Lost Days

Blue's tuck effects have always traded tempo for permanence: you spend the mana to put a threat far enough down the library that it stays gone for a while, and you accept that you did nothing to your own board doing it. This one buys back a sliver of that lost card. Sending the target to second-from-top or the bottom is the familiar Time Ebb-into-Condemn spectrum, one option a temporary delay and the other a near-exile against decks that cannot dig, but the Clue token is what changes the math. You spend a card for the answer; the Clue eventually replaces it, so the exchange nets you ahead instead of the card-neutral trade that tuck traditionally represents. That the Clue arrives at instant speed matters more than the card economy suggests: the effect works as an end-step play or a combat-step reset while leaving the extra draw banked for later, when the mana is spare. What holds it back is the price. Five mana at instant speed to answer a single permanent (creature or enchantment, the target range wider than most bounce) is a rate built for controlling decks that can afford to spend a whole turn resetting an opponent's best card and treat the Clue as a slow refuel rather than a swing. It is a patient, grindy answer dressed as tempo, and the Lesson tag marks it as a tutorable piece of that plan rather than a maindeck staple.