This Toph, Earthbending Master Deck Grows Trees to Magnificent Heights

Toph, Earthbending Master | Art by Phima

It's official: Earthbend is cracked to its roots. Not only do earthbended creature lands return to the battlefield when they're killed, but also when they're exiled, rendering them essentially immune to removal. And with good earthbending cards congregating in a color known for landfall, all of our non-earthbended lands are feeling left out.

It's easy to abuse the earthbend mechanic by letting our lands die, but what about a Commander deck where they can truly live? When they sleep, do lands not dream that they, too, smash face as even the measliest of creatures can?

Toph, Earthbending Master from the Avatar universe is here to make these lands' combat machinations a reality. The deck she helms outfits lands with the +1/+1 counters and unyielding protection they require to turn themselves sideways for selfless pain rather than selfish profit. To borrow a quote from a different Universes Beyond property, the Ents…are going…to war…

What Does Toph, Earthbending Master Do?

This particular iteration of Toph, found in Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal, grows her earthbending powers as the game marches on. She's a 2/4 for who rewards us with an experience counter whenever a land enters the battlefield (ETBs) under our control. Then, when any of our creatures attack, she earthbends X, where X is the number of experience counters we've amassed; this means a land we control becomes a 0/0 creature with haste sporting X +1/+1 counters and carrying the clause, "When it dies or is exiled, return it to the battlefield tapped."

Experience counters do not dissipate when Toph exits the battlefield, so if she returns later in the game, the lands she earthbends will remain jacked.

Toph, Earthbending Master represents one of many Avatar Tophs, each of which offers its own earthbending variety. Toph, Greatest Earthbender similarly scales her earthbending power alongside the game's progression and boasts both a double strike anthem for these lands and the Gruul () color identity—though not the landfall ability.

Toph, Hardheaded Teacher cares more about casting Lesson cards for micro-earthbend triggers than earthbending a large beater. Meanwhile, Toph, the First Metalbender unlocks the ability to transform artifacts into earthbended lands that can be abused for extra ETB triggers.

These variations orbit around Toph, Earthbending Master but lack her narrow focus and, frankly, welcoming color restrictions.

Past land animation commanders failed to provide earthbending's inherent recursiveness and, therefore, opened opportunities for opponents to significantly disrupt our game plan. As I mentioned in an earlier article I wrote about Bumi, Unleashed, commanders like Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir and Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor offer protection by only animating lands during our turn but do nothing to assuage our fears of lands dying in combat.

Toph, Earthbending Master showcases the sort of power and resilience that earned her that title. Our land monsters grow bigger by the turn cycle, and their numbers expand every time we attack. In this Toph deck, the lands bite just as well as they bark.

Key Cards for Toph, Earthbending Master

Our earthbended lands will appear most frightening if we can maximize our landfall triggers and rack up experience counters sooner rather than later. For this, I placed particular emphasis on the deck's ramp section, stocking it with an abundance of land-grabbers and more-than-one-land-a-turn enablers, plus a few divergent selections.

Wizards of the Coast has been kind to green in this regard, so there was no shortage of options from which to choose:

• Old standbys Nature's Lore, Three Wishes, and Skyshroud Claim lay the foundation and feel great to see in an opening hand.
• Sword of the Animist and Kodama of the West Tree synergize with our desire to attack. We can't forget to stack the Sword trigger so it occurs before Toph's attack trigger to score an additional +1/+1 counter on our land.
• Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Loot, Exuberant Explorer, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration Broodship, and Gaea's Touch enable us to play multiple lands in a turn and offer more utility than those not chosen, including Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Wayward Swordtooth. Gaea's Touch has been on my radar for quite some time and I'm psyched to finally provide it a happy home; it also feels great to run a card from The Dark.
• The cost reduction offered by Emerald Medallion and The Earth Crystal really adds up over time, even in this green deck ostensibly focused on lands. The former is almost always worth running regardless of strategy, and the latter offers additional +1/+1 counters as a bonus feature.
• Similarly, Defiler of Vigor is a herculean powerhouse that saves us mana and advances our board in equal measures.

As long as we're striving for landfall triggers, I figured it was worth running some of the stronger landfall payoff cards to accumulate additional value along the way.

Staples like Scute Swarm and Avenger of Zendikar make an appearance as powerful go-wide beaters, but others synergize more directly with Toph. Springheart Nantuko can be attached to an earthbended land to allow for land token production. Earthbender Ascension earthbends and ramps upon entry, and soon offers our creatures trample and +1/+1 counters. Mightform Harmonizer aids in growing our earthbended lands to outrageous proportions, especially in the late game.

