems you may come across in the field. Your two most important lessons are going to be Accumulate Wisdom and Combustion Technique. Accumulate Wisdom keeps your hand size healthy as you can quickly turn on its requirement of having three lessons in graveyard, and Combustion Technique is your go to answer to cheaply removing threatening creatures from your opponent’s board.
We have a few more cards that offer redundancy and consistency, so the deck can run more smoothly. There are three copies of Abandon Attachments for a bit more draw power and offers a way to discard cards. This becomes relevant in a moment. Firebending Lessons is a cheap way to remove small early game threats and can scale into a bigger removal if needed, but you much rather cast it for cheap. And should your opponent aim to go wide with many allies as some decks like to do, we see 3 copies of Iroh’s Demonstration as a way of removing many smaller creatures, or still one larger one. The number of cards in your deck that accomplish the same or similar goals make disrupting Izzet Lessons hard, due to them having so many copies of cheap cards that accomplish similar tasks.
Of course, simply drawing cards and removing creatures won’t win you games on its own. You need to draw towards your win conditions. But what are your win conditions? Primarily we have Monument to Endurance. Monument to Endurance says “Whenever you discard a card, choose one that hasn’t been chosen this turn – Draw a card – Create a Treasure Token – Each opponent loses 3 life.” Combine this with the several discard and draw effects, or draw and discard effects, and we have an engine that will keep our hand size healthy, generate treasure for mana, and deal damage to our opponents. What puts this engine into overdrive is Artist’s Talent, arguably one of the most important cards in the deck. Suddenly every spell you cast triggers your copies of Monument to Endurance and allows you to churn through your deck so fast that if you don’t know what you’re doing you could very well deck yourself out.
Scholarships and Refunds - Discounting Spells and Generating Mana
While the overall mana values of spells in this deck are already quite cheap, it can always be cheaper. Gran-Gran from Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender is a dual threat. As the only creature in the main-board of the deck, she serves as an additional way to cycle through your deck when she becomes tapped, and her discard also triggers Monument to Endurance. Her second ability is also a powerhouse in the deck, discounting non-creature spells by 1 as long as there are 3 or more Lesson cards in your graveyard, which is very easy to accomplish in the deck. This discount turns Accumulate Wisdom into effectively a standard legal Ancestral Recall. This discount also applies to Monument to Endurance, and stacks with Artist’s Talent’s discount as well.
This deck really begins to hyper-accelerate once you have established an Artist’s Talent at level 2, a Gran-Gran, and at least one Monument to Endurance. With just one mana, you can cast a Lesson, trigger the Artist’s Talent to discard and draw, and trigger Monument to Endurance for any of its three modes. And here is where you can quickly close out the game. Once the engine is online, you’re able to develop 2, 3, and in magical Christmas land, up to 4 copies of Monument to Endurance. Suddenly your spells are causing your opponents to lose 3 life a turn per copy of Monument, gaining you treasure tokens, and refilling your hand. Very quickly you can drain large amounts of life from your opponent both in your turn and theirs, rapidly closing out games.
Mathematics and Sequencing – Counting to 20 and Sometimes More
Simply because the ceiling of the deck is high, and you can unleash large amounts of card advantage and value, you don’t necessarily want the game to go on long enough to allow your opponents to stabilize or recover health. And while this may sound obvious, it can be quite easy to get carried away setting up for maximum value instead of going for the optimal lines of killing your opponent as fast as possible, in essence, counting to 20. In the early game you will want to keep your hand size healthy with Monument to Endurance, but towards the end it’s enough to simply go for the kill, and not needlessly thin your deck.
Sometimes your opponents will be running life gain, and in these situations, there are quite a few avenues to victory. Stormchaser’s Talent is a great tool for recurring spells primarily, being able to bring back Accumulate Wisdom or Combustion Technique when needed. Utilizing Boomerang Basics on Stormchaser’s Talent also is a great way to generate quick and easy 1/1 Otter tokens with prowess without needing to reach level 3. You also get to double dip on its level 2 as well. These Otter tokens with prowess come in handy, potentially forcing your opponent to block, or even win the race in the mirror match.
Elective Courses – Side-boarding for match-ups
Before diving into the specifics of various match-ups and decks you’ll go up against, it’s quite important to know what’s flexible in your deck and can be changed. This is important because one of the most difficult challenges many players face is knowing just what to bring in and bring out into certain match-ups.
Izzet Lessons is a fairly fine tuned deck. The ratios of Lessons, discounts, payoffs, and interaction can be quite tight. This is why we see cards like Abandon Attachments while we still have Accumulate Wisdom, or why we see It’ll Quench Ya! over Negate or Annul in most instances. Lessons are key, and that’s the first thing to keep in mind. We see in Seth’s side-board many technical cards that can be more powerful in certain situations, but they aren’t Lessons.
