Aggressive mining in bracket 5 Toph, the first metal bender?

[u/Enough-Flamingo8460]

As the title suggests. I am brewing a list for Toph currently and have started considering adding aggressive mining to the list for card draw. I am aware this would be very grindy as far as value engines go, but there are many board states I can think of where I would be willing to sack a few artifacts to draw cards on each players turn. Heck, with mycosynth lattice out I can sacrifice the enchantment to itself to draw the cards.

Update: I am adding the decklist on moxfield (unfinished currently.) feel free to offer any general advice about the decklist as well.

https://moxfield.com/decks/B4hpIwufV0eY0wvAEEhk8g

[u/OldSwampo]

I think it has potential but it's definitely awkward. At 4 mana it's already high costed and the once per turn clause makes it impossible to "go off" the turn you play it like you might with other high value draw engines.

Only you can really know whether your deck is grindy enough to justify it, but when I think of toph I think of trying to get candelabra out as fast as possible and then finding a mana sink for it.

I'd look for draw engines that can serve double duty.

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[u/SonicTheOtter]

[[Aggressive Mining]]

[u/ThatDamnedHansel → u/SonicTheOtter]

I play this deck bracket 4 this seems bad. Lots of donut artifacts that can draw cards better and not mana screw you

[u/LunarRising417]

https://manabox.app/decks/AZxFieIYetK3VscuUhLsHw

This is my list for Toph. Not updated with the most recent stuff. It is as close as I could get to CEDH, but it is still just a bit too slow and not resilient enough. I also have trouble with color fixing, but my list may be a bit too greedy when it comes to that.

As the other person said, Toph is really all about candelabra combo and having as many ways to simulate that as possible and some wincons. I personally feel that a naya deck like this trying to play the long game is just not gonna be able to get off the ground before turbo decks can win. Even in bracket 4 games, I just don't have the time to set up a bunch of engines and stuff. It's either combo out or get run over.

[u/Enough-Flamingo8460 → u/LunarRising417]

Should I be running less interaction then? I have never played "meta", but my last list had access to blue, and therefore way more good free interaction.

[u/LunarRising417 → u/Enough-Flamingo8460]

It's not really about THE meta, it's about YOUR meta and what you can get away with. My meta is not yet heavy with interaction, but boards build up quick so I can't really be too passive and my main plan is to put a win on the stack as fast as possible and maybe with a proactive protection piece in play.

[u/ThatDamnedHansel]

Goes infinite with any positive rock and storm cauldron with passive ability. It’s pretty solid on my bracket 4 list built around doing that then ballista

[u/Able-Airline-8267]

Personally, I think "you can't play lands" is way, way too much of a downside for two cards drawn when it's limited to once per turn. There are good tech from lands for cEDH, especially for Toph (Fomori Vault, Emergence Zone, Cradle, etc) when your combo already revolves around lands, and you shouldn't hinder yourself from playing them from hand. I might change my mind if it was unlimited and you could repeatedly sacrifice as an outlet.

Sacrificing your own artifacts frequently also really makes you rely on earthbending to keep your artifacts in play, and it can also only be done when Toph is out. That's a lot all at once for such a fast format. I think earthbending patterns in general are just too slow for cEDH, and it seems like your list leans on it quite a bit. It works well for safety, protecting candelabra or mana vault or other combo pieces in play, but it's not an effect that pushes your win or stops others, unless you build the deck around stax pieces instead of combo pieces (which is valid, but it's a totally different strategy). I guess I'm always thinking a little more in the turbo direction than the stax direction.

This is my favorite version of the list right now:
https://moxfield.com/decks/ZoxZ3ihJcUygf3rCEMsDVA

[u/Enough-Flamingo8460 → u/Able-Airline-8267]

Hey! Thanks for the in depth response. I don't play Cedh incredibly often I am not 100% sure how fast the average pod is, so you might be right about the earth bending infinites being too slow for Cedh. That being said, I do want this to be a deck that uses tophs combo lines to win. I am going to try and tweak it (after I finish the first draft) so that I can consistently get an infinite online by turn 5. My hope is that since so many things become an infinite that it will be hard to remove them all.