After months of anticipation, preview season for Magic’s Avatar: The Last Airbender set is finally here. Today’s debut gave us a ton of spicy stuff to chew over, including some great cards from both the main set and the Source Material bonus sheet. While MTG Avatar doesn’t have any Commander decks, it does have a Jumpstart set, and we got to see some great new spoilers from that today, too.
Before we get into it, it’s worth repeating that none of these cards will be Standard-legal. Instead, they’ll be playable in Magic’s eternal formats, namely Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. While nothing from today is likely to make an impact in the former two, there are a bunch of great toys for Commander here. Those who love Shrine decks, in particular, will want to take note of this lot.
Hei Bai, Forest Guardian
Kicking things off with a banger, today’s batch of MTG Avatar Jumpstart spoilers included Hei Bai, Forest Guardian. This is a great new Commander option for the five-color Shrines deck, which has long since relied mainly on Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin. The two are comparable as four mana green legends with five-color identities due to their activated abilities, but after that, they diverge quite a lot.
Where Go-Shintai makes Shrines and is a Shrine itself, Hei Bai is just a regular creature that gets you a Shrine from your deck on entry. This isn’t quite a tutor ability, but it is guaranteed to hit every time, which makes Hei Bai a great target for blink effects. None of the Shrines we have right now offer blinking as an effect, but we know there’ll be more coming in the main Avatar set, so fingers crossed.
Hei Bai also gives you a much more aggressive payoff ability than Go-Shintai. Instead of slowly recurring your fallen Shrines, this makes a bunch of nigh-unblockable tokens for you. Throw in a Haste granter like Anger or Mass Hysteria, and this can lead to some surprise kills very easily. While the deck is still very much a “builds itself” affair in a lot of ways, it’s great to see a new Commander for Five-Color Shrines. It’s a popular archetype, after all, and Hei Bai is a wonderfully flavorful character to lead it.
Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing
As the keeper of an enormous library in Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s fitting that Wan Shi Tong is a card that cares about libraries in Magic. In fact, it cares about them in a brand-new way: this is the first card with a “Whenever a card is put into a library” trigger in the game, as far as I can tell. When a card, or cards, is put into a library with Wan Shi Tong out, you get two 1/1 Spirit tokens.
As with many first-time mechanics, there’s a very real chance that this one is broken. The ability is extremely broad, going off whenever any cards are put into any player’s library, from anywhere. There’s no once-per-turn restriction here, either, so if you can get a loop going you can go infinite. Off the top of my head Library of Leng seems easily exploitable with this card and a discard outlet, which is a great flavor win in fairness.
Wan Shi Tong is also just a solid piece of removal on a stick. Dealing with any nonland permanent on entry is excellent, especially since tucking it into a library gets you some Spirit tokens. The only real downside here is that being locked to Mono-Blue may make this a tricky Commander to build around. Other than that, it’s a very exciting new legend indeed.
Avatar Roku, Firebender
Continuing on down the ‘interesting new mechanics’ line, Avatar Roku offers a new spin on Avatar’s Firebending. Rather than having the mechanic itself, Avatar Roku essentially grants Firebending 6 to one attacking creature per player per combat. The fun twist? You always get the mana, even if another player is attacking.
This opens up the door to all manner of shenanigans. Roku comes with a built-in activated ability that can boost creatures’ power, which is a fine use for the mana if you have no other outlets. You can use this to buff your own forces, or enable a smaller opposing creature to trade up if another opponent is attacking into it. It’s a great political tool, and may even serve as an attack deterrent in some cases.
Alternatively, you can sink this mana into instants and creatures with Flash. While it only lasts until end of combat, as with all Firebending, there’s still a window here to cast spells. You can just run a bunch of red cards like this naturally, or use Vedalken Orrery to open everything up. Either way, Roku gives you access to up to 24 red mana per turn cycle.
While this is all great, Roku suffers a lot from its high mana cost. Six is a ton in modern Commander, especially in Mono-Red with limited ramp options available. This will likely end up as a 99 card, either in a big red brew or some kind of Reanimator list.
