Waterbend is a new MTG ability word, introduced with Avatar: The Last Airbender set. Below, you’l find in-depth explanation about everything you need to know about this cost-reduction mechanic.
How Does Waterbending Work?
Spells and abilities use waterbend as part of their costs. When you cast that spell or activate that ability, you can tap your untapped creatures and artifacts. Each permanent tapped that way reduces the cost by one generic mana.
Essentially, it’s like a cross between convoke and improvise, but it also work when paying for abilities.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples to make it clearer.
Examples
Here’s Yue, the Moon Spirit. A 3/3 flyer for four mana with a waterbend ability.
You can pay five mana and tap Yue to cast a noncreature spell from your hand for free. Now five mana is quite a lot, but this ability has waterbend. Thus, you could tap a Clue token and a Storm Crow to reduce its cost to three mana.
Additionally, you could tap five creatures and artifacts to make it cost zero mana. Now that’s some serious mana reduction.
There are plenty of different waterbend abilities, the only thing they all have in common is the cost-reduction part. Katara, for example is quite different from Yue.
For five mana you’re getting a 3/3 and a 1/1. You can also turn your creatures into X/X creatures during your turn. (Reminiscent of Mirror Entity.) You can turn your small threats into a massive beaters.
Even if you don’t have a ton of mana, you can make X pretty larger with waterbending’s help. Just tap a few artifacts and creatures to reduce the cost.
MTG Waterbend – FAQ
Before we wrap up, here are answers to some frequently asked questions about the waterbend mechanic.
Yes, you can.
Just by one. One tapped permanent, one generic mana less.
No, you can’t.
Yes, you can. That’s a pretty neat way to get full value from your creatures.
Yes, you can unless the ability specifically stated otherwise.
You can also pay for the additional costs by tapping artifacts or creatures.
Not by itself. While the cost reduction effects can often be incredibly strong, this one still costs you real resources — you need to actually put those artifacts and creatures in play before you take advantage of waterbending.
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Flowing Away
So, that’s it about waterbending. Hopefully you’ll be able to use this mechanic to its full potential. Oh, and if you’d like to open some awesome waterbending cards, you could order an Avatar Play booster box on Amazon. With 30 boosters, there should be some fun pulls in there.
Want more details about the ATLA set? Take a look at these articles:
- Avatar Scene Boxes (cards that create a large image when put together)
- Avatar Commander’s Bundle (a brand-new product)
- Full-Art Appa Lands (basic lands featuring your favorite sky bison)
Until next time, enjoy playing Magic, and don’t forget to do Katara’s hand motions, when tapping your permanents for waterbending.
Why do some cards have a number by waterbend?
That’s the waterbending cost that you need to pay to activate that ability. You can tap untapped creatures and artifacts you control to reduce that cost. For example, to activate Yue, the Moon Spirit you need to pay five mana and tap it. (That’s why there is the number 5.)
Some cards could state that you need to waterbend 2. That would mean you need to pay two mana. You can reduce that cost by 1 for each artifact and creature you tap.