Commander Deck Tech: Toph, Hardheaded Teeacher

Toph, one of the most powerful earthbenders in the world as well as earthbending master and the true inventor of metalbending, will be your commander in this Commander list!

"The Blind Bandit" has a strong personality and conquered the heart of many Avatar: The Last Airbender fans. She is also a perfect example of "don't judge a book by its cover".

In this article, you'll find two lists. The main one centers around Landfall and either fills your board with token creatures or deals a lot of damage to your opponents directly when lands enter your side of the board. The second one focuses more on this set's central theme: it is a Gruul Lesson list.

Get ready to learn the power of Landfall Toph!

Toph has been blind since she was born and, as a result, grew up very sheltered. Her parents treated her very differently because of her disability. Nonetheless, she learned earthbending from the original earthbenders: badgermoles, represented in cards like Badgermole Cub. She also uses this ability as an extension of her senses and can "see" pretty well through her feet.

In Magic: The Gathering, you can find Toph in the following cards:

By the way, when this set was released, Toph, the First Metalbender became one of the most popular commanders in EDHRec.

The version we'll use in this article is Toph, Hardheaded Teacher!

Like other legendary cards that represent the Gaang, Toph does something when she enters play. She lets you discard a card to return an instant or sorcery from your graveyard and put it in your hand.

Her second ability triggers when you cast spells and lets you earthbend 1. If that spell is a Lesson, you'll put an extra +1/+1 counter on the earthbended land.

Gruul Landfall is nothing new. Omnath, Locus of Rage has definitely traumatized many players because of how much damage it deals and how many elementals it puts in play. However, Toph and her earthbending is a new version of this strategy.

The two most valuable types of resources for this deck is anything that creates tokens and burn cards. Let's start with them!

Creating Tokens

Landfall decks can create creature tokens very easily, as many cards trigger this ability when lands enter your board. Luckily for us, Toph, Hardheaded Teacher is in the perfect colors to get a lot from these cards.

The little Scute Swarm is one of the best "snowball" effects in the format. It can fill your board scarily fast.

As for Omnath, Locus of Rage and Rampaging Baloths, with Baloth Prime, they'll give you big creatures like 5/5 Elementals and 4/4 Beasts. These will protect you and deal damage to other players.

When Springheart Nantuko is attached to a creature, you may pay mana to create copies of that permanent. This is quite useful when you want to take advantage of the non-legendary creatures we mentioned before or even others like Avenger of Zendikar, Sabotender, and Elvish Reclaimer.

Earthbending and Titania, Protector of Argoth are incredibly powerful together.

This Elemental creates 5/3 Elemental tokens when lands leave your graveyard and go into play. As for earthbending, it states that, when a creature dies or is exiled, it returns into play tapped.

This means that, if an earthbended land is destroyed, sacrificed, or "killed" in combat, it still goes through the graveyard before it returns to play, and so Titania will create her scary tokens when that happens.

In this list, lands won't deal damage, but tokens and burn do.

Burn

We'll deal damage with the cards below when our lands enter play:

Traveling Chocobo will double these effects, just like it will double all other Landfall effects.

This list also plays:

You won't have to worry about sacrificing lands with this deck, so it also plays Goblin Bombardment. This card will create many "sacrifice" opportunities for us.

Sacrifice

As all earthbended lands come back into the board after they leave it for the first time, we added a few sacrifice cards that will put these lands in play again and trigger Landfall effects.

Most "sacrifice" interactions let you look for more lands. For instance, Scapeshift, Entish Restoration, Elvish Reclaimer, and Crop Rotation. However, some of them are also great ways to draw cards, like Rob the Archives, Aggressive Mining, and Skullclamp.

Exploration Broodship lets you play extra lands and also lets you cast permanents from your graveyard as long as you sacrifice a land and pay any other costs. This works as recursion for most of the deck.

Lands that sacrifice themselves, like Fabled Passage, Evolving Wilds, Verdant Catacombs, and Wasteland, are the perfect targets for Toph's earthbending. Like so, you'll be able to reuse each of their abilities once more. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth will also create mana whenever necessary with these cards.

Recursion

The idea is to always return our lands into play through earthbending, but this list still plays a few recursive spells that will bring back any lands you lost throughout the game in emergencies.

Lumra, Bellow of the Woods is one of the most powerful land recursions in MTG nowadays. If you're lucky, you'll cast it when Horizon Explorer, Amulet of Vigor, Spelunking, or Tiller Engine are in play. That way, your lands will come into play untapped.

Furthermore, if Zuran Orb is in play, you may answer Lumra's effect by sacrificing all your lands, gain life, and then bring them back with her.

This alternative list uses some Landfall, but it actually centers around Lessons and earthbending cards from the Avatar: The Last Airbender set. This way, you'll be able to take advantage of this mechanic even when Toph isn't in play.

It also plays a few ways to interact with +1/+1 counters, like Badgermole, Earth Kingdom General, Hardened Scales, and Solid Ground.

This is a more flavorful version for Avatar fans that want to feel like real earthbenders.

Toph, Hardheaded Teacher might not have been as exciting as Toph, the First Metalbender when they first came out, but she certainly deserved the hype.

Because she lets you earthbend whenever you cast a spell, she gives you the freedom to build your deck however you want. She'll also reward you for explosive turns, all while she teaches a valuable lesson to all your opponents: never underestimate a Gruul list!

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!