After long months of designing, testing, tweaking, and assessing, I am proud to unveil a set of decks for the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender.  Here are the key features of this set:

Basic Decks
These are essentially divided based upon the bending elements. Firebenders have the same basic deck as one another, Earthbenders have the same basic deck as one another, and Waterbenders have the same basic deck as one another. Aang is the only extant Airbender (the "Last Airbender"), but because he is also the Avatar, he controls all elements and will have a unique basic deck to represent this. Were more Airbenders to manifest themselves, I'd feel inclined to come up with a standard basic deck for them, but at this point it is unnecessary.

Attack Values
In "real' combat there are two general principles guiding how much damage an attack will cause: 1) whether the attack hits the target; and 2) how powerful the attack is. Since a single attack value compared to a defend value is simulating this interaction, it must take into account both of these elements. So, an attack value on a card represents both how likely an attack is to hit, and how much damage it can do.

Defend Values
Survival after an attack similarly has two general principles: 1) avoiding the attack (whether by blocking or dodging); and 2) "absorbing" damage without dying. With this, however, we have two resources -- defense values and health points. So defend values will simulate the ability to avoid an attack, whether by using bending or other abilities, and health points will represent the amount of punishment a character can take.

Water, Earth, Fire: Attack and Defend Values
To apply these principles to basic decks, then, examine the elements and how effective they are.
Water Moderate hit probability, Moderate damage output, moderate blocking ability
Earth Low hit probability, moderate damage output, high blocking ability
Fire Moderate hit probability, high damage output, little blocking ability
Conclusion: Water functions as a basic Blue deck, Earth functions as a basic Green deck, and Fire functions as a basic Red deck.  For this set, however, the Green and Red decks have been slightly altered to "fix" what I perceived as deficiencies in the original game.  A more detailed explanation can be found at the Epic Duels Forum.

Melee and Range
As much as I intended to conform to the Hasbro ED structure, this was one aspect I felt I could deviate. Non-benders will all be clearly either melee or ranged characters, but benders can essentially attack "at range" by simply sending the attack further. However, the attack, in whatever form it takes, must traverse a distance making it easier to avoid. Thus, the printed attack value on a card assumes a melee attack, but all benders are able to make ranged attacks at a penalty of one to the attack value. This goes for basic as well as power combat cards.  NOTE: Sultan's outstanding work on the images makes this abundantly clear on the cards themselves.

Attachment	Date	Size
Avatar Duels.ext	05/04/09 7:41 pm	1.83 MB
Avatar_Epic_Duels.pdf	05/04/09 7:38 pm	12.62 MB