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

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not for me, haven't got enough cheap artifacts. definitely for someone who wants Kappa Cannoneer but with slightly less power level but still high
 
Couple of cool jump-start cards today:

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Kind of like a blue Beast Whisperer if it had a once per turn clause, but casting creatures at instant speed is real upside. This is the kind of synergy card I adore since it's self enabling, but if you have ninjas, other flash creatures, ghostly flicker it can draw multiple cards per turn.

I really wish this had flash / ninjutsu / sneak on it's own, even if it didn't trigger off itself. Really curious to get other's thoughts on this, as I can't tell if it's actually quite strong or mostly garbage.

I like this one a bit, but yeah, not doing anything on its own is rough. Final-Word Phantom is probably better for this kind of ability, even if you don't get the potential draw engine out of it.

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If you're into Zack Fair levels of white 1 drop protection creatures, this is an interesting side-grade. Still legendary, has worse counter synergy and no equipment synergy, can't protect the turn he comes down, but hexproof generally beats indestructible and him not actually dying when he saves something makes him a cool flicker target. I think I'll be making the switch, or maybe even running both.

I much prefer this to Zack Fair, and I think it's a big improvement on the art.

I like keeping the dude around. I like not having to spend mana on this effect. I think hexproof plus a +1/+1 counter is generally better than indestructible. But most importantly, I like that it's much simpler to read and understand.

Devoted Caretaker was in my Cube for a long time, but I think this is preferable in most ways other than art.

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Curse of Predation sidegrade. Much better with mana dorks / crew / saddle, slightly worse that it doesn't work with vigilance creatures, and no synergy with 'attacks' triggers like the new Firebender Ascension. Also not sure it's worth the 'aura loss' (pun intended) of having to run this art.

I think it's significantly better than Curse of Predation, because green has so many dudes that love to tap for mana. It feels like the power delta is a bit too big for having it in the same Cube as Ouroboroid for me, but that's kind of the case for any +1/+1 counter generator the more I think of it. I think with the big improvement over Curse of Predation, I'd put it in this class of cards, all of which I run or have in my on-deck binder:



as well as the recently spoiled:

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Master's Guidance (should be up on scryfall within a few hours) is a super neat card that sucks unless you're deep in the legendary theme. Probably a little too much crossover between the +1/+1 counters, go-wide tokens, big dudes, and legendary-matters themes, but it's kind of nice it does that all. I like drawing an extra card every turn. I like getting multiple +1/+1 counters a turn. It just asks a lot, is all. Happy it exists either way.

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Finally, new Consider art! I'll probably keep my Saruman version, but this is a huge improvement over the original.

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Obsessive Pursuit is a great recurring trinket generator for me that also pairs very nicely with aristocrats cards. I like this more than the new Bitterblossom dude that was spoiled!

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Fire Nation Occupation is more exciting to me than a Monastery Mentor. What a sweet card that really fires you up as a build-around. Don't love that it asks for its own token types, and don't love firebending on them, but I think it's worth the Cube curator-side accounting problems.

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Professor Zei, Anthropologist feels like it was made for Cube curators. Lovely card. Not sure I'm going to have room for it, but I love the simplicity and the lack of sacrifices asked of its players.

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Jet, Rebel Leader would've been so sick a few years ago. I love that it puts the dudes in attacking.

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Airbender's Reversal is like Iroh's Demonstration in that it's a modal spell that really doesn't ask you to make much of a sacrifice for it. I'd still prefer Spectacular Tactics or Battle Menu or Thraben Charm (of which I'm currently only playing Battle Menu) but I think a lot of this is up to the Cube curator's preference and I'm happy to have the choices.

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This is so cool. I'm not sure that it's much better than good ol' Gravedigger, and it's a bit wordy, but it would make for a neat occasional.



Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth creates a ton of trinkets all at once, and I think is super cool. Power level is somewhat lacking, but I think I'd rather have this than Doom Whisperer, for example.
 
As we're wrapping up spoiler season (today's TLE cards round out the mechanically new cards in the set and we're down to just ~20 cards from the main set, with 270/296 revealed), I'm currently at 26 swaps planned for this set. Not a record-breaker (nothing close to FIN/FIC), but there's a lot more high-confidence cards than usual here. I spent some time this morning procrastinating and finding swaps, so I'm ready for the Includes thread as soon as we can get it going!!

Speaking of the last few cards, though:

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Not necessarily for my Cube, but hell yeah. HELL YEAH. You don't need to know Avatar lore or anything to appreciate this design, how well it integrates Magic and Avatar lore, or how perfectly tuned every element of this card is. Just a fantastically designed set overall.
 


Bumi's Feast Lecture is another card in the vein of the earlier-discussed 2-drop-with-a-food-token Michelangelo, the Heart / Spider-Ham, Peter Porker / Tough Cookie / Unlucky Cabbage Merchant, and it's pretty cool! It plays better if you're playing with more of the others, because you really would prefer this not play out as a Bakersbane Duo (especially since it'll enter tapped if you've only got two lands to cast it with). Lower power-level than what I'm trying to do, but interesting nonetheless.
 
benevolentriverspirit.jpg

not for me, haven't got enough cheap artifacts. definitely for someone who wants Kappa Cannoneer but with slightly less power level but still high
I want to Unearth that, but not enough to add a card with waterbending.

The funny thing is that a couple other cards that work well as cheat-y Unearth targets effectively use unkeyworded waterbend:



It's honestly one of the stand-out cards from this set for me.

That said...



(Ezuri's Predation is the only other non-creature mono-green spell that lets you fight a creature without having any pre-existing creatures of your own.)
 
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