Uncle Iroh

Firebending reads like a combat ritual, but the red it banks expires the moment combat ends, which quietly pins the card's real function to its second line. The Lesson discount is the load-bearing half: shaving a mana off a spell you can cast from outside your library, with the fleeting attack mana serving as the closest thing to an in-combat payoff, since the reduction applies to an instant-speed Lesson while that red is still floating. The two halves want the same tempo but occupy an awkwardly narrow window. A static discount does not consume mana, so the ritual only matters when you actually have an instant-speed Lesson or another combat-timed spend queued up. Absent that support, the banked red simply vanishes and the card reverts to a naked beater. That 4/2 is the tell: four power on two toughness is all forward pressure, a body that trades against nearly any blocker or a couple points of burn rather than hedging toward something survivable. The design gravity is unmistakable. This card only clicks in a build already stocked with Lessons and instant-speed reach, and it does nothing to help assemble that support: it presumes the machine is already built, handing you a discount and a swing while demanding you supply everything the discount is meant to accelerate.