Hobbits in Commander!!!

Hobbits in Commander!!!

by Johnny Cycles, August 14, 2026

Hello and welcome to a very special Commander write-up! The Hobbit releases in a couple of weeks, which has inspired me to highlight my Lord of the Rings Hobbit deck, then provide an update with cards from the new set! This deck is unique for me in a bunch of ways. It’s the first, and only, Commander deck I’ve built with partners. It’s my first, and only, Abzan Commander deck. And, most importantly, it’s my only Commander deck built from a single set.

That’s right. Every card in this deck is from the Lord of the Rings set. This includes the Commander decks from Lord of the Rings, but NOT any reprints. This means that my Frodo-Sam deck isn’t just the Precon deck… That wouldn’t be worth writing a whole article about. I’ve cut any non-Lord of the Rings cards, while also eliminating some of the in-set cards I didn’t like. All said and done, my version is quite a lot different than the Precon. In total, I’ve cut 32 nonland cards and 21 lands from the Precon deck.

After I talk about this deck, I’ll provide an updated list with cards from The Hobbit, which just released.

Here’s the deck:

Decklist – Hobbits with Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant

Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit
Sam, Loyal Attendant

Creatures (34)

Delighted Halfling
Frodo, Sauron’s Bane
Farmer Cotton
Feasting Hobbit
Frodo Baggins
Frodo, Determined Hero
Gollum, Patient Plotter
Gollum, Scheming Guide
Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff
Meriadoc Brandybuck
Pippin, Warden of Isengard
Samwise Gamgee
Samwise the Stouthearted
Shire Shirriff
Aragorn, Company Leader
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant
Boromir, Warden of the Tower
Legolas Greenleaf
Lobelia, Defender of Bag End
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins
Merry, Warden of Isengard
Peregrin Took
Rapacious Guest
Rosie Cotton of South Lane
Smeagol, Helpful Guide
The Gaffer
Elanor Gardner
Faramir, Field Commander
Gandalf, White Rider
Saradoc, Master of Buckland
Treebeard, Gracious Host
Galadriel, Gift-Giver
Gandalf the White
Motivated Pony

Artifacts (7)

Stone of Erech
Lembas
Mirror of Galadriel
Sting, the Glinting Dagger
Mithril Coat
Phial of Galadriel
The One Ring

Enchantments (7)

Call of the Ring
Shortcut to Mushrooms
Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Elven Chorus
Flowering of the White Tree
One Ring to Rule Them All
War of the Last Alliance

Instants (9)

Pippin’s Bravery
You Cannot Pass!
Lost to Legend
Nasty End
Slip On the Ring
Shower of Arrows
Stew the Coneys
Bitter Downfall
Isildur’s Fateful Strike

Sorceries (3)

Many Partings
Sam’s Desperate Rescue
The Battle of Bywater

Lands (38)

Minas Tirith
Shire Terrace
The Grey Havens
The Shire
Forest (11)
Plains (11)
Swamp (12)

Before I get into the deck and its primary game plan, let me just say that Wizards did an outstanding job with this set. The fact that we can make a competitive and, more importantly, fun deck using only cards from a single set is incredible to me. And I’m not just jamming every Hobbit (okay, fine, Halfling) printed and calling it good. No, there are some clear synergies between some of the cards and a lack of synergy among others.

Primary Game Plan

It should come as no surprise that our strategy is two-fold (we do have two commanders, after all). We want to make Food tokens and we want the Ring to tempt us. But what is so fun and powerful about this deck and the cards from Lord of the Rings is that the support pieces all bring something else to the table. Thus, our Food generators can draw us cards, grow our team, ramp us, etc. Ditto the support cards that include the Ring tempting us.

And, along the way, there are other angles of attack and synergies that spring up from these various cards. For instance, besides the obvious reason to gain life to trigger Frodo’s static ability, we have other cards that synergize with lifegain. Another fun secondary line is our creature token generation. We have quite a few ways of flooding the board, then taking advantage of these 1/1s.

The deck has been both surprising and super fun to play. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of an Aristocrat deck. Its sum is much greater than its parts. Games we win will see us with a large boardstate of interactive permanents that have us performing multiple actions on our turn and on our opponent’s. And while we lack the kind of drain-and-gain featured in Aristocrat decks, like them, we are unlikely to win in a single big turn, but rather over the course of many as we chip in damage in a variety of ways.

