Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show that didn’t cross my radar until later in life. It was on TV when I was a kid, but I never followed it closely. Two years ago, my partner sat me down and we binged the first season. From then, I was hooked.

Today, we’ll take you through this set, the products, and some Commander decks you can build from the set!

The set consists of two parts. The Last Airbender (TLA) is the main standard legal set. These are most of the cards found in Play Boosters. The Last Airbender Eternal (TLE) is used for cards that skip Standard and go straight to Commander. These are mostly Jumpstart exclusives or bonus sheet cards. Speaking of boosters, you can expect the usual assortment of play, collector, and jumpstart boosters. TLE cards will usually feature screenshots from the TV show as their art. If you’re not sure, check the bottom left of the card for TLE or TLA.

Play boosters are available for €6 or €160 for a booster box (30 packs).

Collector boosters are €50 or €550 for a booster box (12 packs).

Scene Boxes make a return. There are two sets of six cards. Each set forms a complete art piece when placed next to each other. “The Black Sun Invasion” and “Tea Time at the Jasmine Dragon” show key moments and places from the show. Each scene box is €40 and contains three play boosters, the six scene cards, six art-only scene cards, and an easel to display the entire piece.

If you’re just getting started with Magic, try out the Beginner Box. It comes with two ready-to-play decks to teach you the basics. Once you’re more comfortable, it also comes with eight themed decks. Choose two themes, combine them together and see how different colors and strategies work together.  This is a great way to get started or to teach someone how to play.

Finally, for the Commander players, we have the Commander’s Bundle. For €150, you get nine play boosters, one collector booster, and a mixture of 30 basic lands in a mix of foil and non-foil. Some of them also feature the Appa full art like the Bundle. You’ll also get five non-foil promo cards. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Swiftfoot Boots are guaranteed; the remaining two are random from a pool of ten cards. Lastly, you get a click wheel life counter.

Avatar is known for its characters controlling the natural elements. This is called bending. We have a mechanic to represent each element.

To airbend, you exile the target. Its owner may cast the exiled card by paying two mana. Airbend is a versatile effect. You can use it as removal protection, or to re-use powerful enter the battlefield effects. Appa, Steadfast Guardian is a good example. It can exile all your non-land permanents, then rewards you for casting them from exile. Airbend is mostly found on white cards. It reminds me of Elite Spellbinder and Aven Interupter.

Waterbend is seen on a variety of activated abilities or as an alternative cost. When paying for an ability with Waterbend, you can pay the mana cost, or you can tap your artifacts and creatures to help pay for the cost. It’s similar to convoke, but for activated abilities. You can see this on Katara, Bending Prodigy. Six mana to draw one card is steep, but offsetting it with cheap artifacts and Unwinding Clock effects could be a powerful engine.

Katara, Water Tribe’s Hope, has a fun balancing act. Waterbend X to give all your creatures base power and toughness X/X. I like the tension here between tapping down all your creatures or just a few so you can still attack. The best option might be to go all in on vigilance effects. That way, you can attack with your entire board, and then waterbend before damage is dealt!

Earthbend is the mechanic I am most excited for. It appears on mostly green cards as Earthbend, followed by a number. When you earthbend, target land you control becomes a 0/0 creature, then you put a number of +1/+1 counters on it, and give it haste. When that land dies or is put into exile, you return it to play tapped.

That’s a very wordy ability, but in short, it animates your lands. We’ve seen variants of this before. Nissa, Who Shakes the World, and Kamahl, Heart of Krosa, come to mind. I love these effects, but opening up your lands to creature removal is risky. Earthbend fixes this problem by returning your lands to play if they are ever removed. Toph, the First Metalbender, is a great earthbending engine.

Firebending is a triggered ability that happens whenever you attack. A creature with firebending will make red mana equal to its firebending number. This mana only lasts until the end of combat. Zuko, Exiled Prince, makes three mana when he attacks. His activated ability is a great outlet for the mana. Firebending is mainly a red ability. The real power comes from how you spend the mana. If you can’t use it during combat, it goes away. If you want to leverage firebending, make sure to stock up on instants and activated abilities.

We saw the “learn” mechanic in the original Strixhaven. It lets you take lessons from your sideboard and add them to your hand. We will be returning there in 2026. Perhaps we will see more lessons and learn spells down the line!

Sagas make a return, too. These are perfect for any Universes Beyond set. They can tell a story. The Rise of Sozin is a great example. He destroys all creatures, then searches all of your opponent’s zones for a named card and exiles it, then he transforms. This mirrors Sozin’s role in the Avatar show as a warlord hellbent on killing the Avatar. When transformed, Sozin is a 5/5 with menace and firebending 5. When he deals damage, you can pay X mana to reanimate X mana worth of creatures from the defending player’s graveyard.

Experience counters are not a major theme in the set, but they are incredibly powerful in Commander. Experience counters are put on you, the player, not the card. This means if the creature dies, you keep all your experience. Each color gets a legendary creature that grants experience: Aang, Airbending Master, Katara, Waterbending Master, Azula, Ruthless Firebending, Zuko, Firebending Master, and Toph, Earthbending Master.

Each of these could be an amazing commander in their own right. But I’m really excited about pairing them with the other experience counter commanders. Aang and Zuko would go great in an Otharri, Sun’s Glory deck. Zukko can help pay for Otharri’s ability, while Aang can generate even more tokens!

If you love all these cards, you can play Azlask, the Swellng Scouge, and play every single experience counter card in the game!

