The 18 Best Black Cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender Ranked

Azula, Ruthless Firebender | Illustration by Rose Benjamin

New sets, new cards. You know the drill, we do it like 10 times a year at this point. Avatar: The Last Airbender (TLA) looks like a promising set, if only because Marvel's Spider-Man buried the bar. One of the most popular cartoons of all time has been immortalized in cardboard, and it has some juicy cards.

Black cards have plenty of material to draw on, from the conquering Fire Nation to the sinister machinations of the Dai Li. How have these cards been represented, and will any of the new cards see play? Are there any decent reprints? I have you covered with all the answers!

What Are Black Cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Joo Dee, One of Many | Illustration by Olena Richards

Black cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender (TLA) have a mono-black color identity. TLA's black cards generally care about firebending, Clues, and sacrificing permanents—often in combination. Of course, the color still has its trademark removal and discard.

The Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal set (TLE) features a variety of reprints with art from the original show. Reprints from the main set are ranked separately so you get a sense of what's good in the past and present of Magic!

I also want to mention firebending: Though cards with firebending feature red mana symbols, the mechanic doesn't add red to a card's color identity because the red symbols are part of the reminder text, not the card itself. It's the same ruling with extort on cards like Crypt Ghast and Blind Obedience.

Best Reprints and Bonus Sheet Cards

#8. Fire Nation Tank Train (Noxious Gearhulk)

Noxious Gearhulk gives Nekrataal a much more imposing body for some mana. It's great to flicker or recur to kill multiple creatures. It often swings close games with the burst of lifegain and removal, plus a clock to back it up.

#7. Feed the Swarm

A few years ago, black's share of the color pie expanded to include enchantment destruction, and Feed the Swarm is one of the earliest examples. Two-mana sorcery speed removal isn't amazing, but it's a great tool for Rakdos () and Grixis () with no other outs to enchantments.

#6. Black Sun's Zenith

Distributing -1/-1 counters makes Black Sun's Zenith a powerful board wipe because it gets around indestructible. This is also a crucial synergy card for decks that care about -1/-1 counters; no other Magic card distributes them en masse like this, which makes it crucial for commanders like Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Maha, Its Feathers Night.

#5. Bloodrender’s Rise (Bloodchief Ascension)

Bloodchief Ascension‘s main claim to fame is its infinite combo with Mindcrank, but it's a perfectly respectable win condition outside that loop. Two damage adds up fast when it comes tacked onto many basic game actions, like casting nonpermanent spells and trading in combat. Bloodchief Ascension's efficiency can't be beat—but you should be prepared to be Public Enemy #1 when you drop it at a Commander table.

#4. Deadly Rollick

Free interaction is always busted; any time you can spend no mana to ruin something your opponent spent mana on, you gain an advantage. Deadly Rollick asks basically nothing of you, and it's near-perfect removal. It's among the best black staples in EDH for a reason.

#3. Heartless Act

Heartless Act is such an interesting way to make a conditional removal spell that's still powerful. It generally kills whatever you need, and it still impacts the board when your opponent has no legal targets for the first mode by acting as a weird combat trick.

#2. Bastion of Remembrance

Blood Artist variants are crucial to many black, sacrifice-centric strategies and Bastion of Remembrance is one of the best. Being an enchantment makes it harder to remove and lets it survive most board wipes, which helps to keep your value engine running.

#1. Entomb

Entomb is a niche yet impactful tutor. If you can recast the card you bin with something like Muldrotha, the Gravetide, it becomes a super cheap Demonic Tutor, but it normally holds together reanimator decks as their best card. Reanimation decks rely on a three-card combo: a reanimation spell, a reanimation target, and a discard outlet to get the reanimation target into the graveyard. Entomb is invaluable because it's both the reanimation target and the discard outlet, which makes the combo far more consistent and cheaper.

