Commander Overview
Toby, Beastie Befriender is a very fun and thematic mono-white commander from Duskmourn, I love the flavor this card presents and their abilities are quite strong too, being able to generate a 4/4 early and having the ability to give all of our tokens flying quite quickly is not something you typically would expect from a token deck and allows us to be a lot more resilient and evasive in combat, combine that with our legion of blink effects and token doublers and we have many different ways to fill up our board and hit like a truck, blinking Toby for protection or to get the ETB is very strong for the deck. This deck is some classic token fun, and what you see is what you get here, not a ton of surprises, just some good, clean mono-white fun.
Creature 27
Instant 12
Sorcery 7
Artifact 9
Enchantment 8
Land 34
EDH BRACKET
The average current preconstructed deck.
- No Mass Land Denial
- No Chaining Extra Turns
- No 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Game Changers
- Few Tutors
How to Play the Deck
This is a perfect deck for a player of any skill level, as most mono-white decks tend to be. Overall, besides some blink stuff and accounting for extra token creation from Mondrak, Glory Dominus and a few other sources, there is not much complicated stuff going on here. Create your tokens, keep Toby on the field, and blink them a ton, build up a huge army, and hit like a truck!
Synergy’s in the deck
Our whole deck is synergized around tokens; we have so many ways to produce extra tokens like Mondrak, Glory Dominus, Exalted Sunborn, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation. All of these are great ways to make a ton of tokens and make us a true threat. We also have a blink package in the deck, which is primarily used as a piece of protection for our creatures, but some of them, like Toby, Beastie Befriender and Reverent Hoplite, can be blinked over and over to make a ton of tokens and truly go wide.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: We are pretty good at the early game. Toby can come down on turn three, and by turn four, we can attack pretty easily. At this stage of the game, we typically have to attack with Toby so we can attack with our beast and get in some early damage. Like most decks, we spend the early game ramping and setting up for the mid-game.
Mid-Game: By this stage of the game, we usually have one of our token doublers out and have four or more tokens, so they have flying, being in these evasive positions, us quite well against a variety of decks and allows us to attack with ease continuously.
Late-Game: Flying is a big part of our late-game, and ensuring we have four or more tokens at all times is key to our game plan. Being able to go wide and go over our opponents is great, especially in the late-game when opponents’ boards are a lot bigger or the same level as ours. Just keep your token count high and hit hard.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
Mono-white has never been great at ramp, but we do have a few cards that help a ton, like Extraplanar Lens, which is a great mana doubler for the deck and allows us to speed out our big token doublers and our best creatures. While not strictly a piece of ramp, Pearl Medallion is a great card that reduces the cost of nearly our entire deck. This mana advantage allows us to speed up our game plan. We finish off with some mana rocks in Arcane Signet and Sol Ring. The game plan gets extremely accelerated if we have either of these, but getting them can be rather inconsistent.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
Card draw has always been kind of bad for mono-white, luckily for us we have some sources that can be pretty strong like Halo Fountain which is a pretty strong source of cheap card draw for the deck and since we often have so many tokens on the board its draw ability is fairly easy for us to use. Caretaker's Talent is another card that works very well with the deck, and although it can only trigger once a turn, it can trigger on pretty much every turn and be quite consistent. I also want to highlight Secret Rendevouz which is strong card draw for a white deck and can help give us some political points with an opponent since they can draw cards too. While we aren’t amazing at drawing cards we can keep our hand pretty full.
Removal
We have a lot of good removal in this deck. In contrast, we have some classic creature removal in Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares we have removal that is great in all instances like Generous Gift or Stroke of Midnight being able to destroy any permanent with Generous Gift can allow us to remove even the most problematic things are opponents have even if they are lands! Stroke of Midnight is also great to destroy any nonland permanent. Having these options with our removal allows us to take out a variety of threats. Parting Gust is one of my favorite spells in the deck, and it allows us to use it as a removal spell if needed, but can also be a source of blink for our deck!