My initial approach to writing about this deck was to list all the Food generators and all the Ring tempting cards, before moving on to the support cards. However, given that “create a Food token” and “the Ring tempts you” are pretty straightforward in their meaning, I will instead divide the deck by what else these cards do. Before I do, though, let me tell you how many of each Food and Ring cards we’re running.

We have 15 cards that make Food tokens, one actual Food (Lembas), and one way to make Food tokens via other tokens entering (Peregrin Took). Furthermore, eight of these cards can make Food repeatedly. Meanwhile, we play 11 ways for the Ring to tempt us, four of which are repeatable.

Now, as to what else these Food and Ring cards do, I’m dividing them into the following categories: card advantage, ramp, removal, go-wide cards, finishers, protection, life gain, and support cards.

Card Advantage

Our deck has a ton of ways to gain card advantage, from graveyard recursion to tutors to straight up card draw. Furthermore, we have card advantage built into our two commanders and into being tempted by the Ring.

Call of the Ring – one of our best ways both to be tempted by the Ring and to draw cards. If you’re unfamiliar with how being tempted by the Ring works, you can get a token that explains it all that looks like this:

When the Ring tempts us, we must choose a creature as our Ring-bearer, assuming we control one. What is so great about Call of the Ring is that even if we choose the same creature each time, we still can pay the two life to draw a card.
Lembas – this isn’t just in the deck for flavor. We want ways to gain 3 life to trigger Frodo’s static ability and this gives us a way to do that along with card advantage. At 2 mana, we can keep a risky seven with this to help bridge the gap.
Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit – each chapter of this Saga supports either our primary game plan or one of our secondary.

Peregrin Took – what a fantastic card for us and, really, any token generating deck. I play this Halfling Citizen in my Mutagen Man, Living Ooze deck and it does work there, too.
Sam’s Desperate Rescue – one of our graveyard recursion cards that can get a key combo piece back after our opponent answers it.
Samwise Gamgee – a Food generator alongside graveyard recursion. I haven’t counted yet, but we play a TON of historic cards (legendary cards, artifacts, and sagas count).
Samwise the Stouthearted – I’m on the fence about this card to be honest. At its best, we play it after our opponent takes out a key piece on a board full of permanents and we get it right back. At its worst, we tap out every turn to advance our board and never get to use the recursion aspect.
War of the Last Alliance – one of my new favorite cards, we get to tutor up two legendary creatures before getting to the third chapter, which can close out games for us, assuming we have a big enough board. If not, well, we still get tempted by the Ring!

Other Card Advantage

Alongside our Food and Ring card draw, we play quite a few other ways to keep our hand flush with action.

Elven Chorus – a third of our deck is made up of creatures, which means we should hit every third card. Yay, math!
Faramir, Field Commander – while we aren’t eager to lose our key synergistic pieces, our deck is more than capable of pumping out 1/1 dorks to throw away in combat in order to draw a card, including Faramir itself.

Gollum, Scheming Guide – there’s so much text on this card, I almost don’t want to play it… Still, besides the potential card draw we get from this Halfling Horror, we also get to dig two cards deep to set up our next draw. Not too shabby.
Legolas Greenleaf – should an Elf Archer be in a Hobbit deck? I’ll let you decide for yourself, but we play enough legendary creatures that we can grow Legolas pretty big.
Lobelia, Defender of Bag End – playing your opponent’s spells counts as card advantage, right?
Minas Tirith – we won’t be drawing cards with this land in the early and mid games unless we’re missing land drops or are flooded. The late game is where it will really shine.

Mirror of Galadriel – 31 of our 36 creatures are legendary. I finally counted… Post boardwipe notwithstanding, we should rarely be paying more then to activate this artifact.
Nasty End – we’ll likely sacrifice a token for this spell, but being able to draw three cards for a legendary creature will be very tempting, particularly if it’s one that we already got value out of, like Samwise the Stouthearted.
Phial of Galadriel – being hellbent is never fun, but for a deck like ours that lacks traditional bombs and instead relies on synergistic pieces coming together to overwhelm our opponent, we won’t win many topdeck wars. This Legendary Artifact helps with that quite a bit.
Stone of Erech – every deck needs graveyard hate and this one comes along with card draw.
The Gaffer – arguably our best card draw engine since it checks our life gain on each end step.

The One Ring – no self-respecting Hobbit Tribal deck should avoid playing this card just because it’s a game changer.

Ramp

Most of these cards don’t fall under your traditional 2-mana mana rock ramp. However, getting lands from our deck starting on turn 4 still technically counts as ramp. And, they bring with it Food or being tempted by the Ring.

