Magic: The Gathering – Avatar: The Last Airbender Review, Part 3 of 4: White, Blue, & Black Cards

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, Magic never thought to draw on the intellectual properties of others. Then, everything changed when the shareholders attacked. Joking aside, this brand-new pair of sets takes us into the deeply spiritual & thematically rich world of Avatar, and introduces new mechanics tied to each of the core bending styles seen in the show. In this article we’ll take a look at cards for White, Blue, & Black, as well as their impact on Multicolor decks in Commander.

Avatar: The Last Airbender will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on November 18th, and to the tabletop on November 21st. Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal will release on the same date.

Last time we covered Multicolored & Colorless cards, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at every card, but what we will be looking at we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play. This includes both the main set, and Eternal, a straight-to-Legacy Jumpstart companion set.

Aang, Airbending Master

Saffgor: Airbending is my favorite of the new mechanics, but this Aang isn't my favorite of its enablers. Only targets Creatures, fairly slow upkeep trigger, the package isn't stellar. If this were 2-3 mana we'd be talking.

Loxi: Yeah I'm 100% in agreement here, I like the effects as a whole and he definitely gets out of control when he does get going, but I think either being cheaper or even potentially removing the "one or more" part of his experience counter clause, although that might get spicy real fast.

BPhillipYork: Can't imagine wanting to build a deck around this, if it was enters and attacks that'd be much more interesting, or if it had blue. Granted you can do things like Swords to Plowshares your own Ally to get more experience. Seems like a fun addition to an experience deck without being particularly strong, also a useful addition to Ally focused decks.

Aang's Iceberg

Saffgor: This is a classic O-Ring effect, and the added sacrifice clause allows you to still extract some value from it when removal is threatened, or you're about to wipe the board.

BPhillipYork: Totally predictable card, I think we could feed these into some generative AI and have it predict what the card like this will look like in each set and get pretty close, or just use human intuition. 3-cost white enchantment that exiles something until it leaves, and has some version of a set mechanic stapled on. It's fine.

Airbender Ascension

Saffgor: Wouldn't be shocked if this ends up as the best Ascension, because 2 mana removal whose Quest Counter trigger is easy as sin is a great spot to be in, and the gravy? It becomes a Far Traveler! Hard not to love this.

Loxi: It's also worth a shout just how easy this is to stack up - even if you don't have any other blink/airbending effects, it goes off just from playing four creatures. Solid value piece here for a whole lot of decks!

BPhillipYork: Sort of fun repeated exile effect at end step, not to to hard to get to 4 counters, but kind of slow. For U/B repeat exile deck pretty useful small piece.

Airbender's Reversal

Saffgor: It's protection, in a way, or a combat trick, and while this looks like Limited fodder I'm quite the fan for decks playing at Instant-speed.

Loxi: Bonus points for being a Lesson as well, giving it a whole lot of versatility on an already versatile card. Pretty solid.

BPhillipYork: Very solid Lesson, very useful in my opinion. Probably only want to include if you have a a few default targets for the airbend to get more value, or you really care about Lessons.

Appa, Steadfast Guardian

Saffgor: This was the first Airbend card we saw, and it prepared us for this mechanic to get silly. Appa here enables a number of combos, clunkier than another card later in this review, but can do so at Flash speed. 4 mana protection isn't my favorite in the 99 but it might just get the job done in the right decks, and in the Command Zone he's a house. A bounce house, if you will.

Loxi: This card does a lot and is attached to a pretty solid body to boot, classic good-designed-card case of being great in the decks you want it, but not generically good enough to just slam into everything. I can see a lot of decks like Ranar the Ever-Watchful or Taigam, Ojutai Master as great use cases for this outside of this set as well, so it's going to have some good options on hand as well.

BPhillipYork: Pretty solid exile all effect, really nice to have flash stapled on so you can use it defensively or on an end-step. Goes fairly well with Aang, Airbending Master, and also another useful piece to an Ally deck.

Avatar's Wrath

Saffgor: Likely you'll see this card more than any other in the set, as one of the new best-in-slot board wipes for Commander and Standard alike. Keeps a Creature you don't want airbent, resets the rest, and applies a 1-turn Drannith Magistrate effect. Unlike so many modern wipes, it's also a beautiful 4 mana like the OG Wrath of God, just great to see.

