Flavor of the Month: Toggo's Rock Soup

Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith

| Illustrated by Svetlin Velinov

Ride the Lightning

Welcome to Flavor of the Month, where we use the flavor of cards as a recipe for building spicy decks. Today we're following the trail of pink rock salt led by the great Goblin inventor, Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith

Unlike most Magic: the Gathering characters, we're introduced to Toggo not through a card bearing his name or likeness, nor through a pivotal beat in the game's story, but through flavor text. We get little glimpses into Toggo's character thanks to a few cards highlighting his creation of marvelous military inventions like lightning, rocks, and bigger, sentient rocks that smash things on their own.

We were first treated to the inner workings of the Goblin's mind, and his building of a devoted following among his Goblin brethren, in the flavor text of Onslaught, as seen on Pinpoint Avalanche

... and perhaps most memorably, at least for me, Shock

The following set, Legions, gave us a Toggo follower, Goblin Clearcutter

Then we suffered through thirteen long, dark, Toggo-less years until we were gifted the Occam's Razor of Warfare himself in Commander Legends:

There was no room for flavor text on this card, but Svetlin Velinov's art gets the moment across perfectly. Toggo is having his full-on mad scientist moment here, the lightning racing across the sky behind him emblematic of his flash of insight as he stumbles upon (and most likely after stumbling over) his first and greatest to-date invention, the rock.

Ingredients

Because there are only six cards mentioning Toggo outside of his own card, we can consider those essential to this deck with the exception of Goblin Clearcutter

But Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith

Of course, it's Toggo, so the best we can hope for with that invention is "rocks with some poison on them." Enter Falthis.

The interaction here is pretty simple (it has to be, so that Toggo doesn't lose the thread). Every land you get also comes with a Rock artifact token, which you can hand to your creatures to chuck wherever they please. Brilliant! But with Falthis out, if one of your commanders is the one chucking that rock, that rock damage becomes lethal to any opposing creatures. Extra brilliant! Cards like Street Urchin

Of course, for his ambitious goals, Toggo needs an army, and there are few creature types more willing to enlist (or even become the weapons themselves) than Goblins. It's pretty helpful that we can make masses of lil' guys because we're going to be treating them as rather expendable in Toggo's grand scheme. Cards like Pashalik Mons

Preparation

Toggo and his cat neighbor Totoro--er, Falthis, will serve to keep opposing commanders and threats at bay, which is where we can utilize his Goblin acolytes to start turning the tide in our favor. Cards like Goblin Bombardment

We also have a couple of other inventions that we can assume came from Toggo, or maybe inspired him on his way to creating lightning or fire: Goblin Firebomb

A little insurance never hurt, especially when we're banking on a massive board of gobbos doing the job for us. Thankfully, Falthis bringing black to our deck's color identity lets us use Zulaport Cutthroat

We also need to make sure we're reliably making our land drops, since we want to keep the rocks a-flowing (hey, lava is literally flowing rock, so it makes sense if you don't think about it too hard; just be like Toggo!). Some cards that will support this include Sword of the Animist

Finally, we lean into black as a way of keeping our hand stocked. Village Rites

Yield

The result is Toggo's greatest invention yet: a deck that lets him throw rocks and creatures indiscriminately.

When I was younger and playing when Onslaught was a new set (please don't do the math on how old that likely makes me), I was tickled at the flavor text on Shock

For budget reasons, I've left out the proper fetchlands, but those do a lot of work in this deck because they will trigger Toggo twice each. Any that grab Mountain

That's it for this iteration of Flavor of the Month; tell me in the comments what else Toggo could get up to, which planes he should conquer next. Now there's a team-up card I wish was in March of the Machines: Toggo and Norn!