Avatar: The Last Airbender Trading Card Game



The Avatar: The Last Airbender Trading Card Game is a collectible card game developed and produced by Upper Deck Company and released in February 2006. In the game, the player takes on the role of one of the main or secondary characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender and duels another player in a match testing strength and abilities determined by the game's cards. The overall objective is to earn three points before the opposing player does; they can be gained when opponents have no further actions available to them. The game is part of the QuickStrike system of trading card games, which means it is compatible with various other card games from different areas of media and fiction.

The original launch is titled Master of Elements, and has a deck of 235 cards, including 85 common cards, 75 uncommon cards, 65 rare cards, and 10 special cards. These cards are further categorized as strike, ally, advantage, or chamber, all of which differ in usage and effect. Since the initial release, multiple promotional cards and booster packs have also been released, some of which come with the series' DVD collection. Burger King also has a few promo cards.

Early setup
Any one-one-one game of this TCG begins with each player placing his or her chosen Chamber Card on the rectangle marked "Chamber" on the respective player's side of the playing mat. The playing mat is divided into two symmetrical sides, meaning that each player has the same amount of areas as the other and that a player only lays cards on his or her side. The Chamber Card, with the image of an Avatar character adorning the front, represents the character who the player will act as during the game. More information about Chamber Cards will be elaborated upon later. After each player has chosen a Chamber Card and placed it in the proper spot, both of them shuffle their decks of cards and put the decks onto the designated "Deck" areas of the mat.

Basic gameplay information and brief overview of strike system


Unlike the vast majority of trading card games, the QuickStrike system of gameplay, which as mentioned earlier is the system used for the Avatar TCG, does not have the players hold a hand of cards at which they deliberate over what to put into play. Instead, the players flip cards from the tops of their decks. Since the deck of cards is presented in a face-down position, the player does not know what cards he or she will flip over onto the playing mat. The areas onto which the player flips the cards are marked "Flip Here". Both players should be able to see any flipped card – there is no concealment from the opposite player in concern to cards that have been flipped. Elaboration on the reason for flipping and details on when to flip are in the following subsection. Once a card has been flipped onto the green "Flip Here" area of the mat, the player should take care to examine which card he or she has flipped. It may be a strike card.



A strike card consists of two vital-to-understand values: an Intercept number and a Force number. The Intercept number is a measure of the defensive strength of the card. A high Intercept number means strong defense against enemy attack, and a low number means a weak and possibly vulnerable defense stat. Oftentimes a lower Intercept number is balanced by a higher Force number, which is a measure of the offensive strength of the card. A Force number works in the same way that an Intercept number does: high means strong offense, low means weak offense.

As mentioned above and visible in the first image of this subsection, the play mat has three colored zones. Each zone represents a chance for the player to put a stop to an opponent's strike, otherwise known as an opponent's strike card, and the zone's color represents the level of danger: an opponent's attack into the green zone is not extremely troublesome or unsafe for the player being attacked; an opponent's attack into the yellow zone is a bit more risky, and an attack into the red zone is very unsafe and dangerous for the player being attacked. All of this is because the green zone is each player's "first line of defense", the yellow zone is the second, and the red zone is the last. If any player runs out of zones (has each zone attacked) without being able to stop a strike, the opposite player scores one point.



In order to stop an opponent's strike, the player being attacked must flip one card with a higher Intercept number than the attacking card's Force number. If the card that has been flipped does not have a higher Intercept value than the attacking Force value, then the attacking player strikes down the card, which was in the green zone, bringing him or her one step closer to earning a point. (Further details about what happens after defeating one's card with a strike are elaborated upon in the following subsections, this being only a brief overview.) If this happens in the yellow and red zones, the opponent has broken the player's defenses and scored a point. If either player earns three points, the game is won by he or she who earned the three points.

Further setup information and the opening attack


Any game of the Avatar TCG begins with each player placing starting energy on his or her side of the mat. A starting energy is represented by whatever amount of face-down cards are on the right-hand side of a respective player's zones. At the beginning of the game, before either player flips cards into the "Flip Here" areas and begins to use strike attacks, one should take nine cards from the top of one's deck without looking at what they are and place them in the designated starting energy areas (see illustration to the right). Each card is considered to be one starting energy. Energies in the green zone are called "green energies", energies in the yellow zone "yellow energies", and energies in the red zone "red energies".

After the starting energies have been placed, it is time to determine who will make the first move in the game. Both players draw four cards from the tops of their decks and put them onto the discard area of the playing mat, henceforth known as the discard pile. This time, the cards are to be placed face-up. The players then add up the Force values from those four cards, and whichever player has the higher Force value total goes first. Ally and advantage cards, which will be detailed later, are worth zero and add nothing to the player's Force total.



The player who goes first makes the opening attack, making it so that his or her opponent has no choice but to defend. The opening attack has a Force number of 4 and executes its offense just as a normal strike would, except the opening attack is not represented on a card like all other strikes will be. Before a player can execute an opening attack, however, the opponent should add another energy to the green zone, or add a green energy. Aside from the energies that are added at the beginning of the game, all further energies come from the discard pile. Therefore, a player who is to defend against an opening attack will take whatever card it is that can be seen face-up in the discard pile and bring it to the green zone, where he or she will place the card face-down. Doing so adds one more energy to the green zone, which will aid the player in his or her defense.