Loxi: I think this is a great wipe, but the use-case definitely depends on the type of deck you're in. I really like this for midrange-y decks and combo decks, as well as decks where your own creatures will have replay value for casting them again and you don't want to miss out on that. I think I tend to prefer harder removal in control shells, but it's all going to be quite meta dependent. This definitely will be stronger at higher brackets where you can be more explosive with that protected turn as well as make better use of it being cheaper with a more mana efficient deck.

BPhillipYork: I think the staxy, can't cast spells from anywhere other than the hand effect is actually potentially really powerful. This is a kind of pushed Wrath of God most of the time, though it only buys you 2 turns, which is an interesting twist on it. What is, in some ways, more powerful than Wrath of God is that this virtually blocks your opponents' commanders from coming back for two rounds. Normally they just die, and the commander tax tics up, and they come back out, but this will actually block them for one more round. There's probably some good ways to recur this, but there's also things like Drannith Magistrate to just lock out all your opponents airbent creatures, which is pretty solid.

Destined Confrontation

Saffgor: Another solid board wipe, although this one is far more situational. Players keep their utility dudes and sacrifice their threats, so you had better control the best utility pieces. This is also huge for Defender deck enjoyers.

BPhillipYork: Forced sacrifice is powerful, but 4 power worth of creatures is pretty goofy to predict. This will end up being really swingy, sometimes it'll clear multiple commanders, other times it'll be some mana dorks.

Earthshape

Saffgor: Utter. Banger. This is the only playable Earthbend card in White, but it makes that count; at worst this reads as a means of protecting Power 3 or less Creatures you control and yourself, but it also gives White the capacity to loop an extra Strip Mine or double-dip on Flagstones of Trokair. This goes directly into Beza, and I beg of you not to forget this exists for White & White-Green decks.

Loxi: This will be fantastic for pretty much every low to the ground token deck, but even in situations where your commander fits the bill exclusively this can be a nice way to dodge removal and get out of some combo finishers.

BPhillipYork: It's a next card but I think of pretty limited use, unless it's purely defensive just to keep your dorks and stuff alive. Generally go wide decks need to get pumped at some point, and that's usually the critical juncture, where you'd need to protect them, but by then they will probably be higher power than your newly animated man-land.

Momo, Friendly Flier

Saffgor: If your Commander is a 3 mana flier, this is a great dork, but aside from that I'm mixed on Momo. If he at least allowed for a discount on Flashing in fliers during opposing turns, that'd be nice.

BPhillipYork: I wonder if this makes Lemures cheaper. Wow that is super strong for a very specific thing. This screams like, throw it into your Angel deck, or Dragon, and just hope for early cost reduction. It's really a 1/1 with flying for 1 mana that also gets bigger and will do cost reduction. Also if you have flying commanders it's just a great way to get get them out sooner.

Sokka, Swordmaster

Saffgor: Ardenn but worse, with a conditional discount? What Sokka provides is better storm capabilities for draw-on-Equipment cards like Sram, Senior Edificer.

BPhillipYork: Very aggressive Equipment cost reduction, and there's now a ton of ways to get out tons of Allies, so this could easily just be a solid enabler for Equipment decks.

Monk Gyatso

Saffgor: There he is, the Commander that took me from concept to purchase in 48 hours. Monk Gyatso is Nadu lite—more expensive, fewer colors, and less of a self-contained engine. But, how many mild differences can one have from a card banned in nearly every format he's legal, and not still be incredible? Not enough, Gyatso answers, and he helms an amazing Eldrazi deck that was covered last week, providing protection and combos all in one.

BPhillipYork: Potentially really strong for a variety of things. One simple one would just be setting up an infinite loop, where creatures with ETB abilities are targeting each other, combined with cost reduction or mana generated off casts you can just keep doing it. The fact it's a may trigger is super helpful, and means your creatures become very difficult to kill. If combined with Zada, Hedron Collider you could easily airbend all your creatures repeatedly.

