Toph, the First Metalbender Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on November 1, 2025

Toph, the First Metalbender | Illustration by Eilene Cherie

Every so often, Wizards prints a card with perfect flavor. The mechanics align with the story of the character represented and the card shines. It’s especially impressive when they pull this off in Universes Beyond sets, using Magic’s mechanics to portray out-of-universe characters.

Toph, the First Metalbender is the flavor winner from Avatar: The Last Airbender, a card that combines the earthbend mechanic with artifacts to embody the skill and craft of the first metalbender. Today, we exploit that in a powerful landfall shell!

The Deck

Glacier Godmaw | Illustration by Bruce Brenneise

This is a pretty standard landfall deck, with a strong artifacts package to support the commander. It focuses on going wide with token producers, then finishing the game with team-wide buffs and Impact Tremors variants.

The artifacts provide cantrips and card advantage plus extra landfall triggers. You have a small equipment package to go with Stoneforge Mystic and artifact creatures that build your boardstate while they aid the central landfall cards. The artifact package makes the deck more robust and a little different than your standard landfall deck.

The Commander: Toph, the First Metalbender

Toph, the First Metalbender provides character to an oft-bland archetype and opens the door to exciting synergies and interactions you can’t get with other Naya commanders (). Every Mishra's Bauble and every Soul-Guide Lantern triggers your landfall cards. That results in extremely explosive turns that overwhelm your opponents since you can trigger landfall two or three times a turn.

You can’t overlook the earthbend ability, either. Earthbend animates a land, gives it some counters, and mostly importantly, returns it to play when it dies or goes to exile. While that primarily serves as protection against removal so you don’t get Stone Rain’d, you can easily exploit that with lands like Urza's Saga and Windswept Heath that sacrifice themselves. Since Toph makes your artifacts into lands, you can also recur artifacts with it.

This deck was built before Avatar: The Last Airbender dropped, so the full set might have support to make it even better!

Landfall Payoffs

The landfall cards are the heart of the deck. It has other things going on, but they’re in service of making these cards thrive so you can overwhelm your opponents, mostly through token hordes.

Lotus Cobra and Nissa, Resurgent Animist are two of the strongest landfall cards. Every untapped land gets to cosplay Ancient Tomb for a turn, but it gets better with the artifacts: Most of them cost 0 or 1 mana, so they’re often mana neutral or even positive!

Your top-end token producers are Omnath, Locus of Rage, Rampaging Baloths, and Avenger of Zendikar, some absolute classics of the genre. Omnath and the Avenger are notable as the only possible hits for Nissa, Resurgent Animist’s second landfall trigger.

Tannuk, Memorial Ensign and Valakut Exploration are critical as the few ways to draw cards in red landfall decks. Tannuk’s damage is also handy in a board stall.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and Scythecat Cub enable quick, aggressive starts and have decent synergy with Toph since they affect the counters that earthbend gives to permanents.

Your key cards are quite cheap, so you can recur them with Trove Warden. It’s a powerful way to rebuild after a board wipe and a generally annoying card for your opponents to deal with.

Felidar Retreat and Eusocial Engineering provide your first level of token production. When you have a big board, Felidar Retreat puts counters on your team to help turn the corner. Warping Eusocial Engineering can be quite impactful when you control Toph and have a few cheap artifacts.

Likely the best landfall cards in this deck—and many other landfall decks—are Scute Swarm and Springheart Nantuko. They dominate games with sheer board presence. The Nantuko is a particularly sticky threat; you can bestow it on something like Rampaging Baloths, which forces your opponents to have a board wipe, and you keep the Nantuko afterwards.

Token Payoffs

Agate Instigator and Warleader's Call damage your opponents as tokens come into play, which feels similar to giving them haste. They break through board stalls and finish your opponents when they think they’ve stabilized.

Canyon Jerboa and Glacier Godmaw convert a board of tokens into a lethal strike force.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer might be the single best token card printed in the past few years. A token doubler that creates tokens would be a stellar card alone. But this is a planeswalker, so it needs more abilities! We’re really interested in the 0 ability, which basically says “kill target player” if you have any board presence. Outside of the landfall cards, Elspeth might be the best card in the deck.

Artifacts

These give the deck its special flavor. The artifacts are geared towards card advantage and being extremely cheap: You don’t want big artifacts to flood your hand and make it hard to curve out, you want to dump a flurry of spells into play for your landfall cards.