#10. Ruinous Waterbending

My interest is contingent on Secrets of Strixhaven reintroducing learn cards to Standard. A Ruinous Waterbending in the sideboard to pull out against aggro in game 1 could be crippling. Variations of this effect have seen sideboard play in Standard before, so a wish-able version would be very playable—assuming we get the Wish cards, of course.

#9. Azula, On the Hunt

Azula, On the Hunt‘s two abilities amount to drawing a card when it attacks, though you have far more options since you can save the Clue and spend the mana on a burn spell or something. Four mana is a lot for a creature without an enters ability, but this could still work in casual Cubes.

#8. Foggy Swamp Visions

You need to put in some work to utilize Foggy Swamp Visions, but it looks worth it. A haste enabler like Anger or Concordant Crossroads would be simple, but it could be strong in a sacrifice deck. If you waterbend five creatures to get five tokens, you end up with 10 pieces of sacrifice fodder for Ashnod's Altar and Zulaport Cutthroat. It could even be good in a deck built around creatures with good enters abilities like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Cat-Gator.

#7. Fire Nation Occupation

Fire Nation Occupation is the rare spellslinger payoff in black, and it's a decent one: A stream of 2/2s that produce mana takes over games quickly. Since you want to play spells on your opponents' turns, I imagine this plays like a secret blue-black card. It looks like one of the more interesting black cards for Cube especially.

#6. June, Bounty Hunter

June, Bounty Hunter converts creatures into Clues, which is a great trade for sacrifice decks. Any sacrifice outlet that costs 1 mana probably goes infinite with Pitiless Plunderer and the right setup. A cheap creature with a cheap sacrifice ability that results in extra cards has lots of synergy potential; this looks perfect for Peasant Cube and Artisan Commander.

#5. Day of Black Sun

The newest black board wipe has decent potential. Since Day of Black Sun strips creatures of their abilities, indestructible enablers like Heroic Intervention do nothing. It doesn't handle expensive threats very well, but it's a great anti-aggro tool. It's also a great sideboard card against token strategies since it can destroy them for just .

#4. Cat-Gator

Cat-Gator staples Corrupt to a body, which is super intriguing. Black can pseudo-flicker this with Undying Evil effects and a sacrifice outlet, or you can play blue or white to flicker it properly. It has an incredible ceiling as a finisher. It's by no means better than Gray Merchant of Asphodel, but it offers an alternative or a redundant copy for singleton players.

#3. Raven Eagle

Raven Eagle looks like a decent threat for Standard and Cube. Similarly to Graveyard Trespasser, it pressures your opponent's life total and graveyard with incremental lifegain and damage baked in. It’s worse than the werewolf because you don't get a guaranteed enters trigger, but it still has Standard and Cube potential.

#2. Mai, Scornful Striker

Between first strike and the punisher ability, Mai, Scornful Striker is a powerful beater. It attacks through or profitably blocks most other 2-drops and basically guarantees 2 damage your opponents: Most removal spells deal 2 damage to them, so you always get some damage. Aggro decks can't ask for much more than that.

#1. Joo Dee, One of Many

First off, I want to tip my hats to Wizards for such a chilling and interesting design on Joo Dee, One of Many; it's the perfect way to represent the brain-washed masses the Dai Li used to oppress Ba Sing Se.

It also looks like a decent value engine. The ability is templated such that you can sacrifice the token it creates, so it effectively costs 1 mana to trigger all your cards that care about creatures dying, like Blood Artist and Morbid Opportunist, or you could use it to turn a stream of artifact tokens into 2/2s for board presence, like a black Legion Extruder.

Wrap Up

Day of Black Sun | Illustration by Matteo Bassini

Overall, black fared poorly in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Its most notable cards are reprints, while many of the new cards look either extremely niche or overshadowed by previous, similar cards. That said, there are some interesting designs like Foggy Swamp Visions and Joo Dee, One of Many, so I doubt this set will be totally forgotten.

What do you think about black cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender? Are you happy with how the cards turn out? Did you expect anything different? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord server!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!