The Universes Beyond sets have sparked a lot of controversy amongst the MTG community recently. Some hate the fact that you can craft a dark fantasy vampire centric deck only to be faced with an opponent running a ‘Dwight from The Office’ deck. Or Spiderman. Or Hatsune Miku. Some people love it. And some people (like me) are kind of in the middle of these viewpoints. I started playing MTG again between the release of the Spiderman set, and the Avatar the Last Airbender set. So, this was the first new set that was awaiting for me when I re-joined my MTG addiction journey.
Now that we have had a little time to reflect on the set, was the Avatar the Last Airbender set worth it? Did it bring anything new to the game? Is it still worth checking out? Does the set have any fun or strong commanders worth building a commander deck with? Is life just a simulation being ran by 4D beings out of our control? I can promise to answer most of these questions here!
New Mechanics!
So, the first thing everyone will know about will be the new keywords in the set. Primarily, Firebending, Airbending, Waterbending and Earthbending. These all feel super thematic to me and help tie in the world of Avatar (the anime, not the big blue people one) to the intricacies of Magic The Gathering. This, as a whole, helps sell me on this Universes Beyond (UB) set as having a concrete base in the game and not one that has been ‘tacked on.’ Which was unfortunately the impressions I personally got from the Spiderman set.
Firebending has its roots in combat and benefits from an aggressive playstyle. Firebending generates lots of mana, but mana that fizzles after combat. This means that to utilise this mechanic you need to build a deck with lots of combat spells.
Airbending has its roots in ETB (entering the battlefield) triggers and benefits a lot from repeating them. Airbending allows you to exile your cards and sets their mana cost to 2 generic mana. Which opens the doors to combo-centric decks. It also gives you options to ‘blow away’ your opponents creatures opening up easy combat avenues for you.
Earthbending has its roots in landfall and utility. It allows you to turn your lands into creatures and overwhelm your opponents by turning your land into a small army. It has the added benefit of allowing your land creatures to return as lands again if they die, so your mana base is never in jeopardy.
Waterbending has its roots in control primarily. It works very similarly to ‘convoke.’ It allows you to tap untapped artifacts or creatures to trigger different abilities based on the card in question. This one is arguably the weakest of the new keywords. I think this is because it is just a cost reduction for lots of other abilities, rather than being a solid ability on its own.
All of these new mechanics can be super strong in the right hands. For me though, I think the most fun to play with has to be earthbending. Firebending and airbending likely see competitive play more than the others. But I am a sucker for using cards in weird ways. And turning my lands into an army that bounce back as land again opens my brain up to many fun possibilities.
Some of The Cards You Want
There have been a couple of stand out cards from this set. Some that are fun to play with, some that broke ‘the meta’ and some strong cards to keep as your commander.
The standout card for the entire set hands down goes to Badgermole Cub though. Green decks are notorious for being the best colour at producing mana and ramping out bigger and bigger spells. Badgermole Cub allows you to expedite this inherent trait as it allows your mana dorks (creatures that produce mana) to give even more mana. It quickly became a must have card in every format.
Gran-Gran gives lesson cards a home and she is a great utility card in giving you a draw engine (especially when paired with waterbending cards). And she reduces costs of everything for you as long as you have lessons in your graveyard. Lesson cards in general have been given new vitality with this set.
Origin of Metalbending is a great card for green decks. As it allows you to destroy an opponent’s artifact for only 2 mana and is also a lesson card. Green doesn’t usually have the strongest of removal options and this slotted into a lot of decks smooth as butter.
Day of The Black Sun is a new board wipe card. But not only does it wipe the board of creatures, it depowers them first, stripping them of all abilities. This means any creature death triggers, leaves the battlefield triggers etc don’t get to take effect. It is also an X cost cast which gives it great versatility.