Southern Air Temple

Saffgor: Shrines return in this set, and as a mechanic hinged on density, this is only okay. It's more that there are more Shrines to play, that excites those with the archetype.

Loxi: This one is a little interesting as it does need you to have enough creatures to be relevant in a Shrine deck. Obviously you'll still have creatures, but are they ones you care about stacking counters on in Shrines? Frankly, I'm not really sure, but I think it could see some play just due to being a Shrine.

BPhillipYork: It seems like Shrines are being pushed more and more into "generates token creatures" territory, which is probably good since it's at least interactable. The strongest blue, black and red Shrines which allow you to just snowball madly and kill people off is kind of, meh, so this new cycle is nice to see and also more interesting for actual gameplay.

Team Avatar

Saffgor: This reminds me a lot of Touch the Spirit Realm, and that's a glowing comparison! The ability to help decks that want to go both tall and wide with two things they need, being lethality and interaction, is great, and that second ability not being counterspell-able is gravy.

Loxi: If any of you out there are like me and still break out Rafiq of the Many every now and then, this is sick for Exalted decks.

BPhillipYork: It's nice to see "attacks alone" decks getting some payoff for having other creatures. Throw this onto some double attacking Samurai or some such and it's pretty solid all around. The discard to kill someone else is really solid too.

Tale of Momo

Saffgor: The number of legal targets for this has doubled in the wake of Avatar's release, but I can't find any 2-card combo that's accessible with just Tale of Momo. It's good, don't get me wrong, but a bit too specific to see wide usage.

Loxi: I don't think this is terrible in a vacuum for this set, but in terms of Commander I think it's held back by the popular Ally commander General Tazri allowing you to tutor so easily. If you have some key cards and want to get them but don't want to play Tazri it can be a fine pickup though.

BPhillipYork: Solid tutor for Allies, which is pretty new for white. The cost reduction is also solid and combos nicely with airbend.

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

The Legend of Yangchen // Avatar Yangchen

Saffgor: This is a card that is never bad, but rarely great. Savvy opponents will decline to select, and even if it's the weakest opponent also drawing 3, that's a ton of advantage. When she flips, Yangchen is the third-best Airbend enabler, and that's perhaps being generous. Very balanced design, but nothing special.

BPhillipYork: Super confusing to read. What this card actually does is first you a choose a permanent one of your opponents controls with mana cost 3 or more, and then in order your opponents choose a permanent controlled by one of your (not their) permanents. In which case, this costs 5 mana to remove 4 permanents your opponents control that cost 3 or more mana, which is pretty solid. Especially because there are various ways you can recur this and really just keep hammering at opponents permanents. Also worth noting that you can't exile this with Avatar Yangchen's trigger, which I'm sure is the intent, to keep it from just being easily every 3 turns or so you are mass exiling. I would mostly thing this is a solid reanimation target. Also I get a kick out of the political element of turn 2.

Water Tribe Rallier

Saffgor: I'm calling out this card from many blah uncommons because I think it's the best of these effects we've seen. You can tap trash Artifacts or tokens at Instant-speed to find potential advantage, and this is going to be ~{2} or less to activate each time. It's even a hard tutor with infinite mana!

BPhillipYork: This could let you grossly just ram through your deck with lots of creatures, dumping them out and getting more and more. Also a solid way to get rid of the top of your deck if you know you don't want what's there.

Accumulate Wisdom

Saffgor: This is our signal that Wizards means for us to take Lesson decks seriously, and I think they're loud and clear. This riff on See the Truth is excellent when online, and not even awful outside of that.

BPhillipYork: Really solid Brainstorm-like effect, that cares about Lessons and is a Lesson. So a good building block for Lesson decks.

Baboon Spirit

Saffgor: This is Deadeye Navigator with modern sensibilities. Cheaper, typal synergy, and with a knob to prevent infinite combos. It's fine, but are those changes all indicative of better card design? Mixed opinions.

BPhillipYork: Pretty solid piece of Azorius exile decks, or else Spirit typal decks, though that's mostly Azorius as well.

Ember Island Production

Saffgor: Aside from being hilarious, this is another non-Legendary copy spell for the decks that want it.

