Commander Deck Guide: Katara, the Fearless

The legendary creatures in the Avatar: The Last Airbender set are definitely worthy enough to command our decks.

Some are great with other cards in this set itself, like Iroh, Grand Lotus, but some shine next to old cards, like Fire Lord Azula and today's commander, Katara, the Fearless!

In this article, we'll show you two lists. One centers around auras and equipment cards that give abilities to Katara and other Allies. The other one, our alternative list, centers around Allies with strong ETB effects and some airbending spells as well.

Without further ado, let's see our commander!

In Avatar: The Legend of Aang, we follow Katara's journey. She goes from a young waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe to a waterbending master by the end of the series. She even mastered a rare waterbending skill, bloodbending.

Katara was one of the core characters in the series, a part of the "Gaang" itself, and really stood out during Avatar Aang's adventures. They even end up together at the end of the original series and have kids in the other Avatar show, Avatar: The Legend of Korra.

With that in mind, it's no wonder she was in seven different cards in this Magic: The Gathering set.

You'll find some of the versions above in our two lists, but our real protagonist is Katara, the Fearless.

A single Roaming Throne in a Commander list is already worrisome enough. Now, imagine a Roaming Throne that is also your commander. That's Katara, the Fearless, but for Allies. Her skills also trigger one extra time.

This ability makes creatures like Kabira Evangel, South Pole Voyager, and even Katara, Waterbending Master create a lot more value.

As we mentioned before, our first list plays several enchantments and equipment cards that grant different effects to our Allies.

You can play it as if it is a Voltron list. That is, use Katara to boost effects and as one of the best attackers/blockers in your deck. Or you can buff your other Allies and build a "snowball" board with different effects.

Here's our main list:

Bant lists have many ways to control the board and make any airbending ability a lot more powerful, but this list centers around buffing Allies so that you can create value in each combat phase.

Buffs

Ideally, we want to make Katara's Allies a lot stronger in several different ways. These are the cards we'll use to do that:

Equipment cards like Conqueror's Flail and Dragonfire Blade are valuable protection in this list, even if they don't give our Allies more abilities that we can double with Katara. Besides these cards, another equipment card that stands out is Hammer of Nazahn, which lets us attach equipment to our creatures for free.

Some effects that give us a huge advantage are cards like Glowcap Lantern, Conformer Shuriken, Snake Umbra, Staggering Insight, and Combat Research.

Sheltered by Ghosts is one of those cards that create a lot of value because they have more than one effect. In this case in particular, all its effects are quite cool.

When this enchantment comes into play, it exiles a nonland permanent the opponent controls until it leaves play. As for the creature you enchant with this aura, it gets +1/+0, lifelink, and ward 2.

This means it's a removal (albeit temporary), a buff, and protection, all in the same card. We just had to add it to our list!

Card Draw

We've already mentioned a few card draw tools, but let's get them all in the same section.

As auras and equipment cards don't cost a lot of mana, we opted for constant card draw. If you'd like, you can replace some of them for Greater Good or another green card draw tool, or even a blue card draw tool, known for their efficiency.

Evasion

The idea behind this deck is to attack so that you can trigger more abilities. Because of that, it plays cards like Silent Arbiter, which are great if you want to attack with just your commander. Nonetheless, you'll still have to play some evasion as well.

Our Allies can become killers with Brotherhood Regalia, scan the top cards in our deck with Aqueous Form's Scry, and get a lot from aura buffs like Shield of the Oversoul or Steel of the Godhead.

Because decks with two or more colors are so popular, you'll often run into decks that play nonbasic lands when you play Commander. This means Trailblazer's Boots is one of the strongest cards for any deck that leans more towards aggro.

Your opponents may try to remove it, but they'll often take at least one attack before they can.

Tapping Permanents

This list doesn't play lots of control cards, but it does play two that are great with Katara, the Fearless' effects.

Both of these cards trigger more than once with Katara. So, you'll tap two permanents when you attack with Ghostly Touch attached or tap two creatures when Ty Lee, Chi Blocker enters play.

Our alternative list interacts a lot more with Allies and plays lots of them from other sets, like Worldwake's Jwari Shapeshifter.

You won't give new abilities to your Allies with this deck, just buff the abilities they already have.

Many Allies do something when other Allies enter play, so this list plays cards you'll typically find in blink decks, like Panharmonicon and Eerie Interlude.

To get more out of the Avatar cards, we also leaned a lot into airbending and added cards like Avatar's Wrath, Monk Gyatso, Appa, Steadfast Guardian, Aang, Swift Savior, Airbender Ascension, and Aang, Airbending Master.

Katara, the Fearless is in excellent colors for a control list, but you don't actually want to play lots of control pieces with her.

She is strong and versatile, so you can use her as a main piece in your deck or as support for other cards, depending on the game.

You can also easily adapt her to your style or your pod's power level/bracket because she doesn't need a lot of pieces to work consistently.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!