Dodgy Little Hobbitses: The Two Towers

Readers,

Last week I cracked open a pack of Lembas bread and my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  I’d expended my word budget and more just getting through the first two decks. If you didn’t read last week’s article, please take a second to familiarize yourself with it because I explained what I was doing, and while I could explain myself again, it’s easier on all of us if you just brush up on it. Even if you did read it, it couldn’t hurt to read it again - I certainly had to, and I wrote it three days ago. 

We don’t need much more preamble than that, I trust - you’re ready to devour some knowledge. So let’s get you fed, starting with the foodiest food deck that a guy who looks disturbingly like Guy Fieri with normal hair has ever seen in his life. 

Food and Fellowship

$0.50$0.99

Sam, Loyal Attendant and Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit are the face commanders of the deck. And while they seem pretty good, so far the most popular commander in the set isn’t either of them, but rather another legend from the same deck.

I expect Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant to resonate with older players as well as brand new ones, as well as casual players. Everyone likes lifegain. It’s fun, and there was barely any of the important stuff reprinted in the deck. That’s good, that’s very good. The deck wastes a lot of space on an Ent sub-theme that isn’t supported enough. Anyone who heads to EDHREC, like all brand new players should, will see that Magic has a lot of tools to make that 111 life goal fairly trivial to reach.

Authority of the Consuls seems like it’s pretty expensive, especially on CK where the price has basically never gone below $15. Because why would it? 

The axes here make it a bit tough to see what’s going on, but TCGPlayer’s graph tells the tale.

This fell by like four bucks in the last few months and it’s already climbing right back up. Until it's reprinted, make like Card Kingdom and assume people will eventually figure out that it's a $15 card. Buy $7 copies on TCGPlayer accordingly. 

Speaking of Card Kingdom…

They’re paying a little under $10.50 in credit for a card that is gettable for $7 right now. I’m not saying try to arbitrage these, I’m saying mirror their confidence. Also, the foil isn’t much more than the non-foil and it’s way, way harder to reprint (though not impossible).

Is Beacon of Immortality more on TCGPlayer than it is on Card Kingdom for the reason I think it is?

Yep!

This has gotten quite a few reprints in its time, including one in the Ixalan board game that I praised as a new, innovative way to introduce reprints before Hasbro realized there wasn’t any money in board games and instead gave us 450 secret lairs in a three year period. It’s probably not actually that many, but you believed me for a second and that’s why it’s a concern. Despite there being a couple of foil versions of Beacon, I don’t hate foil copies under $15 because those are drying up, too.

A $1.50 buy-in on the 4th-highest-synergy-scoring Artifact in the set of decks EDHREC has scraped so far isn’t that exciting. But you know what is an exciting price?

Even Card Kingdom has EA foils at under $5. I don’t think you leave foils of Cosmos Elixir (Extended Art) in store inventories if it’s under $5. I’m not trying to cause a run here, just sayin’.

Authority of the Consuls	CardKingdom $15.99	TCGPlayer $10.83
Beacon of Immortality	CardKingdom $6.99	TCGPlayer $5.31
Cosmos Elixir (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $1.10

Elven Council

Galadriel, Elven-Queen’s ability set is kind of mid, but this Elf deck gave us a very cool and exciting commander and nerds everywhere are geeked.

Portrayed in the Hobbit movies by one of the Doctors Who (I don’t know which one, and please don’t tell me), Radagast, Wizard of Wilds is currently built more than any other commander except for Bilbo. This card sure creates a ton of value AND rewards us for playing five-mana spells in a format where people like to wrap things up on turn four in a lot of pods. What’s not to love? If the game is slow because you’re playing the precons against each other or upgraded precons against each other or the people are new and have never even see a Thassa's Oracle, this will be a lot of fun. On top of the obvious “token doubler” cards that are good in every deck, there are some Radagast-specific cards that could use a look.

No one at all said they had to, but most people are building this deck as a Beasts-type deck. It’s fine - I think people really wanted an excuse to build a Beasts deck and they’re making the most of it. Giving Siege Behemoth Ward 1 is non-trivial, I suppose, but this really, to me, speaks to pent-up demand for Beasts and Birds. I welcome it.

I don’t have too much to say about Fable of Wolf and Owl. It’s not because I’m being lazy or that I am tired, I just really think that looking at this card’s historical price graph is worth a thousand words and I don’t want to write that many. This is disappearing online and it’s easy to see why. It's always been a card casual players liked, and I don’t think it gets more casual than building a Beasts and Birds deck based on Lord of the Rings precons. Sure, it’s technically an Elf deck, but Radagast does his own thing and always has. 

People like extra turns cards, Radagast rewards you for playing a spell that costs five or more as Alrund's Epiphany does, this makes Birds and Card Kingdom is paying TCG retail on their buylist.

If you need more reasons than that, I actually don’t know if there are any. This is the perfect sorcery for the second-most-built commander from the entire set and, not that I’m shocked, it didn’t get a reprint. If they did reprint something with Foretell, this is the literal last one they would reprint. I feel very good about this, both treatments and even the foils since they’re barely more than non-foils. 

Siege Behemoth	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $1.76
Fable of Wolf and Owl	CardKingdom $5.99	TCGPlayer $4.20
Alrund's Epiphany	CardKingdom $3.49	TCGPlayer $3.19

That does it for me this week, which means it does it for the four precons. I hope you liked the format of this article and I hope you’ll join me next week where I imagine we’ll be discussing previews of an entirely new product. Until next time! 

Check out these other articles:

Hidden Gems - Man! I Feel Like a Zombie! by Adam Berg

Modern Times - Tales of Middle-earth by Corey Williams

A Penny Saved, a Mite Earned by Ryan Cole