Avatar the Last Airbender Precon Upgrade
- Leo De Jesus
- Nov 2
- 6 min read
Hey there!
Welcome back to Precon Playground where we find new cards for old precons.
As we’re in the middle of spoiler season for the Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) set, it’s a good time to take a look at some older precons to see what could get a huge upgrade. When looking at the four main keyword abilities in the ATLA set (airbend, firebend, waterbend, and earthbend) I feel that cards with earthbend already have a precon that’s made for them. The earthbend X ability reads: “Target land you control becomes a 0/0 creature with haste that’s still a land. Put X +1/+1 counters on it. When it dies or is exiled, return it to the battlefield tapped.” The intent of the earthbend ability is to attack with your land creatures knowing that they can come back if they leave the battlefield. What we can do with this precon is really interesting as we can capitalize on earthbending certain lands and using their fetch abilities to get them right back. The Land’s Wrath precon is a perfect fit as it cares both about landfall triggers and the +1/+1 counter strategies. With a few really cheap upgrades and most of the revealed cards with earthbend, this deck can go from one of the more budget precons to a frightening value engine capitalizing on lands & landfall triggers.
Part 1: The New Gameplan and New Avatar the Last Airbender Commander Precon
The deck is going to revolve around Toph, the First Metalbender as our commander.
We’re going to almost completely disregard the first half of the card and focus on the earthbending 2 on each of our end steps. The new goal of the deck is to get down as many landfall payoffs as possible and try to earthbend as many of our fetch lands as possible before we use them. Doing so will allow us to fetch with them and have them come right back to the battlefield tapped. Some of the best value you can get in a landfall strategy is using fetches to get two activations a turn. The ideal situation is leaving up a fetch land without using it, and on your next turn with Toph out, you can play a land for turn, earthbend a fetchland, sacrifice that fetchland to get two more landfall triggers. One from the fetchland’s target and another from the fetchland returning tapped. This makes the most “useless” lands EXTREMELY valuable. Combined with some other ways of getting your lands back to the battlefield, the value will hopefully be unsurmountable for your opponents. To close out the game we’re going to make sure that a bunch of our landfall payoffs are token makers to make sure we have enough creatures to go wide enough to take out our opponents.
Part 2: Best & Worst of the Mana Base
This is very rare but instead of going down a land or staying at or around 37 lands, we’re going up to 40 to make sure we can fetch for basics as much as possible. We’ll also be running the relatively risky (but pretty freaking funny) play of running only fetches and basics. To make sure we always have targets to find and maximize our value. To be on the safe side we’ll be very careful with any cards with multiple pips in the mana value. Ideally once we fetch one forest, mountain, and plains, we should be able to cast whatever we need and have enough fetch lands to get us through the rest of the game for the higher mana value cards. To highlight some of the best options already in the precon:
these are expensive to activate, but you can get two lands off of them and get them back to do it again later with Toph. After 2-3 activations they can start paying for themselves with the lands they get out.
Evolving Wilds & Terramorphic Expanse: This is the exact kind of ability we want, free activations to continuously get value. Unless the cards can get multiple lands like the Blighted Woodland and Myriad Landscape, we ideally don’t want to pay for our fetching activations.
Cryptic Caves: This is a cheap source of card draw that we can keep getting back with our earthbending abilities. Late in the game when we’re looking for closers or for more cards with landfall this can come in clutch.
Lands We’re Removing:
Bounce lands | Boros Garrison, Gruul Turf, & Selesnya Sanctuary: The bouncelands are great for making sure you make you land drops each turn but we can afford to get rid of them given the rest of the lands we’ll be adding.
All dual lands: We’re trying to prove a point by using only basics so we’re getting rid of the guildgates, the tri-land, and yes, even the command tower. It makes the deck actively worse but we’re doing this out of principle.
Lands Coming In:
Trimming all of the lands above gets us to just 28 lands in the deck. We’ll be padding it back up with more basics and the following fetch/utility lands.
It’s an expensive fetch for just getting us one basic, but it can deal with your opponents’ pesky utility lands and we can keep getting our back.
Escape Tunnel: We won’t be using the second ability much but this is another free sac and search along with Evolving Wilds and the like.
Fabled Passage: Probably the best earthbending target as we can get the fetched lands untapped.
Sheltering Landscape: Makes mana on its own and is also a free sac and search land.
Vibrant Cityscape: Another functional reprint of Evolving Wilds & Terramorphic Expanse.
Part 3: The Ins & Outs of the Deck
Cards Coming Out:
A lot of the deck is now focused on landfall value so many of the purely +1/+1 counter synergy cards are going to get cut. Some of the top end cards that cost way too much or have very restrictive casting costs also have to go.
Armorcraft Judge
Elite Scaleguard
Evolution Sage
Keeper of Fables
Living Twister
Sandstone Oracle
Tuskguard Captain
Return of the Wildpeaker
Together Forever
Fertilid
Murasa Rootgazer
Scaretiller
Inspiring Call
Waker of the Wilds
Satyr Wayfinder
Cards Going In:
As mentioned before the deck is now about using landfall token triggers.
Scute Swarm - This deck is now Landfall/Tokens and this card is one of best token generating options.
Felidar Retreat - Having our landfall activated token makers in enchantments is huge since it provides some resilience against boardwipes and let’s us rebuild quickly.
Tannuk, Memorial Ensign / Sabotender - These cards ping our opponents for each land drop we make. This deck does not struggle in making about 10 - 15 extra land drops over the course of a game, effectively setting your opponents’ life totals to 25-30 at the beginning of the game if these aren’t dealt with. Potentially lethal if they are both out together.
Phylath, World Sculptor - With the sheer amount of basic lands we’re running, it’s very easy to have this come down and create 10+ tokens.
Springheart Nantuko - We have some great payoffs/finishers in the deck that we’d love to make copies of if we can swing it. This lets us get those copies and outpace/outvalue our opponents much easier.
Valakut Exploration - Every green deck struggles with card draw so having a great source of incidental impulse draw is still great.
Toph, Earthbending Master - This is another repeatable source of earthbending so we can make the most out of all of our fetches and maximize our land drops each turn. Also if left unchecked, this can act as our closer spitting out 8/8s or 9/9s each turn is no small feat.
Bumi, Unleashed - Another way to earthbend and also to close out the game if we’re able to create enough land creatures.
Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender - It makes sense that the great Kyoshi is the best earthbender of them all. Like I mentioned before, making a free 8/8 each turn is pretty threatening.
Eusocial Engineering - Another enchantment-based way of getting landfall triggers and making a ton of tokens.
Avenger of Zendikar - A fantastic budget option to getting a ton of creatures at once and an easy way to make them all massive.
Conclusion: This Deck Hits Hard
This deck hits like a truck and the best part is that it is very unassuming and pretty resilient. There’s a bunch of landfall-token makers, so if your opponents get rid of one, there’s a bunch more to deal with. Getting rid of Toph just gets rid of the ability to recur your fetch lands consistently but you’ll have enough lands to get them all right back. So below is the decklist (cards we removed in the sideboard) check it out and let me know what you think!
And as always, remember to play nice and no shoving!
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