Avatar: The Last Airbender (TLA) Limited Review — Black

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Avatar: The Last Airbender has its prerelease events on November 14, 2025. Want to know more about how each card rates in Limited, with recommendations? Then check out this series of TLA Limited reviews!

• For the mechanics, see this article: Avatar: The Last Airbender Mechanics Explained

Rating Scale

5.0: Always take it; gives you a near-winning advantage
4.5: Always take it if you’re in the right colors; gives you a huge advantage
4.0: First-pick quality; excellent synergy with the archetype’s theme, and can be the deciding card for splashing, switching colors, or entering a color pair
3.5: Top uncommons and commons of the set, plus other strong cards; good synergy with the archetype’s theme, and a key card for entering a color pair
3.0: Important cards for an archetype’s theme, plus other above-average cards; you’ll want them in your final deck
2.5: Average, usually a decent curve filler
2.0 to 1.0: Below average; you generally prefer not to play them, and can use them as filler if necessary, but not too many
0.5 to 0.0: Unplayable; basically never play it, it will only help you lose

Card Ratings

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A flexible interaction. If used in combat it can have an effect similar to -2/-2, except the +1/+1 counter stays around permanently.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: A solid body. If you can keep her alive and attacking, and assuming you sacrifice a Clue to pay for firebending, that is effectively drawing an extra card every turn, and the advantage snowballs quickly.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A decent body. Paired with a few small creatures or Clues, it attacks, draws cards, and grows all at once. If the opponent doesn’t deal with it in time, it has a high chance of locking up the game. For a common, being able to fight and generate value is quite excellent.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: A strong card for the Ally theme, and a quality 3-drop for your curve.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: The body itself is unimpressive, and it needs artifacts or creatures to draw cards. Lurking on the battlefield and growing is nice, but it also requires your creatures to have counters.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: It deals damage early, and in the mid to late game it can block and then earn you a Clue. An excellent 1-drop for your curve, and it gets even better with a few Equipment or pump spells!

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Early on it finds you a land, and in the mid to late game it shows up as a threat. The extra Food to gain a bit of life is nice, too.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: In mono-black it’s a one-hit kill, and the lifelink gains you life when it deals damage. But for every additional color you mix in, this rating drops by 0.5, so don’t play it in three or more colors.

Corrupt: Everyone’s making sorceries into creatures these days, huh? Good thing I win by costing one less mana…

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A reprint of Corrupt Court Official. Rather than slamming it down on time on turn 2, it’s better to wait until the opponent’s hand has run down to a certain point to use it. Otherwise it can’t really take part in combat on the battlefield and is just sacrifice fodder.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Discarding a card for 2 mana isn’t very appealing, but earthbend 2 matters a lot more in a black-green deck.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: This sweeper first makes creatures lose their abilities and then destroys them, so it can wipe out indestructible creatures, and their dies abilities won’t trigger either.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Paired with Clues or Food it’s excellent removal, but if you have to pay five mana for it, it’s pretty ordinary.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Quality removal that lets a small creature take down a big one.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A rather subtle card. It can reanimate a small creature as a 4/4 land creature, but if the creature that died was higher in value, you may still prefer a traditional 2-mana way of crawling back (for example: Fake Your Own Death)

Rating: 3.5
Comment: Treat it as a 4-mana sorcery-speed kill spell, but don’t forget it has to tap itself as well. As a 6/3 trampling Vehicle with crew 2, it’s also fairly capable of fighting.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: It doesn’t need to attack itself. As long as you attack that turn, raid triggers at end of turn and puts a counter, and it can even go on Vehicles!

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 0/4 reach wall that blocks most flyers, and without attacking itself it makes every attack deal 2 extra damage. The artifact creature it sends out is only sacrificed at end of turn, so it can also serve as fodder for a sacrifice theme.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: If you can reliably draw two, it keeps your life total healthy. If you can’t, you don’t necessarily need to play it.

