Enjoying Tea with the Master himself, Iroh!

Posted on December 4, 2025

If anyone has ever enjoyed watching Avatar: the Last Airbender, then you're quite familiar with Uncle Iroh. The great General Iroh has quite the arc in our story. In the first book, he acts mostly as Zuko's mentor and serves an odd "good-guy on the bad-guy team" role. In the second book, he starts off as more of a quirky old man trying to help Zuko find his way when separated, until an injury at the hands of Azula reunites them all the way until he can open the Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop in Ba Sing Se with Zuko. If it weren't for Azula, Iroh probably would have been content running that tea shop until the end of his days without having to ever fight again. In the 3rd book, he has quite a glow-up where he returns to his former General Iroh glory, but on the good guy side because he's also Iroh, Grand Lotus, an ally of Team Avatar! Overall, his arc complements the entire show's characters well while also being a fan-favorite.

Now that's cool and all, but now we're gonna use this wild pacifist to do some hilariously degenerate things! Iroh, Tea Master is a 2/2 Human Citizen Ally that enters to create a Food token (yes, canonically in Magic, tea is a food now, not a drink, deal with it) The more exciting trigger is the second one though. At the beginning of combat, you MAY get to donate a permanent you control to an opponent. When you do (so another trigger), you make a 1/1 ALLY token, and put a +1/+1 counter on it for each one of your permanents that your opponents control. There's a few key things here:

1. He makes a Food token. That token is an easy first permanent you can donate that you don't have to be upset about losing, it's just three life if they even crack it so you don't get a bigger ally.

2. He's an ally that regularly makes more allies! That means that all of the relevant ETB allies can be played, along with other ally-related cards.

3. We're donating permanents! Anyone who started playing Commander during the Zedruu era knows that donating permanents can always be a chaotic thing to do. While Iroh is probably great in the 99 of a Zedruu deck, we're gonna have Iroh as our Commander so that we can also enjoy the ally benefits as well!

Let's begin!

"Prince Zuko, you're really going to get a kick out of this. The lotus tile was in my sleeve the whole time!"

I'm trying something new. Usually, I start with the relevant cards for mechanics, but for this list, we're gonna start with FLAVOR. One major benefit of Universes Beyond is that there are tons of cards that are great for flavor reasons. In our case, we're keeping it to the playable ones! To start, we've got Wartime Protestors. This card is great for all the allies that Iroh makes, giving them haste and making them all a bit bigger, which adds up. Iroh developed probably the most gutsy technique in all of Avatar, which is Redirect Lightning! Redirect Lightning is great against various spot removal and counterspells, so it's worth running in almost all Red decks. Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop is an allies-matter land that also creates tokens, while also being the literal actual tea shop that Iroh opens in Ba Sing Se, which lasts all the way through the finale of the entire show. Humble Defector arguably describes exactly who Iroh is, while also showcasing another member of the White Lotus, Jeong-Jeong, on the TLE version of it! It's also a convenient donator card that lets you pass around a card-drawer. Finally, we have White Lotus Tile, which represents both Pai Sho (a game I would LOVE to actually play), a game that Iroh excels at, and the White Lotus organization, a group of powerful benders that transcends the elements and strives for peace. It's also a mana rock that taps for the number of creatures you have of a type, allies in this case.

"Captain: Surrender yourselves! It's five against two. You're clearly outnumbered.

Iroh: Ah, that's true, but you are clearly outmatched."

Next up, we have our allies! Going in mana cost order, we have Ondu Cleric, who will gain us life for each ally we control every time the cleric or another ally enters. Kabira Evangel provides protection and the similarly-costed Lantern Scout provides lifelink! South Pole Voyager, one of our new allies, gives us regular life gain and card draw if we have more than one ally enter each turn. Talus Paladin is a Lantern Scout that grows bigger, Hero of Goma Fada gives indestructible, and my personal favorite, Tuktuk Scrapper, former Standard-Playable-Birthing-Pod-All-Star, lets all of your allies get rid of pesky artifacts while dealing incremental damage! Kazuul Warlord will let our allies get quite large, quite fast, which pairs well with Resolute Blademaster to give them double strike!