Loxi: I do really enjoy effects that let you copy things on either side of the board - the added flexibility will help this find a slot in copycat decks.

BPhillipYork: Super flexible copy a Legendary (or anything else) card, that lets you grab a useful piece or duplicate yours.

Dutiful Knowledge Seeker

Saffgor: This and the Wan Shi Tong below make up a new mini-archetype in Blue, and I'm all for it. It's a tad confusing for some people, how scry/reveal/look won't trigger these effects, but it's made up for by inviting odd synergies and old classics.

Loxi: The real power move here is going to be milling yourself just to generate infinite mana, refill your deck, and swing with a big old fox. BadMtgCombos subreddit, watch yourself, I'm coming.

BPhillipYork: There's some ways to force your library to just cycle over and over, which would let you dump infinite counters onto this. Frankly the trigger will happen quite often in certain kinds of decks, and I also like the utilitarian ability to remove something from a yard at instant speed. Though mostly a 2/2 beater for 3 that gets bigger is really not worth it unless you need to pull off some trick.

Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing

Saffgor: This Commander got some buzz on reveal, as the pinnacle of a weird, powerful card that epitomized the best of Wizards' design this set. You're invited to get out your Tomb Trawlers and Four Horsemen combos, with this Bird Spirit tying together the old and new design oddballs seamlessly.

Loxi: At the bare minimum, I really enjoy this design space of allowing players to find some real whack cards that don't see play and put them to good use, it's a lot of what I think draws us to Commander as a whole. I don't think this card is a powerhouse or anything but I cannot wait to see this hit the table.

BPhillipYork: I see what the deck is, but monoblue for some kind of put cards into libraries thing just seems extremely meh to me. It would be kind of funny, vs certain kinds of decks, how many free Spirits you would get. Things like Abundance will make this card go nuts.

Chakra Meditation

Saffgor: Damn, that's...fantastic. This has to be the most efficient an effect like this has been, and coupling it with a Ghostly Flicker or similar has me wringing my hands. If you can turn it on with Lessons, this is going to put in serious work, but even otherwise it's card neutral and loots.

Loxi: Absolutely seconded, I think this is fantastic even if you aren't running Lessons, but becomes really something special if you are. So many mono-blue decks have decent graveyard interaction so even pitching some cards will often barely be a setback, let alone having access to more color diversity.

BPhillipYork: Solid card draw. I think it's sort of funny how you need Lessons in your yard for this to not just be card selection, but also this puts one back in your hand, but that's a fine trade off. Goes very well into lots of spell slinger decks.

Gran-Gran

Saffgor: Another stellar part of the Lesson deck, and could even be the Commander by way of Top/Chip combos or similar. She's just so efficient if you can meet that condition, nearly all these payoffs are. It's like if Arcane was well-treated in Saviors.

BPhillipYork: Solid utility support for various kinds of decks, mostly spell slinger and artifacts.

FromTheShire: Worth noting she is already appearing in what seems to be a powerful shell in Standard. Expect to see her a lot.

Master Pakku

Saffgor: Yes he looks like a worse Neerdiv, Devious Diver at first glance, but with twiddles and Waterbending this could easily fill your yard with enough Lessons to be a real mill threat. He's an Advisor too, for Petitioner synergy.

Loxi: I'm not super sold for constructed but I do want to give this a limited shout - prowess can be a solid way to leverage your early drops and mill is a really valid win condition for 40-card deck formats.

BPhillipYork: Really like idea of putting Freed from the Real onto this guy and then just untapping him and tapping him over and over. Mill's not really that "good" generally, but it is kind of fun.

Nightmares and Daydreams

Saffgor: Good lord that's a lot of mill. This is probably targeting yourself, and can work in a Brain Freeze-esque way to pay for Escapes or turn on Flashbacks. It functionally lasts four turns, too, so you can plan on having this around for a while.

Loxi: I think "target player" is really the only thing holding this back from being a mill staple, but I do still think it's solid. Drawing three cards and netting some extra incremental mill isn't bad at all, and realistically I think what will determine if you include this is how reliant your milling is on instants/sorceries or if you're going a different route, like Phenax, God of Deception or some other tomfoolery.

