Despite a ton of powerful, flavorful, and exciting cards appearing across MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender’s spoiler season, we haven’t seen a lot of the Jumpstart cards yet. Notably, these cards will not be Standard legal, giving Wizards of the Coast’s design team an opportunity to create some stronger designs. It’s clear from today’s Weekly MTG that, despite Jumpstart being a product aimed at beginners, Avatar Jumpstart won’t be one to count out.
Whether you’re after a new infinite combo enabler, an absurd new ramp enchantment, or a new conditional one-mana tutor. Avatar: Jumpstart has a ton of exciting things to watch out for.
Monk Gyatso
This card being Eternal legal may be the biggest blessing in disguise we’ve seen in a while. As long as you can reduce the casting cost of Airbended creatures you own to zero, Monk Gyatso can go infinite with a wide range of different cards, even in the Command Zone.
Because Monk Gyatso can Airbend cards that are targeted by an ability, all you need to do is find a creature with a targeted enters ability to start going nuts. Backup Agent, for example, is a two-mana white creature that can target itself with its own enters ability, creating an infinite Airbending loop. Many creatures with more powerful ETB effects, like Flickerwisp, need to target other creatures, but getting a board with two powerful enter creatures that can target one another is trivial in a focused strategy.
From there, Semblance Anvil can reduce the casting cost of your Airbended creatures to zero, so long as you exile a creature under it from your hand. Alternatively, Urza’s Incubator can also make specific Airbended creatures cost zero, so long as they share a creature type. Expanding your color identity adds even more options to accomplish this, like the Standard legal Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius. Once your Airbended creatures cost zero to cast, winning the game from here is rather trivial, as any mix of enters triggers will bury your opponent in advantage.
You don’t necessarily need to go the infinite combo route, either. Combining Monk Gyatso with powerful entry effects like Solitude and instant-speed targeting abilities can create a stupid amount of value with minimal resources. Gyatso can also protect your other creatures from opposing removal spells, forcing them to deal with the Monk before targeting other things. There isn’t really a wrong way to go with this card, making it the highlight of the Avatar Jumpstart cards we’ve seen so far.
Tui and La, Moon and Ocean
An interesting engine that draws a card when tapped, Tui and La, Moon and Ocean also goes infinite with a slight breeze. As long as you can find cards that tap and untap Tui and La, you’ll both draw your entire deck and create an infinitely large Fish.
This means that Tui and La creates a two-card infinite combo with Mind Over Matter and Paradise Mantle. You can tap Tui and La with Paradise Mantle, generating mana, while discarding your drawn cards to untap Tui and La with Mind Over Matter. This will create an infinitely large Fish, while drawing your entire deck and offering as much mana as you have cards. Expanding your options, Paradise Mantle can easily be replaced with a card draw doubling engine like Teferi’s Ageless Insight, or a different tap effect like Enduring Vitality.
Freed From the Real and Pemmin’s Aura should similarly create a ton of value with Tui and La and, with some extra cards, could easily go infinite. This is the type of MTG card that will only see play in Commander decks if the player is up to no good. Get rid of this fishy pair on sight.
Tale of Momo
Tale of Momo will be an auto-add to any Ally Typal Commander decks. The card’s reduction effect encourages Tale of Momo to be used reactively following a removal spell, but tutoring for the best card in your Typal deck is a good deal even for three mana.
Outside of Ally Typal, Tale of Momo can still be used to tutor up Allies that function as centerpieces in other Commander decks. Bumi, Unleashed, for example, has some particularly nasty infinite combos that could create interest for the card in land-focused Commander decks. Alternatively, tutoring Zulaport Cutthroat or Kasla, the Broken Halo in their appropriate archetypes, could make Tale of Momo worthy of inclusion. Both Convoke and Aristocrats want to use small creature tokens, which makes triggering Tale of Momo’s reduction cost easier, as well.
Tectonic Split
Tectonic Split offers an extremely powerful mana ramp engine with an equally disastrous casting cost. While it having Hexproof ensures that your opponents can’t remove Tectonic Split once it enters play, sacrificing half of your lands is quite a nasty pill to swallow.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to get around Tectonic Split’s casting cost: just don’t cast it. Cheating this enchantment into play through other means grants you a Hexproof mana-tripler without forcing you to sacrifice half your lands. Zimone, Mystery Unraveler is an example of a recent Commander precon headliner that can do this. Just Manifest Dread Tectonic Split into play, and flip it with Zimone’s ability.
Alternatively, decks that sacrifice lands are relatively popular at the moment, making Tectonic Split’s casting cost much less of a downside. Hearthhull, the Worldseed is a rather popular Commander after Wizards of the Coast created a precon masterpiece around the Vehicle. If you manage to fully Station Hearthhull, Tectonic Split can both ramp your mana and force your opponents to take a ton of damage.
Coming to an Arena Near You
While these are some of the more exciting cards appearing in the Avatar: The Last Airbender Jumpstart packs, there are lots of different cards that can level up a ton of different Commander strategies. Interestingly, it’s also been confirmed that these cards are coming to MTG Arena, meaning that there is potential for these cards to impact digital formats with larger card pools like Historic and Timeless. Many of the flashier rares appear to be overcosted for the formats, but a ton of powerful lower rarity reprints, like Frantic Search, will be craftable following MTG Avatar’s release. If this is legal in Historic, it could wreak havoc alongside Lotus Field. Even if this doesn’t end up being the case, many of the more flavorful rares should be particularly fun in Brawl.
There’s a lot of reason to be excited about Avatar Jumpstart, and it’s only a small part of the upcoming MTG Avatar release. Whether you’re a Commander player, an Arena fanatic, or just a beginner, there are a lot of reasons to keep an eye on this.
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