Elanor Gardner – with our commander out alongside this Halfling Scout, we should easily get an extra land every turn until we run out of them.
Galadriel, Gift-Giver – we have to choose between the Food or the Treasure, it’s true, but since it’s repeatable, this 5-drop is one of our best token generators if we can keep it alive in combat.
Many Partings – technically not ramp, I’m still including it here because it mana fixes, which is often more important than ramping for us. Costing only means we can keep some 2-land opening hands with this included.

Smeagol, Helpful Guide – I’m not sure why Wizards put so much text on the Gollum cards, but this is another one that is crazy long. But it also happens to be super busted. We get a repeatable way to be tempted by the Ring, which is great, but ANY time we are tempted by the Ring, we get a land from our opponent’s deck. And, what I’m stunned by, is the nonland cards they reveal on the way to finding us a land go to the graveyard, rather than the bottom in any order, which is typical for this kind of effect. I’m sure someone has made a Mill deck with this as the Commander.

Other Ramp

We are playing some more traditional ramp, as well, that doesn’t bring with it a Food or a temptation. These are them.

Delighted Halfling – a case could be made that this is the best 1-mana mana dork ever printed. In our deck, it’s amazing!
Elven Chorus – turning all of our creatures into Birds of Paradise can lead to some explosive turns…or to just a lot of Food being sacrificed.
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins – very conditional ramp, the ceiling for this card is very high. And don’t sleep on its menace.
Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff – we ought to be able to trigger this card ourselves pretty reliably. When our opponents do it, we can pull far ahead on the resource front.
Phial of Galadriel – there used to be a time when 3-mana mana rocks that did little but tap for mana were the industry standard. Now we get a card like this and it barely sees play.

Removal

If there is one big weakness in building a deck with only Lord of the Rings cards it’s the removal. Overcosted and underwhelming is how I’d describe most of these spells. Thankfully, we get some upgrades in The Hobbit!

One Ring to Rule Them All – a sweeper our opponent will have a turn to prepare for that also doesn’t kill their commander. Womp womp. But we can’t not play a card with this name! Not to mention it’s one of two sweepers we have.
Stew the Coneys – the flavor of this card is great. We get the food from the frying pan we use to kill the creature. Otherwise, makes this card unplayable in any but Hobbit Tribal.
The Battle of Bywater – now this is a powerful sweeper. It should very often be close to one-sided, while also netting us quite a few Food tokens.

Other Removal

Without these cards, our deck would be even weaker in this area. Again, though, many of these spells are just bad.

Bitter Downfall – like this one. But when the pickings are slim, you got to take what you can get.
Isildur’s Fateful Strike – another subpar, overpriced removal spell. Sigh.
Lost to Legend – we can at least target our opponent’s commander with this one.
Shire Shirriff – one of our best removal cards since it exiles. It’s also the most fragile.
Shower of Arrows – I thought for sure there was a strictly better card that did everything but the scry 1 for just two mana, but I can’t find it. And, in fact, with the scry 1, this instant is strictly better than what we’ve gotten before it (Broken Wings). Interestingly enough, Wizards decided to give us a second Shower of Arrows in Edge of Eternities called Shattered Wings, except it’s a sorcery.

You Cannot Pass! – the final scene of the best sequence from the movie, this also happens to be our best removal spell, assuming we can trigger its block clause.

Go Wide

One of our best ways of closing out games is to flood the board with tokens and overwhelm our opponent’s defenses. Once again, several of these cards also make Food or tempt us with the Ring.

Farmer Cotton – another generically powerful token producer in any deck looking to make them, we get all the fun Food and Halfling synergies along with a bunch of tokens!
Faramir, Field Commander – a 1/1 Human Soldier token for each time the Ring tempts us can lead to some big turns for us if we have the right draw. Other times, we won’t have the Ring cards, but all that other text makes Faramir a great inclusion.
Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit – it’s the third chapter of this Saga that has it in this section. There will be times we get only two 1/1 Halflings, but there will also be times when we get more than 10.

Other Go Wide Cards

Merry, Warden of Isengard – unfortunately Wizards limited the power of this Halfling Advisor considerably, but at least we can trigger it on our opponent’s turn, as well. The lifelink on the tokens is also some bonus synergy.
Saradoc, Master of Buckland – 24 of our 34 creatures will trigger this Halfling Citizen, not including our commanders.

