Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on February 18, 2024

Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant | Illustration by Billy Christian

Every so often, tucked away in the 99 of a Commander precon, is an alternate commander that’s actually better than the deck’s face card. One good example is Elsha of the Infinite back in Commander 2019. We got another alternate commander that surpasses its deck’s face cards with the release of the Lord of the Rings Commander decks: Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant.

Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant is in the perfect color combination for a powerful lifegain deck. Green and white have plenty of great lifegain cards, while black has good ways to turn your gains into your opponents’ pain. Bilbo itself boosts the amount of life you’re gaining, which in Commander goes very well with lifegain staples that seek to take advantage of the format’s higher starting life.

I tried to include some of the cards from the Food and Fellowship precon that Bilbo comes in when putting this deck together. This was partially for the theme, but it also makes this deck a little more budget-friendly if you’re looking to pick up a copy of the precon Bilbo comes in. That said, this deck is more powerful than an upgraded precon because it includes some infinite combos.

Let's get into it!

The Deck

Samwise the Stouthearted | Illustration by Irvin Rodriguez

This deck has two main goals: gaining you life, and draining it from your opponents. I’ve also leaned into a creature heavy-build to take advantage of Bilbo’s activated ability if you’re able to get that off. I didn’t build this deck with the ultimate goal being to reach 111 life, though, because I think that might be a bit too difficult in quicker and more competitive games.

I also included a lot of low-cost creatures so that you can more easily take advantage of ETB effects on cards like Beast Whisperer, The Great Henge, and Soul Warden.

I also made sure to put other cards besides Bilbo that allows you to pay life for good effects, like Aetherflux Reservoir and Bolas's Citadel. There are also cards like Serra Ascendant which allow you to take advantage of having a higher life total.

The Commander

Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant is a great way to speed up the amount of life you’ll be gaining from the cards in this deck. Even though one extra life doesn’t seem like a lot, it adds up quickly. This is the kind of commander that sneaks up on your opponents, which is a nice bit of flavor since Bilbo is an accomplished burglar.

Bilbo is also a relatively cheap commander, making it easy to cast early. Since Bilbo doesn’t have as flashy of an effect until you hit 111 life, your opponents are likely to let it stick around a bit until they realize how dangerously your life total is snowballing.

Lifegain

This deck’s strategy is largely built around gaining life, so you’ll obviously need some ways to do that.

Creatures like Soul Warden, Essence Warden, and Soul's Attendant are all great ways to gain life, especially when you’re running a lot of creatures.

Daxos, Blessed by the Sun is an especially good way to gain life in a creature-heavy deck since it’ll gain you life when creatures are coming and going.

Another good method for gaining life is through Food tokens generated by cards like Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Rosie Cotton of South Lane.

Sam, Loyal Attendant is especially helpful because it’ll both create Food tokens for you consistently and also reduce the cost of activating them to gain life.

Beacon of Immortality is perhaps the most powerful bit of lifegain in this deck because it can gain you an absurd amount of life depending on how much you have when you cast it.

Heliod's Intervention can also gain you a decent amount of life, but it has the option of being used for removal instead if that’s more helpful at the moment.

March of the Multitudes can also help you gain lots of life because it can create a large number of lifelink creatures. Its convoke ability makes it much easier to spend more for X than you normally would be able to.

Lifedrain

While gaining life for yourself is great, you’ll also need to be taking life away from your opponents to win.

Cards like Suture Priest and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim are great ways to eat away at your opponents’ life totals over time.

Kambal, Consul of Allocation and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse are great at draining life from your opponents for taking actions that are necessary for them to play the game. As a bonus, these cards also gain you life.

Perhaps two of the greatest life drain cards in this deck are Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and Sanguine Bond. These cards drain one of your opponents’ life each time you gain life, which is quite frequently in this deck.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel is a good way to drain opponents’ life while gaining yourself some. While your devotion to black might not reach game-winning numbers in this deck, good old Gary can still give you a pretty solid swing in your favor.

