Edge of Eternities’ official release date hasn’t passed yet, and we’re already getting bombarded with spoilers from future sets. This week, a multitude of Spider-Man spoilers were revealed as part of the first look. Now tonight, we got a glimpse at our second Avatar: The Last Airbender spoiler.
This card looks like it could be quite powerful in Commander. Getting to cast huge spells for free is always appealing, and this card theoretically allows you to do so turn after turn. While we don’t have full information yet about how the card works mechanically, there’s plenty of room for speculation.
Yue, the Moon Spirit
Our spoiler today is none other than Yue, the Moon Spirit. Yue was an iconic princess of the Northern Water Tribe who sacrificed her life to save the Moon Spirit and, in turn, restored balance to the Water Tribe and the world. Despite not possessing any bending abilities during her life, she took over the Moon Spirit’s abilities and, unsurprisingly, can produce large tidal waves.
As is expected, this MTG card features the Waterbend mechanic, and comes with a pretty incredible payoff. The problem is that we don’t know exactly what the Waterbend mechanic implies yet. Unlike Avatar Aang, the number next to Waterbend is in a bolded circle, suggesting it requires five mana to be spent to activate the ability.
However, if Waterbend were nothing more than an ability appearing for flavor purposes, it would traditionally appear in italics (as is common for Universes Beyond sets). As such, it’s safe to assume that, in addition to paying five mana and tapping Yue, we have to meet certain criteria to activate the Waterbend ability. Avatar Aang also has Firebending 2, while there is no -ing after Yue’s Waterbend ability.
This makes it tough to evaluate exactly how good this card is, since there’s a lot of missing information. In theory, casting huge haymakers for just five mana repeatedly sounds awesome. If Waterbend requires you to jump through extra hoops to get your reward, perhaps by tapping other creatures as an additional cost, Yue may fall short of expectations. We’ll just have to wait and see how restrictive Waterbend is as a mechanic.
Potential Pairings
Even without full knowledge at our disposal, though, that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate on cards that are strong to pair with Yue. Chances are, a creature with such a beefy activated ability, no built-in protection, and no enters-the-battlefield effect won’t cut it in Standard.
Nonetheless, in EDH, there are a ton of ways to make use of casting spells on the cheap. Obviously, you want to cast spells that cost a lot of mana to get your money’s worth. Cards that take extra turns, such as Time Stretch or Expropriate, should make for great inclusions in a Yue deck.
Cheating in Omniscience is also a great way to pull ahead. Throw in some sources of card advantage, and you may be able to win the game pretty quickly.
On top of that, you can get extra value out of Yue with cards like Illusionist’s Bracers. Paying five mana is a steep cost. If you can cast multiple big spells with one activation, though, you’ll get a lot more value.
It’ll be interesting to see how the bend abilities end up working out. Avatar Aang could end up being a fantastic bomb with enough support. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for any updates on the Avatar: The Last Airbender mechanics.
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