So when it comes to what DO we cut, we believe it comes down to what DON’T we cut. The integral part of Izzet Lessons undeniably are Monument to Endurance, Accumulate Wisdom, and Artist’s Talent. I feel these are the core to the deck, and everything else supplements just how good this core engine is. Everything else I believe is fair game, and match-up dependent. Sometimes you need more creatures, sometimes you need more removal, and sometimes you need more counter spells just to keep the opponent honest. Let’s dive into some of our recommendations for some of the match-ups we saw at World Championship 31.
Temur Otters
Temur Otters is a prominent deck in the metagame as we’ve seen from World Championship 31. As another deck centered around non-creature spells, and a devastating combo built around Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talent, we really need to bring in our counter-spells. Based on Seth’s list, here is what we would recommend for side-boarding.
Bring In: 2 Negates, 1 Annul, 1 It’ll Quench Ya!, 1 Spell Pierce, 2 Quantum Riddlers, 1 Torch the Tower
Take Out: 3 Boomerang Basics, 4 Stormchaser’s Talent, 1 Iroh’s Demonstration
The Quantum Riddlers are almost essential against other blue decks as you may find yourself going very low in cards. They offer another way to restock on cards in hand and also serve as a decent endgame creature if it really comes to that. You’re likely to engage in a war of attrition, countering win conditions and removing creatures. Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talent don’t make the cut as we’re not looking to battle on the field against another deck that can do that better, and there really isn’t much you want to bounce against the opponent that they can’t simply replay for low cost and gain extra value. We bring in Spell Pierce, Negate, and Annul to really try and stop them from playing their own Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talents. Annul can even counter an Enduring Vitality.
Lastly, we want to bring in the Torch the Tower as it effectively deals with Badgermole Cub. We cut a copy of Iroh’s Demonstration as it has less utility when all their creatures have 2 or more toughness.
Sultai Reanimator
Looking at the deck-lists from World Championship 31, the side-boarding here seems very much like a mind game. Much of your side-board is to prevent their side-board pieces from affecting your deck, and shoring yourself up against weaknesses. As they are also a graveyard deck, we of course have our own hate-bearers for that strategy.
Bring In: 2 Soul Guide Lanterns, 2 Quantum Riddlers, 1 Annul, 1 Spell Pierce, 1 It’ll Quench Ya!,
Take Out: 4 Firebending Lessons, 3 Iroh’s Demonstration
Soul Guide Lantern is an obvious side-board piece as it is very likely to disrupt the reanimator Combo that utilizes Superior Spider-Man and Bringer of the Last Gift. Being able to turn off the combo is invaluable. Quantum Riddlers become extra useful because we expect to see a lot of hand interaction and counter-spells from the opponent, and these provide good tempo.
Additionally, Sultai Reanimator is unlikely to have fast kills if you disrupt their combo, and Quantum Riddler provides a good endgame beater. We still want to have as many counterspells available to stop them from playing their own Soul Guide Lantern, and preventing an important Intimidation Tactics or Awaken the Honored Dead is not too bad either. Firebending Lessons and Iroh’s Demonstration feel like dead cards in this match-up as they tend to go all or nothing with creatures.
Bant Airbending
The Bant Airbending side-board plan is going to look very similar to the Temur Otters sideboard plan. We expect them to sideboard in more counter-play, so Quantum Riddler makes an appearance again as a great momentum builder. You’ll see we take out Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talent for much the same reasons. We won’t be winning on board and bouncing their permanents just doesn’t feel good, especially since they already want to be replaying their cards.
Bring In: 2 Quantum Riddlers, 1 Pyroclasm, 1 Torch the Tower, 1 Iroh’s Demonstration, 1 It’ll Quench Ya!, 1 Abandon Attachments
Take Out: 3 Boomerang Basics, 4 Stormchaser’s Talents
The reasoning for taking out the Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talents is exactly the same as against in the Temur Otters gameplan, however in this situation we keep the Iroh’s Demonstrations and even add one in because it can effectively deal with Appa, Steadfast Guardian, and can be used to remove a Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius as well. Sometimes Bant Airbending makes a relevant amount of 1/1 Allies that it can be used to that effect as well. Abandon Attachments comes in as a 7th card to keep the lesson count up a bit, while also allowing us to remove all copies of Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talent. Pyroclasm helps when the enemy goes really wide with allies and smaller creatures and Torch the Tower also offers good removal of key engine pieces against Bant Airbending.
Final Thoughts - Keep Learning
Izzet Lessons is the kind of deck that rewards time, patience, and repetition. The more games you play, the more you start to see where small sequencing choices snowball into big advantages, and where a single mistake can cost you your advantage and even the game. We hope that all the info covered helps smooth out the learning curve, and that the sample sideboard plans above help with understanding those match ups and even give you some ideas about ones we didn’t cover.
As always, no guide replaces real testing. Metagames shift, sideboards evolve, and every opponent will ask different questions of your deck. The Standard metagame does seem quite open, with lots of counter-play options available. Good luck with your testing, and we can’t wait to see what you bring to Magic Spotlight: The Avatar in Lyon (9-11 January 2026)
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