Designing Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™: Team Avatar and Legendary Creatures
One of the most challenging parts of designing Universes Beyond sets is that each release has extremely different needs. For example, I previously worked on various Universes Beyond Commander decks. Some of those properties span many decades, with hundreds of characters and thousands of hours of content. By contrast, Avatar: The Last Airbender is only three seasons long, with a total of 61 episodes. Rather than deciding which characters to include, our challenge was deciding how many versions of each character to make.
Our team and Avatar Studios identified a core cast of seven characters: Aang, Katara, Azula, Zuko, Toph, Iroh, and Sokka. To highlight these characters, I wanted to make three versions of each to line them up with the three books (or seasons) of the show. Having each character pick up additional colors over time helped convey their growth and made it easier for players to track which one was which. Additionally, we knew that Jumpstart Boosters were going to need additional monocolor versions of these characters, which meant we wanted to make multicolor options in the main set so that Commander players would have different options available to build decks for their favorite characters.
0074_MTGTLA_JmpNew: Aang, Airbending Master
0207a_MTGTLA_Main: Avatar Aang
Jumpstart Booster themes are usually one color, which means they’re a bad home for multicolor legendary creatures.
The uncommon version of each character shows them at the start of their journey. These cards help to ensure that fans will get to see their favorite characters, even if they only open a few booster packs.
0004_MTGTLA_Main: Aang, the Last Airbender
0059_MTGTLA_Main: Katara, Bending Prodigy
0085_MTGTLA_Main: Azula, On the Hunt
0163_MTGTLA_Main: Zuko, Exiled Prince
0198_MTGTLA_Main: Toph, the Blind Bandit
We picked five characters, one per color, to be our marquee uncommons. These cards show off the major set mechanics, are powerful draws into their respective colors for Limited, and appear in their respective Character Booster in Prerelease Packs.
Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender
Prerelease Packs
Your seeded Character Booster may appear in clear cellophane depending on where it was printed.
We decided to make seeded Prerelease Packs to align with feedback from players who said they wanted to introduce their friends and family to Magic with this set. Prerelease is our biggest event in terms of new-player attendance. Guaranteeing that you can play your favorite color or character is a big bonus and makes the experience smoother and easier for players who may be building their first sealed deck.
Whenever I told people about our Prerelease Packs, they would always ask, “What’s the black one going to be?” and I would say, “Azula!” Nobody ever had any further doubts!
Two of our characters—Sokka and Iroh—ended up in our cycle of uncommon hybrid legends.
0241_MTGTLA_Main: Sokka, Lateral Strategist
0224_MTGTLA_Main: Hama, the Bloodbender
0252_MTGTLA_Main: Zhao, Ruthless Admiral
0248_MTGTLA_Main: Uncle Iroh
0243_MTGTLA_Main: Suki, Kyoshi Warrior
0225_MTGTLA_Main: Hei Bai, Spirit of Balance
0238_MTGTLA_Main: Professor Zei, Anthropologist
0233_MTGTLA_Main: Long Feng, Grand Secretariat
0229_MTGTLA_Main: Jet, Freedom Fighter
0223_MTGTLA_Main: Guru Pathik
Modern Magic sets have one or two cycles of multicolor uncommons we call “signposts.” These cards communicate the strategy players should expect to see in each two-color pair and offer a powerful reward for committing to that strategy.
0201_MTGWOE_Main: Ash, Party Crasher
0208_MTGDSK_Main: Arabella, Abandoned Doll
0225_MTGEOE_Main: Sami, Ship’s Engineer
Some legendary signposts from previous sets.
Legendary creatures tend to be a great fit for these signposts, but something we noticed early on in testing was that newer players would naturally prioritize their favorite characters. If their favorite characters were multicolor cards, less-experienced players could easily end up trying to play too many colors in their deck or trying to draft colors that weren’t open.
To solve this, I was inspired by one of my personal favorite sets, War of the Spark. In that set, Lead Designer Dave Humphreys made an uncommon cycle of hybrid planeswalkers because he wanted the characters to show up in more decks while still communicating the identity of the character. As a bonus, these hybrid cards also supported monocolor decks similar to another one of my personal favorite sets, Throne of Eldraine.
By making our main cast of legendaries monocolor and hybrid cards at uncommon, our hope was to greatly increase the chances that building or drafting around these recognizable faces (which fans already wanted to do) would be strategically correct more often.
0059_MTGTLA_Main: Katara, Bending Prodigy
0231_MTGTLA_Main: Katara, Water Tribe’s Hope
0230_MTGTLA_Main: Katara, the Fearless
When it came time to design the rare versions of each character, we tried to look at each set of three holistically. For instance, originally, all three versions of Katara had waterbending abilities. But while playtesting, we found that Katara, the Fearless’s extra ability wasn’t adding much. The first line was exciting enough on its own, and by removing other text, we could simplify the card, reduce her mana cost, and add flavor text, all of which resulted in a more appealing card. Because there were two other Kataras that both prominently featured waterbending and leaned more heavily into Katara’s combat skills, we felt comfortable with her third card leaning more into her supportive, team-player role.
