What About Second Thanksgiving?

Sam is the true hero of the Lord of the Rings franchise and also the hero of Thanksgiving at The Shire (I'm sure of it!).  Here is a deck that is placed 100% in the Lord of the Rings franchise to really set the mood.

While my entire blog is designed to showcase retro cards and deck building restrictions, we are going to stray from the retro cards but stick with a major restriction.  I am not one that is actually opposed to the existence of Universes Beyond sets, I also rarely play cards from them.  The exception that I have made for myself is if I am to play these types of cards I have to keep the whole deck in that universe.  This helps to prevent me from spending money and feeling like I need to build from each group of Universes Beyond releases.  

With that said, let's join Sam as he prepares for Thanksgiving at The Shire.

Learning The Recipe

One of the foundations for Thanksgiving Dinner as well as in deck building is to learn the recipe or to learn.  Card draw represents this knowledge in a game of commander.  One day, this deck will include The One Ring but I am going to wait until it catches a ban in Modern for the price to plummet.  The upside of our commander pair is that Frodo will draw us plenty of cards meanwhile as he attacks and becomes more and more tempted by the ring.  

Prep Work

I like to imagine ramping as the prepwork of having a large family meal.  This is something that is not glamorous and is oftentimes done at the beginning of the day/game.  You need to ensure your deck has plenty of vegetables as some call them and allow for your to get a jump on playing more powerful spells than your opponents.  

Arrival Of Our Guests

As you know, the burden of Thanksgiving does not usually lie solely on the host.  The same is true for making food in our Lord of the Rings food deck.  Hobbit life revolves around food and honestly, I can relate!  Some of the creatures in this deck are downright powerful!  Banquet Guests, Feasting Hobbit, Farmer Cotton, and Pippin are game enders.  Gollum, while he probably wouldn't be invited to Sam's Thanksgiving dinner, did get an invite to our deck.  We all have that family member that gets the invite just by default, for us that's Gollum.  Gollum, Obsessed Stalker can really put a clock on your opponents if they don't have an answer.  He has amazing evasion to get in for the damage to enable his ability.  With Sam's discount for sacrificing food, you really can deal a large amount of damage while putting yourself further out of range of dying.  The rest of the creatures just help to provide value.  Who would have ever thought there would be powerful hobbits?

Removal Of Unwanted Guests

As we all know, sometimes things at a dinner party can become hostile and it is beneficial to remove someone.  Because of this, we too pack a pretty powerful removal suite.  Luckily they printed some of the most powerful removal spells in commander in the Lord of the Rings sets.  Shower of Arrows is a versatile enough spell that can help to kill off an enemy flier which I've always found is the best form of evasion.  I love how thematic The Battle of Bywater is and can leave you in a great position to steal a victory if done at the appropriate time.

86 An Opponent

Galadriel's Dismissal is an amazing card and I think it's honestly one of the best cards in the set.  It allows you to phase out an opponents creatures if they are coming in to attack you for lethal... Can phase out your opponents blockers... can save your board state by phasing out your creatures in response to a board wipe.. All of those modes are great!  Motivated Pony gives your creatures Vigilance and in most cases +3/+3.  Sanguine Bond has become my absolute favorite way to die to my friend when he plays this deck.  He eats a bunch of a food.... and then I die?  It's very funny to think about.  Treebeard is the proverbial "big stick" as he is in theory made of wood and boy does he hit hard!  The addition of Trample & Ward makes him extremely difficult to deal with.