Rating: 1.5
Comment: Unless you have many creatures with enters, leaves, or dies abilities sitting in the graveyard, there’s no reason to play this.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: Basically close to a clean kill. Removing counters can also kill land creatures made by earthbend 3 or less, though it’s a bit annoying if the opponent’s threat has a counter on it and so can’t be killed.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Gives menace to creatures with counters on them, and works very well with earthbend. Occasionally you can also exhaust it to give yourself menace when attacking.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: The engine that kicks off white-black sacrifice. Consider the surveil 1 a freebie.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A very capable bear, and in the mid to late game it can also eat small creatures to draw cards.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: It can serve as a clean kill with a great body, and it has an extra win condition in the late game, but it’s a bit clunky. Don’t forget, this card is not Agatha’s Soul Cauldron: it doesn’t say you can spend mana of any color to activate abilities, so if the colors don’t match, even if you exiled the creature, you still can’t use the ability! Also, it only has the activated abilities of the creature it most recently exiled. If another exiled creature has an ability you’d rather use, you have to pay 1 life again to switch the ability over. After all, a person only has one face at a time, even a spirit.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: A rare black tutor that works with Lesson cards. The Lesson spell having lifelink basically ties it to red-black, but if other black-based color pairs have Lessons worth playing, they’re worth including too. Being able to find a Noble makes it more reliable at getting the royals of the various nations into your hand when you draw them.

There are 14 cards with the “Noble” type in this set. If you’re in the right colors and can cast them, they all have a certain amount of strength.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 2-mana 2/2 first striker is the supreme ruler of bears, but it worries about running into 2/3s. Whether the static ability is any good depends on the opponent, and be careful not to hurt yourself with it.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Now black’s bears can be reused over and over, too.

Rating: 1.0
Comment: The worst Shrine on its own. Draining one or two life is usually irrelevant.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: The first ability alone is worth this rating, and sacrificing to draw before each attack will at least make your creatures bigger. Even better with other effects that sacrifice when attacking! Note that the sacrifice activation has to resolve before the attack; choosing whether to sacrifice upon attacking isn’t counted.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Mind Rot has made it into the curriculum too, and it can also finish off 2 extra points of damage.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: A sacrifice deck can keep sending out flying Vehicles, but turning them into creatures realistically still relies on crew… wait… this is exponential growth (1→2→4→8)! If the sacrifice theme is running smoothly, in three turns you can make eight 4/4 flyers for a total of 32 power on board!

Rating: 2.5
Comment: It should be usable in a white-black sacrifice deck; skip it if you won’t be sacrificing.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: The new Graveyard Trespasser! A 3-drop 2/3 flyer with exile effects on entering and attacking, and if it exiles a creature card it can keep making Clues! Clues also serve the blue-black draw-two theme well and get you extra life differential, so blue-black decks will love this card!

Rating: 5.0
Comment: Chapter I is a sweeper, Chapter II is Lobotomy, and in Chapter III, after it flips, the 5/5 menace hits and digs through the opponent’s graveyard, with a chance to dig out more than one creature. Firebending 3 makes that graveyard-digging effect even stronger!

Don’t forget, the combat phase doesn’t end immediately after combat damage is dealt, so you still have the chance to use the mana produced by firebending to pay for Fire Lord Sozin’s ability in the end of combat step!

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Very strong in a white Ally deck, and waterbend can also give you a big gulp of life.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Reliable 4-mana exile removal that can also buy back a Clue. In red-black, firebending makes it easier to cast, and the Clue supports the sacrifice theme.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Basically a 3-mana sorcery-speed clean kill, and more efficient against flyers.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 3-mana 4/4 Vehicle isn’t bad, and crew 1 is very practical.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A Wind Drake that might get two lives. Drawing two isn’t hard in black, which is good at making Clues.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Whether it’s instant-speed graveyard recovery or even reanimation, staying flexible is very important.

Conclusion

This time black performs excellently across resource usage, the sacrifice theme, making Clues, and removal. Firebending also allows for many synergies, and it’s worth experimenting with to build fun Limited decks.