Outside of ETB allies, we also play Longshot, Rebel Bowman, an ally that slots well into spellslinger decks, and will be beneficial for quickly casting some of our donated permanents later, as many are colorless, so reducing their cost is quite nice. Iroh, Dragon of the West (yes, the same man) gives all of your creatures with counters (including ally tokens) firebending 2, which gives you mana to use into your Sun Warriors, to create even more allies! Finally, Sokka's Charge gives us our third instance of lifelink along with Resolute Blademaster's double strike as well, but only on our turn.

"Sometimes the best way to solve your own problems is to help someone else"

There's no better quote by Iroh to represent how we're gonna donate everything we can. Time for the bread and butter (and tea?) of our deck, the donations! Ideally, we're only donating cards that have effects which we don't normally want, so that our opponents get things that aren't easy to get rid of! To start, we have the trio of Jinxed Idol, Jinxed Ring, and Jinxed Choker. These all deal damage to their controller, while also having a way to be donated without Iroh. Along with that, we have Pumpkin Bombs, which allows you to gain some card advantage, deal damage, and donate it afterward. Remember, we don't have to necessarily always donate with Iroh, as long as we still get Iroh's trigger after all of our donating is done each turn. Rust Elemental also deals damage to players that can't keep other artifacts in play (get to work Tuktuk Scrapper!). Finally, Bronze Bombshell is another damage dealer that deals a nice, one-time 7 damage. There are weird combos with it, but we don't need to play those, we just wanna smack people with our gifts.

Cards like Steel Golem and Grid Monitor will help prevent our opponents from playing creatures. This might seem a little mean, but hey, make sure your opponents thank you for your kind gifts. Speaking of Mean, Aggressive Mining might be the most savage thing you can do to someone who missed their land drop, but it will also be a story you'll get to tell forever.

Finally, we've got a few actual win conditions in the form of donations. To start, we've got Nine Lives. The goal is to donate Nine Lives, which then immediately puts a target on the head of the person who controls it, which won't be you. The best part is that you don't gain control of it when they die to it because it's already in your graveyard! Lich's Tomb is also a pseudo-win condition, in that, our opponent is ideally going to have to sacrifice most, if not all, of their permanents when we swing at them with an army of allies. They'll almost assuredly sacrifice the Lich's Tomb, but it will already have done its damage by then.

"Sharing tea with a fascinating stranger is one of life's true delights"

I sure hope that one of your opponents is playing a version of Toph, it will make this quote that much more special! We've got lots of donations, but we can't forget the donors! Iroh himself donates, but we also play some others. Zidane, Tantalus Thief will give you Treasures whenever an opponent gains control of a permanent from you, and using Threaten-like effects count, as long as they get it back! Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant, another Final Fantasy IX banger, gives us card draw whenever an opponent gets a card you control. Sadly you can't donate Stiltzkin, but anything else is fair game! Bazaar Trader is a donor on a stick and Treasure Nabber is another Threaten-esque effect that we can use to borrow mana rocks! I'm finally sleeving up that Deadpool Harmless Offering because it slots so well here, cards like Bucknard's Everfull Purse and Hithlain Rope will give everyone at the table value. Your opponents will be tempted to give it back to you so you get less value out of your Iroh too, so that's a nice bonus.

You'll notice we only play 2 Game Changers here. This deck sits nicely in bracket 2, but these two cards were too good not to play here. Enlightened Tutor guarantees one of our hilarious donations and Teferi's Protection is nice in the early game if we've given away more than we can handle (and it also has an Avatar Screenshot art, which doesn't hurt either). Dropping those two for your favorite Red or White cards is also fine here; even just more mana rocks are worth playing!

Here's the list, make Uncle proud!