Though the wait for MTG’s Avatar: The Last Airbender set has been long, it seems to have been well worth it. Yesterday’s debut included a ton of fantastic new cards, some of which have real constructed potential. The Source Material bonus sheet, while not to everyone’s taste, has some solid value hits so far, too. Of course, the big question on a lot of players’ minds right now is how much MTG Avatar has in store for Commander.
As with most modern Magic sets, the answer is “quite a lot, actually.” Even in the small batch of spoilers we’ve seen so far, there are plenty of big, splashy effects perfect for multiplayer tables. Whether you’re looking for absurd ramp, a great board clear, or a way to straight-up take an opponent’s turn, Avatar has you covered.
Secret Of Bloodbending
Bloodbending is one of the biggest, darkest revelations in the entirety of Avatar, so it’s fitting to see it get its own mythic rare in the set. It being a spell that lets you take control of an opponent is absolutely perfect flavor as well. Obviously, the big draw here is the full-cost version, where you take control of a player’s entire turn a la Mindslaver or Emrakul, the Promised End. While this is exciting, 14 mana is no joke, even with Waterbending letting you Convoke and Improvise on most of it. This means you’re unlikely to get this off in most games.
Fortunately, the basic four mana version of the card is pretty great in Commander by itself. You have a lot more options to pursue here than in 1v1. You can feed an opponent’s utility creatures into blockers to get rid of them, or use them to make a genuine attack against a weaker player. In any case, this lets you tap down their board, leaving them open for you to attack them next turn. There’s a lot of play here, especially if you can copy it with something like Twincast.
No matter which way you cast Secret of Bloodbending, that four blue cost is going to be a serious obstacle. This makes it very difficult to play in decks with three or more colors, and pretty tough even for two-color lists. While this is disappointing from a wider play perspective, it is nice to see powerful effects that reward mono-color players. Scary as Secret of Bloodbending is, it’s not something every deck playing blue will want, which is refreshing these days.
Day Of Black Sun
Board wipes are some of the most important cards in the Commander format, and MTG Avatar has an absolute doozy of a new one to add to the mix. Day of Black Sun is a black board wipe with X in its cost, immediately calling to mind The Meathook Massacre and Nuclear Fallout. This one, however, has two unique aspects that set it apart.
First of all, it doesn’t kill creatures based on their toughness, but rather their mana value, which is a big upside. Without putting any mana into X at all, this can sweep every token off the board. A lot of creatures these days, looking at you Vivi Ornitier, also start off small but grow big over time. For creatures like this, only having to pay equal to their mana value is much better than chasing their huge toughness totals.
The other major benefit to Day of Black Sun is that it turns off all abilities on the creatures it affects. This means any dies or leaves-the-battlefield triggers your opponents have won’t be going off. Against decks like Aristocrats, this is a massive deal. Without the life drain from the likes of Zulaport Cutthroat, these lists go down to board wipes like everyone else. It’s also worth noting that the ability removal here happens before the destruction. This means Day of Black Sun can kill Indestructible creatures, which is another big plus.
While Toxic Deluge and Meathook Massacre probably still have it beat overall, Day of Black Sun seems like the next-best black board wipe for Commander. With how aggressive many decks are in the format right now, it feels perfectly placed.
White Lotus Tile
If Commander players love one thing, it’s a good Typal deck, and MTG Avatar has a great new piece for such strategies. White Lotus Tile is, essentially, a Three Tree City in mana rock form. It produces mana of one color equal to the number of creatures you control that share a type.
Right off the bat, decks like Elves and Goblins are going to love this card. As types that go wide, White Lotus Tile has a very real chance of producing double-digit mana for them. Elves and Goblins are also often played as mono-color decks, where Tile’s single-color restriction doesn’t matter at all.
What’s interesting about Tile is that it doesn’t require you to lock into a type when it enters. Most other Typal support cards, like Three Tree City and Cavern of Souls, only work with the one type you pick. Tile only cares about the number of creatures you control that have a type in common, however, which means it’s particularly good in multi-typal decks. If you’re playing Aegar, the Freezing Flame, for instance, it can benefit from both your Giant and Wizard packages.
Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention how slow White Lotus Tile is here. It costs four mana to get out, for a start, which is a lot for ramp. It also enters tapped, so it won’t have an immediate impact without something like Voltaic Key. While the potential here is high, it’s also hard to justify a four mana do-nothing. That said, this is still likely to be an auto-include in a lot of casual typal decks in Commander.
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