Avatar: The Last Airbender Makes Ancient MTG Common Spike 1397%

Last updated on July 10, 2025

ATLA illustration – art by Toni Infante

Although we're in the middle of Edge of Eternities‘ reveals, the hottest star in the Magic card market may be a five-color legendary that lives not one, but two MTG sets in the future.

Avatar Aang and its back face, Aang, Master of Elements, is the only card we know about from the Avatar: The Last Airbender, which won't be release until November. Yet Aang is already kicking the price of old cards into the stratosphere thanks to his Master of Elements form.

Last week we reported about Fist of Suns, which had spiked by 100% to around $9 when we wrote about it, and then doubled again in price to around $18 at the time of writing, according to MTGStocks.

And now, a very old common has shot to the moon: Searing Touch, from Tempest, went from zero to hero (or, more precisely, from around $0.35 to nearly $6) in a matter of days:

Source: MTGStocks

While it does have some cEDH pedigree with Rowan, Scion of War in the Command Zone, Searing Touch is virtually unknown in casual Commander. Roughly just 1 out of 1,000 decks include a copy, and has never cost more than fifty cents.

Yet the hype around Aang has pushed Searing Touch from forgotten bulk to hot commodity.

Aang vs. Morophon

“Does Searing Touch work with the new backside of Avatar Aang like I think it does?” wondered u/Tall_Dancer last week. “Can I flip Aang, then cast Searing Touch for free and kill all of my opponents?”

“Yes,” explains u/Will_29. “Cost reductions apply to the total casting cost of a spell, including additional costs. You can cast Searing Touch with Buyback for free, infinitely.”

In other words, Aang, Master of Elements is fundamentally different to a very popular five-color commander, Morophon, the Boundless.

Morophon, the Boundless‘s cost-reduction ability does not work with generic mana, as it explicitly says in the card. Which means that if you want to cast Vanquisher's Banner, which costs , you still have to pay the full cost. 

But when Aang flips, every spell you cast costs less, and Aang's cost reduction does apply to generic mana. “If you reduce a colored symbol from a cost that doesn't include that color,” explains u/Will_29, quoting rule 118.7b from the Magic Comprehensive rules, “you reduce it by one generic instead.”

In other words: Spells that normally cost five or less become totally free with Aang in play as long as they don’t have several pips of the same color. And Aang discount also applies to alternative or additional costs. With Morophon, Vanquisher's Banner still costs the full ; with Aang flipped, it costs . 

And here is where the Buyback mechanic from Tempest shows up.

Buyback lets you pay an extra cost to return the spell to your hand after it resolves. Because Aang’s reduction also hits that extra cost, Buyback spells that cost less than 5 generic mana can be looped forever. The poster child is Searing Touch: Cast for free, buy it back for free, repeat until the table is dead.

You could also do a pretty good, “We've got Cyclonic Rift at home” with Capsize…

… which won't work against hexproof like Cyclonic Rift does but, hey, it's free! Or turn all of your opponent's lands into creatures with Verdant Touch and then Pyroclasm them. Or just cast any buyback spell a million times to drive your Storm count up and then Grapeshot or Brain Freeze the whole table.

But as the most straightforward way to go “Flip Aang, play buyback spell, win,” Searing Touch is the buyback card that's spiking hard right now, with the TSR printing of Haze of Rage also showing a lot of upward pressure.

Two other reasons for Searing Touch‘s spike are that financial-savvy MTG players have already noticed the trend, and the fact that Searing Touch is a very old card, and in relatively low supply:

Source: TCGplayer

Good News, Bad News, and Moonmist

The good news is what we just saw above: Aang, Master of Elements is one of the best cost reducers we've seen in a while. Fist of Suns spiked sky-high because you can cast it for free with Aang in play, and they you can cast anything for free.

Bad news is: In Magic, great power usually comes with a great cost. We still don’t know how the “element bending” mechanic will work, but with such a powerful backside, it's safe to assume it's going to be pretty hard.

(The worst news could be: Every once in a while, great power is trivial. See Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Then it gets banned.)

The interesting news is Moonmist, which had a stellar moment during the Final Fantasy pre-release:

Moonmist can transform any human at instant speed. And Aang's front face, Avatar Aang, is indeed a human (even if the backside is not) and therefore Moonmist will flip it. 

What Will Happen With Searing Touch's Price?

Searing Touch has never been reprinted since Tempest, and print runs in 1997 were tiny by modern standards. So while it's technically a common, it's a very rare common, above all if you're looking for near-mint commons.

And it's plain to see what's happening with Fist of Suns, which seems to have no ceiling. 

On the other hand, and with the usual caveat that this is not investment advice (doing your own research is priceless!), a lot depends on how easy Aang, Master of Elements is to flip.

His backside definitely offers one of the most aggressive cost reductions ever printed, and Searing Touch is the first buyback card to catch the Avatar wave.