Last updated on November 23, 2025
Earthen Ally | Illustration by Boell Oyino
Avatar: The Last Airbender finally hits Magic's Standard format today! And with it comes earthbending, a mechanic that looks, at first glance, like it solves the classic risk of land animation.
It does… until someone points a bounce spell at your “safe” earthbended land.
And Standard just happens to have a very good bounce spell up its sleeve… plus a couple other nasty surprises for would-be earthbenders: Aetherize, and Final Fantasy's Ultima. Let's see how bad the bad news are!
Earthbend 101: What Your Land's “Life Insurance” Policy Really Covers
Toph, the First Metalbender | Illustration by Eilene Cherie
When you earthbend, a target land you control becomes a 0/0 land creature with haste, you put N +1/+1 counters on it, and when it dies or is exiled, you return it to the battlefield tapped under your control.
The “life insurance” policy is a big plus: When your land becomes earthbended it can get killed with Feed the Swarm, or exiled with Swords to Plowshares… but it's not such a big deal if your land then returns to the field.
“Turning your lands into creatures is risky,” notes WotC's Matt Tabak in the Avatar: The Last Airbender Mechanics article. “If they leave the battlefield, you effectively lose a creature and the mana that land could have provided. Earthbend is much safer.”
Thing is, you have to read the fine print. Earthbend's “life insurance” policy only covers death and exile… but there are other ways to remove a land from the battlefield, and in those cases your land won't come back.
Into the Flood Maw: Standard's Earthbender Hate
Into the Flood Maw is a one-mana blue instant that targets a creature an opponent controls and bounces it, and that has an upgraded “gift a Fish” mode that allows it to hit nonland permanents.
It's very much a multi-format all-star that sees top-tier play in cEDH, Modern, Pioneer and Standard… and the irony here is that, although the gift mode is why it's so good (because you can get rid of any pesky nonland permanent), it's the basic “creatures-only” mode that ruins an earthbender day.
As we reported earlier this week, it sees a lot of maindeck play in one of Standard's breakout decks, Izzet Control…
… but it's also present as sideboard tech in Simic Ouroboroid Aggro, and some Dimir Aggro variants.
With a card that sees play across so many Magic formats is never easy to know which factors are impacting its price, but the fact is that Into the Flood Maw has, well, bounced. Hard.
Source: TCGplayer
… And in Other Bad News…
Into the Flood Maw isn’t the only spell making earthbend a tough sell.
As it happens, Standard has a playable mass-bounce spell, Aetherize, sometimes seen as sideboard tech in what's currently the most popular control deck, Jeskai Control.
If your opponent ever decides to go full Avatar State and swing with a bunch of animated lands, Aetherize just picks up all those lands and dumps them back into their hand.
And then there's Ultima, also played often in Jeskai Control.
Ultima is a Final Fantasy sorcery that destroys all artifacts and creatures, then ends the turn. The interaction with earthbend is brutal: Your earthbent lands are creatures, so they’re destroyed by Ultima, which would create a bunch of “when this dies or is exiled, return it” triggers… but Ultima then ends the turn, exiling everything on the stack and skipping straight to the cleanup step.
Wrap Up
Boseiju, Who Endures | Illustration by Chris Ostrowski
Avatar’s earthbending mechanic is flavorful and genuinely powerful, but it’s not the risk-free “animate your lands forever” button it might look like on first read.
If you’re planning to throw lands at people, you should respect foes that leave open. Your earthbended lands can shrug off death and exile, but will break down before a bounce!
Follow Draftsim for awesome articles and set updates:
4 Comments
Not sure if I’m wrong here, but I don’t think [[Ultima]] affects earthbent lands. According to rule 603.3, “Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority.” And according to rule 117.5, “Each time a player would get priority, the game first performs all applicable state-based actions as a single event, then repeats this process until no state-based actions are performed. Then triggered abilities are put on the stack.” And finally, rules 608.2a-n describe the steps to follow while resolving an instant or sorcery spell, while 608.2p says “Once all possible steps described in 608.2c–n are completed, any abilities that trigger when that spell or ability resolves trigger.” All of this to say, the earth ending triggers won’t be put on the stack until after Ultima has completely finished resolving, which means it won’t remove the triggers from the stack.
Appreciate the rules-digging, but Ultima does work as written in this article.
If you want some extra proof, check out the rules on Ultima specifically, which states “All spells and abilities on the stack are exiled. This includes any abilities that triggered as a result of destroying all artifacts and creatures”. It covers the triggers that would go on the stack as a result of destroying/exiling an earthbent land.
while ultima does exile anything on the stack, I believe there’s no time for those triggers to go on the stack between the creatures being exiled and the turn ending so wouldn’t they just go on the stack at the next time the game checks state based actions? which would be at the beginning of the next turn?
Check out this ruling on ending the turn:
723.1a. If there are any triggered abilities that triggered before this process began but haven’t been put onto the stack yet, those abilities cease to exist. They won’t be put onto the stack.
Add Comment