Much like the main set, the MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender Source Material bonus sheet is a surprisingly high-value affair. There are a ton of spicy reprints here, including playables for all manner of eternal formats. The bonus sheet even includes some impressive deep cuts from way back in 1999, getting their first-ever reprints here. While it still has some duds, as all bonus sheets do, the ratio of financial hits here feels very good indeed.
Whether you’re cracking Avatar Play or Collector Boosters, there’s a good chance a bonus sheet pull could pay for your pack. With that in mind, it’s well worth knowing which Source Material cards from Avatar: The Last Airbender you should be looking out for. Here are the top five most expensive cards on the MTG Avatar bonus sheet.
Presale Prices
Before we begin, there are a couple of key caveats to keep in mind for the list. First of all, we’re determining the value of each reprint based on the lowest available price currently available. The prices of the new versions are currently pre-sale prices, which are notoriously volatile, and will likely shift a lot in the next few weeks.
On top of this, it’s worth noting that the art on the MTG Avatar bonus sheet has had a rather poor reception thus far. Players aren’t too happy with most of the pieces used here, as they’re low-quality screengrabs in many cases. This could have a major negative effect on their future value, compared with other printings.
On the other hand, these bonus sheet cards could prove to be very scarce, which might have the opposite effect. Cards from the Avatar: The Last Airbender Source Material bonus sheet only appear in one out of 26 Play Boosters. While one bonus sheet card is a guaranteed inclusion within Collector Boosters, these cards are much rarer than past bonus sheet reprints.
For now, it’s too early to say which way the price of the MTG Avatar bonus sheet reprints will end up going. Due to this, we’ll be updating this article with more information once the set has been officially released. Until then, here are all the most expensive MTG Avatar bonus sheet cards are the time of writing.
5 | Empty City Ruse
Price: $41
The MTG Avatar Bonus Sheet features a surprising number of first-time reprints from 1999’s Portal Three Kingdoms. As you’d expect, going over 25 years without a reprint has done wonders for the value of these cards, making them some of the biggest hits available.
As a tech piece, Empty City Ruse has a number of uses. You can use it to prevent a go-wide Tokens player from alpha-striking the board, for starters. You can also use it in trickier ways, to deny a deck like Isshin, Two Heavens as One attack triggers, or to turn off ‘start of combat’ triggers, like those on Emperor of Bones, for the turn.
These are great use cases in Commander, but the card is still incredibly niche. According to EDHREC, fewer than 300 decks in the entire format run it. Since it doesn’t see play anywhere else, the financial possibilities of this new version are fairly dubious. Right now, copies will run you $41, but that could easily come down with this new reprint.
4 | Taunting Challenge
Price: $43
On the surface, Taunting Challenge looks like a card with a lot more potential than Empty City Ruse. You can use it as removal by targeting a Deathtouch creature, or as a way to grant most of your board evasion. In this sense, it’s a potent offensive tool for green.
Unfortunately, the mana cost here is quite steep, especially for a one-time effect. Other options like Lure and Roar of Challenge exist, offering better versions of the same effect. This low playability is reflected in the card’s EDHREC stats, which put it in only 225 decks. Because of this, it’s really only the scarcity of the card’s original printing that’s propping up Taunting Challenge’s $43 price tag currently.
In theory, since scarcity is the main price driver, this new reprint should cause a total price crash. That said, Portal Three Kingdoms cards have a way of staying expensive. Back when Capture of Jingzhou was reprinted in Commander Masters, the price of the original Portal Three Kingdoms variant barely moved. Thankfully, the 2023 reprint is selling for significantly less, and the same could happen here, but that remains to be seen.
3 | Teferi’s Protection (Aang’s Shelter)
Price: $45
Unlike the Portal Three Kingdoms cards, Teferi’s Protection’s high price tag is driven entirely by its playability. This is consistently ranked among the best white cards in the Commander format, and even made the Game Changers list earlier this year for that reason. Simply put, no card in Magic offers a better overall protection effect than this one.
Whether you’re keeping your creatures safe from a board wipe or keeping yourself safe from a combo win, Teferi’s Protection is the ultimate ‘Get out of jail free’ card. While it primarily sees play in Commander, its performance there is truly incredible.
Despite multiple reprints, Teferi’s Protection will still set you back $45 on the low end. Several printings, like the Double Masters Etched Foil and the Strixhaven Mystical Archives version, are up in the $50-60 range, too.
2 | Force Of Negation
Price: $48
Force of Negation is one of the most widely-played, and consequently most expensive, cards on the MTG Avatar Bonus Sheet. You’ll find players running this potent free counterspell in Modern, Legacy, and even Vintage. It also shows up a good amount in Commander, especially in high-level cEDH decks.
Like Force of Will before it, Force of Negation is a brilliant free answer to many problematic plays your opponents might make. It’s not as effective as that all-time classic when it comes to stopping combos, since it can’t be cast for free on your own turn, but it’s still great interaction. While it has a much narrower pool of targets than Force of Will, Force of Negation has some advantages in its lower base cost and exile clause.
This has more than earned the card its current $48 low-end price. As with Teferi’s Protection, there are fancy versions sitting at higher price points, even up to $68 in some cases. There’s no way of telling where in that range Force of Negation will ultimately land, but whatever the case, it’ll be one of the biggest hits on the bonus sheet.
1 | The Great Henge (The Banyan Tree)
Price: $63
When it comes to green draw engines in Commander, you really can’t do any better than The Great Henge. While undervalued initially, this Eldraine classic has established itself as a full-on super-staple in the Commander-dominated Magic landscape.
Not only is this a mana rock that adds two green mana, something unique in itself, but it also gains you two life each time. That’s not even factoring in the card draw and creature buff ability, which is the big reason to run the card. Throw it all together with a discount effect that allows you to cast it for just two mana, and there are few green decks that wouldn’t want it. When you consider all of this, its low-end price of $63 isn’t surprising at all.
An added wrinkle in this case is the fact that The Great Henge has, somehow, not been added to the Commander Game Changers list yet. This means it’s at less risk of a ban than something like Teferi’s Protection, so its price is more secure. With past Borderless printings, like the Lord of the Rings Party Tree version, selling for $85 and up right now, The Great Henge is the biggest hit of the MTG Avatar Bonus Sheet by far.
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