As is tradition, ahead of the latest spoiler season starting, MTG Head Designer Mark Rosewater has unveiled their teaser. Typically, this much-anticipated Blogatog post will unveil new abilities, creature types, and card names. While it is a Universes Beyond set, the MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender teasers certainly don’t disappoint.
Controlling an Opponent’s Phase
Of all the teasers given by Rosewater, a new effect that allows you to control an opponent’s phase is getting the biggest reaction from the playerbase. There are a few effects in Magic that currently allow you to control an opponent’s turn, like Emrakul, the Promised End, but none that only care about one phase. Many players suspect that this will be Magic’s way of representing Bloodbending, which would certainly be flavorful and extremely powerful.
Currently, players suspect that the combat phase is the most likely one for this to affect. Considering that taking over a Main Phase is basically the same as taking over an entire turn, this makes a lot of sense. Needless to say, this effect will likely be very hard to pull off, since controlling your opponent almost always results in them losing the game.
Tons of Land Hate
Having Blood Moon be mentioned in a teaser for a Standard set is concerning, yet it happened here. We now know that there will be a red card with a Blood Moon effect in the set, but we notably don’t know what the mana value of the card is, or if there are any hoops to jump through to acquire the effect.
This effect is infamously powerful in older formats. If you catch your opponent without any Basic Lands in play, Blood Moon can completely shut down an opponent’s manabase, preventing them from playing any cards. This will likely be a bit less powerful in Standard thanks to Basic Lands being more common, but it will shut down specific strategies that are greedy for more colors. Having a functional Blood Moon reprint in Standard seems like a massive power outlier, so I would expect the new card to be significantly worse. I suspect that this card will either represent The Day of the Black Sun or the Death of the Moon God.
If the return of one of the most obnoxious effects in Magic wasn’t worrying enough, we’re getting even more land destruction in Avatar. A Sorcery costing 1R that destroys a land has been confirmed, but this is likely a lot less scary than it looks. Pauper staple Cleansing Wildfire is the first card I think of that matches these parameters, and it suggests that this card will likely be designed to punish a lack of Basic Lands in a player’s deck instead of being a straight Stone Rain.
New Tutor Punisher
In Commander, cards that punish tutoring are always very popular. Archivist of Oghma, for example, draws a card every single time an opponent tutors. Since this also applies to many ramp cards and Fetch Lands, these cards can offer insane value. For all these reasons, seeing a new card that cares about your opponents searching a library is exciting.
If its mana value is cheap enough, the card could even see Modern play thanks to the prevalence of Fetch Lands. Archivist of Oghma is notably not legal in that format, as it would otherwise likely see a lot of play.
Ramp Incoming
Alongside a lot of card names and creature types that confirm some deeper cuts into MTG Avatar, a few more interesting abilities have been confirmed to appear in MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender. King among these is a new take on a popular Commander effect that’s already present in Standard.
A new effect that allows your extra mana to carry over turn by turn has been revealed, and it almost certainly represents Sozin’s Comet, a Macguffin that motivates the pacing of the animated series. These effects are commonly popular in Commander, and could even create a bizarre Standard strategy alongside Electro, Assaulting Battery. A big mana strategy could be pushed further by a new replacement effect that adds an additional green mana whenever a creature taps for mana.
More Coming Soon
We don’t know too much about MTG Avatar yet, and after these reveals, players are even more excited for information. If you want to know more about the MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender set, you won’t have to wait much longer. Spoiler season for the set kicks off next Tuesday, October 21st, unleashing the entirety of the set across the internet. We’ll be sure to have all the biggest reveals here, so be sure to watch this space.
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