Magic’s next set release is The Hobbit, which releases on August 14th. This isn’t our first visit to Middle Earth, though. 2023’s Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth brought us lost of awesome cards representing characters, places, and events from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece.
It’s no secret that our first visit to Middle Earth featured some incredibly powerful and interesting cards. Cards from that set shook up 60-card formats as well as Commander. You don’t have to play a whole lot of EDH to encounter Sauron, the Dark Lord and Aragorn, the Uniter decks. They’ve become two of the most heavily played Commanders around.
Sauron is the 9th most popular Commander on all of EDHRec.
Aragorn is the 48th most popular Commander on all of EDHRec.
The set didn’t just have powerful Commanders either. There’s no shortage of awesome cards for the 99 either. The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters are both Game Changers because they are so powerful that can entirely take over games.
However, while virtually all players are aware that Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth is replete with powerful cards, I do think there are some that are being overlooked. In this article, I’m going to take a look at 5 cards from the set that are currently being underrated by Commander players.
UNDERRATED COMMANDER: GOLDBERRY, RIVER-DAUGHTER
Goldberry is 1,995th most popular Commander on EDHRec
Unlike Sauron and Aragorn, Goldberry isn’t a super-efficient creature with a text box filled with seemingly unending triggered abilities. However, she’s a unique Commander that can definitely generate tons of value.
The most intriguing thing about her is her ability to interact with all kinds of counters – and she can do it all at once. Her first ability lets you move a counter of each kind you have on to her, and her second ability lets you redistribute them however you want. There’s just not another Commander out there that can do what she can do.
This means a Goldberry deck should be a broad “counter” deck that has a nice mix of those counters for her to really go off. You’ll want to include the obvious +1/+1 counters, but you’ll also want cards that make keyword counters, shield counters, charge counters, the list goes on. She also works great with other mechanics that like all kinds of counters – like Proliferate.
While she can do tons of interesting stuff , she is perhaps the most interesting with Sagas. Her ability to remove lore counters from them lets you rebuy the same chapter every turn. Alternatively, if you really need to accelerate a saga, you can put multiple lore counters on one of your Sagas too.
Getting all of your chapters at once from Kiora Bests the Sea God, or keeping Scroll of Isildur around so you can hold on to the artifact you stole is pretty great, and that’s really just scratching the surface of what Goldberry is capable of.
PHIAL OF GALADRIEL
Played in .37% of Decks on EDHRec
Commander players like three-mana mana rocks. That’s why it’s kind of shocking that this one sees so little play. It’s not a card that should be an auto-include in every deck, as there are better mana rocks out there, but if you’re playing the right kind of deck the Phial is very powerful.
How often are most mana rocks this cheap also capable of drawing you a bunch of extra cards and gaining you a bunch of life? Not very many. You do need the situation to be right to activate those replacement triggers of course, but they are active precisely when you need them to be – when you’re almost dead or out of cards.
It can get particularly interesting in decks that have other incentives for fulfilling either of those requirements. For example, if your commander is Flubs, the Fool or Neheb, you’re not going to have a hard time making it so that the Phial is drawing you extra cards.
Additionally, if you’re playing an artifact deck, having the Phial around to tutor up when it’s at its best is also worth considering. It can really turn games around for you with that card advantage and life gain augmentation.
HEW THE ENTWOOD
Played in .13% of Red Decks on EDHRec
In most sets, Red gets a wacky Rare or Mythic that does a bunch of random and chaotic stuff, and this definitely checks that box. However, it’s possible to be wacky, chaotic, and good. It’s admittedly a little bit narrow – you can only sacrifice lands to it, and you only get to put artifacts and lands into play with it.
Hew The Entwood works pretty well in a lands-matter deck, because it’s a card that lets you give up lands and get lots of lands. This can trigger lots of different abilities. For example, if you’re using Hearthhull, Hew the Entwood can make your opponents lose tons of life
It also recently got a lot better thanks to Earthbending. If a land is animated by Earthbending, it returns to the battlefield when it dies. That means not actually losing the lands. This makes Toph, the First Metalbender perhaps the best Commander for Hew the Entwoods. This is because she can earthbend your lands and she likes artifacts too, which she can also earthbend! This makes it more likely you have strong artifacts to cheat into play when you Hew.
VORACIOUS FELL BEAST
Played in 0.45% of Black Decks on EDHRec
The Fell Beast might only be an Uncommon, but it has a huge impact on games, especially in the right deck. It’s “enters” trigger is incredibly good in Commander, as it will end up generating three Food tokens while subtracting from each opponent’s board. It’s true that they can give up a token or whatever, but that’s fine.
A creature like this gets particularly spicy if you can find a way to blink or rebuy its trigger, which definitely gets better each and every time. If you’re playing a Commander who likes food, you should really consider using the Fell Beast. It’s particularly potent alongside Ygra, Eater of All, because he turns all creatures into food too. That means he’ll get two +1/+1 counters for every creature that gets sacrificed to the Beast.
DISPLAY OF POWER
Played in .57% of Red Decks on EDHRec
Display of Power is a really cool card. It doesn’t always line up perfectly, but there are several times in most games of Commander where many instants and/or sorcery spells are on the stack, and firing this off when that’s the case is an incredible feeling. All of your copied spells even get to resolve first.
The way to make the Display even more consistent is to have a deck where you alone put lots of spells on the stack. While it’s definitely more fun to copy a bunch of spells controlled by opponents, the Display can copy all of your spells too.
That means you want to play this in a spellslinger deck – and that’s especially true if you’re using a Commander with Magecraft, like Ashling or Veyran. Magecraft triggers not only when you cast spells, but also when you copy them. That can make the already amazing Display of Power absolutely absurd.
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Lord of the Rings was an insanely strong set with lots of great staples – but don’t forget to look at the other cards too! It’ll be interesting to see whether or not The Hobbit has a comparable impact on all of Magic’s formats.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.