Here’s How Bending Mechanics Work In The Magic: The Gathering – Avatar: The Last Airbender Set

Wizards of the Coast has officially revealed the first look at cards from the upcoming Magic: The Gathering – Avatar: The Last Airbender expansion. Along with new cards showing off many fan-favorite ATLA characters like Toph, Sokka, Katara, and Zuko, the First Look livestream showed off the expansion’s new Bending mechanics: unique abilities attributed to the airbending, earthbending, firebending, and waterbending powers synonymous with the Avatar series.

Each element’s bending ability gives the same basic benefit to the player using it, though the size of the benefit depends on the card being cast. Here, though, is a brief explainer on each of the four core element’s bending abilities, and examples of cards that will utilize bending abilities in their overall strategies.

Airbending

Airbending allows you to exile–the Magic term for “remove from the game”–a certain number of permanents on your side of the battlefield. You can return those permanents later in the game by paying two generic mana rather than the card’s actual mana cost.

The example card is Appa, Steadfast Guardian, which allows you to airbend as many permanents as you wish as soon as the Bison Ally is cast. Then, whenever you’re ready, you can bring back those permanents for that two-mana airbending cost–and, if Appa is still around, you’ll get a bonus 1/1 Ally creature for each one you bring back.

Earthbending

Earthbending allows you to “animate” a land–basically, it turns any land you control into a creature, which can then attack or block as normal creatures do. It also grants haste, which means the land can attack even if it’s the turn it entered the battlefield. And if your land creature should take damage and “die,” it will simply be returned to the battlefield as an ordinary land.

What’s key to focus on is the number next to the word Earthbending, like the four in the above exampled card, Earthbending Lesson. That number dictates how powerful the newly animated land will be upon becoming a creature–the higher the Earthbend number, the more +1/+1 counters will be placed on the land. Earthbending Lesson, then, would make the animated land a 4/4 creature from the jump, and that can be a handful for an opponent.

Firebending

Firebending instantly adds a specific amount of red mana to your available mana resources, which can then be used to cast Instant spells for the rest of that combat phase. Like Earthbending, the amount of mana added to your resources when the Firebending ability triggers corresponds to the value next to the word Firebending in the card’s text.

The example card, Fire Lord Zuko, is an interesting case, as he grants X amount of red mana–with X being his current power. At his base level, he’ll add two red mana per attack, but if you can make him stronger through casting exiled cards, the amount of free mana he can provide can end up being astronomical. Other Firebending cards have a single amount, but Zuko could potentially burn brighter than the rest.

Waterbending

Waterbending in Magic: The Gathering may be the most unpredictable of the four elements. Waterbending does not follow a set ability path like the other elements; each Waterbending ability is specific to the card using it, as is the cost to activate said ability. There is one constant throughout all waterbending abilities, however: No matter what the cost to activate the ability is, a player can tap artifacts and creatures to help pay the generic costs of the ability, with each tapped artifact or creature paying for one generic mana.

For example, with Katara, Water Tribe’s Hope above, you can pay any amount of generic mana you want to make your creature have a base power and toughness equal to the amount of paid mana until the end of the turn–if you pay four mana, for instance, each creature will have base power 4/4.

However, say you’ve cast three random artifacts throughout the course of a game, and you have four lands available for mana. You can tap the three artifacts and the four lands to make each of your creatures a base 7/7 until the end of the turn–and if any of those creatures have +1/+1 counters on them, they’ll be even larger.

Magic: The Gathering – Avatar: The Last Airbender launches November 21 in local game stores and big box retailers.