Lifegain Support

Other cards in your deck synergize well with your lifegain theme. For instance, Bolas's Citadel can make good use out of the life you’re storing up to help you cast more spells each turn.

Cards like Serra Ascendant and Ajani, Strength of the Pride gain powerful abilities when you have a high enough life total.

Felidar Sovereign is actually a win condition if you have enough life. If you’re able to get it on the battlefield while also having enough mana to cast Teferi's Protection, you’ll have a good chance of winning the game.

Aetherflux Reservoir both gains you life and gives you a good payoff for how much you’ve gained over the course of the game. As soon as you’re over 50 life, your opponents live in constant fear of you activating this card and taking one of them out. It’s a great way to keep yourself safe when your opponents know you can end them at any time.

Both Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn can help you buff up your creatures when you gain life. Since this deck runs a lot of smaller creatures, this can be a good way to help your board state keep up with your opponents.

Apart from Bilbo, Rhox Faithmender and Cleric Class gain you extra life each time one of your lifegain abilities goes off. This makes it easier to reach high enough life totals to do things like activate Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant’s ability, or use Aetherflux Reservoir to take out an opponent.

The Mana Base

For the land base, I tried to use a lot of the good dual and tri lands already included in the Food and Fellowship precon. This includes cards like Murmuring Bosk, Canopy Vista, and Sunpetal Grove. Apart from being good lands, I also like having the additional valuable Lord of the Rings cards included to go along with Bilbo and the other Hobbits in this deck.

I also added some other dual land and tri-lands for good measure, including Overgrown Tomb, Godless Shrine, and Undergrowth Stadium.

Some filter lands help with mana fixing, like Twilight Mire.

Both Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are also good bits of mana fixing. If you don’t mind seeking them out, there are Lord of the Rings variants of these cards to help fit the theme.

Apart from lands, I included just a few mana rocks. Arcane Signet and Sol Ring are kind of no-brainers, and then The Great Henge which is always a good resource for creature heavy decks. The Great Henge is another card with a Lord of the Rings variant, and since it’s The Party Tree from Bilbo’s birthday I thought it was an especially good choice for this deck.

This deck also includes some mana dorks, like Birds of Paradise and Elvish Mystic.

Dryad Arbor is a good inclusion for this deck because it can activate some of your ETB effects for creatures at no mana cost to you.

Delighted Halfling works really well for Commander in general since it allows you to cast your commander without fear of it being countered.

Accomplished Alchemist is another good mana dork for this deck. You’ll be gaining life pretty consistently, so you’ll likely be able to activate its second ability and get a lot of extra mana.

The Strategy

You’ll want to set up one of your methods for gaining life early on. You have plenty of creatures that gain you life when other creatures enter the battlefield, so these are good things to look for in an opening hand. You’ll also want to make sure you have all your colors early on so Bilbo can hit the battlefield as early as possible. Don’t worry if you’re just focused on increasing your life total early on; you’ll be able to pay it off later.

There’s an adage in Magic that lifegain isn’t a way to win the game, basically since gaining life means nothing if you can’t take your opponents down to zero. Some players mistakenly think this means they can just ignore a player who's gaining a lot of life and nothing else, which is an impression you can use to your advantage here.

I’d wait to drop anything like Ajani, Strength of the Pride or sometimes even Aetherflux Reservoir until you have enough life to activate them. This way you’ll be able to surprise your opponents instead having them remove these permanents before you can do anything with them.

There are a few ways you can look to win with this deck. You can use one of several infinite combos, which I’ll go over in the next section. You can also use cards like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose to help drain your opponents’ life over time.

Alternatively, you have cards like Ajani, Strength of the Pride or The Battle of Bywater that can clear away your opponents’ blockers and allow you to swing out at them once their life totals are getting low. You won’t have to worry as much about someone cracking back at you since you’ll likely have a high life total.

Finally there’s Aetherflux Reservoir which can be used to eliminate your opponents individually. I doubt you can take out everyone with it in a single game, but it can help remove the players you don’t think you can finish off in other ways.

