Avatar The Last Airbender: The Set Review

The Verdict

Our score Criteria stated below

Overall

7.5/10

A well built crossover with a genuinely balanced format.

Limited

8.0/10

The most balanced set of pairs we measured.

Commander

6.5/10

Solid but no landmark card or cycle.

Opening value

7.0/10

Two cards above thirty-five dollars.

Mechanical depth7.5

Archetype variety8.5

Format balance9.0

Commander impact6.5

Financial depth6.5

Newcomer accessibility8.0

These are our scores, not a community aggregate. Limited is graded on the archive: speed, archetype spread and how evenly the pairs perform. Commander is graded on EDHREC inclusion rank. Opening value is graded on median prices and concentration.

How It Was Received

Sourced, not scored No aggregate exists

Avatar was one of the two crossovers keeping Magic's backlist unusually healthy into 2026, alongside Final Fantasy, with Hasbro noting that continued sales of both made the year the third-largest backlist year in the game's history. That is a different kind of success from a big launch week: people kept buying it long after release.

The source material is well suited to Magic. Four bending disciplines map onto colours naturally, and the result reads as a coherent set rather than a licence stapled onto a card game.

The archive found the most balanced set of archetypes we have measured. Only 3.3 points separate the best colour pair from the worst, against 5.3 in Bloomburrow and 4.8 in Aetherdrift. Every single pair was a winning deck. That is a genuinely hard thing to achieve and it deserves more credit than it got.

Reception sources: Wizards, everything announced for 2026; Flipside Gaming, 2025 recap and 2026 releases.

The Mechanics

Four bending arts Median win rate vs set baseline

Waterbend

-0.71

Slightly below the median. The blue discipline is fine rather than strong. 12 cards.

Firebending

-1.87

The aggressive discipline, and it underperformed. 13 cards.

Exhaust

-3.25

The worst scoring mechanic bucket in this entire archive. 7 cards.

Two things are worth separating. The bending mechanics scoring near or below the median is not a criticism of the set, because its balance comes from everything being close together. But Exhaust at minus 3.25 is the single worst mechanic result we have measured anywhere, and it is worth knowing that the once-per-game abilities here simply did not deliver.

The design conceit, one mechanic per bending art mapped to colours, is the clearest flavour-to-rules translation in this collection.

The Money

Market signal Prices retrieved 17 August 2026

Prices move, so this is a snapshot. Base price means the cheapest printing, which is what the card actually costs you. Where a premium treatment runs materially higher we note it separately, because special treatments otherwise flood the top of any value list.

Card	Rarity	Base	Premium	Why it costs that
Badgermole Cub	Mythic	$45.30	$65.70	The chase card, and a Commander staple at rank 1,302.
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian	Mythic	$36.85	$58.82	The set's marquee legend and a strong draft card.
The Walls of Ba Sing Se	Mythic	$23.63		A defensive centrepiece with a following.
Redirect Lightning	Rare	$11.77		The most played card from the set in Commander.
The Legend of Roku	Mythic	$8.95	$14.78	One of the past-Avatar transforming mythics.
Appa, Steadfast Guardian	Mythic	$6.67	$13.96
Abandoned Air Temple	Rare	$5.96
The Legend of Kyoshi	Mythic	$5.85	$12.92

Most valuable

$45.30

Badgermole Cub

Median rare

$0.42

The typical rare slot

Median mythic

$4.00

The typical mythic

Top 10 cards

57%

of the set's total value

Top heavy but with real chases. Badgermole Cub at forty-five dollars and Wan Shi Tong at thirty-seven are genuine hits, and the top ten hold 57 percent of the value. The median mythic at $4.00 is healthy. This is a reasonable set to open.

Two Formats, Two Sets Of Cards

The finding worth the reviewLimited percentile vs EDHREC rank

We hold both the Limited archive and Commander inclusion data. Avatar's divergence is smaller than most, which fits a set whose whole character is balance.

Built for the 99, not the 40

Real Commander cards that underperform in draft

Redirect Lightning EDH #602 Limited p16
The most played card in the set, and the 16th percentile in draft.
Bender's Waterskin EDH #611 Limited p35
Fire Nation Palace EDH #1,790 Limited p33
Cycle of Renewal EDH #2,048 Limited p14
The Last Agni Kai EDH #2,174 Limited p13
Airbender Ascension EDH #2,559 Limited p31

Great in the 40, invisible in the 99

Draft all-stars nobody sleeves for Commander

The Fire Nation Drill Limited p99 EDH #8,310
99th percentile in the format, invisible in Commander.
United Front Limited p97 EDH #5,695
Bumi, Unleashed Limited p96 EDH #3,779
Koh, the Face Stealer Limited p96 EDH #9,768
Azula, Cunning Usurper Limited p95 EDH #7,450
Phoenix Fleet Airship Limited p94 EDH #9,597

Commander took the cheap interaction. Redirect Lightning is the most played card from the set and sits at the 16th percentile in draft, which is the usual shape: a cheap answer that is excellent in a format with big threats and mediocre in one without.