BPhillipYork: It's a potentially abuseable mill card. Solid enough support for that kind of thing, though predicating it on a Saga seems really risky to me.

The Legend of Kuruk // Avatar Kuruk

Saffgor: You sure this Kuruk guy was an Avatar? This card is abysmal, overcosted, slow, and I could say worse. Genuinely a flop Mythic.

Loxi: I agree this feels very not-mythic in general, but I like this card outside of Commander. It's slow but does get a pretty good amount of value, I wish his stats were a bit better once he flips and then I'd be much more interested in him.

BPhillipYork: Extremely slow extra turn spell, but decent enough trigger for just generating a huge horde of creatures. The creature generation trigger is pretty unlimited and could easily be used as fuel to keep casting creatures, it's a bit unwieldy though - here's my combo card that goes off in 2 turns, please don't do anything about it by then.

Katara's Reversal

Saffgor: This does have a few means of going infinite, with the likes of Kitsa or Isochron Scepter, but at 4 mana I am unconvinced.

Loxi: I quite like the reversal spells for draw-go control that allow you to maintain decent mana and hold counter magic up, but this depends heavily on your mana being creature/artifact based to make that work.

BPhillipYork: I wouldn't run something like this, it's flash the one time it gets pulled off, but meh. Untapping 4 mana rocks could be an infinite mana source but it's a really unusual way to do it, and takes lots of pieces, so just not really worth the doing.

Katara, Waterbending Master

Saffgor: From the makers of Eluge, the Shoreless Sea comes your next Permission Control Commander! Katara here trades mana advantage for card advantage, and while I still prefer the gar, she's a worthy piece of the puzzle and likely makes a 99 slot.

Loxi: This will just draw a silly amount of cards in most decks that want to play at instant speed, for two mana she's likely going to generate great value even if you end up having her die after attacking a few times.

BPhillipYork: Slam it into the WUBRG experience deck for fun.

Princess Yue

Saffgor: As one of Harold and Bob, First Numens' leading stans, Commanders that basically become Lands are kinda my jam. Returning tapped is the major concern here, as otherwise there'd be some juicy loops with Ashnod's, but alas. Similar but worse, albeit way funnier. That's rough buddy.

BPhillipYork: It's imperative that she eats an Imprison in the moon, immediately. Scry 2 is nice on tap (groan). Just a nice utility creature that also you can just sacrifice once.

Secret of Bloodbending

Saffgor: This card is extremely cool but not very good. UUUU is a profoundly restrictive baseline, and an extra 10 pieces of junk isn't free to tap. In a political deck, I could maybe see this if you were Monoblue, or Ux with really good mana.

BPhillipYork: Too much mana. Neat that it's a Lesson though, maybe just a Lesson to dump into your yard for Lesson threshold.

Spirit Water Revival

Saffgor: Finale of Revelation can finally rest, this has inherited the vast majority of what it can do. At worst it's Divination, at best it's some kind of freaky self-Time Twister+++. I don't think this cuts it in cEDH due to it being nondisruptive, but for anything below that? Sign me up.

Loxi: Notably draws 7 cards no matter how many you already had in your hand, so this can get you a pretty gnarly hand for the investment. It's a great Big Draw Spell to add to the collection.

BPhillipYork: 3 mana draw 2 isn't too bad for a floor, obviously you're looking to draw 7 off this, which if your deck just runs a lot of creatures or a lot of token generators should be really doable.

The Blue Spirit

Saffgor: I know he's cool but 4 mana is not where you want to be for this type of value piece. I wouldn't even call him great as a draw-go Commander because he inexplicably lacks Flash.

BPhillipYork: I like things that push actually doing stuff on your opponents turns, so I like this card.

The Spirit Oasis

Saffgor: Of the half-dozen Shrines that draw, or vaguely generate hand advantage, this is probably in the upper percentile.

Loxi: Drawing cards is good, and Shrine decks want to play Shrines anyway, so I think this will likely see play in most Shrine decks on that merit alone.

BPhillipYork: Wow the blue Shrine is just pure card draw. Great. Super strong. Snowbally.

