Hello and welcome back! Hobbit spoilers are still going and coming back again, and with them there is a surprising support for certain typal decks and new legends to build them around. Some, like Elves and Humans* (and Landfall decks), are obvious and easily fit into a popular archetype of deck. Others, like Dwarves and Goblins, are getting some needed extra support and archetype diversity, and still other types like Bear and Wolves are getting exciting new options and support. Let’s dive into these!
ELVES
Probably the only creature type that easily has enough support for any kind of build for a bunch of different decks and have their themes be somewhat different despite the creature type involved, even these decks are getting new and exciting legends and support for even more deck archetypes.
A new legend that will probably make some waves will be none other than Thranduil the Elvenking. The combo potential here is pretty good depending on what’s in your graveyard. Even just some normal elf deck that doesn’t want to combo out can gain a lot of value out of the rummaging alone.
A support piece comes in the form of Thranduil’s Company. Well, sorta. It’s a good card on its own but gets better if you have another elf on the field with it, allowing an additional land drop per turn. It might be a better landfall support card, but the additional elf is necessary for its other effect. With its landfall ability, you can permanently pump a creature up with counters, twice. There are many synergies here that can be taken advantage of, all in popular archetypes. In this set specifically, landfall features heavily among the elven cards.
An interesting elf printed in this set is less about elves and more about combo potential in Elven Raft-Steerer. It’s very much a Coralhelm Retreat, but more limited. Still, there is a lot of potential here to abuse even outside of elves, though I’m sure Thranduil will love being able to mimic these creatures. Just need a way to grab more lands and put them into play.
HUMANS (WELL, RECRUIT)
*Another creature type that doesn’t need too much help and if I’m honest the focus on human typed creatures in this set is lacking for the human typed cards. So, a bit of a cheat here, but many of them do get a very useful new ability called Recruit.
The main new legend among the humans is Bard King of Dale, which I covered a bit in my previous article. This six drop legend rewards all kinds of token and card draw abuses, but he supports the Recruit mechanic by giving it extra value. Instead of one token you get two, and instead of the normal looting of a card you net a card in the process. While the support for the set limited environment is clear, the legend itself can go into so many decks and be such good value I’d say, again, it’s remove-on-sight.
As I said earlier, the human creature type isn’t the real focus for the human card in this set. It’s all about Recruit. Master’s Councillors help that along a bit by giving a bonus for the second draw by milling an opponent. While it’s only three cards, an easily repeatable mill is pretty good. This card also gets a bonus for opponents having a graveyard a bit stocked as well, menacing some good damage.
The Mountain-King's Return helps with some recruit, recursion and buffing. For Commander specifically, it gives some early card selection, and allows you to pitch something that you can recur the next turn for free. It’s a lot like a favorite card of mine, The Restoration of Eiganjo. You can get a lot of value out of seemingly small effects like this.
DWARVES
Dwarves got a good few cards in this set. While dwarves have slowly gotten some better cards to fill out the type over the years, direct support has been somewhat rare. The dwarves also get their own mechanic, storied, which is a batch mechanic that counts the number of artifacts, legendaries and sagas you control. If you have three or more, you gain an enduring story for the rest of the game. Honestly, this isn’t hard to do.
Bifur, Melodic Rider cares about the creature type and gives you a bonus if you have an enduring story. It’s a double triggers effect, but limited to Dwarves you control. A real lord himself, he also buffs your creatures, though this ability doesn’t care about the creature type and can target any creature.
Balin, Loremaster, isn't so much a supportive Dwarf as he is the finisher for Dwarves. With the rather easily gotten Enduring Story from the Storied ability, you are able to burn down a table if you have a stocked hand. More than that, even without the Enduring Story, you get mass card selection by discarding your hand if you’d like and drawing that many cards when another Dwarf comes into play. The dwarves' themes in the set have a decent amount of enter abilities to take advantage of by the way, so triggering this multiple times might be best with some blink or token creation.
Speaking of tokens, the dwarf cards of the set revolve around equipment a bit, but there is a good enchantment in An Unexpected Party that can help a Dwarf Commander deck go wider and taller. The sorcery creates you some dwarves by playing into X, and so can scale a bit with the game length. The enchantment side gives you a typal bonus based on what type you choose, but if you’re playing dwarves and making dwarf tokens, might as well choose dwarf.
