I’m Usman, and I’m a cube writer who’s been writing set reviews and theory about cube for 15 years. I’ve written about cube here before and I’m back again to give a brief overview of the “hits” of Avatar: The Last Airbender for cube as a follow-up with my initial cube thoughts on Avatar that I posted on my Substack.
I’ve broken these down into 3 broad categories: Generically good cards, exciting/build-around cards and learn/lesson cards.
Generically Good!
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian
The natural comparison is Hydroid Krasis; both are big mana plays that draw cards, but Wan Shi Tong plays very differently as a threat to represent at instant speed instead of a big-mana tap-out stabilization effect.
Unlike cards such as Archivist of Oghma, which could be painfully weak when the opponent wasn’t searching their library, Wan Shi Tong rarely felt useless and unsurprisingly, it worked well when it was played. Cubes that are including multiple fetchlands will likely see it being cast for X=1 or 2 mana more often, but even aspects like it having vigilance were great upsides. This is likely the best card for cube in the set.
Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing
Thinking of this as Spell Queller meets Aven Interrupter gets you part of the way there, but the ability to airbend creatures made it play much stronger by letting it meaningfully impact the board. Neutralizing an opponent’s threat or, less commonly, airbending your own creatures and being a 2/3 gives it enough presence to ambush 2/1s in combat, but so far, it’s mainly been a very good disruptive piece and played like everything I wanted Spell Queller to be. Waterbending also makes the eight‑mana activation less intimidating, so it becomes a credible late-game plan to help you turn the corner.
At first, I thought that this was more of a really good blue-white tempo card, but I’ve been coming around to it being more of a really good generalist blue-white card.
Ba Sing Se, Abandoned Air Temple, Agna Qel’a
Abandoned Air Temple is the star of the show and worked well in testing, but the others are good enough on base rate to do their thing, especially if they’re consistently entering untapped. The question always is whether these types of utility lands are worth the cost of inclusion in a cube and so far, I’m thinking that they pass that bar. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ba Sing Se work well as virtual mana ramp or as a way to reliably Wasteland/Strip Mine players out of a game.
Firebending Student
This card reminds me of Vivi as it punches well above its mana cost. Without buffs, she won’t generate a mana advantage, but cards that can reliably recover their mana investment usually perform well in cube.
Buffing raises her ceiling but isn’t required. I rate her higher for decks that can consistently push her to attack for 2–3 damage but the floor looks to be good.
Aang’s Iceberg
Oblivion Rings used to be cube staples, but over time their status as a three-mana sorcery answer has left them behind. While this is mana-inefficient, flash helped offset that inefficiency by allowing instant-speed interaction. As one of the early previews, this is one of the cards that I’ve had the most reps with; the iceberg’s 3-mana cost made it questionable in aggressive decks, but it still showed up in those shells occasionally due to its effectiveness.
The ability to crack the Iceberg proved live several times in testing. It was surprisingly easy to reach a point where you could crack one on the end step when the exiled threat no longer mattered. Being able to tap idle creatures or artifacts to pay the three-mana tax made the cost far more palatable.
Mai, Scornful Striker, Zhao, the Moon Slayer
I like both of these as hate bears that throw just enough disruption at an opponent to keep them off of their game plan; even though they’re symmetrical, decks that want to play them will ensure that they’re not seeing as much of the pain, especially with Mai playing the role of Eidolon of the Great Revel.
Raven Eagle
We’ve seen a few 3/3s for 3 that hate on the graveyard with Lord Skitter and Graveyard Trespasser being obvious comparisons, and it was great when they could do their graveyard-hosing thing while being fine in matchups where the graveyard didn’t matter much. I generally preferred Graveyard Trespasser, even with its day/night nonsense, but this new riff plays the same tune.
This version is unique because it draws a card when it nabs a creature from the graveyard; that card draw alone likely puts it ahead of the other two; the life drain, while incidental, doesn’t hurt either.
Appa, Steadfast Guardian
In the vein of Restoration Angel and Salvation Swan as a flash flying threat that can eat small attackers. Like with Resto, airbending something away at instant speed in response to removal feels excellent.
