The 23 Best Blue Cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender Ranked

Katara, Heroic Healer | Illustration by Pauline Voss

Avatar: The Last Airbender (TLA) brings a slew of new cards to Magic, including reprints and new build arounds and value engines. Blue looks especially exciting: Between strong reprints and intriguing new cards, blue players should have something to tinker around with.

Whether you want to keep up with Standard, enhance your Commander deck, or expand your Cube, TLA has at least one card for your binder.

What Are Blue Cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Wan Shi Tong, Librarian | Illustration by Ryota Murayama

Blue cards in Avatar: The Last Airbender (TLA) are any cards with a mono-blue color identity. That's often due to their mana cost, but it could be because of activated abilities on colorless cards. Blue cards from TLA generally care about noncreature spells or waterbending, a new mechanic from the set.

In addition to the main set, we have Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal (TLE), which features reprints with images from the original show, much like the Final Fantasy: Through the Ages cards and the Starter Decks. This list ranks reprints and new cards separately so you have an idea of which reprints are worth chasing and which new cards look promising.

Best Reprints and Bonus Sheet Cards

#8. Training Grounds

Though Training Grounds is a relatively niche card, it's exceptional alongside creatures like Kenrith, the Returned King and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. Few other cards offer such steep cost reduction for so little cost.

#7. Intruder Alarm

Intruder Alarm is one of Magic's best combo enablers. If you have a creature like Shrieking Drake that returns itself to your hand and mana dorks that tap for more mana than the drake costs, you net infinite mana. The combo lines grow increasingly complex if you like, and they make it a central card to many EDH decks.

#6. Agent of Treachery

Agent of Treachery stands supreme as one of the best big flicker targets in the game. Stealing permanents forever is a double-whammy that gives you a threat while denying it to your opponents. Theft answers opposing commanders beautifully since your opponent loses a central card, but it won't go back to the command zone.

#5. Mystic Remora

Mystic Remora never took off in Constructed because only one player could trigger it, but it scales beautifully in your typical four-player EDH pod, so much so that players warn each other not to feed the fish. Cumulative upkeep means it won't stick around forever, but you only need to draw two cards to be ecstatic.

#4. Mystical Tutor

Magic has an inherently high level of variance, and one goal of good deckbuilding is to mitigate that. Tutors are one way to guarantee you have the card you need, and Mystical Tutor is one of the best due to its efficiency. Because it puts you down a card, this is best used to assemble game-winning combos by finding cards like Demonic Consultation, Doomsday, and Time Walk.

#3. Brainstorm

Brainstorm is one of Magic's most iconic cantrips, though its power relies on shuffle effects from cards like fetch lands. This card's strength lies in the play pattern: Draw three cards, then shuffle away your two worst cards. Depending on the circumstances, it feels like casting Ancestral Recall. Three looks at an answer, land, or whatever else you need for a single mana at instant speed is hard to top.

#2. Fierce Guardianship

Fierce Guardianship is easily the strongest card of the powerful cycle of free spells from Commander 2020. Free countermagic is strong enough to play even when it puts you down on cards, like Force of Will, so you can imagine how powerful the effect becomes when you need to do nothing but control your commander—which you want to do anyway.

#1. Force of Negation

Force of Negation shuts down most scary things your opponents try to do. While not as versatile as Force of Will, it's also far more reasonable to hard-cast in a pinch. It also proves how good free spells are: Even though this requires a two-for-one and has heavy restrictions on what it can target and when you can cast it without paying its mana cost, it still sees heavy play.

#15. Gran-Gran

Gran-Gran intrigues me, though it's likely more interesting than good. On the one hand, 1-mana cost reduction tends to be quite strong. But is it worth filling your deck with lessons to reach that point? Probably not, but it still seems interesting to build around. I bet there's a Simic () self-mill deck that could make this work in Constructed….

#14. Katara, Waterbending Master

I fear Katara, Waterbending Master belongs with Gran-Gran in the more interesting than good category, but I still love the design. This is one of the more unique experience counter cards, both in what it offers and how it collects them. It has no immediate impact and is exceedingly fragile, so it probably doesn't get there in the modern era, but that won't stop me from trying.

#13. Octopus Form

Octopus Form is hardly revolutionary since we already have Shore Up, Dive Down, etc. But Commander players might be interested in a redundant copy of the card. It also has potential in future Standard; if Secrets of Strixhaven brings back learn to go with TLA's lessons, this hyper-efficient trick could be a sideboard staple.