And the expensive cards are good cards. The six most valuable average the 75th Limited percentile, so the chase cards here are ones you are pleased to open in a draft too.

Commander

Where the set keeps living EDHREC rank, lower is more played

281 of the 286 cards carry an EDHREC rank. The rank is global across all of Magic rather than relative to this set, so a card at #50 is the 50th most played card in the format overall. For reprints the rank belongs to the card, not to this printing.

**Redirect Lightning**The most played card from the set in Commander.

**Bender's Waterskin**Cheap equipment that slots into many decks.

**Shared Roots**A quiet green engine with steady uptake.

**Badgermole Cub**The chase card, and a real Commander card too.

**Abandoned Air Temple**A utility land, which Commander always finds room for.

**Wan Shi Tong, Librarian**The set's marquee legend.

By colour identity

WhiteAbandoned Air Temple (#1,310), Avatar's Wrath (#1,738), Airbender Ascension (#2,559)

BlueWan Shi Tong, Librarian (#1,351), Agna Qel'a (#2,692), The Unagi of Kyoshi Island (#3,170)

BlackHeartless Act (#4,790), Mai, Scornful Striker (#5,367), Realm of Koh (#6,144)

RedRedirect Lightning (#602), Fire Nation Palace (#1,790), The Last Agni Kai (#2,174)

GreenShared Roots (#1,178), Badgermole Cub (#1,302), Ba Sing Se (#1,778)

ColourlessBender's Waterskin (#611), Secret Tunnel (#1,438), The Walls of Ba Sing Se (#2,101)

By strategy

Interaction

Redirect Lightning is the set's most played card and it is a cheap answer.

Redirect Lightning

Equipment and auras

Bender's Waterskin gives equipment decks a cheap and thematic piece.

Bender's Waterskin

Lands and utility

Abandoned Air Temple is the kind of land that quietly ends up everywhere.

Abandoned Air Temple

Kindred and elementals

The bending disciplines double as tribal hooks.

Shared Roots

Legendary commanders

The past-Avatar cycle gives five transforming mythics, one per colour.

Wan Shi Tong, Librarian, The Legend of Roku

Defensive and fog

The Walls of Ba Sing Se anchors a genuinely different archetype.

The Walls of Ba Sing Se

Reprints

Seven, all functional

**Lightning Strike**Reliable red removal, reprinted again.

**Heartless Act**Efficient black removal.

**Corrupt Court Official**A functional common.

A workmanlike sheet. No marquee reprint, but a set of clean removal spells that make the Limited format better and cost new players very little.

Constructed And Pauper

Market signal, not play data Read the caveat

Be clear about what this section is. We do not hold play-rate data for Standard, Pioneer, Modern or Pauper, and we are not going to invent it. What we do hold is legality and price. Price is a reasonable proxy for constructed demand, because a rare does not carry a high price unless somebody outside of draft wants it. Treat what follows as market signal.

Standard legal

284

cards at release

Pauper pool

commons added to the format

Set size

286

distinct cards

One of each

$271

total base value, non-basics

The market read is crossover-shaped: value concentrated in a small number of recognisable characters and creatures, rather than spread across competitively essential cards. Badgermole Cub is the exception, carrying both a high price and genuine Commander play.

For Pauper, 96 commons entered the pool, including several clean removal reprints, which is a better contribution than the headline cards suggest.

Who Should Buy This

Straight answers

Buy it if

You want the fairest possible ten-archetype format. Only 3.3 points separate first from last, the tightest we measured.
You are drafting with mixed experience levels. Every pair is viable, so nobody gets stuck in an unplayable lane.
You like the show. The flavour translation is the best in this collection.

Skip it if

You want a landmark Commander card. Solid contributions, nothing format-defining.
You want your mechanics to be exciting. All three measured buckets landed at or below the median, and Exhaust is the worst result in this archive.
You dislike crossovers. This is one, however well executed.

The one line version

Avatar is the most balanced Limited format in this archive and the best flavour-to-rules translation in it, and it kept selling for a year after release. Its mechanics did not individually shine and it gave Commander nothing landmark, but as a product to sit down and draft with a mixed group it is close to the top of this list.