Universes Beyond: Avatar the Last Airbender is right around the corner, and we've already seen a lot of cool new cards. While I'm excited to start building around some of them in Standard, my favorite new card so far is from the supplemental product. Like with UB: Spiderman, there is a main set that will be legal in 60-card formats like Standard and Pioneer and a smaller set just for eternal formats, and among those cards is Aang, Airbending Master.

Also like UB: Spiderman, many of the show's iconic characters get multiple cards showing their growth over the course of the story, so what does this version of Aang do? For four generic mana and one White mana, Aang is a 4/4 Human Avatar Ally that airbends a creature when it enters, exiling that creature and letting its controller recast it for two generic mana. It also gives you an experience counter whenever one or more creatures you control leave the battlefield without dying, and at the beginning of your upkeep it makes a 1/1 Ally creature token for each experience counter you have. Its three abilities come together to make a great blink commander, essentially serving as a Restoration Angel that can also make a wide board of tokens as you blink your non-token creature. The best part is that it does this with experience counters, which are nearly impossible for your opponents to interact with and allow you to bounce back faster if Aang gets removed. If a deck blending the archetypes of blink and tokens sounds like your style or if you're looking for a simple yet powerful mono-colored deck to introduce your Avatar: the Last Airbender fans to the game, here are some of the cards that pair best with Aang, Airbending Master:

Semblance Anvil

While airbending is a great way to reset our enter triggers, what sets it apart from other blink spells is that we need to pay two generic mana to recast our creatures. Luckily, we can reduce those costs in a variety of ways, and Semblance Anvil is one of the best. For three generic mana, this artifact lets us exile a card from our hand to make all of our other spells that share a card type with the exiled cost two generic mana less. Imprinting a creature under the anvil makes our airbended creature spells free to recast, opening the door for more efficient airbending and even some infinite combo potential with other blinking creatures like Restoration Angel or Felidar Guardian.

Dion, Bahamut's Dominant

When this four-mana knight enters, you create a 2/2 knight token with vigilance, and during your turn Dion gives all your knights flying. Then, if you pay six mana and tap Dion, you can flip it into Bahamut, a saga creature that puts a +1/+1 counter on all of your creatures and gives them flying until end of turn for the first two chapters, then destroys a permanent and flips back to Dion on the third. Dion is a great card for this deck, creating tokens as you blink it in the early game and providing a way to win the game once you build up a big board and have six mana available.

Metastatic Evangel

Because Aang makes tokens equal to experience counters, I would suggest running some proliferate cards so you can build up those counters even if Aang gets hit with a removal spell. Metastatic Evangel might be the best option for the deck, being cheap to cast at two mana and proliferating whenever a non-token creature enters under our control. As long as Aang gave us at least one experience counter, this could get out of control very quickly, especially if we combine this with a mass blink spell like Semester's End or Eerie Interlude.

Wand of the Worldsoul

Wizards of the Coast has been printing a lot of three-mana mana rocks with upsides lately, and Wand of the Worldsoul may be one of the best. This artifact enters tapped, but it taps for a White mana or can be tapped to give your next spell this turn Convoke, allowing you to tap creatures to pay its mana cost rather than using mana. With enough tokens, this can essentially let you cast a free spell each turn, and because it isn't limited to your turn you can surprise your opponents with free removal or protection spells even when the rest of your mana is tapped out.

Argent Dais

Argent Dais is another flexible card that synergizes well with our token plan. This two-mana artifact enters with two oil counters and gets another oil counter whenever two or more creatures attack. It also has an ability to pay two mana, tap it and remove two oil counters to exile another target nonland permanent, with that permanent's controller drawing two cards. Repeatable, nearly unrestricted removal is very good, and in a pinch, you can target your own creature to draw cards and get an experience counter from Aang.

Aven Interrupter

Aang's ability to airbend creatures isn't limited to those you control, making his ability pretty good as a defensive tool. Forcing your opponents to recast their best creatures for two generic mana can slow them down a bit, but this annoying bird makes that cost even harder to pay. Aven Interrupter is a three-mana 2/2 with flash and flying that exiles a spell off the stack when it enters and plots that spell, then has a static ability that makes all spells your opponents cast from graveyards and exile cost two generic mana more. That extra two mana can make airbent creatures much harder to cast, and if you blink the Interrupter, you can potentially soft-counter more spells as the game goes on.

Aerial Extortionist

Speaking of disruptive birds, Aerial Extortionist is another defensive card that can slow down our opponents while providing some value for us. This five-mana 4/3 bird with flying exiles a nonland permanent whenever it enters or deals combat damage to a player and lets that permanent's controller cast it again as long as it remains exiled, then draws us a card whenever a player casts a spell from anywhere other than their hand. It's a mix of temporary removal and card draw, and because the removal ability triggers on enter or after combat damage, it could trigger multiple times each turn if we attack before blinking it.

Dauntless Scrapbot

In my opinion, Dauntless Scrapbot may be one of the most underrated cards from Edge of Eternities, and while it can be good in just about any deck, it shines best in a blink deck like this one. When this three-mana artifact creature enters, it exiles each opponents' graveyard and creates a lander token, which can be sacrificed for two generic mana to put a basic land from your library into play tapped. All commander decks should play a little bit of graveyard hate, and this card is an easy replacement for other blink staples like Angel of Finality for its ability to ramp as well.

And that's it. I hope I've given you a good starting point for building around Aang. If you want to learn more about the airbending mechanic, check out this article, and if you want to look at other new cards, check out this article to learn more about another legendary creature in the set: Toph, the First Metalbender.