Table of Contents
Spoiler season is over for the new Avatar: The Last Airbender set, which means brewing season has just begun. It looks like a really great set, with flavor wins, fun mechanics, and awesome commanders. Today, however, we’ll be going into the staples. TLA and TLE contain new mechanics, new effects, and new takes on old effects and mechanics. We’ll look at cards from all aspects of this set: the main set, the Jumpstart set, and other supplemental products. Let’s jump right in.
White
White gets a suite of go-wide and Blink tools, interesting boardwipes and removal, and some excellent support for +1/+1 counter decks. The new Airbending mechanic is centered in white. When you airbend a permanent, you exile it and then its owner can recast it for two generic mana. Different cards with this mechanic use it both as blink and as temporary removal.
You can play Suki, Courageous Rescuer as your commander, but she’s still great in the 99 of your deck. She gives your creatures +1/+0, and makes an Ally token when another permanent leaves the field during your turn. This triggers off of fetchlands, blink effects, or any creatures that die during combat, and it’ll trigger more often than you think.
United Front is a sorcery that both makes tokens and buffs your board. For X and two white mana, it gives you X 1/1 Allies and then gives each creature you control a counter. You can spend lots of mana to make lots of tokens, or just cast it for two and buff all of your stuff.
If you’d rather cheat out creatures, Jet, Rebel Leader is a 4-drop reminiscent of Winota, Joiner of Forces. While he’s not downright broken, putting a creature into play with every attack is a lot of value. Jet works well in any mono-white deck, and he’s great for go-wide strategies that play quality 3-drops like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar or Enduring Innocence.
Experience counters return in the ATLA Jumpstart set, with cards like Aang, Airbending Master. He airbends a creature when he enters and gets an experience counter when a creature you control leaves without dying. Then, at the beginning of your upkeep, he makes a 1/1 Ally for each experience counter you have. Whether he’s in a blink deck with go-wide elements or a go-wide deck with blink elements, he’ll make lots of tokens.
Blue
Blue gets a lot of more combat-focused cards in this set, but its best hits here are the card advantage engines. Waterbending abilities, centered in blue, have a generic cost that you can tap creatures or artifacts to reduce, so token decks will also enjoy this set.
Secret of Bloodbending and Water Whip are exciting waterbending cards for commander. Water Whip costs two blue mana plus a waterbending cost of 5, bouncing two creatures and drawing two cards. If you’d rather have pure fun, Secret of Bloodbending can be a Mindslaver if you pay an additional waterbending cost of 10. Play both in your artifact decks.
Katara, Waterbending Master is the blue experience counters card from the Jumpstart set. For two mana, she’s an efficient card advantage powerhouse for decks that play on their opponents’ turns. You get experience counters when you cast spells on your opponents’ turns. When she attacks, those counters draw you cards. With enough instants, Katara can refill your hand every turn.
In Commander, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian will usually come in for two mana, draw you a card, and become a 2/2 flier with vigilance, because fetchlands exist. Whether your opponents are finding lands or combo pieces, you’ll get a free card every time. You can also just pump it up and get your card advantage with the X cost.
We’ll finish this section with something simpler, but still powerful. Waterbending Scroll draws a card for six mana, but it costs 1 less for each island you control. Later on, it gives you a free card every turn in a mono-blue deck. This is a very high-quality draw engine for an uncommon. Any blue deck that doesn’t plan to win by turn 5 should seriously consider this card.
Black
Black gets a lot of weird things in this set. Different cards care about counters, Clues, life loss, sacrifice, and discard, because Black gets a little bit of all of the new mechanics. While most of the new black cards seem strange and niche, some of them end up being incredibly powerful.
Day of Black Sun is a new boardwipe that’s quite versatile. For X and two black mana, it removes all abilities from creatures with a mana value of X or less and destroys them. Perhaps its best mode is X=0, which destroys all creatures tokens on the board. In a high-cost midrange deck, this boardwipe will skew heavily in your favor.
Foggy Swamp Visions is going to be underrated. Commander players want to make permanents they can keep if they’re not winning the game. For three mana and waterbend X, you exile X creatures from graveyards. You then make a copy of each exiled creature, and all of them get haste. Towards the end of a game, when graveyards are full of answered threats and crazy ETB effects, this card can absolutely steal a game.
