Nov 21, 2025
TLA Draft Report (WB Go-Wide Value)
Nov 21, 2025
TLA Draft Report (WB Go-Wide Value)
New set seems fun!
New set seems fun!
Last Wednesday was my weekly draft night at the bar, and the new Avatar set was released recently, so that's what we played. I'm not a huge crossover fan or hater either way, and I'm a fan of Avatar, so I was pretty excited to draft the set. I missed out on the prerelease due to forgetting it was happening last weekend till all the slots at local shops were sold out, and I hadn't tried it out on Arena yet, so I was going into the draft a lot less prepared than I'd usually be for "Day 1" of the format. This was a lot of fun, since I enjoyed everything being relatively new to me. Lots of "readers" when cracking the packs and trying to figure out archetypes and color-pair strategies on the fly during the draft. We also got solid turnout too, with an awkward 9 person pod. Someone's was gettin' a bye!
I think they really nailed the flavour of Avatar with a lot of the card designs. The bending mechanics all felt pretty resonant to me, and there were a lot of individual card designs that really pulled at the nostalgia heartstrings mechanically. If the gameplay holds up over the course of the format, I'll be pretty enthused to keep drafting it.
Pack 1 was pretty fun. I started out with a fairly weak seeming pack, so I took the rare land from it for Pack 1 Pick 1 - Abandoned Air Temple. This got followed up with Airbender Ascension in the next pack, so I felt like I could maybe try to stick to White for a bit and see what ends up being open for the 2nd colour. I got a few nice hybrid picks between the uncommon Sokka and Zhao, so I had a solid amount of options for my 2nd color. A bunch of solid black removal came my way, so I settled into black/white. This looked like it had some self-sacrifice/value plans, so I tried to prioritize anything that gave some throwaway tokens or etb/death value to lean into it. Cards like Kyoshi Warriors and Pretending Poxbearers seemed like they'd be good here.
Pack 2 wasn't too surprising overall. Pack 2 Pick 1 ended up with a pretty soft pack with a Heartbeat of Spring alt-art which I kinda wanted for Commander, so I just rare-drafted it. I did get passed a South Pole Voyager right after though, so I felt pretty confident that white/black was the right spot for my seat at least. I snagged a Tolls of War (and passed a 2nd one that didn't wheel) too, so that was another point in favour of sticking to white/black. This pack also had a bunch of good removal and filler-ish cards to support the go-wide value plan, so I was pretty happy at the end of pack 2.
Pack 3 ended up being fairly autopilot since I was so committed to the black/white strategy. Pack 3 Pick 1 was Aang's Iceberg (solid removal), so I was happy to open an on-colour rare. Pack 3 Pick 2 was pretty funny, since it was a pack that started with 4(!) rares. My buddy to my right got the alt-art Ozai, and passed over the giant face Cruel Tutor, a foil alt-art Last Agni Kai, and Avatar Destiny. Only the Cruel Tutor was in my colours, and I think it looks so goofy as a card I kinda had to have it. The table was in awe of this crazy pack. The rest of Pack 3 was pretty good if uneventful. Mostly just got rewarded for finding my lane with good removal and the uncommon Azula. Here's the list I ended up with:
For round 1 I got paired up against a pretty aggressive-seeming blue/red tempo Lessons deck with a bunch of fliers.
Game 1 got off to a fast start after I won the die roll and my opponent started off with and aggressive one-drop. Luckily I had Airbender Ascension to just airbend it away, and the next few turns were just me trying to stay on board and keep some semblance of positive tempo against a deck that really wanted to be on the front-foot. Eventually I got the Ascension activated and I was able to grind the game to a halt by flickering Kyoshi Warriors and Corrupt Court Official for tons of value while my opponent was stuck topdecking. I quickly ran away with the game from that point on.
Game 2 was pretty rough for my opponent. They had to mulligan on the play, and kept a hand full of red spells and no mountains. Their turn 1 Gran-Gran looted probably 3 or 4 cards before I was able to stick a blocker, but they still couldn't draw a mountain to save their life. Rough! After sticking a blocker and getting the combo of Sokka + Azula going on the attack, the game was effectively over. As an aside, seeing Sokka and Azula teaming up to take down Gran-Gran was pretty funny.
Result: 2-0 in my favour
My second opponent was my friend who prefers to play big late-game decks with lots of slow value and inevitability. This week, he was on a White/Blue/Green shell with a red splash for a really cool Shrines deck with a ton of bomby rares and hard to deal with threats. Game 1 he drew a bunch of his 2-drops, so we did some small-ball trading for most of the early game without me being able to get much going offensively. Luckily for me, he ended up having some mana trouble and was unable to cast the good bombs rotting in his hand while I started to snowball out of control with an online Airbender Ascension. After putting him into the Abyss with some big 4/4ish attackers, and some poor draws on his end, I ended up taking the game.
Game 2 was similarly unlucky on his end. This time, the game went pretty much the same, but he drew way too many lands after mulling, and just fell too far behind. We ended up playing a friendly game afterwards and I got completely stomped by him getting to cast Aang at the Crossroads twice, thanks to him re-buying it from the graveyard after I sunk a ton of resources into getting rid of it the first time. Feel like I dodged a few bullets this match, but sometimes your oppponent stumbles and you can take advantage of variance. That's Magic!
Result: 2-0 in my favour (but 2-1 counting that rubber match!)
My last opponent ended up being a pair-down due to the 9-person pod, so I was playing to kick the underdog down a bit it seemed. He was on a white/blue/red deck with a pretty solid tempo plan and lots of interaction. Game 1 was a real grind-fest. Lots of 1-for-1 interaction, and my opponent spending a lot of effort to keep my Joo-Dee from netting me too much value by getting me to sacrifice it to itself to get out from under a Watery Grasp, then killing off the token copy with a lightning strike. At one point, I traded off the remains of my board to clear out their last creature, putting us both into topdeck mode, since I felt my deck had better long-term potential. We both eventually rebuilt, but I ended up being correct, and slowly ground him out of the game with Airbender Ascension and Kyoshi Warriors to make a giant army that topdecking couldn't deal with.
Game 2 played out much the same, with a Joo Dee that he fought pretty hard to deal with, lots of back and forth 1-for-1's, and some trading of blockers to whittle away resources. They had to mull this game, and had some mana troubles too. I don't remember anything too crazy happening this game, but I suppose I just kinda got there with my wide board and value plan. Nothing flashy, but it did the job!
Result: 2-0 in my favour
Avatar seems pretty fun based off of my sample size of one draft that I ended up winning. Definitely probably a bit of winner's bias mixed with enjoying the setting, but I liked how it seemed like you could do some soupy green-based powerful rares stuff, tempo-y spellslinger stuff, or go-wide value grind without any of them feeling super underpowered. Maybe this'll change as the format gets more solved, but nothing stood out to me as seeming totally unplayable, and the gameplay had a lot of interesting pockets of synergy to take advantage of. Hybrid mana is always sweet, and probably enables some cool decks too. Looking forward to drafting this set a bunch more!
Final Result: 3-0, 6-0 (If you don't count that one rubber match) 🏆