0085_MTGTLA_Main: Azula, On the Hunt
0208_MTGTLA_Main: Azula, Cunning Usurper
0220_MTGTLA_Main: Fire Lord Azula
0248_MTGTLA_Main: Uncle Iroh
0228_MTGTLA_Main: Iroh, Tea Master
0227_MTGTLA_Main: Iroh, Grand Lotus
Some characters, like Azula and Iroh, had very clear story moments we could represent. Each of these cards speaks to a particular episode or story arc from the show. I particularly enjoy Azula, Cunning Usurper stealing your opponent’s cards like she stole the throne of the Earth Kingdom, as well as Iroh, Tea Master embracing a simple, humble, selfless life by sharing his permanents with others. Personally, I like to imagine Iroh, Tea Master also represents him after the events of the show.
0241_MTGTLA_Main: Sokka, Lateral Strategist
0240_MTGTLA_Main: Sokka, Bold Boomeranger
0242_MTGTLA_Main: Sokka, Tenacious Tactician
As the main cast’s only nonbender, we wanted Sokka to draw strength from interacting with your other creatures and spells rather than through raw output.
Other characters undergo less-dramatic changes, so their designs are based more around representing different aspects of their character. For example, Sokka’s first card is good at supporting his friends, his second card shows his personal growth as he learns lessons and embraces his technical aptitude, and his final card is him coming into his own as a leader. All three of his cards work well with his signature weapon, Trusty Boomerang.
0198_MTGTLA_Main: Toph, the Blind Bandit
0246_MTGTLA_Main: Toph, Hardheaded Teacher
0247_MTGTLA_Main: Toph, the First Metalbender
Similarly, Toph showcases earthbending in three different ways. Her first card is (literally) empowered by earthbending. Her second card teaches you earthbending. And her third card redefines earthbending. Toph, the First Metalbender was a design I spent a lot of time fighting to keep weird. Fans of the show know that metalbending is a massive moment that changes the world in a fundamental way. I strongly felt that the strangeness of this card—namely the way it breaks a lot of interactions you normally take for granted—was the perfect encapsulation of this moment and of Toph’s general disregard for established norms. They did convince me to put reminder text on it, though!
We spent a ton of time working on these cards to make these characters shine in both flavor and gameplay, but there were two characters in particular I knew would be especially important to get right as a set.
0163_MTGTLA_Main: Zuko, Exiled Prince
0253_MTGTLA_Main: Zuko, Conflicted
0221_MTGTLA_Main: Fire Lord Zuko
The first was Zuko. Zuko’s character arc is one of the most iconic narratives in all of animation. I wanted to make sure all three of his cards worked together to tell a cohesive story. Exile, both conceptually and mechanically, ended up being the key to tying the three Zuko cards together. Exile is a powerful tool for designers, and Zuko’s exile from his home is the catalyst for his journey throughout the show, so we found different ways for each Zuko card to use exile. His first card exiles cards from the top of your library, a staple effect for red cards that also represents his desperate search for the Avatar (and for meaning in his own life). His second card captures his self-destructive nature at this stage of his life, exiling himself to try and figure out who he truly is. His last card ties everything together, synergizing with both previous versions as well as with airbending to represent his newfound friendship with Aang.
0004_MTGTLA_Main: Aang, the Last Airbender
0204a_MTGTLA_Main: Aang, Swift Savior
0203a_MTGTLA_Main: Aang, at the Crossroads
0207a_MTGTLA_Main: Avatar Aang
Due to production limitations, we couldn’t have the uncommon version of Aang be a double-faced card (DFC) without adding many more uncommon DFCs to the set, so we chose to leave him as a simple card. Instead, we were able to add additional mythic rare DFCs, which became the cycle of double-faced Sagas.
Speaking of which, Aang is obviously the other character we had to get right. As the title character, Aang’s journey serves as the foundation for the entire show. He’s the only character with four cards in the main set, each one featuring an additional color and the next element in the Avatar Cycle. He’s also the only character to receive double-faced cards, showcasing him entering the Avatar state.
Aang’s final card, Avatar Aang, was probably the card we changed the most throughout the design process. It was difficult to try and capture all four elements on one card. Our final design ended up feeling the most resonant to the character because it sent players on a quest just like Aang. To maximize the card’s potential, you must track down benders from all four nations and gather them together as a team, just like Aang did. Sometimes the best design for a card isn’t about capturing that character’s literal abilities but instead recreating their emotional state for the players to experience.
As I sign off, I want to give a big shout out to all my fellow designers who worked on this project, as well as to the many other wonderful Wizards who worked on art, creative text, rules, editing, digital, packaging, marketing, localization, and so much more. While it was a true privilege to lead this set, I’m ultimately one small part of the village it takes to make something like this a reality.
I loved bringing Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender to life for you all, and I hope you’ll love it, too. Enjoy!
