Really Bat Deck

Thanks a lot for the input! I changed the tag.
also added the pest summoning lesson. Might be a good alternative to basic conjuration.
with poet's quill I'm not sure. Yes it does fit the deck in a way, because as you said lifelink goes well with flyers, but I think it goes even better with just high attack value which the bats generally don't have. Also one bat already has lifelink itself. And on top I just think poet's quill is not that good of a card in general. I read it as "4 mana draw a card and give a creature a small boost". Maybe I just have to try it out, but with the current set of available lessons I'm not too convinced. It may become busted if future lesson prints are more powerful.

I like the way that you 'translate' what the quill does, it's a good way to analyse how the game works, but you have to be very carefull that you do not lose anything in that translation.

In this case the card has several stages that needs translation.
First of, the card initially costs 1B and let's you learn.

If it's countered it does not learn, but it only cost you 2 mana to lose it, imagine if it cost 4 outright and got countered, that would really hurt.

In case it isn't countered it may then be destroyed, but then it has already been usefull by replacing itself with a wish effect. At that point you have payed for a non-random draw, a draw where you were in control of what was drawn. Compared to an ordinary draw, this is extremely powerfull. Look at the meta, do you often meet decks with learn? Watch some pro youtubers, are they using learn in their games?

Next stage of the cards effect is equipping, your opponent may destroy it at several times during the game, so the trick is to know when they gain the optimal advantage of doing so.

The optimal time is when your equipped creature is blocked by another creature. By destroying the quill at that point they can have their creature kill yours.

This brings us into a lot of smaller scenarios where you must evaluate how much it costs your opponent to destroy the quill, and the probabilities of them doing it.

If they can't destroy the quill itself it suddenly become a longterm lifegain effect. Do you see any decks in arena that win often in arena by just gaining life? If you do it's good.

If they can destroy the quill, the next question will be if they have any fliers. If you equip the quill on a flier, they must have a flier themselves to get an optimal advantage out of the card. If they have no flier they only unboost your creature and cuts of your lifelink.

If they have a flier and it's a flier that is 1 toughness smaller than your attacking creature, then they will be able to perform the most advantage giving way of destroying your quill. By blocking your creature will die when the equipment is gone and damage is dealt.

That raises new questions, like can you remove their creature in response with some removal, so they gain nothing. Can they counter your removal?

If your head is spinning at this point of my ramblings, then think about how your opponents brain will have to walk through all of this within minutes after the quill is played. Their brain will aim ad the most advantageous play, but we've sort of been through that and know how things are going to play out.

You opponent will either be spending brainpower on remembering what lesson you drew, or they will be caught unaware when you play the card. Confront the past, contain the outbreak and pest summoning represent different sorts of threats to your opponent, so if any of these three cards will affect their decktype, their brain will use energy to remind them of the danger.

So you see, not only does the quill forward your gameplan by giving you a wish draw, it also exhaustes your opponents mental energies while you only need to spend a second or two when casting it or when they destroy it.
Do you know of any games where you lost because you were mentally fatigued ?

At the moment I'm carefully watching cgb/covertgoblue to see to what extend he and others are using learn/lesson because I was actually in the middle of researching wishboarding when new "wishes" were suddenly spoiled. I went from analysing 5 cards to suddenly having 20 more cards enter my study.

I planed to track down all uses of the 5 most recent wishes (one of them being "coax from the blind eternities"),
But instead I just have to pay attention to the next three months to study the effect of wishboarding.

My goal is to find the perfect quantities of how many slots in the sideboard should be there to support wishes in general (like "fae of wishes") and how many cards should be kept as ordinary sideboard cards.

The arrival of learn/lessons couldn't be better for my study, which is sort of why I had the quill in mind :)

Translating a card like you did is a fine mental art, one that I use myself, but it's vital that you never let anything get lost in the translation. Sure it makes it hard to analyse individual cards, but if you use an actual pen and notebook you only need to analyse the card a few times before you have it's secrets written on paper.

Oh, and before I lose track. Mono white lifegain wins a lot by lifegain, and some new witherbloom deckdesigns are going to focus heavily on draining life.

Sorry for wall of texting you :D

Ps. If you like wall of texts, read my newest wall "deckbuilding and storytelling"