Finishers

You won’t find the traditional finishers in this list since we’re a Lord of the Rings deck, but we still have some powerful ways to end the game…with a little help. Again, I’ll be starting with the cards that either make Food or tempt us with the Ring, as well as help us win the game.

Frodo, Sauron’s Bane – nothing says finisher like, “that player loses the game.” Sure, it’s not too likely we’ll go the distance with this, but in the late game after we’ve been tempted four times, we only need to sneak this Halfling through once.
Pippin, Warden of Isengard – it’s not quite Overrun, but this will certainly help us survive combat and finish out games. Haste is a nice bonus and can lead to some sneaky wins with Frodo, Sauron’s Bane coming down in the late-game.
Rapacious Guest – we have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this a finisher, but we already want to sacrifice Foods, so we can go about our business, while slowly growing her to bigger and bigger proportions. Menace means we’ll even have a chance of chipping in damage with her before she gets so big, our opponent will be between a rock and a hard place. We also play a handful of ways to sacrifice our own creatures, allowing us to kill her on our own terms.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane – this unassuming 3-drop can grow one threat to massive proportions or distribute the counters among the team. Yes, it will take some doing, but if she is left unanswered, she can close out games quickly.
Shortcut to Mushrooms – okay, this is a bit of a stretch, but given enough time…
Treebeard, Gracious Host – our deck is well-suited to gaining life, even without the Food tokens. With enough of a boardstate, we should be able to grow our team to lethal over just a couple of turns.

Other Finishers

Feasting Hobbit – it shouldn’t be difficult for us to resolve this 2-drop with double digit power and toughness.
Flowering of the White Tree – +2/+1 is no joke and should help us finish games quickly.
Gandalf, White Rider – an offensive Glorious Anthem that is repeatable makes this Avatar Wizard a great facilitator of victories for us.
Motivated Pony – another pseudo-Overrun for us, we get to do it every combat, which is pretty awesome.
Saradoc, Master of Buckland – probably our second worst finisher after Shortcut to Mushrooms, if we have Motivated Pony out and have made a Food, we can attack, untap everything, then tap all the attacking Halflings to grow Saradoc large. Not too shabby.

Protection

Even a couple of these spells will lead to temptation. Alas, no Food production.

Boromir, Warden of the Tower – shutting down free spells is great, but it’s the indestructible we care about the most.
Slip On the Ring – a great way to nerf targeted removal along with doubling any enters ability we may want again.

Other Protection

Lost to Legend – rather than removal, we can use this to protect one of our key cards.
Mithril Coat – granting Frodo, Sauron’s Bane indestructible can give opponents headaches.
Pippin’s Bravery – not true protection, we can use this to ensure a creature survives combat.

Life Gain

Other than the life we gain from Food tokens, we have a few other cards that gain us life. I’ve written about most of them already, so I’ll simply list those.

Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant – we aren’t a dedicated lifegain deck and so Bilbo is more of a flavor-win/guilty pleasure card than anything else.
Lembas
Lobelia, Defender of Bag End – we can’t repeatedly sacrifice an artifact to drain our opponent in one big turn, but it’s still nice to have a bit of reach.
Merry, Warden of Isengard
Phial of Galadriel
Saradoc, Master of Buckland

Support Cards

We have a few cards that bring additional value to our deck, but that don’t necessarily fit in with our primary or secondary strategies. Some of these can be cut easily for new Halflings from The Hobbit.

Aragorn, Company Leader – another card that ranges from out of control advantage to a vanilla creature. With our tempted by the Ring cards, we can quickly give our team at least two of the four keywords. Without them, well, Aragorn will be on chump-blocking duty or fodder for sacrifice.
Frodo, Determined Hero – we are by no means an Equipment deck (we play two), so I’ll be cutting this card for something more synergistic from The Hobbit.
Gandalf the White – I will NOT be cutting this card. Everything about this card synergizes extremely well with our deck, making Gandalf one of our best late-game draws, as it should be.
Sting, the Glinting Dagger – here more for flavor and a lack of better options, sneaky haste can win us some games.
Frodo Baggins – one of our best ways to have the Ring tempt us multiple times in a turn, meaning this very unassuming 1/3 will not get cut.
Gollum, Patient Plotter – a slower way to have the Ring tempt us repeatably. This one is on the list of cards to cut, depending on what I find to replace it. It is one of our few ways to sacrifice our own creatures.
The Shire – a repeatable Food generator.
Meriadoc Brandybuck – ditto this card. If only we got a Food for each attacking creature…
Mithril Coat – another flavor inclusion, but one that may make the cut. Indestructible is not nothing, after all.

