Three years ago, Magic the Gathering started one of its first steps into Universes Beyond with Tales of Middle-earth: a set that took place in Tolkien’s world of The Lord of the Rings. We’re returning to the Shire, but this time it’s set during The Hobbit story, with Bilbo and his band of dwarves on their way to face the dragon Smaug.
My Precious Mechanics
When drafting for The Hobbit, it’s the first time in a while that I was eager to build a deck out of practically every creature archetype. Usually when a set releases, I gravitate towards one or two creature types, but I was deep in my pile of cards trying to build something for elves, humans, goblins, and a wolves deck.
Being set in the same world as Tales of Middle-earth, you can expect to see a few returning mechanics from that set. Specifically, the return of Adventures and Amass. If you’re unfamiliar (or just forgot), Adventures are sorcery or instant spells attached to a permanent (similar to Strixhaven’s Prepared mechanic). When you have that card in hand, you have the option of playing either the Adventure part of a card or the permanent half. The card An Unexpected Party, for example, is a 4-cost enchantment that lets you give +2/+2 to a chosen creature type. You can play this card no problem, but doing so will cost you the opportunity to play its other half. At the Door is the attached Adventure to this card, and it’s a sorcery that lets you create 2/2 dwarf tokens. If you opt to play this half of the card first, then the card goes into exile instead of the graveyard, and you’ll then have the opportunity to cast the enchantment from exile anytime you want. It’s a fantastic mechanic that I’m glad to see return.
Amass is pretty straightforward, so let’s use Bothersome Noisemaker as the example. It states that whenever you cast a noncreature spell, you can Amass Goblins 1. This means you create a 0/0 Goblin army token and add a +1/+1 counter to it. Alternatively, if you already have a Goblin army token out, then you’ll just attach those counters to it instead of creating a new army token.
Now the new mechanics I really gelled with in The Hobbit are Hone Counters and Recruit. Hone Counters are probably the most interesting new toy to play with in this set, and while there are only two cards in the set that deal with them (Sting Bilbo’s Sword and Dwalin Weaponmaster), it’s a very exciting new mechanic that I hope sees more play in the future. So the way Hone Counters work is that a single Hone Counter gives a creature +1/+0; now it’s important to note that this is the ability of the counter, NOT the equipment. Sting, for example, doesn’t give creatures any sort of buff; it’s the Hone Counters that it attaches to itself that do that. Dwalin, a creature card, can give each equipment you control a Hone Counter. They’re a potentially huge shake-up to Magic, as you now have a way to buff equipment. So imagine a scenario where your creature had an equipment attached to it, but your opponent destroyed that creature. If that creature had ten +1/+1 counters on it, well then you just lost your big swinger. However, if the equipment that was attached to it had ten Hone Counters attached to it, then you can simply attach that equipment to a new creature, and you haven’t lost your big swinger after all; you simply replaced it.
The other new mechanic I really enjoyed is Recruit. It’s essentially a token generator, but with card draw, which makes it incredibly enticing. There are a variety of ways to trigger Recruit, but once you do, you’ll draw a card, discard a card, and if you discarded a non-land card, then you can create a 1/1 human token. The Queen of Dale is a particularly powerful card because she can Recruit whenever an opponent casts their first noncreature spell each turn; in a game of Commander where you’re usually playing against three other people, this can snowball quickly. This combined nicely with cards like Lakeshore Apothecary, which gets a +1/+1 counter anytime you draw your second card each turn, which could potentially happen up to four times in a full Commander rotation.
While building my decks, I really wanted to do something with all the variety of beast cards I had, like the wolves, bears, and even Great Fierce Bees. Ferocious was an ability a small handful of these cards had that, while not a common enough ability to use as the focus in a commander deck, suited my 40-card standard deck just fine. Ferocious basically gives your creature a bonus if they attack while you control another creature with power 4 or greater. The Chief Warg, for example, lets you draw a card at the cost of 1 life, whereas Wilderland Scrounger puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. What makes Ferocious extra fun is that it can trigger itself if you can get a creature with that ability up in power. I’m hoping to see it again when next year’s Kamigawa: Titanbreach set releases, with it possibly paired with the monstrous creatures from Ikoria.
My friend’s elf deck became the bane of my existence during our draft with its token creation and landfall triggers. Thranduil Sindarin Liege was out here buffing and creating elf tokens, all while Woodland Weavemaster and Boughside Wanderers got buffed whenever elves and lands entered (which were both happening constantly). Drop a Through the Forest Gate so that you could look at the top twenty cards of your deck and play any lands from among them, and you can see how this is getting silly. The nail in the coffin for this combo was him having Sting Bilbo’s Sword, Key to the Side-Door, and Galion Elvenking’s Butler all out.
Cards like Thranduil Sindarin Liege, Thranduil’s Company, or Elvish Archdruid would boost all the elves on the field, but they’d be specifically boosting Galion. Building up my board became a double-edged sword because my friend was waiting for me to build it big enough to drop Sting down, which increases in power based on your opponent’s creatures, and he’d attach that to Galion. Key to the Side-Door makes Galion unblockable, and Galion’s own ability makes another creature copy his power and toughness for that combat turn, which means you’ve got an army of elves (thanks to Thranduil) and two massive swingers coming your way. It was so well done I couldn’t even be mad about it; only upset cause I’m working on a Lathril deck and realizing I might want to pivot to a Thranduil one instead.
A Return to Middle-earth
Now, while The Hobbit didn’t release with any commander precons, Wizards of the Coast did push out a (much-needed) reprint of the Tales of Middle-erth precon decks from a few years ago. There are four precons, each centered around a specific character: Food and Fellowship sees Frodo as its commander, Riders of Rohan has Eowyn, Elven Council has Galadriel, and finally Hosts of Mordor has Sauron as its face commander. This won’t be a review of them, but I just wanted to discuss them briefly in case you see them in your local card shop and were curious about possibly picking them up (you should).
Five Armies, One Table
Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it, The Hobbit will feature a cooperative game that you’ll be able to play with your friends. There’s not too much known about this game besides that it’s called Battle of Five Armies, named after the climactic finale of the book that saw the armies of men, elves, and dwarves fighting against the goblin and wolf armies. If it’s anything like TMNT Team-Up, you and your friends will have premade decks to choose from that you’ll use to “fight” against a self-playing villain deck (in this case, the goblins and wolves, which each get their own decks).
Unfortunately, it’s been delayed until 2027, so I’ll simply include a description and a friendly heads-up to stay tuned.
Final Word
The Hobbit feels like a fantastic supplement to Tales of Middle-earth, and it really does feel great to be back in this world again. The flavor of the cards is fantastic, the new and returning mechanics are all great to play with, and the art might be some of Magic’s best. If there was any downside with this release, it’s the lack of precon Commander decks when so many cards feel like they were just begging to be placed in one.