Yue, the Moon Spirit

Saffgor: Big Blue players, you may exchange Braids for this. Finally you can really feel like Omnitell without giving your opponents rocket launchers.

BPhillipYork: Cheating out super expensive spells is interesting, but you're investing 4 mana and a turn or haste getting this going, which is probably a bit too slow. This should override timing restrictions, so it lets you bust out a creature to have avoid the delay, so that's sort of useful. Or slapping out a creature during combat or something else goofy like that.

Waterbender's Restoration

Saffgor: A sidegrade to Hide on the Ceiling in the set following Spider-Man? Creative, WotC.

BPhillipYork: This is super solid defensively or to get more ETB triggers etc.. Not super exciting but a very decent card.

Waterbender Ascension

Saffgor: I see the use case, but the fact this does nothing unless paid into or built up makes me very cagey. Not a fan.

Loxi: My initial comparison here is Bident of Thassa, as you can easily get this to get all it's quest counters on it in one go. You will keep putting quest counters on this arbitrarily and drawing cards off it, so it's basically like paying for a discounted Coastal Piracy that takes a second to come online and has a bit of a bonus when you need to sneak a creature by. I think the relevancy of this will depend how early you start dropping creatures to attack, but I can see a lot of Flying Men type decks using this well.

BPhillipYork: To me this is just stronger than Coast Piracy or it's other versions. It costs less, and yes, you'll miss 3 draws, but generally if you're trying to do this kind of thing, you're going to be hitting with a lot of creatures every turn and cost is frequently quite prohibitive, also the ability to make your creatures unblockable pretty useful.

Tui and La, Moon and Ocean

Saffgor: There's a hefty number of combos available to these fish, but at 4 mana they're ripe to be slain by anyone wise enough to realize you're a combo deck.

BPhillipYork: All of these "when it becomes tapped" are pretty solid in the context of waterbending, and this is another solid utility creature, though a bit expensive for what it ends up doing, which would be drawing a card every turn. If you're doing something to make your creatures untap a lot suddenly this get super strong.

The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

Saffgor: Faerie Mastermind's big brother, and at a pretty good rate! The protection is adorable, and the only reason it might not exist in the CZ is a lack of group draw options in Monoblue. Great card, but the alt art shamelessly traces the artist's previous work on Eluge.

Loxi: Yeah I think I tend to prefer the mana efficiency of mastermind even though this has much more card draw potential in a shorter time frame and has better protection. Both are solid, but I don't think I'm jumping to slot this one in.

BPhillipYork: This card is solid enough, the trigger is really strong in my opinion, with the only caveat that you know, your opponents decks must be also good. But in that scenario you should be drawing a lot from this, which seems to be the intent, you flash this out in response to a draw spell or something like that, and you get a payoff immediately. Also pretty good compared to Sea Serpent.

Waterbending Scroll

Saffgor: If this costs {1} or less to draw, it's got some applications, but it requires a very non-greedy manabase and too much time to come online.

BPhillipYork: Let's say you cast this on turn 2... then you're using it on turn what, 6? Draw a card on turn 6 is not worth it. There might be ways to make this kind of abusive, like if you're doing some kind of weird domain deck that's land ramping madly and then you're dropping this but then you also have to be untapping it some way to make it useful?

Wan Shi Tong, Librarian

Saffgor: The money Mythic Rare. People are already expecting this across every serious non-Standard format wherein it's legal, for good reason. Flash means he's reactive, X makes him a mana sink, Vigilance keeps up a blocker for tricky combats, and search punishing gets more relevant the deeper into Magic's history you go. This bird is the word, the period, the end of sentence. If he reshapes only one format's tempo lists, I'd be shocked.

BPhillipYork: Solid card to run vs good decks, I could see this showing up cEDH decks, but in most brackets below that there's generally not enough searching to make it worthwhile, but it's also just an X, draw 50% of X spell, which is pretty solid, especially with flash.

FromTheShire: There's no reason to limit it to non-Standard, we have Llanowar Elves and a bunch of other great ramp in Standard right now where you are falling behind if you don't have 5 mana on turn 3, and this is plenty close enough to Hydroid Krasis for that to be supremely playable. Another one to expect to see a ton of.

