Bending the Magic Secondary Market with Avatar: The Top 15 Cards that Airbending will Inflate in Price
- Jace
- Nov 13
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 3
We’ve taken a bespoke combo of AI and data science techniques to see what the new Avatar cards might do to bend Magic the Gathering card prices: So lets start with which cards are likely to float up in price because of Airbending?
Since Commander dominates the card prices, we'll focus on that.
Probably the cards who best represent Airbending for commander are Aang Airbending Master and his glorious pet/companion Appa, Steadfast Guardian
They each give you many, many blinks/flickers for your team and together can keep blinking each other to go infi-flicker AND to summon you hordes of 1/1 allies. So you’re going to want a lot of Enter the Battlefield triggers, and then to multiply those triggers.
But maybe the best is the totally busted:
But he's probably just going to be a staple in any x-white deck, so our selection here focuses on cards that are more generally good with airbending not just good with the monk (everything). The internet has already said a lot about airbend being a blink, but what feels less said is that you cast the cards - which gives a bunch of trigger options that traditional Momentary Blink/Ghostly Flicker types don't give. We have a few of those in here...
So here are the top 15 cards that the data science techniques predict will rise in value if lots of folks start airbending:
15. Mister Negative: for a card that had so much commander hype pre Spiderman release, it’s relatively cheap right now (in $) but a great airbending target. But perhaps the higher probability of opening any given Spidey rare/mythic in a play booster (because of the low number of cards in the set and the potential for 2-3 rares in a boosty) - plus the (in)famous excess supply of the Spidey set may mean this card’s not going up in value in the next couple months... Maybe it’s got a good shot of rising on ~year timescales.
14. Soulherder and Syr Vondam: every airbend pumps them and without a huge number of printings (and with Edge of Eternities second printing still an eternity away...) they stand a good chance of floating up.
13. God-Eternal Oketra: is going to make you a lot of 4/4s from every creature recast with airbending. But it had a relatively recent printing in the Aetherdrift commander precons, so it probably does not have huge potential.
12. Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald: just the one printing and much like Oketra (but much cheaper) you’re going to be churning out oodles of 2/2s, although unlike Oketra you have to be Naya to airbend with this, so much more limited breadth of deck options. Why is it ahead of Oketra? There are less copies available and it's not crazy to imagine an extra aetherdrift precon drop - harder to see more Faldorns entering the market.
11. General Tazri: Tutoring every ally by airbending Tazri each time seems good. In fact, if it’s your airbending commander of choice then you get all 5-colours of Magic allies to choose from. It only has the one (now quite old) print. And because it has 5 colours of activation, it lets you build an Aang airbender deck that also airbends Primeval Spawns, Soul of Emancipation AND Atraxa Grand Unifier etc…
10. Much as blinking Primeval Spawns, Souls of Emancipation and Atraxa feels unreasonable - blinking eldrazis feels similarly silly. For example, looping Emrakul to steal all your opponents turns is going to seal the game pretty quickly or at least let you thoroughly ruin each of their game plans. But the Eldrazi already command a pretty steep price, so in terms of a % rise this might not be huge.
9. Ketramose, the New Dawn: every airbend is card draw. On TCGplayer, its price climbs rapidly beyond the first few sales and Aetherdrift was not a popular set to open (and aside from stock up, probably will stay that way).
8. Kaya Spirits Justice: lets you turn every 1/1 ally into a copy of your best creature every time you bend. Currently, it’s at bargain bucket prices. Maybe there’s too much supply for it to really price spike?
7. Chulane, teller of tales: turns all your airbends into growth spirals. Not hugely well supplied, but also not particularly short supplied and requires the airbenders to be airbanters.
6. Annie Joins Up - gives you some fine removal, but mainly gives all the airbent legends double triggers: twice the tutors with Tazri, twice the wolves with Faldorn, twice the extra turns with every Eldrazi blink..., but just one printing...
5. Zinnia, Valleys Voice: every time you recast with airbending you can pay 2 and make an extra offspring copy… At the moment its super cheap, but tough to reprint because of the Bloomburrow-specificness of Offspring. Again, twice the extra turns, twice the tutors, but also twice the Soulherders and twice the number one pick...
4. Panharmonicon - already a staple, and it might have too many printings to grow in price significantly. But, unlike Annie, it doesn’t have to be Naya so it fits in whatever build of airbending is preferred.
3. Marneus Calgar: this might seem a weird one, but the ranking is based on most likely to price rise and there are plenty of other factors driving this one, but for Aang and Appa: every token you make draws you more airbending chaos… it might not be an airbender but its hard to see Marneus, who already has his own popular commander deck and is from 40k so limited availability for the foreseeable future - doing anything but going up in price.
2. Kellan, the Kid — When you cast spells from anywhere other than your hand (casting permanents from Appa’s exile qualifies), Kellan lets you cast another permanent from your hand for free (equal or lesser value) — fantastic tempo and value because Appa makes cheap, repeatable off-board casting possible.
1. Keeper of Secrets and The Lost and the Damned: Already on the up (Lost and Damned was one of the biggest price growers this month from Green Goblin, Gwen/Ghost Spider etc decks) any Boros/Jeskai airbenders are going to be pinging opponents and summoning hordes of 3/3s with these two 40k all stars. There are a few 10s of copies of each of them left on TCGPlayer. Airbend Emrakul, with your offsprung Keeper in play and throw 30 damage where you like - you won't even need the extra turns. Every airbent Keeper makes you an extra offsprung copy and throws around 6 damage.... But really at the heart of this price rise is how many new commanders these cards work perfectly with.
Honorable mentions:
There were so many that we could have written a book, but here's a handful of the most fun ones:
Katara, the Fearless is obviously ideal for doubling your airbending, but its not out yet so we don't consider it here.
Cheaper than Chulane, without the ramp, but fitting in the jeskai builds: Vega the Watcher feels like an allstar uncommon here.
Rocco Street Chef is another (better) Soulherder or Syr Vondam, but needs to be Naya.
Beza the Bounding Spring - is a very solid value blink target that fits in any airbending decks and doubling its triggers starts to push it out of control....
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Jace & Garruk