Finally, Allies make a return. This is a creature type similar to shrines. Being an ally doesn’t do anything on its own, but many allies get better the more allies you control. In the TV show, Aang is uniting people from different walks of life under one banner, and the allies feel right at home. Hakoda, Selfless Commander lets you cast ally spells from the top of your library. Katara, the Fearless, doubles ally-triggered abilities.

These pair well with the old allies from the previous Zendikar sets. Sea Gate Loremaster draws a card for each ally, and Turntimber Ranger makes tokens. General Tazri buffs your entire board.

There are no Commander preconstructed decks with this set. The good news is, there are so many potential commanders. I am going to design a couple of packages to help get you started. These won’t be complete decks, but they should be a great jumping-off point.

Iroh gives all instants and sorceries in your graveyard flashback equal to their mana value.  If that spell is a lesson, its flashback cost is one mana. It is challenging to balance the number of lessons vs regular spells. As of this article, lessons are pretty weak. Try to find Lessons that are ok on their own, and amazing when cast for one mana.

Iroh has potential in high-power games, too. He reminds me of Kess, Disident Mage, but in different colors. While Kess gets Demonic Tutor, Iroh can play Green Sun’s Zenith.

Taking inspiration from Underworld Breach decks, we can mill our library to help find a win condition. We can also supplement our win with Lessons that can give us backup for cheap when they are milled. Sokka’s Haiku and Redirect Lightning give us a cheap interaction once Iroh is in play. True Ancestry can get Underworld Breach and other key spells back from the graveyard if they get milled or destroyed.

Focusing back on casual play, Uncle Iroh gives a cost reduction on all Lessons. If you go deep on this theme, Uncle Iroh will give you a discount on all Lessons. Master Pakku mills target player equal to the number of Lessons in your grave. Sokka, Bold Boomeranger gets bigger for each Lesson you cast! There are a couple of other honorable mentions.

Check out this Moxfield packag to get some more ideas!

Avatar Aang draws cards whenever you water, earth, air, or firebend. If you put in zero effort building Aang, you will always draw a card whenever he attacks. If you manage to do all four types of bending in one turn, he transforms. This is tricky. The bending abilities are limited to just this set; we need to maximize these abilities without watering down our card quality too much.

Our focus is on repeatable sources of bending. Firebending is easy. Aang already has it. We don’t need to worry about it as much as the other bending abilities.

Waterbending appears on activated abilities. Katara, Water Tribe’s Hope, is our best bet. She can be activated for one mana. This will trigger Aang’s ability reliably for cheap.

Earthbending is mostly an enter the battlefield effect. Our best repeatable options are Toph, Earthbending Master, and Toph, the First Metalbender. They trigger when you attack and on your end step. This will net you an extra card and get you closer to transforming Aang. Haru, Hidden Talent is another good option. So many cards in this set are allies that you’ll have no trouble triggering this ability.

Airbending is hardest. It is a removal-style effect, so it is usually less repeatable. For the best results, I suggest airbending your other airbending permanents. For example, cast Appa, Steadfast Guardian. Exile Aang, Airbending Master, or Aang, the Last Airbender. Now you have an airbend ability sitting in exile, ready to go whenever you need it!

Depending on how badly you want to transform Aang, this deck is very flexible.

Here is the Avatar Aang Package for your deck on Moxfield!

Turning lands into creatures is something I have always wanted to make work. Unfortunately, it always fell flat. Avatar has made this deck real!

Your main options are Aang, at the Crossroads, or Toph, the First Metalbender. Aang is a double-faced card that transforms to give your land creatures vigilance, and he earthbends every turn. Unfortunately, without red, he misses out on some amazing cards.

Toph, the First Metalbender, earthbends on our end step and turns our nontoken artifacts into lands. I’ll be mainly focusing on the earthbending side instead of our artifacts becoming lands.

We have three additional Toph’s in this deck. We mentioned Toph, Earthbending Master in the experience counters section. It’s a great inclusion, even if we don’t go wild with experience. Toph, the Blind Bandit has power equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on lands we control. Toph, Greatest Earthbender gives our land creatures double strike. Between these three, we can swing for huge damage.

Bumi gets two cards in the set that fit perfectly here. Bumi, Eclectic Eathbender puts two counters on each land creature whenever he attacks. Bumi, Unleashed untaps all your lands and grants an extra combat when he attacks! Bumi could be an amazing commander if you are ok dropping white from this deck.

The duo of Badgermole and Badgermole Cube works well with Toph. The cub gives you an additional green mana whenever you tap a creature for mana. We turn our lands into creatures, so the cub is sure to pay for itself in no time. The big Badgermole gives creatures with counters on them trample. This could fit in any counters deck, but it ties into the earthbending theme perfectly.

Finally, think about lands worth animating. The Resless cycle from Wilds of Eldraine and Lost Caverns of Ixalan is a good start. Restless Ridgeline, Restless Prairie, and Restless Bivoiac have abilities that trigger when they attack. This happens regardless of how you animate them!

Here is your Toph, the First Metalbender Moxfield Package!

Force of Negation is a great inclusion. It’s a sought-after card in Modern and mimics the show perfectly.

Blasphemous Act is welcome in any red deck.

The Great Henge has been reimagined as The Banyan Tree. I have never gotten around to owning a copy of this card, but this art might convince me to pick it up.

There are 61 borderless source material cards. Check out the full list here before building your next deck!