The Ultimate The Hobbit Limited Set Review

An Unexpected Party | Illustration by Matt Stewart

Welcome to the world of The Hobbit, the book that pretty much started it all. J.R.R. Tolkein’s debut novel from 1937 set the standard for medieval fantasy moving forward. This is the classic tale of Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Wizard’s adventure to The Lonely Mountain to seize dwarven treasure from the ancient dragon Smaug. This novel has inspired millions throughout the last century, including Magic: The Gathering itself. While I’m not hugely familiar with it, it’s still a perfect setting for a Magic set, and I’m sure this will be one of the most popular sets of the year.

As always, this review is based on my initial impressions of the cards. It’s hard to figure out how they’ll play out without knowing things like the speed of the format or the relative power levels of the colors and archetypes. Many cards will under- or overperform based on initial impressions as the format takes shape. My reviews are largely based on the card’s quality in a vacuum or the assumption that the archetype they belong in is playable.

Grading Scale

I use a comparative rating system on a scale of 0-10. Here’s a rough guide to what each rating means:

10: The absolute best of the best. 10s make a meaningful impact on any game, especially when you’re playing from behind, and they’re extremely tough to beat.

Examples: Captain Marvel, Earth's Protector or Doctor Doom.

8-9: Extremely good cards, usually game-winning bombs and the most efficient removal spells, though not quite good enough to be a 10/10. Could also be the mythic uncommon of the set (though these are harder to predict).

Examples: Wolverine, Fierce Fighter or Elektra, Daughter of the Hand.

5-7: Important role-players. These are typically great uncommons that really drive you towards playing a particular color, such as build-arounds and good removal, as well as very powerful commons.

Examples: Agent 13, Sharon Carter or Stature, Size Shifter.

2-4: The average Limited card. Most commons end up in this range, and your Limited decks will be made up mostly of these.

Examples: Raft Security Officer or Hour of Defeat.

1: These cards are weak and you hope to never play them in your main deck, though they’re still just about playable if you need them in a pinch.

Examples: Volcanic Villain or Super Strength

0: Virtually unplayable in every scenario and you should never put these cards in your main deck. Typically cards that were designed with Constructed or Commander play in mind but are awful in Limited.

Examples: Arc Reactor or Worlds Within Worlds.

Set Mechanics

Through the Forest Gate | Illustration by Leon Tukker

This set comes with some returning mechanics but also some brand new ones that help to tell the story of The Hobbit.

Adventures

Adventurer cards are back once again. These designs have been a fan favorite ever since they first debuted back in 2019’s Throne of Eldraine, and they’re a perfect flavor fit for this set.

Each adventurer card comes with an instant or sorcery spell attached to it. When playing an adventure card, you can choose to cast it as normal, or you can choose to cast the adventure spell instead. If you do, the card then goes to exile, or “on an adventure” if you prefer, and then you can play the main card from exile.

As long as they do something relevant, these cards are always powerful as an incredibly easy way to pick up a two-for-one.

Amass

Another returning mechanic that we last saw in the Lord of the Rings set, amass is WotC’s answer to the question: “Is there a way to represent a growing mass of goblins on a single token?”

We first saw this mechanic creating zombie armies to represent Liliana’s dreadhorde in War of the Spark, then it represented LotR’s orc armies, and now we’re getting goblins, one of the armies from The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you’re instructed to amass goblins X, then you create a 0/0 Goblin Army token and put X +1/+1 counters onto it. However, if you already control a goblin army, you just put the X counters on that instead.

This mechanic has played out very well in the past. Ideally, you want to keep sacrificing your army for value, as each instance of amass will then create a new one, but sometimes piling all of your counters onto one big army is exactly what you need.

Recruit

Recruit is a new mechanic that feels like the “good guy” version of connive. To recruit, you start by drawing a card, then you discard a card, just like when a creature connives. But if you discarded a nonland card this way, you create a 1/1 token instead of getting a +1/+1 counter.

Connive is a pretty solid mechanic already and personally, this feels like a very good upgrade. Free creature tokens are a very good thing to get, and they’re often better than a +1/+1 counter, but we’ll have to see how it plays out in practice.

Storied

Storied is a new mechanic that harkens back to ascend from Rivals of Ixalan. Basically, if you ever have a storied permanent in play along with three artifacts, legendaries, and/or sagas (including the storied permanent itself), then you get “an enduring story” for the rest of the game. These cards then have bonus abilities that are active as long as you have an enduring story.

