Standard: 5 Budget Decks with Avatar: The Last Airbender

The Magic: The Gathering collaboration with Avatar: The Last Airbender has been celebrated for the immersive narrative quality the set's cards offer to longtime fans and those unfamiliar with Aang's adventures, showcasing iconic moments and diverse character arcs across various stages of the story.

With the set's cards now available on Magic Arena, this is a good time to explore new possibilities, including for players who may not want to spend as much on the digital platform and prefer low-cost wildcard decklists and a more casual environment for completing daily missions with inexpensive but efficient decks.

With this audience in mind, this article presents five Standard decklists requiring a maximum investment of twelve rare wildcards, aiming to leverage some of Avatar's highlights or create decks based on some of the set's key mechanics!

Selesnya Allies - 8 Rares, 2 Mythics

There are many ways to take advantage of Allies in the various color combinations in Avatar, but since most of the available Legendaries are rare and we're focusing on accessible lists, we prioritized type interactions with South Pole Voyager and Earth King's Lieutenant, which guarantee more resources and a considerable increase in board presence.

Fortunately, we also have other quality non-legendary allies in the set: Earth Kingdom Jailer can deal with small creatures and artifacts while being a 3/3 for three mana, Invasion Reinforcements puts two bodies on the board and guarantees an extra draw with South Pole Voyager on its own, and Earth Kingdom Protectors allows playing around removals.

Azorius Fliers - 8 Rares

Momo, Friendly Flier and Air Nomad Legacy are excellent motivators for exploring a deck with flying creatures, and this color combination also allows us to play with one of the best cards from Avatar, Aang, Swift Savior, which functions as both board and stack interaction.

Speaking of interaction, we also included Sheltered by Ghosts as spot removal, in addition to Into the Flood Maw as cheap bounce. It's worth noting that many of our spells also have the advantage of putting creature tokens with Flying into play, improving the synergies we have with Momo, Friendly Flier to pressure the opponent.

Izzet Lessons - 8 Rares

Lessons is another of the main themes of the new set, with Accumulate Wisdom and Ran and Shaw as the main payoffs for a deck focused on the mechanic. To increase consistency, we run a total of sixteen Lessons between Accumulate Wisdom, Iroh’s Demonstration, Combustion Technique, and Firebending Lesson, which form our interaction package.

Since Ran and Shaw also care about dragons, we included Marang River Regent as both a win condition and a source of advantage in cards complementary to Stock Up, in addition to Dragonfly Swarm as a threat that interacts with the Lessons. Including more dragons also expands the potential of Dispelling Exhale as a stack interaction.

Mono Blue Terror - 0 Rares

Serpent of the Pass is another addition to Tolarian Terror and Eddymurk Crab in a Mono Blue Tempo deck running several cheap cards to increase the number of instants and sorceries in the graveyard to have an army of 5/5 or higher creatures on the board for the least amount of mana possible.

We use Sleight of Hand and Opt in the early turns to filter the top, while Picklock Prankster allows us to feed the graveyard and, hopefully, facilitate the casting of one of our bombs as early as turn three. Spell Pierce and Get Out function as protection and answers against troublesome cards, which they also share with Bounce Off and Unsummon that doubles as protection from spot removals and board interaction.

Mono Red Prowess - 12 Rares

This is a classic Mono Red Prowess list using the new Firebending Student as another powerful threat with the pump spells available in the format, and with a relevant bonus: the Firebending ability generates mana equal to its power, so any spell, in addition to Prowess's trigger, will also generate mana when it attacks, turning pumps into pseudo-Dark Rituals or better.

This mana allows for a more conscious use of the main phase, playing more proactively with our creatures under the guarantee that a Wild Ride will be enough to generate four red mana in the same turn, allowing for more sequenced spells in combat, or even casting Opera Love Song to search for more resources.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thank you for reading!