The Best Cards for the 99 from The Hobbit

Greetings, planeswalkers and researchers! Tamiyo here, back at the same mountainside I documented last week.

My previous entry sorted The Hobbit into five armies and picked a commander for each. But a Commander deck is one card in the command zone and ninety-nine everywhere else, and it is the ninety-nine where a set actually earns its place. So I have spent the days since release doing the less glamorous half of the work: reading every card in The Hobbit (HOB) and The Hobbit Eternal (HOC) that isn't asking to lead a deck, and asking which ones deserve a slot in decks that already exist.

Ten cards survived. Five of them I would call format-wide — cards that will show up in decks with nothing to do with Middle-earth. The other five are more conditional, but every one of them is a card I would happily register.

A note on the early data

The set arrived on August 14, so we have six days of registrations to work from. That is enough to see the shape of adoption but not enough to be confident about ceilings, and I have weighted my own reading of the cards accordingly. Where the community and I disagree — and on one card, we do — I have said so.

1. Gleaming Splendor

This is the most-registered new card of the set by a wide margin, appearing in roughly one in fifteen decks that could legally play it, and I think the number is earned rather than hype.

The two halves are the point. Modern Commander tables draw a great many extra cards, and every one of those after the first each turn hands you gold. But the reason it never sits dead is the activation. On an opponent's turn, after they have taken their draw step, targeting that opponent and yourself means you draw a card, they draw a card, and you get a Treasure — two mana for a card, with the Treasure paying you back a third of the cost. It is a floor, not a ceiling, and floors are what separate a real card from a build-around.

It also asks nothing of your opponents, which is worth more than it sounds. Smothering Tithe and Rhystic Study tax the table and collect a proportional amount of resentment; Gleaming Splendor simply watches. Both of those are on the Game Changers list, incidentally, so if you were planning to run all three, that deck belongs at a Bracket 3 table or higher — the Splendor itself is unrestricted.

Add Academy Manufactor and each of those Treasures arrives with a Clue and a Food attached. And if you built the red deck from my previous entry, remember that Smaug the Magnificent counts your Treasures as ammunition.

2. Wizard's Staff

Triggered-ability doublers are among the most powerful effects available to a Commander deck, and they have always been expensive. Strionic Resonator charges you and a tap for each copy. Roaming Throne costs four mana and locks you to a creature type. Lithoform Engine wants two mana every single time.

Wizard's Staff wants nothing. Cast it for two, attach it once, and every attack trigger, every combat-damage trigger, every upkeep trigger on that creature fires twice for the rest of the game.

The honest limitation is that it doubles one creature, and that equip on a non-Wizard is a real cost you'll pay on a turn you'd rather be doing something else. Point it at a commander that already generates the trigger you care about and the arithmetic stops mattering. It is also, quietly, the best possible partner for Chief of the Wilds, whose own doubler stacks with it multiplicatively.

3. The Queen of Dale

Each opponent, each turn. In a four-player game that is up to three triggers per turn and up to twelve across a full round, from a two-mana 2/1 that most tables will not remove.

Read carefully, though: recruit is filtering, not raw card advantage. You draw one and discard one, and the profit is the body. That makes the Queen a card whose value depends entirely on what you build around her — and white, of all colors, has almost never had a free repeating discard outlet to build around.

Two directions work. The first is bodies: Skullclamp turns each 1/1 Soldier into two cards, and Mentor of the Meek — reprinted in the Eternal half, which is welcome — draws off every one of them for . Anointed Procession doubles the whole operation.

The second is the graveyard. Every trigger is a mandatory discard, which is a liability in a deck with no yard payoffs and an engine in a deck with reanimation, flashback, or madness. Choose one of the two before you register her; the middle ground is where this card disappoints people.

4. Bilbo's Gambit

White has spent thirty years unable to interact with the stack, and this is the most convincing exception I have documented. Two mana at instant speed, in white, that answers a spell already on its way to resolving.

The gift clause is what elevates it. Give the Treasure and the turn simply stops — not "counter this one spell," but "nobody casts anything else." A combo turn ends. A counterspell war ends. A table digging for an answer to your board ends.

The cost, and you must plan for it: players includes you. Once you promise the gift, your own hand is locked for the turn too, which makes this a card you hold for an opponent's turn rather than a piece of protection for your own. Think of it less as Silence, which clears the way for you, and more as an emergency brake anyone can pull. The spell also goes back to its owner's hand rather than to the graveyard — you are buying a turn, not a card.

5. My Precious

The Equipment half is a strictly more useful Whispersilk Cloak for any deck that wants to keep suiting up. The Cloak's shroud protects your creature from you as well; hexproof does not, so the rest of your Equipment and auras can still land on the carrier. For a Voltron deck that is the whole difference between a protective layer and a dead card.

The Adventure is what makes it worth a slot in decks that own no swords at all. Two mana at instant speed to sacrifice a creature in response to removal and draw two is a fine aristocrats card on its own — and afterward the card waits in exile, ready to be cast as the Equipment later. One slot, two spells, cast at whichever end of the game you need.