Azula, Ruthless Firebender

Saffgor: Yeah I'm good thanks. Scales more slowly than her Experience Counter peers, kinda clunky trigger, and the reward? A slightly bigger threat. No thanks.

BPhillipYork: Fine for experience decks, but I don't think I'd really want to build around this specifically.

Buzzard-Wasp Colony

Saffgor: The shape of this card interests me; it's evasive, can filter advantage on Enters, and is itself a mini-Ozolith. There's something here for Commander, I can just feel it.

BPhillipYork: Basically yet another The Ozolith effect, which also will cause duplications because you don't move counters, just add and subtract them, so nice for that.

Desperate Plea

Saffgor: If you Learn for this, it can get back Eyetwitch most of the time, which makes me imagine some sort of Dimir pile in Pioneer that grinds out value from the Sideboard. Not too shabby in Commander, either!

BPhillipYork: Solid reanimation in certain contexts, or if you just want to sacrifice things.

Fire Nation Occupation

Saffgor: This is a cool way to incentivize draw-go in Black, and given the tokens created produce their own mana, you can hold back the rest your lands generate for the opponent's turn.

Loxi: Rakdos/Grixis control decks will absolutely love this as a token generator, I think even getting 2+ casts off this will be outstanding value.

BPhillipYork: Those are really strong tokens, really this seems like a quite strong card, 2/2s with firebending 1 is a lot of threat on your turn to do combat tricks, extra turns, etc., and it just incentivizes you killing things.

Fire Nation Salvagers

Saffgor: This is going to be backbreaking in Prere—hey wait, this is from ATLA Eternal? This card would have done gangbusters in Standard but it's been banished to a world where it does nothing relevant.

Loxi: I like the concept but I sometimes find selectively stealing from peoples graveyards outside of mill strategies to be a bit unreliable, and I'm not really sure of a home for this where it will consistently actually have a target you want. I do really like this though so I'm going to let it simmer for a bit.

BPhillipYork: That is a lot of reanimation threat if you're doing counter creatures. Would work really well with mill and certain kinds of Sultai decks. Expensive but getting to reanimate several creatures a turn out of your opponents decks is potentially super strong.

Foggy Swamp Visions

Saffgor: This is closer to Goryo's Vengeance than people give it credit for, and pseudo-reanimating combo pieces is easy pickings.

BPhillipYork: If you have a lot of mana or know you'll have a lot of creatures/artifacts to pay the waterbend cost, the real thing in my opinion to do with this is to reanimate a winning pile, so something like Buried Alive into reanimate 3 things that'll win you the game. Which is not hard, Leveler and Thassa's Oracle will do it.

Koh, the Face Stealer

Saffgor: If you let this live for even a turn, that's your own fault. Expensive, without protection, and presents a host of combos. This is Bracket 3 bait.

Loxi: It's got powerful potential but it's the sum of it's parts, quite literally. You'll have to telegraph what you're doing with this, but it's got some fun things you can do if you can execute it well. I think it's a bit expensive and convoluted to pull off as a commander, but the Johnny in me really likes this janky mono black combo/control shell that you could try to make work here.

BPhillipYork: The ability to just exile your opponents creatures to get new abilities is pretty solid, and to keep them out of graveyards and such is a nice staxy effect, but for 6 mana, that's just not enough juice for the squeeze.

Lo and Li, Twin Tutors

Saffgor: I touched on this pair in my Puzzlebox last week, but essentially they serve as a 'Commander Toolbox' in the Command Zone, getting a ton of notable options to serve as temporary extras with Lifelink. Not high power, but pretty nifty, and our first real support for Nobles.

BPhillipYork: I like that there's a Lesson specific commander, though it's sad to have a two person card that is mono-colored, mono black Lessons doesn't seem strong enough to really pop off. Certainly just throwing this in as support for a Lesson focused deck is a no-brainer.

Mai, Scornful Striker

Saffgor: The worm in my head wants to slam a mox into this turn 1 in cEDH and somehow build Monoblack hatebears. You shouldn't, but you should want to do that.

