It’s still nearly five months away, and already Magic: The Gathering’s Avatar: The Last Airbender set has got players buzzing. We saw the Headliner card for the set, Avatar Aang, previewed during MagicCon: Las Vegas a couple of weeks back. While some of the card’s abilities remain a mystery, its potential power level certainly isn’t. In fact, players have already discovered a number of infinite combo lines with Avatar Aang.
Thanks to the cost reduction effect on its backside, Avatar Aang allows you to cast many different spells for free. Pair him with mechanics that add your spells back to your hand, and you have a number of easy infinite loops. The applications for this effect are plentiful, especially when you factor in cards that tweak the costs of your spells. We may not know how the bending abilities work yet, but that shouldn’t stop Aang from being a bona fide game-ender, in Commander in particular, come November.
A Crucial Difference
Like many modern Magic: The Gathering cards, Avatar Aang has a short novel’s worth of text across its two sides. The first side lets you draw each time you bend any of the four elements; a game action that remains unknown at present. If you do all four in one turn, it flips into Aang, Master of Elements, which is where the fun really begins.
In his final form, Aang has a static ability that reduces the costs of all your spells by WUBRG. We’ve seen a number of similar colored mana discounts before, on cards like Bard Class and Morophon, the Boundless. For the most part, these effects only affect colored pips; however, not generic ones. Casting a 4R creature with either of those two cards out would still cost you four mana.
Avatar Aang is a different kettle of fish entirely. The discount ability here works like that of Eluge, the Shoreless Sea, in that it also hits generic mana. With Aang out, that hypothetical creature above would be free. In fact, any spell that costs five or less, as long as it doesn’t have more than one of a given color pip in its cost, is free with Aang’s discount. This opens up a huge range of possibilities, and even allows Avatar Aang to serve as an infinite combo enabler.
While this option is obvious when broken down, there was a good bit of confusion around it on reveal. Many players assumed it functioned like Morophon and wrote it off immediately as a result. Aang is much more flexible and powerful, however, and MTG players are starting to take notice.
The Avatar Aang Infinite Buyback Combo
One of the best applications of Avatar Aang’s ridiculous discount is looping Buyback spells. This is a bit of a forgotten mechanic, used mainly back in Tempest with only sparse cameos since. It’s an extra cost on spells that returns them to your hand on resolution if paid, theoretically letting you reuse them forever. The most famous example is probably Capsize, but Constant Mists is a close second.
While Buyback is an additional cost, it’s still affected by Aang’s WUBRG discount. This means that any Buyback spells that fit the criteria (total mana value five or less, no double color pips) can be cast infinitely with Aang on the board. This opens up a number of powerful avenues, especially since Aang counts as a five-color Commander.
The most obvious combo here is with Searing Touch. This spell deals one damage to any target, and it’s fully free to Buyback with Aang in play. This lets you ping down the entire table in a single turn, as well as any pesky creatures that may be standing in your way somehow. As soon as Aang flips this is a one-card, instant-speed, instant win. It’s pretty rare to find those in Magic, so expect players to at least test this out on release.
None of the other Buyback spells let you end the game immediately, but they do allow for some pretty powerful plays. Verdant Touch can turn all of your opponents’ lands into 2/2s, which you can then easily clean up with a board wipe. Land destruction is generally frowned upon in Commander, but this example is flashy enough to maybe get a pass. You can also use Invulnerability to prevent all damage, stalling out until you draw the win.
Other Five-Color Shenanigans
Even the less impactful Buyback spells like Sprout Swarm or Mystic Speculation can get you the win with Aang in play. Simply cast one of them ‘infinite’ times and then follow up with a Storm spell like Grapeshot or Brain Freeze to close things out. Storm wins are usually the domain of cEDH, but Aang makes them comically easy to execute in regular games, too.
Beyond Buyback, Aang’s discount also has the potential to let you cast any spell for free. If you get a Fist of Suns or Jodah, Archmage Eternal into play, both of which are totally free with flipped Aang, you can set the costs of all your spells to WUBRG, then discount that right down to zero.
It goes without saying that casting anything you want for free can end games quickly. With Impact Tremors out, you can loop self-bounce creatures like Shrieking Drake infinitely to burn out the table. Cloudstone Curio enables something similar with any two creatures, allowing for all manner of shenanigans. You can even draw around 20 cards with Necrodominance on your end step, then use Borne Upon a Wind to cast them all for free before you have to discard.
Basically, Avatar Aang is an infinite combo machine. The real question at this point is how easy it’ll be to access that power, or how easy it is to bend each of the elements. Only time and card reveals will tell on that one. It is worth noting that Moonmist works with Aang as well, mind you. This could be enough to propel you into an early combo win, and possibly propel Aang into the ranks of cEDH.
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