Food and Fellowship Upgrade Guide: 19 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on July 6, 2023

Peregrin Took | Illustration by Campbell White

Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth has arrived, and I’m sure many of you have your eyes on at least one of the four exceptional Commander precons. Let’s head to The Shire for a banquet of Food tokens and extra life!

Deck Overview

This is the Food and Fellowship deck, one of the four Commander precons released alongside Tales of Middle-earth. It’s an Abzan () deck with a focus on making Food tokens and gaining life.

Your main commanders are a very famous pair: Sam and Frodo. Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant make for a powerful pair of partner commanders. Combine them together and each turn you’ll create a Food, sacrifice it for one mana, draw a card from Frodo, and get an attack in with your new Ring-bearer. You can then add in all the extra Food token generators to do this much more consistently.

The alternate commander is Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant. Bilbo has a pretty hilarious-looking ability that gives you an enormous payoff but requires you to reach 111 life. I really like a good challenge, so this would be my personal choice of commander. With each Food token gaining four life and a ton of other sources of lifegain permeating the deck, 111 feels like a very attainable goal.

Magic The Gathering The Lord of The Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Commander Deck 2 + Collector Booster Sample Pack

• MAGIC MEETS THE LORD OF THE RINGS—Experience the beloved story of The Lord of the Rings with the strategic gameplay of Magic: The Gathering, facing off against opponents in thrilling magical battles
• EPIC MULTIPLAYER BATTLES—Commander is a multiplayer way to play Magic, an epic, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue
• FOOD AND FELLOWSHIP—Get a 100-card White-Black-Green The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth deck containing 2 Foil Legendary Creature cards and 98 nonfoil cards
• INTRODUCES 20 COMMANDER CARDS—This deck introduces 20 never-before-seen Commander cards to Magic: The Gathering
• COLLECT SPECIAL TREATMENT CARDS—Each deck comes with a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack containing 2 special treatment cards from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare and at least 1 Traditional Foil

$73.95

Buy on Amazon

Strengths and Weaknesses

Food and Fellowship‘s biggest strength is the sheer abundance of Food and lifegain abilities. It shouldn’t be too hard to set up a board with half a dozen different things that trigger and give you some extra advantage with so much redundancy. There are quite a lot more cards you can add to ramp this up to another level. Lifegain is one of Magic’s most popular mechanics, and it has a ton of cards available to enhance it.

The biggest weakness of a deck like this is that it lacks ways to draw cards. A few of the cards I recommend adding will help to alleviate that issue.

The Battle of Bywater

Suggested Cut: Toxic Deluge

Toxic Deluge is by no means a bad card, but it’s frankly ridiculous that The Battle of Bywater isn’t already in this deck. This can often be leveraged into a board wipe that doesn’t hit your board and gives you a bunch of Food given how small your creatures are.

Taste of Death

Suggested Cut: Fumigate

This deck has four board wipes, so cutting one of them isn’t too bad.

Taste of Death is an extremely powerful card that isn’t quite on the level of a board wipe, but it’s going to be close in a lot of situations. It also gives you a bunch of Food on top, which is exactly what you’re looking to do.

Mortality Spear

Suggested Cut: Mortify

This is just swapping out one good removal spell for a slightly better one. The fact that you should be gaining life most turns makes Mortality Spear a strictly better upgrade to Mortify, especially because it hits a wider range of targets.

Battle at the Bridge

Suggested Cut: Path to Exile

I’m not a fan of playing Path to Exile in Commander, but Battle at the Bridge is a great removal spell that slots perfectly into this deck. You can improvise it by tapping your Food tokens, and it gains you a bunch of life.

Trail of Crumbs

Suggested Cut: Call for Unity

Call for Unity is clearly synergistic with the deck, but it’s very slow and provides an effect you don’t care about. Trail of Crumbs is a broken card advantage engine, and you want card advantage more than anything else.

Feasting Troll King

Suggested Cut: Great Oak Guardian

I don’t really know why Great Oak Guardian is here, apart from the fact that treefolk are in LotR. Trolls appear in The Hobbit, so the flavor still works, right?

