In EDH, card draw spells are almost always at a premium. While blue decks get plenty of choices, other colors need to dig a bit deeper for strong card advantage effects.
This makes it all the more rewarding when you can incorporate a unique option into your deck that not everyone can maximize. One particular enchantment that fits the mold is now on the rise thanks to some deadly MTG Avatar synergies.
Aggressive Mining MTG
Aggressive Mining’s extreme restriction hits like a wall of bricks. Considering that Commander revolves around massive haymakers, cutting off your mana is really risky. On top of that, in order to make use of the card draw, you need to put yourself even lower on lands. That said, if you can somehow work around these negatives, the sheer number of cards you can draw over the course of a game is staggering.
One of the easiest ways to take advantage of Aggressive Mining is to pair it with cards that put lands from your hand into play. As you continue to draw cards, anything from Walking Atlas to Patron of the Moon ensures you can make use of all the lands you draw. In a similar vein, you can also incorporate cards like Aftermath Analyst that resurrect the lands you sacrifice. Any Commanders that pay you off for sacrificing lands, such as Szarel, Genesis Shepherd, can help pull you further ahead, too.
Alternatively, you can go a completely different route and play Aggressive Mining in your Zedruu the Greathearted or Iroh, Tea Master deck. By giving Aggressive Mining to one of your opponents that isn’t well-suited to abuse it, you can completely mana-screw them while your Commander generates value.
Earthbending Synergies
While Aggressive Mining is powerful in sacrificial land and donation themes, the card is even better when used with Earthbending. Thanks to Earthbending’s unique built-in protection, if your Earthbent lands leave play for any reason other than getting bounced, they’ll come right back to play. This, of course, includes you sacrificing your lands to Aggressive Mining.
With this in mind, Aggressive Mining is a really sweet addition to Toph, Hardheaded Teacher decks. The card advantage Aggressive Mining provides ensures that you won’t run out of gas, making it trivial to trigger Toph’s second ability repeatedly. Even though you can only activate Aggressive Mining once each turn, in a four-player game, you can still draw up to eight cards before you reach your next turn.
Taking Earthbending further, Toph, the First Metalbender is an even more popular Earthbending Commander that provides similar upside to Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. This time, though, you can turn your artifacts into lands, then sacrifice those artifacts to Aggressive Mining to draw cards and bring them back to play. Any artifacts with strong death triggers, such as Ichor Wellspring or Solemn Simulacrum, can amplify the value that Aggressive Mining provides.
A Cheap Upgrade
All in all, Aggressive Mining offers more utility than you might expect at first glance. As long as you have some way to minimize the card’s downsides, you’ll be drowning in card advantage before you know it. Yet, despite getting a Secret Lair printing, it still appears in less than 12,000 decks according to EDHREC.
Thanks to the massive restriction, this draw engine is also available relatively inexpensive. Aggressive Mining is readily available for under 50 cents in its cheapest form on TCGplayer. As such, players won’t have to fear breaking the bank to make an upgrade for their Commander decks.
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