The Best Cards in MTG | Avatar: The Last Airbender – Early Standouts, Playables & Collector Favourites

Avatar is here and the MTG: The Last Airbender cards are looking pretty special already. In case you missed it, Avatar: The Last Airbender is the latest ‘Universes Beyond’ set, with the beloved world of Aang and friends coming to MTG. It’s going to have huge appeal to fans of both Magic and Avatar, with a significant crossover between the two. That means these new cards are going to be in high demand, especially as ‘UB’ releases are now also Standard legal. Let’s take a look at some early stand outs, commander all stars, and highlights for collectors.

Early Standout Cards in MTG: Avatar: The Last Airbender

A set like Avatar has appeal not only in the cards themselves, but also in the characters. There’s some great synergy, and also flavour for players that like to build to a theme. Let's start with cross-format cards (especially Standard) before we go deeper on Commander.

• Badgermole Cub – Badgermole Cub is the ultimate ‘mana dork’. It turns a land into a creature while also making every creature that taps for mana producing two rather than one mana, including the likes of Llanowar Elves. This badger will be a huge hit in every format
• Gran Gran – as we’ll see, blue, and in particular the lesson cards, are super strong, and Gran Gran does a heck of a lot for a one drop creature. It loots, and fuels its own ability to make spells cheaper if you have three or more lessons in your graveyard. Yes, it narrows you down to lessons, but that’s no bad thing!
• Accumulate Wisdom – Accumulate Wisdom is here both for itself, but also a representation of the ‘lesson’ cards as a whole which have been dominating Standard. Combined with Gran Gran, this card can quite literally become an Ancestral Recall, not bad for Standard!
• Earthbender Ascension – While lesson decks have been dominating, landfall decks are beginning to challenge, fueled by the badgermole and also Earthbender Ascension, which does a bit of everything! For just three mana, you’re ramping, earthbending (which works great with badgermole) and soon enough able to continually pump your team and grant trample to those massive creatures to make sure they connect
• Appa, Steadfast Guardian – Again Appa is here as a representative as bant airbending as a whole. Appa and Aang, Swift Savior both enable you to airbend when they enter, allowing you to use one to airbend the other and cast it again for just two colourless mana from exile. Combine these with Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius, and you can cast them again for free, and therefore infinitely – and so from there it’s whatever ETB combo you want! Appa itself creates infinite 1/1 tokens

The reason these cards stand out are simple Magic: The Gathering fundamentals. First, they are all mana efficient. Nothing on the list above costs more than four mana, and most just one or two. Next is flexibility – there’s incredible combo potential, but also these cards are just good on their own, too. Appa, for example, is a Restoration Angel with extras, meaning it can be a surprise blocker, attacker, save another creature from removal – all as well as providing part of a combo to go infinite. The third is synergy, the cards from Avatar: The Last Airbender just work super well together, whether it’s airbending combo, earthbending, lessons, or something else. These mean not only are they dominating Standard, but formats beyond too.

Commander Playables & Deck Staples

Avatar is full of legendary creatures, which are always good for Commander. But more than that, the set offers a lot for many existing archetypes and brings a raft of new staples. Let’s take a look at a few standouts

• Spirit Water Revival – this is at worst a Divination, but late game it powers up into a draw seven, which also puts your graveyard back in your deck in case you’re in danger of being milled out or simple to be able to tutor up something that had been lost
• Sozin’s Comet – what?! How much?! The amount of mana this is producing allows for some game over moments, so long as you can use the mana at instant speed
• Redirect Lightning – a great effect that for just one mana (and five life) allows you to protect your commander (or other key creature) and take down something else. What a bargain
• Origin of Metalbending – not a flashy card, but wow it works hard. Removal, pump, save a creature, +1/+1 counter synergies… you really get a lot of flex with this one

Cards like these not only fit into existing decks (such as the blue red spells going into other lesson or spellslinger decks, but the fantastic new bending mechanics create new decks on their own too. Airbending is a brilliant new blink variant with a twist, and, as we’ve seen, has combo potential too. Firebending is certainly a stand-out in terms of putting the mana burst to use with the condition it is used at instant speed, for example with combat tricks, instant-speed burn, or activated abilities. Waterbending has some great blue token-based opportunities, especially with artifacts as a subtheme. Then there’s Earthbending which may be my favourite, adding a great new twist on the ‘creature land’ strategy, especially considering that, as the lands come back when the creature dies, ‘land aristocrats’ could be an option!

Collector Favourites & Showcase Treatments

So far we’ve focused mostly on the play aspect of Avatar, but there’s so much here for collectors too, just like other Universes Beyond sets. There’s actually too much to cover in just one article, but let’s look at the broad treatments.

First let’s start with the headline – or the headliner: a borderless raised foil version of Avatar Aang, illustrated by Bryan Konietzko with a truly dazzling treatment. It’s in raised foil only, found in Collector Boosters.

There are ‘battle pose’ cards that capture the series’ characters as they take on their foes. There are four neon ink borderless battle pose cards, complete with textless treatments to show off the artwork. Neon ink foil battle pose cards are only in Collector Boosters.

Next up are the source material cards, which have imagery from the original series on Magic cards. There's a source material card for every episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, totalling 61 cards in the set. Each card lists the book and episode that the artwork comes from on the card, too. Non-foil source material cards are available in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters, but traditional foil source material cards are only available in Collector Boosters.

Scene cards make an appearance again here, with key moments from Book 1, 2 and 3 shown on collections of cards that can be put together to create a scene. Book 1 is a 4-card scene, Book 2 is a 6-card scene, and Book 3 is a massive 9-card scene for the series’ finale. Non-foil and traditional foil scene cards can be found in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters.

And that’s not everything! There’s boardless double faced sagas, borderless field note creatures (as we first saw in Bloomburrow), elemental frame cards and full art journey AND Appa lands!

Conclusion

This set is just fantastic, packed with fun and exciting cards that even people with little knowledge of Avatar will love. For those who know the franchise, it’s going to be an amazing play experience, and will introduce many, many new players to the game. With strong card design, high collector appeal and strong options for Standard/Commander, MTG: The Last Airbender cards are real winners.

If you’re keen to explore Avatar: The Last Airbender further, or other sets, everything you need is right here at Magic Madhouse. You can sign up for preorder alerts, and or everything from sealed products to singles. And keep this page bookmarked for all kinds of content, from decklists to spoilers and key product updates.