Airbending Legends Team Up to Produce Infinite Flicker Combos

Last updated on October 17, 2025

Katara, Heroic Healer | Illustration by Pauline Voss

Aang and Appa, name a better pairing. Tymna and Kraum? Alright, you got me there.

These two were a given for Avatar: The Last Airbender, and we've already seen at least a few cards each for both of the characters. It also just so happens that some of their mythic rare versions work quite well together, as you'd expect from Aang and his trusty mount.

The Hardest Element to Master

To understand the combo potential between Aang, Airbending Master and Appa, Steadfast Guardian, one must first master airbending. This is one of four new Avatar-universe mechanics being introduced in the Universes Beyond set, and it's fairly intuitive. Airbending a permanent exiles it, then allows the owner to cast it from exile for instead of its normal mana cost (timing restrictions still apply). Think of it like a fair version of blink, which can exile your own permanents for value/protection, or get an opponent's creature out of the way for a bit.

The best airbending card revealed so far is Appa, Steadfast Guardian, a riff off the classic Restoration Angel (flash, flying, same mana value and statline, same general idea). Whereas Old Resto provided an immediate flicker effect, Appa instead tucks the target away to cast later. The bison has a more restrictive mana cost, but also rewards you by being able to target multiple permanents at once, and also creating 1/1 allies when you cast something from exile. That last part can be from airbended (airbent?) permanents, or something that was put into exile from a completely different effect.

You also have Aang, Airbending Master, which comes from the supplementary Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal add-on. This 5-drop airbends something on ETB, and gathers experience counters as your creatures leave play in various ways. You then spit out 1/1 allies on your upkeep equal to the number of experience counters you have.

Combo Potential

Aang's Journey | Illus. Kotakan

The two are obviously meant to work flavorfully together, but it also helps that they can produce infinite combos when combined with a few select cards. The trick here is reducing the cost of creatures you cast by at least 2 mana, which will make it free to recast airbending targets from exile. If you can bring that cost down to , you can loop Appa and Aang infinitely. Whichever one enters second can airbend the other one, which you can then cast for free with the right amount of cost reduction in play. They then trade off exiling one another and returning to play, which results in infinite 1/1 ally tokens and infinite experience counters.

Cards like Semblance Anvil and Urza's Incubator are key pieces of the combo here. Aang and Appa are both allies themselves, so Incubator can make them both free to cast from exile. You could also aim for tandem cost reducers with some combination of Pearl Medallion, Oketra's Monument, and/or The Wind Crystal. As long as you can get that 2-mana requirement on airbending down to 0, your airbent permanents are free to cast.

As anyone who's played with Squirrel Nest combos knows, amassing a board of infinite 1/1s doesn't immediately win the game on its own, so if you're not keen on waiting a turn to smash with all your allies, you can add in extra pieces to make this an immediate wincon. Any sort of Impact Tremors ability will do the trick, and allies even have their own ETB pinger in Kalastria Healer. You could also drop a haste enabler to let your 1/1s attack right away, and you have Chasm Guide if you want to keep on-theme with more allies. You don't have to play allies by any means, but it's cool that the tools are there to bring it all together. You even have General Tazri as an ally-specific tutor that can search up most missing pieces of the combo.

If you're looking for non-ally specific ways to cheese airbending, check out cards like Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius, Hoarding Broodlord, and Sage of the Beyond as additional ways to recast airbending targets for free. These are the sorts of combo pieces that are perfect for casual Commander builds in the Bracket 3 range, given how clunky they are. These Appa/Aang combos are perfectly reasonable ways to end a game, but also require set-up using somewhat expensive individual cards, so you shouldn't get any complaints from your playgroup (unless they just really hate Universes Beyond).