Fang, Roku’s Companion
Roku’s trusty Dragon, Fang, is considerably less interesting than the man himself. We’re long past the point where a 4/4 Flier for five is interesting, and the other upsides here aren’t particularly strong either. Buffing up another creature’s power is nice, but the legendary restriction here really stings. Fang also has to attack itself to trigger it, which is a shame given its lack of Haste.
The one mark in this card’s favor is its resilience. If Fang dies, it returns to the battlefield again as a Spirit. This kind of makes it two 4/4 Fliers for five, which is a much better deal. It’s still not very exciting, mind you, even in dedicated Dragon Typal or Attacking-Matters decks. Of all the new spoilers revealed for MTG Avatar Jumpstart today, this is very likely the weakest.
Sokka, Swordmaster
Sokka, Swordmaster looks like a great new pickup for Equipment and Voltron decks in Commander. Just by itself, with no other Ally support, it gives you a discount on your Equipment and lets you equip one for free each turn. Without any further synergy, that’s good enough to make a ton of lists, including Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale and Captain America, First Avenger. The low mana cost and single white pip are great assets in this regard, too.
Sokka’s discount ability gets better in a dedicated Allies build, though so far there isn’t a ton of support for an Ally Equipment deck. Maybe Avatar will provide some, but I doubt it’ll reach critical mass from one set alone. For this reason, I don’t expect to see Sokka much in Ally Typal, or as the Commander of its own deck. Instead, it’ll be a staple in the 99 for other Equipment decks, which is still a fine place to be.
Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender
Magic has had plenty of big stompy creatures over the years, but Avatar Kyoshi is definitely one of the biggest and stompiest. Eight mana for a 6/6, even one with Hexproof, is a dire rate these days. Eight mana for a 6/6 that also provides a Hasty 8/8 every turn is a bit more interesting, however, and that’s ultimately what Kyoshi offers.
Thanks to the built-in resilience of Earthbending, there’s little risk to animating your lands with it. This makes Kyoshi a pretty scary threat in Ramp or Reanimator decks that can circumvent its mana cost in some way. Even in such decks, there are likely better options with more immediate impact, mind you. There might be some combo lines available with a big land creature each turn, but outside of those this seems pretty mediocre unfortunately.
Are You Experienced?
On top of the standalone spoilers above, we also saw the rest of the Experience counter cycle from MTG Avatar Jumpstart spoilers today. We’ve seen two of these before, in an earlier batch of previews. Azula, Zuko, and Toph complete the cycle, and they’re all, unfortunately, rather underwhelming.
The payoff abilities for gathering Experience on all three of these cards just aren’t very exciting. Azula gives you a scaling firebreathing effect, while Zuko and Toph get scaling Firebending and Earthbending, respectively. None of these are really worth building around, which pushes these cards more into the role of Experience generators for other Commanders.
In that sense, there are some decent options available. Toph seems solid in Meren of Clan Nel Toth, for example, while Zuko could slot into Mizzix of the Izmagnus. Outside of this, I don’t see any of these cards leading decks in their own right, which is a shame given how iconic these characters are.
Rough Reprints
Jumpstart sets aren’t all about the new stuff, of course. MTG Avatar Jumpstart will also include some reprints, and we got to see two of them in the spoilers today. With Wizards cutting back on potential reprint outlets at the moment, these slots are more precious than ever. Unfortunately, things aren’t off to a great start for this set.
Descendants’ Path is a fun card for typal decks, but it’s not exactly a banger. Copies can be had for around $1.80 at the moment, which reflects its relatively low power level. Spending three mana on a draw engine that might never draw you anything at all is a bad bet. This is doubly true these days, when green has access to cards like Guardian Project and The Great Henge.
Fiery Confluence is a bit more interesting gameplay-wise. It can be a board wipe for small creatures, a mass burn spell, an answer to multiple artifacts, or anything in between. It’s a solid generic card for any red Commander deck to run, but it does lack synergy. This makes it a bit unexciting, even if it can perform well in some games. This isn’t helped by the card’s price tag, which is just $0.30 right now.
While the new Avatar art here is excellent, neither of these reprints are particularly strong. Hopefully, Avatar Jumpstart is keeping the real reprint equity for later in preview season.
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