One of my most favorite Avatar: The Last Airbender characters is Bumi. It only took one episode for this guy to go from unassuming grandpa into formidable combatant, and the same goes for his Magic: The Gathering card. What makes Bumi so special? Let's explore one of the ways that you could build Bumi, Unleashed to leave your opponents wondering where that forest grew arms to smack them from.

Lands Matter, But Better

When you hear lands, your mind probably goes to the automatic includes in any "Lands Matters" decks. Sure we COULD play Life and Limb and Quirion Druid to make land creatures, like we were doing some sort of Obuun shenanigans, but Earthbend makes a FAR more important impact on our gameplan.

Lands are the most important resource you have in a deck, so while it's fun to turn those lands into creatures to beat down with them, when someone exiles or destroys your land creature it makes you feel sick. Luckily, Earthbend avoids that completely, giving you those lands back tapped.

Because of this, our strategy is going to utilize a lot of the earthbend cards coming out of the ATLA set because it's just such a great mechanic. And Bumi comes with the ability already baked in.

Team Avatar Adjacent

Anyone who has watched the series knows who Team Avatar is. Toph, Katara, Sokka, Aang, Zuko, Suki, Momo, and Appa are the key members, but we'll only be borrowing one of these key legends, and every single copy of her has to show up in our earthbend deck. Toph has four printed cards:

• Toph, Earthbending Master
• Toph, Greatest Earthbender
• Toph, Hardheaded Teacher
• Toph, the Blind Bandit

Wouldn't you look at that, they ALL come with earthbending abilities. Toph is key to our strategy, but she's not the only earthbender we're going to recruit.

Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender is one of the best earthbenders we have access to, earthbending 8 each turn she's on the field. Earthbend allows us to keep stacking counters on lands, making a single massive threat (or several of them) meaning that the ability is never put to waste.

The Boulder, Ready to Rumble (which, most newer players would miss, was a tongue-in-cheek reference to The Rock, Dwayne Johnson's wrestling persona) also earthbends on attack and it synergises really well with Firebending Ascension which is already in our colors.

Earthbend Like You've Never Earthbended Before

These legends are all great additions to our deck, but if we're going to have a significant threat we need a lot more earthbending. Luckily, we have that support in the ATLA set. Here's our main contenders for inclusions for Bumi:

• Earthbending Student, who also gives our land creatures vigilance.
• Bitter Work, for emergency earthbending to close out a game and incremental card draw to keep us ticking over.
• Earthbender Ascension, which gives us a way to make our lands trample over blockers.
• Solid Ground which puts an extra counter on all our earthbending targets.
• Badgermole Cub making our land creatures double up mana production. Earth Kingdom general keeps our life total high.
• Finally, Ba Sing Se allowing us to earthbend every turn, making for big threats, or several smaller threats.

There might be no war in Ba Sing Se, but that's because the lands keep beating up anyone who tries it. Getting lands into creatures is one thing, how do we make those lands into a formidable fighting force? Support comes in many packages.

Getting Our Land Creatures Pumped

Lands as creatures is a novel concept, but they can still be blocked and when they attack you can't tap them for mana. If only there was a way to get around those caveats. Well, it turns out there are. We already mentioned Earthbender Ascension and Earthbending Student, but those abilities also come in other bodies:

• Badgermole (the adult) in Green and Embodiment of Fury in Red both give our lands trample
• Embodiment of Insight gives our land creatures vigilance as well.

Even with all of these things, our lands are still susceptible to removal. That would be an issue, except if they remove the land, it comes back tapped. What if we could remove the land ourselves? There are a few things we can use for that.

• Elvish Reclaimer is one of the better ways to get value from sacrificing our lands, but he's a once per turn trick.
• Zuran Orb trades lands for life, and since they're coming back after they die anyway, it's free life.
• Sylvan Safekeeper allows you to sacrifice a land to give something shroud, which is pretty good at protecting Bumi or any of your other regular earthbend targets.
• Entish Restoration and Harrow are great instants that sac a land to find two more lands, giving us three lands for three mana.

Making our land creatures bigger is also a key element of this. And since we have more lands than we know what to do with, let's look at some landfall triggers that will help keep our lands pumped:

• Bristly Bill, the Spinesower puts a +1/+1 counter on each earthbent land every time a land comes onto the field (including when those same earthbent lands die).
• Omnath, Locus of Rage triggers when your lands enter or your earthbent lands die and give you an endless stream of expendable elementals that are even deadlier if your opponents kill them.
• Titania, Protector of Argoth, makes all your earthbend lands trigger to give you a 5/3 token when they die.

Having creatures on the field is how you'll win this game. But it helps to have more opportunities to land hits on your enemies.

More Attacks Than You Can Shake a Land At

Bumi already gives you multiple attacks, but we'll be throwing a few things in here that give us even more multiple attacks, because why not swing out in one turn and kill ALL your enemies? Here's what we're adding:

• Akki Battle Squad, since all our lands are modified creatures anyway (thanks to the counters) we automatically get at least once extra combat a turn. Two if Bumi's out.
• Fury of the Horde gives us another good option and could potentially be free if we exile two Red cards from our hand.
• Moraug, Fury of Akoum can trigger multiple times if we can kill our earthbent lands on a main phase, since they come back to give Moraug a landfall trigger.
• Aggravated Assault is another great addition, because when you start using your lands to tap for mana, and they all untap, you can take as many combats as your heart desires.

Overall, these make for formidable game-ending pieces. You should use them to your benefit.

Bumi's Traveling Land Show

Bumi's Traveling Land Show | Commander | Jason Dookeran

• Commander (1)
• 1 Bumi, Unleashed

• Creatures (40)
• 1 Aftermath Analyst
• 1 Akki Battle Squad
• 1 Anger
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
• 1 Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender
• 1 Badgermole
• 1 Badgermole Cub
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Blossoming Tortoise
• 1 Disciple of Freyalise
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Duskshell Crawler
• 1 Earth Kingdom General
• 1 Earthbending Student
• 1 Elvish Reclaimer
• 1 Embodiment of Fury
• 1 Embodiment of Insight
• 1 Goblin Anarchomancer
• 1 Insidious Fungus
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Meltstrider Eulogist
• 1 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
• 1 Ohran Frostfang
• 1 Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Rage
• 1 Pinnacle Monk
• 1 Quilled Greatwurm
• 1 Sabotender
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Springheart Nantuko
• 1 Sprouting Goblin
• 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1 The Boulder, Ready to Rumble
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
• 1 Toph, Earthbending Master
• 1 Toph, Greatest Earthbender
• 1 Toph, Hardheaded Teacher

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Wrenn and Six

• Instants (4)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Entish Restoration
• 1 Harrow

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Fury of the Horde
• 1 Nahiri's Lithoforming
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Season of Gathering
• 1 Sundering Eruption
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Worldsoul's Rage

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Bitter Work
• 1 Earthbender Ascension
• 1 Earthbending Lesson
• 1 Solid Ground
• 1 Terrasymbiosis
• 1 The Legend of Kyoshi

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Aggravated Assault
• 1 Exploration Broodship
• 1 Zuran Orb

• Lands (35)
• 1 Arena of Glory
• 1 Ba Sing Se
• 1 Blinkmoth Nexus
• 1 Chocobo Camp
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 7 Forest
• 1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
• 1 Hidden Nursery
• 1 Hidden Volcano
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 3 Mountain
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rumble Arena
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Sheltered Thicket
• 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 1 Spinerock Knoll
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Thornspire Verge
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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This is what I came up with for Bumi, allowing for a unique style of gameplay, while still abusing the earthbending mechanic. Try it out and let me know what you think!