Every set in Magic: The Gathering has that one commander. You know the one I mean. It's the commander that is not only highly popular, but also taps into some unused design space and causes a bunch of strange, niche cards that were previously almost worthless to suddenly blow up in value.
Every MTG set has at least one of these unique, high-impact commanders. In Edge of Eternities, it's Ragost, Deft Gastronaut. In Final Fantasy, I'd argue it was Hope Estheim - though you could also make the case for Vivi. In Tarkir Dragonstorm, it was Teval, the Balanced Scale, thanks to all those druid zombie synergies.
We've only been shown a handful of cards for Avatar The Last Airbender, the last set of the year on the Magic: The Gathering release schedule. Yet, I have a funny feeling that we've already seen the most impactful card for this release and that it's Toph, the First Metalbender.
See how Toph checks all the boxes. Firstly, this will be a popular MTG commander, that much is certain. It has a powerful effect, multiple colors to play around with, and even more importantly, features a beloved character and depicts them during one of their coolest moments in the show.
And secondly Toph, the First Metalbender has a very unique effect, combining artifacts with landfall in a way that will surely open up some neat synergies that have never been tried before.
As well as an impressive static effect, the end step ability Toph offers is also super useful, and there are bound to be some tricksy interactions that leverage it. Toph's Earthbending keyword lets you turn one of your artifacts into a creature on your end step, but what's more important here is the artifact also gains the power to return to the battlefield after it's killed or put into exile.
The fact it even works on exiled artifacts is especially interesting. Players have already worked out that you can use the card Aeon Engine with Toph to lock one player out of the game forever, repeatedly changing the turn order to give yourself twice as many turns as the players on your left and right, and forcing one poor sap to just sit and watch. There are probably more useful and less toxic things you can do too.
With these two interesting and unique effects, I predict that Toph will be a major driver of price spikes come MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender's release date. In fact, it's already caused Terra Eternal to triple in price. With Toph, this card makes all your artifact creatures indestructible - not bad for three mana!
What do you think of the Avatar spoilers? Are you hyped up for this set or did they leave you cold? Come let us know on the Wargamer Discord. And don't miss our guide to the best MTG Arena decks in the new Standard meta.