#12. The Spirit Oasis

The Spirit Oasis is criminally under-costed. Like all shrine cards, it's too parasitic to be a genuine problem, but its mana cost is crazy. Its enters trigger counts itself, so you always go up a card. You only need one other shrine for it to be Divination—thus, perfectly on-rate for a 3-mana, sorcery speed draw spell—and anything else makes it unfair. It doesn't offer quite the same amount of card advantage as Honden of Seeing Winds, but you also don't need to wait until your upkeep for cards.

#11. Water Whip

In most sets, I'd dismiss Water Whip as a Limited playable, and only then if the format is particularly slow. But waterbend is significantly better than costing generic mana. Blue creates lots of tokens, especially when you add another color for access to, say, Third Path Iconoclast or Monastery Mentor. You get a great deal if you cast Water Whip for 4 mana and tap summoning sick tokens or artifacts like Cori Steel Cutter that don't need to be untapped. This won't break the Pro Tour, but it's one of the more interesting Cube cards.

#10. Yue, the Moon Spirit

Cards that cheat on mana costs are always interesting, and Yue, the Moon Spirit potentially lets you drop cards like Omniscience and Time Stretch for no mana at all. It faces stiff competition from cards like Jodah, Archmage Eternal and Fist of Suns without the once-per-turn or noncreature restrictions, but the mana you save with waterbend might be the key to make it work.

#9. Baboon Spirit

Oh look, another card that goes infinite with Peregrine Drake!

Baboon Spirit looks niche, but very useful. Flicker decks don't mind a redundant copy of Mistmeadow Witch, and it's a strong payoff for spirit decks, which often rely on the ETB trigger of cards like Rattlechains and Spectral Arcanist. That casts this as a secret Azorius card, but it's still worth highlighting.

#8. Spirit Water Revival

A Divination that becomes a personal Timetwister when you invest enough resources has incredible potential. Spirit Water Revival looks excellent in decks that can convert card draw into tokens; think The Locust God or Gavi, Nest Warden. Waterbend 6 is probably too much without significant token production, but I see this working out.

#7. Waterbender's Restoration

Mass flicker effects are powerful protection spells. Exiling your creatures until the end step gets around every form of board wipe, from destroying all creatures, to exiling or sacrificing them. You also get to retrigger all those valuable enters abilities, an effect worth playing on its own, so these become extremely flexible. Waterbender's Restoration does all that at an incredibly cheap cost if all the creatures you want to protect are untapped.

#6. Waterbender Ascension

Wizards has printed many variants of Coastal Piracy, but Waterbender Ascension‘s low mana cost is unique; this effect normally costs 4 mana. It takes time to get it running, and it doesn't always draw a card the turn it comes down the way a regular Piracy might, but you don't lose out on much if your opponent blows up the enchantment. Reducing the cost of a card that doesn't directly impact the board is always useful, and blue has plenty of proliferate cards to fuel this.

#5. The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

The Unagi of Kyoshi Island has incredible potential as a control threat. Flash lets you hold it up alongside your countermagic and Consult the Star Charts. It doesn't even enter tapped, so you can ambush opposing creatures, and it has ward. That alone wouldn't be strong enough in 2025, but drawing additional cards so you can keep pace with your opponents looks spicy. I expect this to be decent in Standard and Commander, and it’s notable in EDH because you have three opponents that draw cards to trigger it.

#4. Wan Shi Tong, Librarian

Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is an instant Commander staple. This is just Archivist of Oghma, except you're as happy to draw it turn 8 as you are turn 2. Between fetch lands, ramp spells, and tutors, Commander players constantly search their library.

#3. Forecasting Fortune Teller

We finally have a blue Thraben Inspector, though Forecasting Fortune Teller costs twice as much. Blue does more with Clues and artifacts in general than white, so this likely sees a fair bit of play, even if it’s the weaker card of the two.

#2. Katara's Reversal

You rarely need to counter four spells, but I suppose Commander tables might find an excuse for it. Katara's Reversal seems more interesting for the mass untap ability. This generates infinite mana pretty easily with cards like Lithoform Engine and Kitsa, Otterball Elite that can copy the Reversal and get untapped by the copy plus mana dorks/rocks. The flexibility is key here: A combo card that also protects you is pretty appealing.

#1. The Mechanist, Aerial Artisan

The Mechanist, Aerial Artisan offers some of the most consistent Clue production in the game. Forensic Gadgeteer comes close, but this card has far more general applications. The tap ability is fine and cute, and it’ll win a game or two of Cube, but the triggered ability should make this an EDH staple.

Wrap Up

Yue, the Moon Spirit | Illustration by Yuumei

I'm interested to see how Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s blue cards impact multiple formats. It doesn't have any immediately obvious standouts like Consult the Star Charts or Stock Up, but some of these cards could become format staples in EDH and Cube.

Which blue cards are you interested in playing from TLA? Are you happy with how they turned out? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!