Experimental Synthesizer, Mishra's Bauble, Urza's Bauble, and Soul-Guide Lantern made the cut for one reason: They sacrifice themselves to draw cards. That’s exceptional with Toph’s earthbend ability because they come back for another round. They also cost close to or literally nothing, which enables your best turns.

Like the Baubles, Haywire Mite is significant because it sacrifices itself for value. But rather than draw cards, it kills things, which is super handy. Because players run so many mana rocks, the Mite almost always has a target, and a recurring Haymite Mite is a headache for many strategies.

Mox Amber isn’t at its best without a significant legends theme, but I couldn’t pass up on the 0-mana landfall trigger and didn’t want to reach for Game Changer-level fast mana.

The Stoneforge Mystic package comprises three cards:

• Staff of Titania’s attack trigger plays very well with the landfall and token themes. I chose it over the slightly cheaper Sword of the Animist because the Staff creates tokens of its own.
• There’s a reason every Urza's Saga deck plays Shadowspear: It offers so much for so little investment. Trample and lifelink make it hard to race and the activated ability is very prevalent in Commander because players love their board wipes.
• Skullclamp is one of the best draw spells ever printed and you make plenty of 1/1 tokens to fuel it. It’s just a hideously unfair card, and the deck’s best artifact.

Crucible of Worlds and Conduit of Worlds combo with fetch lands. I wouldn’t normally play these just for fetches, but Toph gives them just enough extra value to warrant it. The Conduit doubles as a card advantage engine for the late-game if you flood out, or a Glacier Godmaw is a better play than what’s in your hand, a role that Exploration Broodship also fills.

Staff of the Storyteller provides another means of squeezing card draw from your tokens, plus a token itself.

Larval Scoutlander offers a tempting three landfall triggers with Toph in play and potentially more if you earthbend it.

The Ozolith might look out of place since you aren’t a +1/+1 counter deck, but Toph makes it work. This deck doesn’t want to amass an army of land creatures; it wants to animate a Mishra's Bauble or a Wooded Foothills to sacrifice straight away for value. Since those creatures die, The Ozolith stores their counters and puts them on something like Scute Swarm that you want to keep around for several turns.

Esper Sentinel does incredible work for its mana value. You’re happy even if it draws one extra card, and it often draws more. It plays very well with the deck’s many pump effects like Bristly Bill.

Brightglass Gearhulk has a daunting mana cost, but it’s worth overcoming. It’s a sizable creature that draws two cards and represents up to three landfall triggers with Toph.

Mindslaver is super cute with Toph, the First Metalbender since you can animate it, activate it, then get it back straight away. It’s a great way to handle that player who’s about to win or just stir up drama.

Odds and Ends

These cards are worth discussing, but don’t fit into other categories. They’re mostly interaction and card draw, though there are a few other utility creatures.

I love Loyal Apprentice in nearly any token deck. It’s multiple bodies to trigger Agate Instigator or to feed to Skullclamp. A few flying attackers are great at pressuring planeswalkers and keeping yourself afloat if you need emergency chump blockers.

Dryad of the Ilysian Grove plays a vital role in this deck. When Toph makes your artifacts into lands, it doesn’t give them any mana abilities. You need another piece, like the Dryad. Most of your artifacts either become mana-neutral or straight Moxen with this in play. There are a few other versions of this effect, but Dryad has the most utility since you actively want extra land drops.

Between fetch lands and artifacts, you have lots of permanents to enable Evendo Brushrazer. It’s even better with Toph since you can sacrifice random artifacts instead of lands, and it’s the primary sacrifice outlet for cards that Toph can earthbend but don’t sacrifice themselves, like Brightglass Gearhulk.

Awaken the Woods is the perfect marriage of the token and landfall strategies, and it’s an incredibly flexible spell you can cast for 1 or 2 to set up big plays or use it as top-end to spew tokens.

The deck includes several tutors for consistency. Stoneforge Mystic offers access to the equipment while Recruiter of the Guard and Imperial Recruiter find creatures. Though they don’t tutor up every creature, but they find enough of the important pieces. Green Sun's Zenith rounds out the tutor package; while you have many non-green creatures, your best creatures are green.

This deck is rather light on interaction, but it has a few tools. MDFCs like Razorgrass Ambush, Bridgeworks Battle, and Shatterskull Smashing add removal while you ensure you hit all the land drops possible.

Cloud's Limit Break and Grasp of Fate are excellent in Commander because they answer threats from all three of your opponents in a single card.

The Mana Base

The mana base includes plenty of value lands alongside the fixing so you can play 40 lands while you minimize the impact of mana screw.