Protection
We don’t have a lot of strict protection spells in the deck outside of Flare of Fortitude. Still, we do have a lot of blink spells that can be used as sources of protection, like Ephemerate and Cloudshift, which are both great, cheap options that can help us re-ETB great creatures or, more importantly, keep them alive in the face of single-target removal. Moogles' Valor is a great source of protection for the deck and provides some great token production on the condition that we already have a pretty full board. We are quite good at protecting our stuff in this deck.
Utility / Support
Let’s highlight some of my favorite cards in the deck! Elspeth, Storm Slayer is a super cool planeswalker that is truly the whole package for this deck. It provides straight-up token production, passive token doubling, and removal all in a five-mana planeswalker, just a great card for the deck. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar can be a huge attacker for our deck, provides consistent token production, and if Toby, Beastie Befriender is on the battlefield, can turn on the “our tokens have flying ability” when we go to attacks, which can be powerful if we don’t already have this. In my testing games, I got a lot of great usage out of Divine Visitation, which can make all of the 1/1’s we create from cards like Reverent Hoplite and make them into 4/4 angels, which is pretty crazy and can allow us to end games quickly. Since we go so wide, I want to finish by highlighting Moonshaker Cavalry, which is a great way to end the game and can allow us to do so very quickly.
Mana Base
I love our mana base even though it is quite simple since we are a mono-colored deck, Adagia, Windswept Bastion is an amazing card for our deck that is quite easy to “turn on” and being able to copy things like Teleportation Circle or Panharmonicon can be insane for our deck. Since we are a mono-colored deck, we can easily get a lot of usage out of Emeria, the Sky Ruin, which will be turned on as the game goes on, and the consistent recursion can be great, especially for cards like Exalted Sunborn, which are typically targeted by removal. While we don’t have a ton of interesting non-basics, we have an efficient landbase. I tested a bunch of different land counts in this deck and found thirty-four to be perfect.
Win Conditions
Our only win condition is combat, this is made easier by our commander, who can easily give all of our tokens flying and cards like Moonshaker Cavalry, which can easily end the game once dropped.
Strengths of the Deck
Because of Toby, we are naturally evasive and a lot harder to stop.
It only takes a few turns for us to amass a huge board.
Weaknesses of the Deck
It can be rough for us to rebuild after a board wipe. We don’t have mass recursion for the deck, and certainly don’t have the ramp to build back quickly.
We have a tough time against decks that are super heavy on removal. We have blink/protection in the deck, but not enough to do it en masse.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Bruvac the Grandiloquent. Matchup Record: 1-3
I struggled a lot against this matchup, they can mill a ton very quickly and when they have Bruvac out Traumatize effects can be straight up one-shots on us, we don’t have any cards that shuffle back in or cards that put our graveyard back in our library so there isn’t much we can do, our best course of action is to kill Bruvac as much as we can, but that can be tough against a mono-blue deck.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Generous Gift and Ephemerate.
Game 2: Vs Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage. Matchup Record: 3-0
A true mono-white token matchup, our biggest advantage here is our commander, and the flying that we get from them allows us to be at a huge advantage. We do have to worry about overextending ourselves because they can hit back hard, but overall, this is a great matchup for the deck.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Reverent Hoplite, Caretaker's Talent and Teleportation Circle.
Game 3: Vs Sidisi, Regent of the Mire. Matchup Record: 3-2
This was a firmly alright matchup for our deck. We don’t love all of the removal they have, and they can reanimate some very nasty stuff, so make sure you save those Path to Exiles and Swords to Plowshares so we can exile their best reanimation creatures once they are reanimated. Just stick to the game plan and do your best to fly over the top.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Swords to Plowshares, Season of the Burrow and Riot Control.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed it! Toby is a very fun commander and another true underrated commander from Duskmourn. Duskmourn is a set that has some amazing commanders, and Toby is no exception, having the ability to give all of our tokens flying, which gives us an edge on most token decks that is uncommon and very strong for us. This deck presents some classic mono-white fun!