The lands we want to earthbend range from basic Forest to utility players and self-sacrificers, depending on the situation. Here are those worth noting:

• Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, and Fabled Passage can be earthbended and sacrificed to effectively serve as ramp sources themselves. Plus, all three cards are relatively cheap at the moment and can slot into pretty much any deck if needed.
• These lands receive second lives, increasing their efficiency:
  • Cryptic Caves
  • Demolition Field
  • Blast Zone
  • Blighted Woodland
  • Urza's Cave
• Some lands arrive with impactful keywords that translate effortlessly to the creatures they will become. Darksteel Citadel and Cascading Cataracts offer indestructible while Lotus Field and Valgavoth's Lair supply hexproof.
  • Avatar provided a few more: Rumble Arena is vigilant, Secret Tunnel can't be blocked at all, and Ba Sing Se earthbends all on its own.
• If we're in a pinch, Blinkmoth Nexus and Inkmoth Nexus can easily become evasive creatures that take full advantage of the multiple +1/+1 counters on our earthbended lands. The infection is spreading to the trees!

With very little effort, Toph can accumulate a fair number of experience counters and start pumping out earthbended lands that are at least 4/4, if not much larger. So in addition to some of the usual suspects, the card draw sources we're running take advantage of our beefy land bros to refill our hands effortlessly:

• The Legend of Kyoshi
• Rishkar's Expertise
• Season of Gathering
• Terrasymbiosis

How Does This Toph, Earthbending Master Commander Deck Win?

Victory in this Toph deck arrives on the heels of attacking with massive land beasties after accumulating significant advantage over our opponents with a windfall of ramp and a plethora of landfall triggers.

And it all starts with a single earthbended land. However, even though earthbending a land gives it haste, Toph's earthbending ability triggers after our attack phase has begun, and therefore we're unable to swing with our new creature land.

That's where the one-drops come into play. Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, and Elvish Mystic may seem out of place, but they can assist with achieving four mana to cast our commander or pivot into attack mode to score us an earthbending trigger right away. Same goes for Quirion Ranger, which can enable us to repeat a landfall trigger when we need it.

We'll start the game by ramping into Toph with a land still in hand so we can gain at least a single experience counter right away—ideally, we'll also have a creature on the battlefield to attack and score an earthbended land, even if it's only a 1/1. Our focus from there is to grow our experience counters so that each new earthbended creature is meaningfully larger than the last.

Then, with a board of thick land creatures overflowing with +1/+1 counters, cards like Duskshell Crawler, Gnarlid Colony, Bramblewood Paragon (notably, Toph is a Warrior), Sphere Grid, and Badgermole provide trample to push some damage through.

I've also included ways to increase our creatures' size in addition to collecting experience counters. Beastmaster Ascension will easily reach seven quest counters once we begin our attacks (these efforts can be aided by Evolution Sage's proliferate triggers), and +5/+5 is substantial. Quilled Greatwurm grows our creatures exponentially when they deal combat damage to anything, not just players, and can return to the battlefield easily upon death.

Eldrazi Monument offers a modest boost and some additional evasion, and its sacrifice clause feels painless when we can simply send an earthbended land to the slaughter. And finally, there's Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, who can single-handedly pump up our army slowly or quickly—though it comes at the steep financial cost of $40.

If the game stalls out, we can cast Predatory Focus to ensure our large creatures get damage through, no matter what. The card is a bit jankier than something like Craterhoof Behemoth, but it made sense that our lands may not be fully accustomed to winning games on their own and would have to stumble into victories every so often.

Toph, Earthbending Master Commander Deck List

The Forest for the Trees

Due to scarcity at the moment, cards from Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal are all quite expensive. Toph herself is sitting at $45 while Bumi, Eclectic Earthbender and Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender, both in the Maybeboard, are well within double digit prices despite a general lack of power. Hopefully this will all change soon and these cards will become more affordable and, thus, include-able.

Same goes for Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, which is far too expensive for its limited uses in this deck. Landfall remains a popular strategy with high prices to match, so I built this deck with Bracket 3 in mind and tried to remain selective in which pricy cards I included. Hopefully this version strikes a balance between shelling out the green and dishing out the green pain.

Please, let me know your thoughts! Is mono-green the way to go for earthbending shenanigans?