General [TLA/TLE] [UB] Avatar: The Last Airbender

Release Date: November 28, 2025 (so two months after Spider-Man)

Thing I hate: FOUR new words to remember what the hell they do.
Thing I love also hate: Lesson is back but Learn is not

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When you airbend a permanent, you exile it. As long as it remains exiled, its owner may cast it for 2 rather than its mana cost.
(yes, there are both things that airbend your own cards and things that airbend your opponent's)

Some spells and abilities have you waterbend as part of their costs. Waterbending is convoke+improvise (so both artifacts and creatures.)

Earthbending is a keyword action like awaken from BFZ. When you Earthbend X, you turn a target land you control into a 0/0 land creature with haste, then put X +1/+1 counters on that land. When that land dies or is exiled, it returns as a tapped noncreature land.

When a creature with firebending N attacks, you add N red mana that doesn't go away until the end of combat.

Here's some stuff from the stream today:
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I have to admit, two hours ago I didn't have "Environmental Sciences is straight-up obsoleted" on my 2025 bingo card.

But I'm stoked. One of my favorite retail limited mechanics of all time and I'd be amazed if I was alone in that, especially here of all places.
 
None of the bending mechanics seem interesting, but some of the individual cards do.

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I love Untimely Malfunction and have been hoping for more affordable redirects. They play so well in Cube, and a 1MV one is really the dream here to make Red more interesting. Redirect Lightning gets there, I think. In the circumstances you only can leave up 1, you're probably willing to pay the 5 life. Late-game, you can just pay 2 more. I doubt the Lesson part is going to be relevant for me, but it's upside I guess!



Momo, Friendly Flier is pretty good for me. I have 55 or so relevant fliers which is more than enough for the cost reduction to be meaningful, and I love 1MV legends for my ever-increasing legendary matters theme. He also goes off with Lingering Souls!



is generally an upgrade to Leyline Binding for me. I wish it didn't have the trinket text for waterbending; the three mana for getting rid of it doesn't seem like it needs to be there, except for flavor reasons maybe? Eh. I don't mind the aesthetic of this set but I'd rather not have a removal spell like this be such a specific UB card, but I don't think that'll be the deciding factor for me.

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Katara, Waterbending Master is a neat card. A little too low-power for my main list, but a good one to keep in my pocket. I don't love experience counters but so long as it's the only one, it's not an issue for me.
 
Airbending is pretty cool. It's like half bounce, half blink. You always pay {2} but you get another cast trigger.

The thing I hate: the elements showcase frames look awesome, but they will all be used on bending cards and of course none of them will have reminder text. So I wont be able to cube any. Meh.
 
Yeah, it seems a bit lame to use this only as a flavor crutch, when we have a mechanic right there to interact with it...
There's a Strixhaven set coming out next year, so maybe they'll bring back Learn there. But, knowing them, they'll instead create some updated version of Learn called "Study" that tweaks the mechanic to fix some issue they thought they had with Learn.
 
Ugh I was going to ignore this one but Lessons are here.

That said, I'm not a fan of the fact that the four core mechanics are completely different despite having similar names.

Yeah, it seems a bit lame to use this only as a flavor crutch, when we have a mechanic right there to interact with it...

I honestly like it - Magic is historically really bad about printing subtypes for spells once and then never revisiting them, so just having more Lessons to work with is a good thing. I also like that we're finally getting Lessons that are Instants - sure, Sokka's Haiku sucks in a vacuum, but it's cooler as something you can conditionally wish for.

(I do feel like they screwed up by making the card an actual haiku...)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
There's a Strixhaven set coming out next year, so maybe they'll bring back Learn there. But, knowing them, they'll instead create some updated version of Learn called "Study" that tweaks the mechanic to fix some issue they thought they had with Learn.
I think I remember seeing somewhere that this set is going to be more about Arcavios as a plane, rather than the university it got famous for. But if I had a choice, I’ld definitely revisit Learn/Lesson, cut DFC’s, add either Rooms or Adventures (depending on which part you want to focus on: the university or the plane as a whole). Magecraft was fine, I guess, but could easily be replaced as well. Cool, looks like we can do both Rooms and adventures and watch the wider world of Arcavios take shape from the point of view of Strixhaven students doing lessons in classrooms and excursions into the wider world!
 
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