With the above accomplished, the player defending from the opening attack flips one card from his or her deck into the green zone's "Flip Here" area. Whatever is on the front of this card must have a higher Intercept number than the opening attack's Force number (which is 4), lest it be struck down and defeated. For example, if the defending player draws a card with a value 7 Intercept, it is strong enough to hold off the opening strike of value 4 Force. There is a catch to this, however: in order to use the flipped card, one must pay for it with the energies in one's zones.



The cost of using a flipped card can be seen on the side of the card (see illustration to the right). Using the above example, if the card with a value 7 Intercept has a "2" in the Red color and a "1" in the Yellow color, then the player must take the appropriate number of cards from the respective energy zones and place them in the discard pile face-up. By "paying" for the card with the energies, it becomes officially in-play. However, since these are not the case, the card gets turned sideways (placed horizontally with the top side of the card pointing to the left side of the mat and the bottom side pointing to the right) to illustrate how it is going to face the opponent's card, meaning that it is now the opponent who must defend against the value 7 Intercept card.

Replenishing energy, focusing, and defending from counterattacks

 * Note: If the Intercept of the defending player's card had been too low or if the player had been unable to pay for the use of the card, then that player would have had to focus his or her card and turn it into energy (details below).


 * The following information details what happens if the player's card has enough Intercept to stand against the opening attack, the result being that the opponent is the one who must take the defensive stance this turn.



Having flipped a card with more Intercept than his or her opponent's opening attack Force, the player gets to perform a counterattack. A counterattack is the result of an attacking player's card being too weak to strike down the defending player's card. When this occurs, the player who was on the defensive switches his or her card to an offensive stance, as explained at the end of the above subsection, and the opposite player must now defend his or her green zone.

Before flipping a card into the green zone, the now defending player must replenish his or her energy. To replenish means to collect energies from the discard pile and place them into the colored zones. In which zones the energies are placed depends on the zone that the now attacking player defended in the last turn. To use the previous example, since the player with the value 7 Intercept card was defending the green zone, the now defending player replenishes his or her energy by taking one card from the discard pile and placing it into the green zone face-down as an energy. If the originally defending player had made the counterattack from the yellow zone, then the player now being attacked adds one energy to the green zone and one to the yellow zone. If he or she had been defending his or her red zone, then the player now being attacked would add one energy to the green zone, one to the yellow, and one to the red.



Once the defendant has replenished his or her energy, it is time to flip a card into the green zone. If the card that is flipped has a stronger defense than the opposing card's offense, then the defendant's card takes on the stance of a counterattack and the other player must replenish energy, flip a card, and eventually focus that card if necessary (see next sentence). However, if the defendant's flipped card has less Intercept than the opposing card's Force, then the defendant has a chance to focus his or her flipped card. Focusing is the act of converting a flipped card into an energy. If the flipped card has less Intercept than the opposing card's Force, then that card should be moved into the energy area of whichever zone in which it was originally flipped. For this example, since the flipped card was defending the green zone and was unable to stand against the strike, it is moved to the green energy zone face-down. Now that the card has been struck down, this player has lost his or her green zone and must defend the yellow zone from this point forward. The player now flips a card into the yellow zone. If it has too little Intercept to defend against the already-in-play opposing card, the it also turns into an energy, this time in the yellow zone. This process will repeat until the player flips a card with sufficient Intercept to counterattack against the opponent. For this outline, we will presume that the first card the defendant flips into the yellow zone has sufficient Intercept and that he or she performs an counterattack, thereby relaying the turn to the other player.

Cleanup, advantage cards, and continuing the game


Before the now defending player flips a new card into the green zone, he or she must clean up his or her side of the board. The process of cleanup takes place before starting a turn and executes like so: the defending player should take all of the cards that he or she employed for the last turn's defense and place them face-up into his or her discard pile. There are exceptions to this rule: energy card do not get cleaned up, and neither do Ally or Advantage Cards (the functions of these card will be detailed later). For this outline, the defending player would now remove the previously attacking card from the green zone and put it into his or her discard pile.



As shown in the previous subsection, the defending player now replenishes energy from the discard pile into the green and yellow zones, one energy each, as his or her opponent defended from the yellow zone in the last turn. After this, the player flips a card from his or her deck into the green zone. If it is a strike card, then the game continues as has already been outlined above. There are other cards besides strike cards, however. One possible draw from the deck is an advantage card. An advantage card is not an offense- or defense-based card, instead being used to aid or assist the player who draws it in numerous different ways. Some advantage cards allow the player to scan through his or her deck, while others strengthen a strike's Force or alters the amount of a player's energy.

Just like strikes, the cost for playing an advantage is determined by the sidebar, which shows how many energies must be paid and from what zones they must come. If the player does not choose to pay for the advantage card, he or she draws another card from the deck.



On the other hand, paying for the advantage makes use of the card for the duration of the turn. For example, the card in the image is Open-Hand Form. If paid for, it will remain in play for the remainder of the turn, giving its user's strike cards one more force number per card. Assuming the player pays for the advantage card, the card is placed in the advantage area of the play mat. This procedure goes for all advantage cards, not just Open-Hand Form. The advantage area is located just above the green zone. When placed in the advantage area, the card is officially in play.

Trivia

 * One of the illustrators for the cards, VUDUBERI, attests that there are 280 cards, while other sources state 235.