Feasting Troll King is a huge beater that gives you Food and something to spend Food on later, which is just awesome for you.

Witch’s Oven

Suggested Cut: Eagles of the North

You don’t need all this deck’s mana, so you can cut one for a Witch's Oven. You can use it to sacrifice creatures before they die, and it loops really nicely with Feasting Troll King.

If only we had a Cauldron Familiar to go with it…

Cauldron Familiar

Suggested Cut: Landroval, Horizon Witness

So yeah, we need to add the kitty. The Cat/Oven combo is obscene, and while it’ll be hard to assemble, both halves are more than good enough on their own. Cauldron Familiar gives you a way to sacrifice Food that doesn’t cost mana while also gaining life.

Peregrin Took

Suggested Cut: Rosie Cotton of South Lane

Peregrin Took is a card I’m really excited about because getting free extra Food tokens is a huge bonus for you, while also giving you a great way to use them. Rosie Cotton of South Lane just doesn’t do enough for you by comparison.

Samwise Gamgee

Suggested Cut: Night's Whisper

Despite the epic new artwork, I don’t think Night's Whisper is where you want to be. Especially when there’s another awesome member of the fellowship who keys off Food tokens that you can put into your deck in Samwise Gamgee.

Gyome, Master Chef

Suggested Cut: Rapacious Guest

I’m not sold on Rapacious Guest as it just looks a bit slow to me. Gyome, Master Chef looks awesome. It makes Food, though not very many. But you can then use them to protect your most valuable creatures, which is something you’re going to be very grateful for.

Skullclamp

Suggested Cut: Dawn of Hope

While Dawn of Hope works with the themes of your deck, it’s just too slow for my liking. Skullclamp has a lot of good fodder in this deck, including 1/1 Hobbit tokens and Cauldron Familiar.

Academy Manufactor

Suggested Cut: Trading Post

Again, Trading Post has some synergy with the deck but is just too slow. Academy Manufactor is amazing since you’re all about making Food, giving you a bunch of extra mana and card draw for it.

Awesome.

Rhox Faithmender

Suggested Cut: Motivated Pony

Anthropomorphic rhinos might not be part of LotR’s lore, but you can’t find a much more synergistic ability than doubling your lifegain with Rhox Faithmender. Motivated Pony looks good, but I want to move away from cards that are built around attacking and focus more on the lifegain synergies.

Inspiring Statuary

Suggested Cut: Access Tunnel

I think you can trim a single land here, especially because you’re replacing it with a ridiculous mana rock. Inspiring Statuary lets you use your Food to power out any and all your biggest spells.

You’re going to love it.

The Shire

Suggested Cut: Forest

I assume I don’t have to explain why The Shire is good here. It looks like basically a strict upgrade over a Forest, so that’s an easy swap.

Bretagard Stronghold

Suggested Cut: Forest

Bretagard Stronghold enters the battlefield tapped, but it has a very relevant extra ability that this deck can make use of. I think it’s worth turning a Forest into a Stronghold.

Many Partings

Suggested Cut: Swamp

I’m hoping that Many Partings is functionally just a land that also nets you a Food token, so trimming a land for it shouldn’t hurt too much. In fact, I think this should end up a strict upgrade given how much you like making Food.

Indatha Triome

Suggested Cut: Plains

An upgrade you can make to any precon deck is to improve the mana base. Since this is something you do very differently depending on what’s in your collection or what your budget for new cards is, I’m not going to recommend any particular lands.

That is, except for Indatha Triome, because adding your color combination’s Triome should be your first port of call.

Wrap Up

The Battle of Bywater | Illustration by Tomas Duchek

I hope this has been helpful for anyone reading. I may very well pick Food and Fellowship up for myself at CommandFest in London, so I’ll certainly be seeing if I was right about these upgrades.

Which deck will you be playing? Will you be trying any of these upgrades? Let me know in the comments below, or join the discussion over in the Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, take care of yourselves!

Note: this post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, you’ll help Draftsim continue to provide awesome free articles and apps.