Two caveats worth stating: it is legendary, so no redundancy, and the life payment adds up in a deck already paying life elsewhere. Sword of Feast and Famine on an unblockable, hexproof creature remains one of the more decisive combinations in the format.

Five more that deserve a slot

Troop of Ponies

Troop of Ponies is a artifact creature that sacrifices for to fetch two basic lands — one to the battlefield tapped, one to hand. That is Cultivate, split across two turns, available to every color. It undercuts Burnished Hart by a full mana and leaves a body on the board in the meantime, which matters if anything in your deck cares about creatures dying. Twenty-one cents, and I expect it in a great many nongreen decks within the year.

Tom, Bert, and William

Tom, Bert, and William is the sleeper of the set. A 5/5 whose ability reads: , sacrifice another creature, draw cards equal to its power, then discard one. Compare that to Greater Good, which discards three. You are paying per activation and accepting that a creature is easier to remove than an enchantment — but the trolls come back as an artifact when they die, so a board wipe leaves you a permanent that still counts toward Storied. Seventy-one cents for a Golgari sacrifice engine.

Beorn's Hospitality

Beorn's Hospitality is a two-mana landfall engine that drops a +1/+1 counter on a creature every time a land enters, then — for — permanently becomes a Bear as large as your land count. One counter per land is a slow rate on its own, which is why this belongs specifically in decks running Hardened Scales or Branching Evolution, and extra land drops from Thranduil's Company. Its real virtue is that it is an enchantment: it sits under creature removal and sweepers entirely, and only becomes a target on the turn you decide to end the game with it.

Gnashing of Teeth

Gnashing of Teeth is twelve cents of genuine flexibility: -5/-5 with an exile replacement, or -1/-1 to everything one player controls. Infernal Grasp kills bigger things for less mana, so this isn't your first removal spell. It is your answer to the two problems Grasp cannot solve — a commander that keeps coming back, and a board of X/1 tokens. This set produces both in quantity: Goblin Armies, Elf tokens, and a great many 1/1 Human Soldiers. A modal card that is never dead is worth more than a strictly better card that sometimes is.

The Arkenstone

The Arkenstone is the card the reviewers split on, and I want to be clear about why. As a five-mana artifact that gives +1/+1 and draws you a card each end step, it is unremarkable — that criticism is fair.

But you will rarely cast it that way first. Seek the Heart costs and searches your library for any legendary creature, which is a tutor white does not otherwise get cheaply, and the artifact then waits in exile as a free second spell later. Against Vanquisher's Banner at the same cost, the draw is unconditional rather than tied to casting one creature type. And in a Storied deck it is simultaneously an artifact and a legendary permanent, moving you two-thirds of the way to your enduring story by itself. Narrow, yes — but two spells in one slot, and the cheap half is the good half.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best cards from The Hobbit for Commander?

The strongest noncommander cards from The Hobbit are Gleaming Splendor, Wizard's Staff, and The Queen of Dale, followed by Bilbo's Gambit and My Precious. All five cost three mana or less, none require a Middle-earth theme, and Gleaming Splendor is the most-registered new card in the set by a wide margin. If you play outside white and blue, the colorless picks are Troop of Ponies, My Precious, and The Arkenstone's artifact half; green has Beorn's Hospitality, black has Gnashing of Teeth, and Golgari gets Tom, Bert, and William.

Is Gleaming Splendor good in Commander?

Yes — it is the best card in the set for the 99, and it is good in more decks than its reputation suggests. The common criticism is that it does nothing unless opponents draw extra cards, and in a vacuum that is true. But the activation means you can manufacture the trigger yourself at instant speed, so the card is never a blank: two mana for a card, with the Treasure refunding part of the cost. It is genuinely excellent in group-hug and forced-draw shells and merely solid in a normal white deck, which is a better floor than most two-mana enchantments manage.

What are the best budget cards from The Hobbit for Commander?

Troop of Ponies, Tom, Bert, and William, Beorn's Hospitality, and Gnashing of Teeth all cost under seventy-five cents, and the first two would be respectable at ten times the price. Troop of Ponies is Cultivate for any color at twenty-one cents; Tom, Bert, and William is a Golgari sacrifice engine that outclasses Greater Good on the discard clause for seventy-one. Add Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills, a thirty-three-cent uncommon that reads as a two-mana Ghostly Prison once you have an enduring story, and Wood Elves, reprinted here for thirteen cents.

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Ten cards, and not one of them requires you to build a Middle-earth deck to play it. That is the mark of a set that will still be relevant in two years, long after the novelty of the plane has worn off.

If you want to know which of these belongs in a list you already own, Karn will read your decklist and tell you what to cut for it. And if you want to argue about whether the Queen of Dale's recruit trigger is really card advantage, Nissa can at least settle the timing questions.

Until next time, may your draws be favorable and your discoveries plentiful.

— Tamiyo, Field Researcher