All three on-color channel lands from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty made the cut. Boseiju, Who Endures and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire add additional interaction while Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance adds more bodies in a pinch.

You don’t have a significant self-mill theme for Shifting Woodland, but the opportunity cost of a tapped Forest is so low that it’s worth running anyway. The games won by making it into a Glacier Godmaw or Omnath, Locus of Rage will convince you.

Arena of Glory occupies a similar slot to Shifting Woodland: It isn’t at its best, but there’s no reason to not run it. Every now and again you’ll steal a game because you gave that Rampaging Baloths haste, and you’ll be glad you got it.

Field of the Dead is one of your two Game Changers, and it’s a nasty threat. A land that wins the game was a questionable design that this deck happily exploits.

Horizon of Progress does everything. It puts lands into play for landfall, cantrips, becomes a draw engine with a Crucible of Worlds, and taps for mana. It does an incredible amount considering it doesn’t even enter tapped.

Talon Gates of Madara shines in any deck with Crop Rotation because it adds another dimension to the instant to make it a protection spell. The ability to put the land in play from your hand is awesome: It can be landfall triggers or a protection spell or even disrupt an opposing combo.

Urza's Saga is the dream card for this deck: You have several incredible artifacts to tutor, and it works well with Toph since earthbend makes it come back into play after you put the third lore counter on it. An Urza’s Saga that you reread every turn dominates games.

Urza's Cave is the last value land, and it’s just a Crop Rotation stapled to a land. It has excellent targets, but sometimes you just play this and crack it to get two landfall triggers from one land.

The rest of the mana base is fixing, with a focus on fetch lands and fetchable lands. Fetches are super important for landfall purposes and consistency.

The Strategy

A very reasonable critique of landfall decks is that they often play out the same way: Ramp a little, play some landfall cards, then ramp a lot. You never want a hand with fewer than three lands in this deck. Keep an eye out for a good landfall card and some ramp.

With Toph, remember that the goal isn’t to use the earthbend trigger to fill the board. Focus on animating permanents to sacrifice and immediately recur for some great impact. Your best targets are fetch lands or the artifacts that sacrifice themselves to draw a card.

Focus on building a wide board. This deck doesn’t win with card quality but quantity from token producers enhanced with anthems, Impact Tremors, and mass pump spells. When in doubt, go for the play that makes the most tokens. If you can’t make tokens, draw cards.

Combos and Interactions

This deck has very little in the way of combos and interactions. It combines straightforward cards: landfall creatures, cards that put lands into play, and so on.

Rule 0 Violations Check

The deck comfortable passes all Rule 0 discussions so long as you disclose it’s a Bracket 3 deck due to its Game Changers.

Budget Options

The best place to make budget cuts will always be the mana base, because that’s where most of the money lies. You can replace value lands with basics of the same color, untapped lands with tapped lands, and true fetches with budget alternatives like Evolving Wilds and Sheltering Landscape.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and Scythecat Cub can sub out for Roaring Earth and Ride the Shoopuf for cheaper access to +1/+1 counters.

The Ozolith isn’t strictly necessary, and you can replace it with any number of good value cards. Retrofitter Foundry and Currency Converter are excellent alternatives.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer is best replaced with an Overrun effect so you still have a finisher.

Delivery Moogle does a great Stoneforge Mystic impression since all your equipment is super cheap.

Perennial Behemoth can work instead of Crucible of Worlds or Icetill Explorer. You can also use Walk-In Closet if you need to replace both.

You can run Lavaspur Boots instead of Shadowspear to keep your artifact count high.

Jeweled Amulet has much of the charm as Mox Amber with a fraction of the price.

Tireless Provisioner can easily replace Nissa, Resurgent Animist—they’re very similar cards.

Other Builds

While this iteration of Toph focuses on a classic midrange-landfall pile, you could make a more combo-centric build that focuses on an eggs-style strategy of sacrificing and recurring artifacts to amass value. In this case, the “value” is enough landfall triggers from cards like Tunneling Geopede to burn your opponents out, storm-style.

You could also lean into big artifacts to use the earthbend trigger on splashy plays like Portal to Phyrexia or Wurmcoil Engine, then sacrifice them to cards like Goblin Welder and Demand Answers.

Commanding Conclusion

Stoneforge Mystic | Illustration by Mike Bierek

Toph, the First Metalbender is an absolute flavor win, and it has lots of potential as a powerful artifact/landfall commander. Whether you take the midrange route or try to build something more combo-oriented, it adds a new dimension to a familiar archetype.

Are you looking forward to playing with Toph? Which ATLA character are you building around? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!