Gaining an ally when casting an airbent card usually somewhat helps offset the airbending cost, and tucking the creature away to airbend it back later isn’t a strict downgrade either. That interaction shines against mass removal, when you don’t want to blink a creature only for it to die, or when you want to reuse the creature’s enter-the-battlefield effect, such as airbending a Snapcaster Mage to flash it back later.
Avatar’s Wrath
I really liked how this played; it plays differently similar riffs since it lets you break the symmetry in several ways: you can choose what stays on the battlefield, and you prevent the opponent from deploying new threats on the following turn, which came up during testing. It’s not a true wrath, but for decks trying to survive and/or find ways to re-use ETB triggers, that’s often good enough.
Exciting/Buildaround!
Badgermole Cub
I’ve long lamented that the juice from cards like Walk-In Closet and Crucible of Worlds usually wasn’t worth the squeeze and it wasn’t until Icetill Explorer that the lands archetype finally received a really good payoff. Earthbending reinforces that by recurring lands that get destroyed proactively like fetchlands, the horizon lands, and other solid but underplayed options like Lazotep Quarry.
As the cheapest earthbending card, I’ve heard a lot of hype for this card, and so far, it’s performed to expectations, even as just a standalone piece but works really well with synergy pieces.
Earthbender Ascension, Firebender Ascension, Airbender Ascension
Earthbender Ascension is the best of these, as it plays like a Sutina that can’t block when it’s first cast – a respectable cube card on its own – but it trades the land-bounce ability for a built-in Retreat to Kazandu that can also grant trample, which is great when your large landfall threats get chump-blocked. Because the effect is split between the animated land and the enchantment, you don’t lose everything if the 2/2 dies to a Shock: the land still animates and you can continue building toward Retreat to Kazandu and plays really well into existing Landfall payoffs, which we’ve seen work well since the Final Fantasy sets.
Firebender Ascension looks fit for Boros aggro alongside Hired Claw, Jacked Rabbit, Smuggler’s Copter and Glorybringer. It’s probably not “good enough” on its own, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets there. Making a 2/2 for 2 is a low ceiling, but it’s an acceptable floor which usually is enough to get there, but I’m unsure how much it’s needed for cubes.
Airbender Ascension performed decently well as a generalist card, but I wouldn’t be surprised for it to be a build-around for decks that can reliably create tokens and to get this to get 4 quest counters ASAP to turn this into a virtual 2-mana Teleportation Circle.
Fire Nation Occupation, Katara, Waterbending Master
When these were first shown, they got pidgeon-holed as being too narrow as the thought was that it’d be too hard to naturally make a “flash deck” work, but it’s easier to enable than you’d think and you’ll be surprised at how close decks are naturally hitting critical mass.
I wasn’t able to see a deck with Fire Nation Occupation come together in my cube, but initial impressions from Reddit are great and it would have been a natural fit for decks like this.
Katara played similarly to traditional looters, but it requires more setup: you need to cast spells on an opponent’s turn and keep the creature alive during combat so it can attack multiple times, which creates both challenges and opportunities.
Because its experience gain isn’t limited to once per turn, you can advance it cheaply with instant-speed cantrips and interaction, though that isn’t realistic on turn two. In testing I found it underwhelming in decks that desperately wanted early graveyard access and relied on its looter floor, but it showed strong upside in decks that could reliably get it to two or more experience counters: blue-red and some blue-white builds did this easily. As with cards like Ouroboroid and The Endstone, a weak floor doesn’t make it bad if the average case and ceilings are high.
United Front, Suki, Courageous Rescuer
While both of these are great for white aggressive decks, they play incredibly well in go-wide white decks. White three-drops are stacked, which is partly why Suki is being overlooked as a “bad Adeline” as they have some similarities; they both cost three, have four toughness and create 1/1 creature tokens.
Both shine in the white aggro go-wide deck but Suki’s mass-pump ability shouldn’t be underestimated, as an undefeated blue-white deck had this and we were impressed by how it played, partly from its mass pump.
Suki doesn’t generate tokens as easily as Adeline, but token production is more common than you might think with the cards mentioned earlier in this article, and chump-attacking with Suki’s 1/1s was a useful option when pushing damage through, as we saw in testing.
