MTG: Weapons of the First Age – Upgrading the LotR Commander Decks
A warrior is only as good as the weapon they wield. So it’s time to tune these Commander Decks with some upgrades.
With the powerful new cards, fast turnaround, and the introduction of the most expensive Magic card to date, Tales of Middle-Earth has proven to be a very divisive set. Still, it can’t be denied that the cards from the set have provided a ton of new and exciting combo pieces. While preconstructed decks are usually decent the four decks released for LOR are gangbusters right out of the box. Each of the decks offers plenty of ways to take advantage of the themes within the set. Plus the face commanders and their secondary lieutenants have some surprsingly potent abilities. However, if you really want to get the most out of these decks, you’ll need to do just a bit of tuning. The decks are great on their own but a little help never hurts.
Riders of Rohan – The Kingdom of (Hu)Man
Riders of Rohan is unique among the four decks in that is contains two different playstyles. If you choose Aragorn, the sub-commander, as your general, you’ll be playing a Monarch/unblockable build. However, if you play the face commander, Eowyn, you can unleash a Human or Knight army to overwhelm your foes. For this article we’ll be focusing on that. We need a few ways to increase our Human generation and one of the best ways is Horn of Gondor. When if comes into play, it makes a Human token, triggering Eowyn’s ability, but then for three mana you can double your Human tokens. While that won’t be super impactful out of the gate those numbers really add up. Add in an Impact Tremors for ETB Shocks and a Coat of Arms and soon your army will be worthy of retaking Pelennor. If you’re feeling really devious you can add in a Breath of Fury potentially generating infinite combats.
Food and Fellowship – Not a Snack, the Whole Meal
A deck built around generating food and then generating value from that food, Food and Fellowship really doesn’t need much. Shelob, Child of Ungoliant is an extraordinary add allowing you to steal your opponents creatures and turn them into Food tokens. Note you can also do this for your own cards potentially generating infinite mana with Devoted Druid. A surprise interaction is Kuldotha Forgemaster which can use your Food tokens to dig out powerful artifacts. For the best results with that bring along a Biotransference as well which will let you dig for creatures. Finally, bring a Second Harvest to generate a massive haul of tokens which you can then use to power your subcommander Pippin’s second ability.
We’ll be back soon with an upgrade guide for Host of Mordor and Elven Council. Stay tuned!