GOBLINS
Bolg, Erebor’s Reckoning is from the Commander focused cards of the set, and I like it better than his other version as a supporting creature for the goblin and orc creature types. It rewards going wide, and has a mass “flanking” ability, weakening defenders. While not as flashy as the regular set fellow, I think this will be generally better at ending games when they need to be ended. It also has some ways to abuse the last ability, specifically Maha Its Feathers Night and other similar effects come to mind.
Another goblin we’re getting is Azog, Moria’s Ruin. It’s essentially removal with up and down side. The downside replaces what you remove with a goblin token that’s at least as big as the creature you destroyed. However, you can get that token yourself and draw a card if the creature Azog gets-got is your own. While the drawback can be bad, giving an opponent an ability-less creature as opposed to whatever you needed dead isn’t so bad as to be outside of useful. I really like this card, and because it’s a creature recurring or for extra value is going to be great. Personally one of my favorite things to do is add it to a White Black deck with Kambal Profiteering Mayor and a Suture Priest, but for goblins having removal on a creature will also fill a roll those decks need.
The Great Goblin rewards you for modifying creatures, specifically goblins, orcs, and armies, by burning a target opponent for 2. Now, Red isn’t exactly known for its astounding counter making abilities, but it does come up. Black is probably where you’ll get most of this from, in blight and persist to undying and finality. Get enough of that going, and opponents are going to feel the pain quick. Otherwise, the Great Goblin does give you some card advantage when another of those creature types die, but exiled and only until your next turn. Granted, that’s still very good in these colors and with these types of creatures focused decks.
BEARS
The bears have gotten some excellent and adorable cards in this set, and to start us off we have the goat of bears in middle-earth, Beorn the Fierce. It’s a Bear the buffs Bears and makes other things Bears through the Bear virus. Okay, well a trample counter. If you control enough bears, you get to draw TWO cards. Actually kind of ridiculous. It’s a simple card that hits all the right notes I think and it can be the commander or helps out the few other Bear legends we have like Ayula, Kudo and Duskana the Rage Mother.
Since most Bears are at least part Green, ramping is probably part of whatever deck you’re doing. Dancing from Dark to Dawn rewards you with bears when you drops land into play. Beyond that, you can also make those and other creatures bigger via +1/+1 counters when you cast a creature spell. All very Green stuff to be doing, plus it makes more bears if your bear typal deck wants more bodies.
Little Bear is an adorable card that can help you in combat and otherwise. However, this card can be used better in combos with blink and recursion. While it does support bears a bit by adding a +1/+ counter to one you might untap, the ability to untap another creature is where the honey in the hive is here.
WOLVES
Wolves haven’t been given this much love since Innstrad and its batch of sets, and I’m not sure we got all that much then either, at least not specifically for wolves themselves. This set is making up for it a bit after a time with Chief Warg’s Company. Its stats are larger for the drawback of not being able to attack unless you have a few other wolves in the pack. If you don’t manage some, it makes its own tokens during your upkeep, so worst case you can attack for vie on turn five, making the wolf at least break even on time. Increasing you wolf counter is a good way to trigger other effects however, whether those effects care about wolves specifically or tokens or creatures generally
The Chief Warg is the legend to lead the wolves. A simple legend, it has some built in evasion with Menace and offers some card draw if you attack with a creature power 4 or greater. Granted, the Warg starts at 3 power, but there is a lot we can do to up the power there in Commander.
I love mass removal recovery cards, and Head of the Hunt is just that. With flash, you can drop this in response to someone wiping the board. Sure you lose the creature itself, but it offers recovery if your opponents have any creatures also dying to the removal. On top of that, it makes their lives a little less good by exiling their dying creatures. While this isn’t a wolf-specific card, it’s a good card in a lot of other places as well as among the wolves.
OLD STORIES ENDURE
There are a lot of good cards in this set, but I wanted to highlight these a bit since these five creature types are getting some love in The Hobbit.
Until next time, beware the Great Fierce Bee.