With United Front, traditionally, x = 3 is the floor for cards like Finale of Glory to make 6 power for 5 mana. Pumping the team lowers the practical floor significantly, which is part of why this card is being underrated: its baseline of mass pump for WW or as an effective 1WW 2/2 that buffs your team are both solid outcomes, even if they’ll be the minority of cases. The concern that mass-pump isn’t good for cube is valid but not decisive.
Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender
As a cheat payoff, this was a card that worked well since cheat targets work best when they have immediate impact, resilience to removal, and a fast clock to finish the game. Hexproof helps its resilience and ability to reliably make an 8/8, although I found that it wasn’t great against mass removal – usually the opponent either had to have that or a way to chump block an ever-growing army of 8/8s.
Obsessive Pursuit, Phoenix Fleet Airship
Treasure, Clues, Blood/Map tokens all work well with cards that care about being sacrificed; since they’re artifacts, are also great to Waterbend.
Of all the cards in the set, Obsessive Pursuit puzzled me the most in terms of how strong it is. I’ve seen comparisons to Proft’s, and initial impressions of it have been good so far, since although it doesn’t accumulate counters as explosively as Proft’s does, it still usually does its thing at least once and making a clue when it enters helps to raise its floor.
Daxerz also pointed Pursuit is valuable as a clue generator that provides its own payoff for sacrifice synergies, similar to Legion Extruder, Gut, and cards like Nettlecyst.
The flagship is like a Broodmate Dragon effect: it creates a couple of flying threats, but they must be crewed and you need something to sacrifice. The question is how often duplication will happen consistently.
Lesson/Learn!
I’m mentioning both Lesson and Learn as a class here, since STX’s learn cards become much better now, as its corresponding lesson cards weren’t up to snuff with “normal” cube cards, whereas TLA/TLE lessons function more like the power level we expect from “normal” cards.
The lessons that interest me for cube: Enter the Avatar State, Boomerang Basics, Origin of Metalbending, True Ancestry, Abandon Attachments, Iroh’s Demonstration and Desperate Plea are mostly riffs on existing cards: a 1-mana bounce spell/combat trick, a better Nature’s Spiral, but Redirect Lightning is better than existing redirect riffs and performed well in testing, in part because of its Dismember-like flexibility.
What’s been not talked about is how learn with playable lessons fundamentally breaks some contexts of evaluation, where cards that are in the sideboard are usually either cards that “aren’t good enough” or don’t fit with the deck’s game plan.
The ability to fetch something from the sideboard should not be underestimated; especially since we collectively seem to have memory-holed Divide by Zero’s 2022 Standard ban; as Kade pointed out, the TLA/TLE lessons now include instants, which opens up some interesting possibilities by making cards like Airbending Lesson, It’ll Quench Ya, and Airbender’s Reversal fully available at instant speed.
When I test cards out for a new set, I seed the cards into the draft, which created some unique circumstances for this, as I seeded in not only the Avatar Lessons, but Learn cards like Divide by Zero and Professor of Symbology.
An undefeated blue-white aggro-control deck had Professor of Symbology, with Boomerang Basics in the sideboard and That’ll Quench Ya! in the main deck. The deck had and Redirect Lightning in the sideboard, with only Mana Confluence to make red mana, making Redirect a stretch, but an option.
The power level on some of the Learn cards is lagging by 2025 standards – Sparring Regimen is a tough sell in cube, but hopefully we see 2025-era Learn cards in Strixhaven 2.
I see these more as “Divide by Zero gets True Ancestry” rather than “Divide by Zero has a Learn package.” Incidental mana fixing from rainbow lands and other sources makes it possible to play these cards even when they’re off-color too.
Thanks for reading! You can find my socials and my cube lists on my Linktree, as well as other cube set review articles and design articles that I’ve written over the last 15 years.
Usman Jamil (he/him) has been creating Cube content since 2009 and created the first and longest running Cube podcast, The Third Power. He is a member of the Pauper Cube Committee and created the Ravnica Cube on Magic Online. His linktree is: https://linktr.ee/Usmantherad