Avatar: The Last Airbender set adapts the animated series’ core power system — bending elements — into Magic: the Gathering cards. These mechanics afford interesting interactions between cards and can add some flavor to your decks.
If you’re interested in making an Avatar: The Last Airbender-themed deck or just giving your current commander a twist with the cards from this set, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a complete explainer of the bending mechanics from the Avatar: The Last Airbender Magic: the Gathering set.
Magic: the Gathering’s Avatar bending mechanics, explained
There are four bending mechanics in Magic: the Gathering: Airbending, Waterbending, Earthbending, and Firebending. Based on what we have seen so far about the set, we know they aren’t bound to one of the five colors in Magic. While there are black cards with Firebending, you can also find white cards with Waterbending.
Each elemental bending has unique effects that can vary depending on the card. Below, you find an explainer on each type along with a couple of examples to illustrate the effects.
Airbending in Magic: the Gathering
While it changes a bit from card to card, airbending exiles cards, which means they are removed from the game. If you exile a card using airbending, the owner of that card can cast it for two generic mana instead of their original cost. So, you can exile a seven-mana card and bring it back, paying only two.
What is exiled by the airbending depends on the card you’re using with this ability. In “Aang, Airbending Master,” it says, “When Aang enters, airbend another target creature,” so you can target creatures on your side or on your opponent’s side.
On the other hand, “Appa, Steadfast Guardian” specifies that “When Appa enters, airbend any number of other target nonland permanents you control.” In this case, you can exile not only creatures — like Aang, Airbending Master does — but also enchantments and artifacts.
An interesting thing to remember is that when cards come back from exile, the effects they have can trigger. So, you can exile “Gladiolus Amicitia,” which costs seven mana, and bring it back, paying only two to trigger its ability to search for a land card when it enters. A card’s effect won’t work if the card’s text specifies that it must be cast in a specific manner (like from a player’s hand only).
Waterbending in Magic: the Gathering
Waterbending stands out among the bending mechanics because it’s not an ability, but a mechanic that costs abilities to be activated. Whenever a card can use Waterbending, it means that you can tap artifacts and creatures to help pay for a specific ability’s mana cost. Each of these pays for one of the total mana costs of the ability.
Let’s take “Yue, the Moon Spirit” as an example. It has the ability to allow you to “cast a noncreature spell from your hand without paying its mana cost.” To use it, you need to pay five generic mana and tap “Yue, the Moon Spirit.” However, since it has Waterbending, instead of tapping your lands to pay for the ability mana cost, you can tap the artifacts and creatures you have to use Yue’s ability.
The abilities that Waterbending pay for are unique for each card. “Katara, Water Tribe’s Hope” has Waterbending and an ability that allows you to pay X — any number of mana — to change the base power and toughness of the creatures you control to the number of mana you pay. For instance, if you pay one mana, all your creatures turn 1/1.
But since Katara has Waterbending, you can tap your artifacts and creatures to pay for X. So, if you tap six of these, your creatures turn into 6/6. Of course, you can make this move even better by adding your mana pool to make this number get even bigger. However, the idea here is to use Waterbending to keep your lands up for potential plays.
Earthbending in Magic: the Gathering
Among the bending mechanics, the way Earthbending works in Magic: the Gathering feels right, thematically speaking. This elemental bending turns a land you control into a creature with haste and zero power and toughness. It can attack and block as well as interact with other effects targeted at creatures. When this creature dies or is exiled, the land returns to the battlefield, but tapped. If it feels like a lot, don’t worry. There’s more.
When a card’s description says it has Earthbending, there will always be a number following it. This number indicates how many counters +1/+1 the turned-into-creature land will have. For instance, “Earthbending Lesson” is a Sorcery that, when you cast, triggers Earthbend 4, which means that you pick a land under your control, and it will become a 0/0 creature with four +1/+1 counters.
The fact that the creature’s power and toughness come from counters is an important detail to keep in mind. There are other cards with effects and abilities that can interact specifically with counters. From the Final Fantasy MTG set, “Tidus, Yuna’s Guardian” can move one counter from a creature you control to another at the beginning of combat on your turn. So you can get one of the four counters from the land you transformed and give it to another creature if you combo it with this card.
Also, since the Earthbending description says only “target land,” it means you can transform all kinds of lands from your regular “Island” to the Planet Land “Urthros, Titanic Godcore.” When transformed, the land still taps for mana and keeps its other abilities.
Firebending in Magic: the Gathering
Firebending in the Avatar: the Last Airbender animated series was quite aggressive, and we might say the same about how this power was adapted to Magic: the Gathering. In MTG, Firebending adds a certain number of red mana to your pool when the creature with this ability attacks.
All the mana generated through Firebending lasts until the end of combat. It might not sound much, but you can use this mana to cast Instant spells or pay for other cards’ abilities.
The number of mana you receive from Firebending depends on the number that follows the ability’s name in the text box. Once you flip “The Rise of Sozin” Enchantment Saga, it becomes “Fire Lord Sozin,” a black legendary creature who has Firebending 3. So, whenever this creature attacks, three red mana are added to your pool.
There are, however, cards that follow other rules to determine the number of mana that are added. For example, the “Fire Lord Zuko” card’s text says “Firebending X, where X is Fire Lord Zuko’s power”. In this case, if you use other cards to raise this card’s power, then it will generate more mana when they attack.