My favourite card of the entire set though, is one that everyone mocks. It is a card that looks big and scary, but it is easily dealt with by experienced players. The Walls of Ba Sing Se is a behemoth of a card. It costs a hefty 8 mana to drop down, which is what puts most off this card. But I am not a competitive player, I just like the fun of the game. It has defender, meaning it can not attack. It has 0 power and a whopping 30 toughness (the highest of any creature ever printed in MTG history) and gives all other permanents indestructible. Most players will just counter this spell, remove it, bounce it, destroy it etc but I live in hope. One of my decks concentrates on allowing defenders to attack and assigning damage as if their toughness was their power.
As for strong commanders there are some great options. Avatar Aang is all colours which is usually frowned upon but it does give you plenty of deck crafting options. And get a Jodah, Archmage Eternal into play with transformed Aang and you can actually play every spell for free. Avatar Roku, Firebender is an absolute beast for aggressive firebending decks. He generates 6 red mana whenever a player attacks. ANY player. And can give target creature +3 attack. I am sure you can see how deadly this can be. Iroh, Grand Lotus is another card that gives Lessons a home. He also grants instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard flashback. There are so many interesting things you can do with the ability to recast spells.
From standard staples to interesting commanders, there really are so many juicy cards to deck build within this set.
The Collector Art Style Cards
Any set of MTG would not be worth the card it is printed on if it didn’t come with some fetch art style cards, along with fetch chase cards you want to play. And The Last Airbender set absolutely broke some sort of record, and plenty of people’s bank accounts when it dropped. It is important to note that most of these cards can only be obtained in the collector booster packs, and not in the play boosters or the draft boosters.
The absolute pinnacle of these art series, is the neon ink battle pose cards. These were selling for a truly bonkers price of roughly £1500 on launch and still sell individually for several hundred at the time of writing. I am not even sure why; I don’t see their appeal personally.
The scene card series are small collections of 6 cards that depict a scene from the anime when placed together. These look super cool, are cheap to pick up and are interesting. Unfortunately, most cards in the same sets aren’t really good at being played in the same decks. But this is more about the art than the playability.
Field note cards is a series of alternate art cards depicting creatures from the show that look like they are excerpts from Darwin’s journal as he was documenting new discoveries. I think these are super interesting to look at. I am a sucker for alternate art styles.
Elemental frame cards is a special alternative art card series that give the cards an interesting frame around the text box. The rest of the card benefits from a borderless art depiction and generally look real damn fancy!
Not so much an art series, but something that I value highly is that there are 2 sets of full art basic lands to collect. I am a massive sucker for interesting, sexy, juicy, detailed full art basic lands.
It is also worth noting that there is also a series of cards in this set with source material as the artwork. These are not new cards and are reprints of older cards. Unfortunately, the screenshots of the anime used in these cards are all low quality and mixed with the frameless style, make these cards look awful. And that is not just my opinion, it is the overwhelming majority opinion.
Final Thoughts
Avatar The Last Airbender Magic the Gathering set has a lot to offer. It gave us 4 new mechanics to play with. Each of them giving a specific colour deck new flair in which to play around with. The only colour that doesn’t get a dedicated colour however is black. This might be rectified in the future if Wizards of the Coast ever revisit the Avatar IP with a Korra focused set perhaps. The biggest flop of the set is definitely the source material art series cards which are universally hated.
There are plenty of products available for whatever experience you have with MTG. From standard boosters (some random cards), collector boosters (cards with alternate artwork and editions), jumpstart boosters (Smash 2 together for a quick deck to play), beginner box, scene card packs (with some of the scene cards) and a bundle box. There is plenty of options to get into this set.
For the most part, this set delivers, and it delivers hard. From amazing combo pieces to new staples, to bonkers commanders, to new mechanics. And everything in this set reflects its in-universe inspiration and respects the intricacies of the MTG game format and marries them together expertly. Whilst Avatar the Last Airbender might not be an IP that everyone wanted to join the MTG family, I would say it works a lot better than most of the other UB sets that have released so far.
I highly recommend The Last Airbender set. I think it offers the game some incredibly fun possibilities. Check it out here!