The Hobbit

The Hobbit is out today and we have a bunch of new cards to sift through to improve the deck. Unfortunately, though, there are far fewer Halflings than I expected, with an emphasis instead on Dwarves. And this is the first decision point we must make. Do we include the Dwarves in a nod to The Hobbit, or do we stick to our (mostly) Hobbit Tribal build?

You’ll have to make that decision for yourself, but for me, I’m leaving the Dwarves out. I think we have a decently powerful, fun, synergistic deck without them. And, that leaves me another deck I can build around those other small-of-stature heroes.

Overall, the new cards we get do two things this deck needs. First, we get better removal. Second, we get more Glorious Anthem effects. Otherwise, some of the changes may prove less than impressive, but I won’t know until I get some games in. Stay tuned!

Here are the cards I’m looking to add:

Creatures – In (5)

Belladonna Took – this is a very powerful addition to our deck that can easily take over a game for us.
Gollum, Riddle Master – it’s hard to read this card and think it isn’t a strict upgrade to Gollum, Patient Plotter. Sure, we lose one of our ways to have the Ring tempt us, but we get card draw and more reach.
Gollum the Abandoned – some graveyard hate and recursion is always nice.
The Sackville-Bagginses – I love this card for our deck. More card draw, another sacrifice outlet to replace Gollum, Patient Plotter, and reach à la Aristocrats.
Troop of Ponies – I know we’ve seen 2-mana creatures that can be sacrificed to find us lands, but I think this may be the first that does a Cultivate impression for just .

Creatures – Out (5)

Aragorn, Company Leader
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant
Frodo, Determined Hero
Gollum, Patient Plotter
Samwise the Stouthearted

Instants/Sorceries – In (7)

Allure of Power – the Adventure side of My Precious, this is an easy swap with Nasty End.
At the Door – the Adventure side of An Unexpected Party, we don’t really care if we get 2/2 Dwarf tokens or not, but we won’t turn them down!
Bilbo’s Deadly Slice – our best upgrades come in the removal category. This replaces Isildur’s Fateful Strike.
Bilbo’s Gambit – I had originally include the Lord of the Rings Reprieve on accident. I’m glad we have some sneaky counter magic for real now.
Stir Up Trouble – replaces Bitter Downfall.
Stone by Sunlight – a powerful flexible spell that we can cut Samwise the Stouthearted for.
The Eagles are Coming! – a great protection spell that doubles as a finisher in the late-game. We can cut Aragorn, Company Leader for this one.

Instants/Sorceries – Out (6)

Bitter Downfall
Isildur’s Fateful Strike
Lost to Legend
Nasty End
Pippin’s Bravery
Stew the Coneys

Artifacts – In (2)

My Precious – beyond the flavor, this card gives our deck a 2-card combo alongside Frodo, Sauron’s Bane. And while I typically avoid these types of I-win-the-game combos, this one requires a lot of mana investment and time to pull off.
The Arkenstone – this set’s The One Ring, it isn’t as powerful, but that’s more an indictment of just how powerful The One Ring is, more than The Arkenstone being not so good. The Adventure side is a bit over-costed but acceptable in Commander. Of course, since it’s two spells in one, we don’t really care that it’s instead of . A Glorious Anthem attached to half of The Immortal Sun that we can get value from as early as turn 2 makes this card an auto-include in any W/X deck looking to go wide or draw cards…or both!

Artifacts – Out (4)

Mirror of Galadriel – we’re adding card draw with some new cards, so this can be cut.
Mithril Coat – we are trading this for My Precious.
Phial of Galadriel – I’m not going to put this back in my binder while I test out Troop of Ponies.
Sting, the Glinting Dagger – we have to make cuts somewhere and we aren’t looking to combo off with this card, so it’s an easy cut.

Enchantments – In (2)

An Unexpected Party – this 4-mana enchantment gives our deck another finisher and something we sorely lack: Glorious Anthem effects. We have the go-wide part covered, but without jumping through a bunch of hoops, our army isn’t going to win in combat too often. This changes things for us.
Beorn’s HospitalityWizards keeps printing this kind of effect and I’m happy they do! Coming down on turn 2 will give us a ton of value. In the late-game, well, it’s not as good at growing our team, but does become a legitimate threat.

