As week one of Avatar: The Last Airbender spoilers draws to a close, it’s incredible how different the community vibe is with this set compared to Spider Man. From power level to flavor, Avatar is knocking that set out of the park, scoring some major points for team Universes Beyond. What’s great is that pretty much every design here seems to match the show and serve an interesting gameplay function. New spoiler Secret Tunnel is a prime example, as a lore-crucial land that does something truly unique for MTG.
Secret Tunnel MTG
It won’t take long for players to discover that Secret Tunnel is a bizarre MTG card. Seeing “This land can’t be blocked” as a standalone line of text makes little sense out of context. We’ve seen an unblockable land before in Creeping Tar Pit, but that card was at least able to turn itself into a creature to leverage that. Secret Tunnel comes with no such option built-in.
Of course, this is because of the Earthbending mechanic, which is heavily featured in Avatar. With cards like Badgermole Cub or Toph, the First Metalbender, you can turn this land into a creature, at which point it becomes an evasive threat. Because of this, it’s likely the best current candidate for Earthbending if you plan to do so honestly.
That could well change soon, mind you. Thanks to a batch of leaks that dropped yesterday, we know we’re getting at least one other land with a similar design. Rumble Arena is an untapped, colorless Scry land that comes with Vigilance built-in. If we get a couple more lands like this, a full-on Earthbending deck could be on the cards. Provided at least some of them tap for actual colored mana, that is.
Appropriately enough, Secret Tunnel has plenty of other avenues you can explore, too. It packs an activated ability that gives you double the value of Rogue’s Passage, letting you slip two creatures two unblocked if they share a type. It’s not strictly better, since you need two valid targets to use it at all, but it is quite spicy in Typal decks. The card is also a Cave, which opens up a lot of unexpected synergies with cards from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan.
Solving The Mystery
In fact, since the reveal of Secret Tunnel, many MTG players have pointed out a particularly powerful interaction in this arena. With Cosmium Confluence, you can turn Secret Tunnel into a 9/9 unblockable creature for five mana. You can even tutor Tunnel up with Confluence’s first mode if you don’t have it out yet, scoring a more reasonable 6/6 unblockable creature instead. This line requires something like Spelunking, but the extra Cave synergy there makes sense anyway.
While this combo can potentially take an opponent out of the game in just a couple of turns, it has the downside of being extremely clunky. For the full 9/9 version, you need six total mana available, including an untapped Secret Tunnel. Even if you do pull it off, the resulting creature is very vulnerable to removal. One Into the Flood Maw will undo your whole turn, and put you down a land in the process.
With how fast Standard is at the moment, the Cave Typal dream is likely untenable for now, much to the community’s chagrin. That said, Secret Tunnel will still have plenty of homes in Commander. Land Animation decks like Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir and Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper will eat it up, as will aggressive Typal strategies like Elves or Goblins.
The fact that this land exists will also recontextualize every future land animation card we see. Just one out-of-line design could be enough to make it a genuinely constructed-worthy card.
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