Combos and Interactions

There are a couple ways to set up an infinite combo in this deck, so it’s probably worth having a Rule 0 conversation with your playgroup to make sure they’re okay with that. I intentionally avoided including a bunch of tutors in this deck to keep it from feeling too pushed, but it’s still worth checking in my opinion.

The Food and Fellowship precon already comes with a copy of Sanguine Bond, making it way too tempting to add an infinite combo into this deck. If you have both Sanguine and Exquisite Blood out at the same time, an opponent losing life or you gaining it creates a chain reaction which causes you to infinitely gain life and infinitely cause a target opponent to lose life until you’ve won the game.

This combo also works with Exquisite Blood and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose or Dina, Soul Steeper. You have multiple ways to go infinite with this deck and win the game.

Another infinite combo in this deck involves Scurry Oak and Heliod, Sun-Crowned. If you have these two cards and at least one card that gains you life when a creature enters the battlefield, like Soul Warden, all you need to do is gain one life and you can create infinite creatures. Just use Heliod’s ability to put a +1/+1 counter on Scurry Oak, then it creates a Squirrel token, triggering the effect that gains you life, allowing you to put another +1/+1 counter onto Scurry Oak.

You can repeat this as many times as you want as long as it isn’t interrupted. This infinite combo won’t win you the game outright, but it can give you a big advantage both in terms of having essentially infinite life as well as having a ton of creatures.

While not an infinite combo, if you cast Beacon of Immortality while Sanguine Bond or Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose are out on the field, you’ll be able to make an opponent lose a ton of life or take them out of the game if you have a higher life total already.

Beacon of Immortality also works very well with Accomplished Alchemist, since you’re able to tap for a lot of mana on your turn. It’s not necessarily a game winner, but it can swing a game heavily in your favor.

Another powerful interaction is between Bolas's Citadel and Aetherflux Reservoir. As long as you don’t get stuck on a land, you’ll hit a point when you’re likely gaining more life from casting a spell than you’d lose from using Bolas’s Citadel to cast it. You can make your way through a significant portion of your deck and likely get one of your infinite combos online.

Budget Options

A couple of the more expensive cards in this deck currently are The Great Henge and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Both are being reprinted as box toppers in Lord of the Rings. While box toppers likely won’t lower the price too much, it might be worth waiting after release to see if these decrease in price at all.

Another very expensive card for this deck is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. This is a powerful card, but it’s by no means necessary for your strategy. You can easily replace it with a cheaper card that has a similar effect like Underworld Dreams.

Archangel of Thune is another of the more expensive cards in this deck, and since you have ways to win without doing combat damage you can probably replace it with another card. If you even just want to throw in a Profane Tutor to make it easier to set up a combo, you can do that and save a good chunk of money.

Other Builds

If you wanted to take Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant in a different direction then you could try to lean more towards getting its ability to go off. You’d still want a heavy lifegain theme, but you may want to replace some of your life draining cards with big stompy creatures.

Finisher cards like Craterhoof Behemoth or Blightsteel Colossus could be good options to cheat out with Bilbo’s ability. You may also want to include a Concordant Crossroads in this type of build so you can swing out right away when you drop big creatures.

This type of build might also want cards like Gaea's Blessing or Archangel's Light. That way if you drop every creature in your deck just to have them board wiped, you have a way to get them back.

Commanding Conclusion

Peregrin Took | Illustration by Campbell White

Not only is Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant a powerful commander, but it’s pretty easy to upgrade the precon deck it comes in to make it more competitive. You can just throw in one or two and set yourself up for an infinite combo even if you don’t add as many cards as I did. Bilbo is also a fun commander if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan since you can include a lot of hobbit cards.

Would you build Bilbo differently? Are there any other cards from the precon you would keep? Would you want more or less combos in your version of the deck? Let me know in the comments below, or over on Draftsim’s Twitter.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you later!

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