Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang’s Destiny Review

Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang’s Destiny (which I will shorten to Aang’s Destiny) was the game I was most excited about in 2024. Aang’s Destiny is a reimplementation of the cooperative deck-building game Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. This version, designed by Patrick Marino and published by The OP Games, is themed around Nickelodeon’s animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender. This game brought together one of my favourite board games and one of my favourite TV shows, which is why I snapped up the opportunity to write a review about it. Aang’s Destiny plays in 30 – 60 minutes for 2 – 4 players, ages 10 or above.

Theme

Starting with the canon Book 1: Water, players take on the roles of Aang and his friends, and must work together to defeat Adversaries, complete objectives, and ultimately defeat Fire Lord Ozai. Players will play cards on their turn to gain more support cards, increase health, defeat Adversaries, and/or complete story objectives. Once all the adversaries have been defeated and all the objectives completed, Aang and his friends win! You can then unlock the next Story box, which includes new support cards, Adversaries, Fire Nation cards, objective cards, and fun surprises along the way.

Setup

Players start by choosing their character, of which there are four to choose from in Box 1, namely: Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Appa. There is a starting hand of ten cards for each character, which is shuffled to create a draw pile, and then each player draws a hand of five cards. Everyone is also given a heart token to put on the “10” space on their board to indicate that they are on full health, as well as any relevant Bending tokens (Air for Aang and Appa, and Water for Katara).

To set up the rest of the board, piles of Adversary cards, Fire Nation cards, Air Bending cards, Water Bending cards, and general support cards are shuffled and placed on their allocated space. The Fire Nation ship-tracking cards are placed on the board, the objective cards are placed in an unshuffled pile on the board, and the rest of the tokens are in piles next to the board. In the first game, one Adversary card is revealed face-up.

Gameplay

On their turn, players will complete the following steps:

1. Reveal and resolve Fire Nation cards, which usually involves taking damage or losing cards.

2. Resolve Adversary abilities, which, again, usually involves taking damage or losing cards.

3. Review objective effects. Once objectives are completed, the players are usually rewarded in some way.

4. Play support cards, and possibly take hero actions.

5. End your turn – place played and unplayed cards in your discard pile, discard unused tokens, and then draw five new cards.

Resolving Fire Nation cards and Adversary abilities can sometimes lead to players being stunned. This means that players lose half their hand (rounded down) and all of their tokens, and move the ship an extra space on their tracker. However, they can still continue with their turn and will return to full health on the next player’s turn.

Depending on where the ship is on the tracker, players might end up drawing more than one Fire Nation card on their turn.

Playing support cards is arguably the most important part of the game. This is where players can push the Fire Nation ship back (if it reaches then end of the track then this means game over), restore health, attack Adversaries, and gain Purpose tokens (currency in the game), as well as other actions available on cards. Players can use Purpose tokens to buy more powerful cards to add to their hands.

Aang’s Destiny includes 7 boxes of unlockable story and increasingly challenging game content. I won’t spoil what is included in these boxes as part of this review, but it freshens up the gameplay each time, adding an additional challenge in Box 7. We got stuck on Box 6 for a few games, and we’ve played Hogwarts Battle a lot!

Game End

The game immediately ends in victory when all the Adversaries have been defeated and all the objectives have been completed! In which case, players can unlock the next story box and continue the adventure! Or the game ends in defeat if the Fire Nation ship is at the end of track and cannot be moved back by the end of the Active Hero’s turn.

Final thoughts

My friends and I really enjoyed this reimplementation of a firm group favourite. I thought it was different enough from Hogwarts Battle to justify having both in my collection. Aang’s Destiny introduced new mechanics while keeping the gameplay similar to its predecessor, so learning the new rules took no time at all. Aang’s Destiny retained the same art style as the much-loved TV series, and there were lots of recognisable characters and items found on the cards so it definitely brought a lot of nostalgia to the table.

As well as being nostalgic for some, it introduced the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender to friends who had not watched it growing up. They have since started watching the TV series off the back of playing the game, which was a lovely bonus I hadn’t anticipated. By the time we got to Box 7, they had watched all three series!

I played as Aang the first time we played, so I would really love to go back and play all the boxes as a different character. This one will definitely be staying in my collection.

Tell us your thoughts by heading over to our Instagram!