Enchantments – Out (1)

One Ring to Rule Them All – again, cuts have to be made. We’re increasing the efficiency and number of our interactive spells, so I’m going to try the deck without this sweeper and see how it goes.

Lands – In (1)

Hobbit Hole – a strictly better Shire Terrace.

Lands – Out (1)

Swamp

Overall, The Hobbit has unsurprisingly given us some powerful new cards to shore up the deck’s weaknesses and replace some of the rather subpar (Bitter End) or less-than-synergistic (Aragorn, Company Leader) cards that were included because we were limited to a single set. I’m especially excited about some of the additional reach we get in cards like The Sackville-Bagginses.

What we haven’t gotten are powerful bombs/finishers, unless we count the Glorious Anthem effects we have added, which do power up the deck. However, they are still reliant on a go-wide strategy that can prove rather weak to sweepers and decks that go bigger and better than us. I had originally cut Motivated Pony, Legolas Greenleaf, and Galadriel, Gift-Giver to make room for the new cards, but then changed my mind. While none constitute true bombs, they each have potential to become one.

Updated Decklist – Hobbits with Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant

Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit
Sam, Loyal Attendant

Creatures (34)

Delighted Halfling
Frodo, Sauron’s Bane
Belladonna Took
Farmer Cotton
Feasting Hobbit
Frodo Baggins
Gollum, Riddle Master
Gollum, Scheming Guide
Gollum the Abandoned
Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff
Meriadoc Brandybuck
Pippin, Warden of Isengard
Samwise Gamgee
Shire Shirriff
The Sackville-Bagginses
Troop of Ponies
Boromir, Warden of the Tower
Legolas Greenleaf
Lobelia, Defender of Bag End
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins
Merry, Warden of Isengard
Peregrin Took
Rapacious Guest
Rosie Cotton of South Lane
Smeagol, Helpful Guide
The Gaffer
Elanor Gardner
Faramir, Field Commander
Gandalf, White Rider
Saradoc, Master of Buckland
Treebeard, Gracious Host
Galadriel, Gift-Giver
Gandalf the White
Motivated Pony

Artifacts (5)

Stone of Erech
Lembas
My Precious
The One Ring
The Arkenstone

Enchantments (8)

Beorn’s Hospitality
Call of the Ring
Shortcut to Mushrooms
Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Elven Chorus
Flowering of the White Tree
An Unexpected Party
War of the Last Alliance

Instants (8)

You Cannot Pass!
Allure of Power
Bilbo’s Gambit
Slip On the Ring
Stone by Sunlight
The Eagles are Coming!
Bilbo’s Deadly Slice
Shower of Arrows

Sorceries (5)

Many Partings
Sam’s Desperate Rescue
Stir Up Trouble
At the Door
The Battle of Bywater

Lands (38)

Hobbit Hole
Minas Tirith
Shire Terrace
The Grey Havens
The Shire
Forest (11)
Plains (11)
Swamp (11)

* New cards are bolded.
Both parts of the two Adventure cards are included.

Ideal Hand and Game Play

Other than two to three lands (depending on if we have a ramp spell), we would love three creatures that support either our Food or Ring tempting us strategy. Essentially, we are a synergistic deck that needs several pieces on the battlefield for us to start pulling ahead. Any three or four of these in our opening hand would be great.

Weaknesses

Being a deck that is greater than its parts means if our opponent picks off key pieces or resolves a couple of sweepers, we may not recover. We have card draw, recursion, and a bit of protection to help fight these scenarios, but you have to draw them to cast them, of course.

Most of our creatures, as I’ve mentioned, cannot be considered bombs. In the late game, then, our topdecks will likely be underwhelming without some kind of boardstate. For this reason, I’d recommend sandbagging redundant pieces or cards that can be held without falling too far behind and instead spend mana on cracking Food, casting Adventure spells, or taking advantage of the recursion and stealing of our opponent’s cards that we have access to if we can.

Conclusion

Building a Commander deck from a single set has its challenges, even when that set is as big and synergistic as Lord of the Rings. My original deck was left filling in gaps with cards that lacked synergy and playing less-than-efficient interaction.

With the release of The Hobbit, this has largely changed. The core strategy of the deck, however, has remained the same. So if you’re looking for a synergistic deck that requires a lot of attention to your own cards and how they interact with one another, but that lacks big finishers – or, as I like to say, whose sum is greater than its parts – then give this deck a shot!

And let me know if you’ve ever built a Commander deck from a single set or block. How did it go?

As always, thanks for reading and watching!

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