After a long period of radio silence, we finally learned what the Bending mechanics that appear on Avatar Aang mean. All four mechanics have some interesting applications that can be broken under the right circumstances, but from what we’ve seen so far, one mechanic rises far above the rest.
Airbending, in particular, is incredibly broken. Appa, Steadfast Guardian and Aang, Airbending Master are already creating infinite combos, and as long as there’s one other card that’s Standard legal that Airbends on entry, the format could be getting another infinite combo deck.
Breaking MTG Airbending
Airbending exiles cards and offers their owner the opportunity to recast them for two generic mana. It doesn’t matter what the original mana value of the card is, which can both help your situation and hinder your opponent’s. This offers opportunities to double up on powerful enters triggers for you, but it’s not perfect in every situation. Since permanents you exile always cost two generic mana to recast, you can’t instantly break things with zero mana cards.
This seems like a valve to limit the potential to go infinite, but getting around the two mana casting cost is very easy. If you want to truly break Airbending, then Sage of the Beyond is the card you’ve been looking for. Sage of the Beyond will allow you to cast any cards you Airbend for free. This is thanks to its ability to reduce the casting cost of spells not in your hand by two generic mana.
This actually creates an infinite combo with the two Airbending cards we’ve already seen. Aang, Airbending Master, and Appa, Steadfast Guardian can Airbend one another into exile and cast themselves over and over again. Thanks to Appa’s triggered effect, you’ll be able to create an infinite number of Ally tokens.
Winning from this position is trivial. Just add in an effect like Impact Tremors or Altar of the Brood, and the infinite entry effects will win the game easily. Alternatively, just swinging in with an infinite number of Ally tokens should be able to get the job done sometimes, but the looming threat of board wipes can make this difficult.
All of that said, the combo is held back somewhat by Sage of the Beyond being an expensive card. Strangely, one Standard legal two-drop does the same thing as Sage of the Beyond, making this strategy potentially tournament viable.
Breaking Airbending in Standard
While originally overlooked, Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, is both cheaper than Sage of the Beyond and also Standard legal. Since it only costs two mana, the likelihood of creating infinite Airbending combos in Standard with Appa, Steadfast Guardian seems exceptionally high.
Sadly, Aang, Airbending Master isn’t legal in Standard, but there’s a non-zero chance the Avatar: The Last Airbender set will have another card with Airbending as an entry effect. If this does happen, you’ll be able to do the above infinite combo to create an infinite number of Ally tokens. Depending on the mana cost of this hypothetical second Airbender, this combo could even be rather competitive.
Of all the bending mechanics, Airbending seems the easiest to break. We’ve only seen two cards that Airbend so far, and they’re already creating ridiculous situations. The other three bending mechanics can certainly pull of some ridiculous things too, but we need to see a few more cards before we know whether or not they’re worth even trying to break.
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