Koh, the Face Stealer is one of the most hyped cards in the set. As it enters, it can exile a creature, and then you can give it all of the activated and triggered abilities of anything exiled by its effects. This enables many crazy combos. Exiling Galvanic Juggernaut and Avatar of Woe, for instance, lets you tap Koh to use the Avatar’s ability and then swap to the Juggernaut on the stack, and then when the ability resolves Koh will untap and you can swap back to the Avatar’s ability. This lets you destroy any number of creatures at instant speed for two life each.
Red
Red gets many new toys in this set. Firebending is its new mechanic, and while it’s somewhat limited, it’s super powerful with the right payoffs. A creature with Firebending X will make X red mana whenever it attacks. You lose that mana when the ‘declare attackers step’ ends, so you’ll have to use it at instant speed.
Fated Firepower increases all of your damage by the X you pay when you cast it. It’s extra good with firebending. Whether you’re using Impact Tremors or Guttersnipe, this card makes your win conditions even more lethal.
Redirect Lightning is another copy of the Bolt Bend effect, and might be the best version yet. Since it can often send an opponent’s spell back at them, five life and one mana is a bargain. It’ll be even funnier if you can point something like a Time Warp at yourself.
I have to group Zuko, Firebending Master and Firebending Student together. If you’re playing lots of spells during combat in a deck like Feather, the Redeemed, both of these creatures will overperform. Even in a storm deck, these two will be great additions if you can use the mana.
Firebender Ascension is a 2 mana enchantment that makes a 2/2 token with firebending 1. When you’ve activated enough attack triggers to put four quest counters on it, it starts doubling those triggers. Remember, it works with all attack triggers, not just firebending. In a Laelia, the Blade Reforged deck, you should be able to start doubling your Laelia trigger by turn four.
Green
As per usual, Green receives strong ramp cards and big creatures, but in this set it also receives some interesting retrains. The new Earthbending keyword animates lands without the fear of losing them to removal. When you earthbend X, that land gets X +1/+1 counters and becomes a 0/0 with haste in addition to its other types, and when it dies or is exiled, it returns to the battlefield tapped.
Elemental Teachings is not Gifts Ungiven, but it can be close. At any bracket, you can use
The Earth King is a far more generic version of Kodama of the West Tree. It new card makes a 4/4 bear when it enters. When you attack, it searches up a basic land for each attacking creature with 4 or more power. This can go in any green stompy deck. Worst case scenario, someone targets it with a Doom Blade and you’re still left with a 4/4.
Rampant Growth is one of the most widely used green staples. Tutoring a basic land for two mana is the uncontested rate. Avatar gives us a functional reprint in Shared Roots. Ilysian Caryatid also receives a slightly weaker reprint in Raucous Audience.
This set’s most exciting retrain, in my opinion, is close to a mono-green version of Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. Badgermole Cub is a two mana creature that lets you earthbend 1 when it enters, then adds an additional green mana whenever you tap a mana dork. The land you used your earthbend trigger on becomes a mana dork, so you could play a Llanowar Elves on turn 1, tap the Elves and one land for the Cub on turn 2, earthbend your untapped land, and then have two more mana for another mana dork, untapping with 7 mana on turn 3.
Other Cool Cards
Bitter Work is a very simple card advantage engine for Gruul decks. Whenever you attack a player with 4 or more power worth of creatures, you draw a card. In many Gruul decks, you can draw a card with it on the turn it comes down. The thing is, it draws a card for each player you send 4 or more power at, which means you can get three cards per turn. It also lets you pay 4 mana to earthbend 4, which is a nice bonus that helps you maximize its own ability.
Planetarium of Wan Shi Tong is the latest in a long list of ‘big flashy colorless mythics,’ and alongside certain commanders, this one can be particularly busted. For six mana, whenever you scry or surveil, you can cast the card you left on top of your deck for free once per turn. It also taps to let you scry two for one mana, which is a nice bonus. Scrying or surveilling at instant speed lets you get up to four free spells per turn cycle. If you can enable it, you can’t get much better than this for six mana.
You can play Katara, Water Tribe's Hope as a commander if you want, but to me, she seems more like a high-quality finisher for any Azorius go-wide deck. You can tap Katara and the Ally she makes to for the waterbending cost, along with any other creatures/artifacts you aren’t attacking with. For Azorius decks, she’s usually a strictly better Mirror Entity.
Conclusion
This set’s filled to the brim with cool cards and homages to the beloved animated series. We couldn’t go over all of the cards in this set and all of their awesome interactions in this article. I only got to one of the four new Ascension enchantments, and I couldn’t fin in any of the five new mono-color lands. There are so many awesome cards coming with this set and I can’t wait to try them all.
What cards are you excited to play with? Come over to our Discord and talk about it.
