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"Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony…"

Avatar: The Last Airbender has a magic system they repeatedly claim isn't magic (though it clearly is), which is themed around the four elements. You might think that maps easily onto Magic: The Gathering—red is fire, blue is water, white is air, green is earth, you've got black left over so throw it on any leftover bad guys like those creepy Canyon Crawler insect things, bish bash bosh, job's a good'un. But where the previous Spider-Man crossover set was content to wrap deep cuts from the Spider-Verse in existing mechanics, Avatar is more systemically ambitious, giving each flavor of elemental bending its own mechanic.

Which is an interesting choice for a set you would expect to be aimed at younger players, but I guess they figured if a 12-year-old can play Magic and make it through the filler episodes where Aang and the gang trudge through a swamp or a town where things are a bit weird then they can sure as hell learn some new rules.

Firebending seems like an obvious one. Magic's already got fireballs. But firebending is more than just a spicy ranged attack—it's the one variety of bending where you don't need to have the element at hand. While airbenders have it easy because the element's usually all around, in the show waterbenders have to carry a bottle just in case and earthbenders can typically be defeated by cutting them off from the ground. Firebenders meanwhile just pull fire out of nowhere.

So in Magic, firebending becomes a bonus that gives you red mana whenever you attack. It's a free lunch you can spend on whatever you like, whether or not that's a fireball, and a reward for playing aggressively. It's a nice match for the show, where firebenders can technically do all kinds of things, but often default to violence.

Waterbending, meanwhile, needs a source. Instead of being free, waterbending effects all have a cost—but that cost can come from multiple places. As well as tapping land, you can also tap creatures and artifacts to pay for its effects. And since the show depicts waterbending as able to heal or harm or freeze or do any number of things, Magic's waterbending can likewise have varied effects like stunning, card draw, swapping a creature's stats, and so on.

It reminds me of the way Ishi Barasume describes her fighting style in the Forgotten Realms comic: "We fight like the river. Changeable. Malleable. Always present, but always moving—and a river flooding its banks will upro

Source: PC Gamer