BPhillipYork: Wow this is going to be all over cEDH, and have not much impact elsewhere.

The Rise of Sozin // Fire Lord Sozin

Saffgor: At least he's better than Kuruk? Yeah I dunno, 6 mana wipe into an effect that isn't great in Commander makes this feel like it has no home. Too expensive for 60 card, weirdly pointless for 100.

Loxi: At face value and nothing more, it's a 6-cost board wipe with a bunch of random extra value tied to it. Is that good? I don't think it's stellar if all you care about is the board wipe, but being able to sometimes eat a key card from someone's deck is a funny trick and getting a decent enough creature a turn later isn't bad, especially one that can be a mana sink to get even more value. It's not a cheap setup and it's slow, but in control decks where you can make the time for yourself, it's basically "board wipe, but with free re-building power built in," and I'm on board with that conceptually.

BPhillipYork: If you actually have a plan to get to your payoff, which is 4 turns after you have 6 mana, that's a nasty hitter that will let you reanimate a bunch of stuff. But even that isn't really going to win you the game, just value pile.

Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth

Saffgor: Flavorful, powerful, but still fair. I want to figure this out for Commander, whether in Gorex or the Command Zone itself. There has to be some Inspiring Statuary or Krark-Clan Ironworks line...perhaps Monoblack affinity? This is a Commander that deserves serious interest and will get none of it, unless I have something to say about it.

Loxi: It's an interesting way to get a bunch of extra artifacts for artifact decks that do have creatures on hand and do some sacrificing - Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer and any of his partner options with access to black will actually be a great fit here, especially since the actual Splicer cards tend to be somewhat pricey.

BPhillipYork: 5 mana for some Clues is probably too much. Could be a weird way to just get a bunch of tokens to waterbend with or something like that, which is kind of interesting.

Obsessive Pursuit

Saffgor: I was low on this card at first glance, seeing it merely as a piece for low powered Korvold lists, but the more Bracket 2 games I've played the more I've grown to appreciate some incidental lifegain. Funny enough, this works wonderfully with Nyla above, it's interesting to see Black be the Clue color this set.

BPhillipYork: Creating these clues is alright, feed them into watebending or else sacrifice for draw or other things, plays pretty nicely with certain kind of decks, mostly those focused on sacrificing artifacts for sacrifice triggers, so I'd definitely us with it Disciple of the Vault or Hedron Detonator type of decks.

Phoenix Fleet Airship

Saffgor: In Standard this gets out of hand fast, with a Fabled Passage or similar, but it seems too slow in other formats.

BPhillipYork: I think this is a fun way to win off Mechanized Production, though slow. Sacrificing a permanent every turn isn't hard for black decks generally, and this should duplicate pretty fast into the 8. Hitting this turn 3 isn't hard, with say a Treasure, then you've got 2 on 4, and 4 on 5, and 8 on turn 6, which is fairly quick to have 8 4/4 fliers with only investment on turn 3. But you have to build around it, and get it that fast, which is harder.

Ruinous Waterbending

Saffgor: This is excellent for control decks to stabilize with, they just need to be a bit deeper on Map/Clue/etc tokens when the board gets cleared. The cost seems steep, but don't forget Black is bound to have Clues lying around

BPhillipYork: Nice board clear with the option of more.

The Fire Nation Drill

Saffgor: A poor man's Shadowspear is still necessary, and this is a budget add for those who want the effect and won't proxy.

BPhillipYork: Not something I'd run in Commander unless I maybe was planning to have it come into and out of play repeatedly.

FromTheShire: Also seeing a bunch of play in early access for Standard and feels like it might have legs.

Northern Air Temple

Saffgor: If Shrines have any viability in 60-card, this will be why. Reasonable tool to stabilize.

Loxi: Also being a one drop means this will be really great if you just rip it turn one.

BPhillipYork: Wow that's another super simplistic powerful Shrine, back to the boring old themes that Shrines had originally. Really solid for Shrine decks though.

Next Time: The Set’s Red & Green Cards

That wraps up our look at the first three colors of Avatar's new offerings! Join us next time as we wrap up our review of the sets, and talk about where our deckbuilding journeys are going with the new release.

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