Gnarled Professor
Creature — Treefolk Druid
Trample
When this creature enters, learn. (You may reveal a Lesson card you own from outside the game and put it into your hand, or discard a card to draw a card.)
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Strixhaven: School of Mages Promos
- Price
- $0.44
- EDHREC rank
- #23049
Gnarled Professor lands as a 4/3 trampler and immediately tutors a Lesson from outside the game onto the battlefield — that's a removal spell, a token maker, or a ramp piece stapled to a body for four mana. The cost is real: Lessons are a separate deckbuilding constraint, and outside of formats where Learn is native, the tutor clause does nothing. Fangorn, Tree Shepherd decks run it anyway because a 4/3 trample that enters with a free permanent is exactly the kind of value-dense creature that tree tribal wants.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Fangorn, Tree Shepherd
Fangorn, Tree Shepherd cares about Treefolk entering the battlefield, and Gnarled Professor is a Treefolk that enters with an extra permanent already attached — doubling the triggers and fueling whatever payoffs Fangorn is assembling on the same turn.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Gnarled Professor is a niche role-player: legal and occasionally useful in Treefolk builds or any green deck that has bothered to run a Lessons sideboard package, but most lists skip it because the tutor clause requires deliberate construction to fire. In competitive Constructed — Modern, Pioneer, Legacy — it was a draft-format card that never broke through; the Lesson payoffs don't scale to high-powered sixty-card environments where four mana needs to do more than fetch a middling spell. Gnarled Professor is at its best in Commander pods that have embraced the Learn/Lesson package as a suite of modal utility cards, where it becomes a compact tutor-on-a-stick that also bashes for four.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.44 bulk tier
At $0.44, Gnarled Professor sits firmly in bulk territory — a safe include for any budget build that can use it. Bulk rares with narrow synergy requirements rarely appreciate, so treat this as a cheap pickup for the specific decks that want it, not a long-term hold.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.