The idea is that once you reach this threshold, like ascend’s “control 10 permanents”, all of your storied cards are live and will be for the whole game, even if you then go under that threshold later.

Ascend was very powerful back in the day and with the sheer number of legendary creatures and equipment in this set, I can’t imagine getting the enduring story will be all that difficult to do. I can see this being a problem if the cards themselves are strong enough.

Draft Archetypes

The Hobbit is a smaller set than usual, mainly designed with Pick-Two Draft in mind. As such, it has only five Draft archetypes, this time themed around each of the five armies. They are:

• Azorius (White/Blue ): Humans, Recruit, and Drawing Two Cards
• Rakdos (Black/Red ): Goblins and Amass
• Golgari (Black/Green ): The Warg and Ferocious
• Simic (Green/Blue ): Elves and Landfall
• Boros (Red/White ): Dwarves and Storied

White

Belladonna Took

Rating: 6/10

The key to Belladonna Took is simply to be able to draw at least one card from it. With the recruit and amass mechanics and the random equipment tokens that some cards make, I imagine this should be quite easy to do with the right deck. Given that, I’d be happy to pick up Belladonna early and try to draft around it; this halfling should be a decent card advantage engine when you enable it properly. It might even get to buff your team every now and again.

Bilbo’s Gambit

Rating: 1/10

Getting to Silence your opponent is pretty funny, but that’s most of what Bilbo's Gambit has going for it and I’m not a fan. Unsubstantiate is significantly better than this and isn’t very strong. Maybe this being in white is relevant, but I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it.

Bofur, Reliable Guardian

Rating: 4/10

Two mana to protect a creature from a removal spell but do nothing else isn’t really a card I’m interested in playing. However, Concerted Care comes with a 1/1 lifelink creature attached, which I think makes Bofur, Reliable Guardian a pretty good card overall. I don’t know if I would run it out on turn 1 and skip over the adventure spell, but as the format develops, we’ll know whether that’s a good play or not.

Celebrate the Mountain-king

Rating: 7/10

Even at 4 mana, an Oblivion Ring is still a powerful removal spell for white. Celebrate the Mountain-king also gives you a free recruit in exchange for that extra mana, which is definitely a good upside to get. This is going to be a premium card for any white deck.

Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills

Rating: 1/10

I don’t put any stock in this Ghostly Prison-esque ability at all. Your opponent only needs to pay 1 mana for each creature they attack with, so guess what? They’ll probably just pay for it. Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills feels like it’s basically a 2/2 vigilance creature for 2 with no other text, and that’s not a card I’m interested in playing.

Dwarven Provisioner

Rating: 3/10

We have seen this kind of design before, and it’s usually a reasonable 2-drop. Dwarven Provisioner is a good pick up for your white decks, and it’ll encourage you to go wide a little bit to make its ability stronger in the late game.

Dwarven Shortsword

Rating: 4/10

Much like U.S.Agent, John Walker in Marvel Super Heroes, Dwarven Shortsword starts out as a 3/4 for 4, which isn’t great, but it leaves behind a reasonable equipment on the board when it dies, which is a very real upside. If I’m drafting dwarves, this is going to be very high on my pick order to make sure my deck has enough equipment to support the set’s synergies.

Eagle of the Great Shelf

Rating: 3/10

A 2/5 flier is really below where a 5-drop needs to be in modern Limited formats. Of course, it can buff itself, but Eagle of the Great Shelf can only do so when you also have a board of creatures. Needing to rely on the rest of your board state makes me think this card will be far too weak, but it does have some potential with the right build.

The Eagles Are Coming!

Rating: 8/10

The Eagles Are Coming! is an incredibly weird and unique design. For 6 mana, you can bounce your whole board and make an army of 4/4 flying eagles, which sounds pretty incredible. Even just bouncing one creature and getting a 4/4 for just 2 mana sounds good, but there’s a significant drawback. Without any creatures on the board, kicker or no, this card doesn’t do anything.

While many games of Limited end up in some sort of board stall and you have to figure out how to break through, others become a battle of attrition in which all of your creatures trade off or otherwise die, and you struggle to keep even one creature on the board. I do like this instant, but its power might be limited by the deck you play against.

Esgaroth Garrison

Rating: 1/10

Getting to recruit on entering is quite nice, but 5 mana is way too much for Esgaroth Garrison. It’s a 5-drop that could be quite big but could also just be a 1/5 or a 2/5, which is far too weak to play at all.

Fíli the Pathfinder

Rating: 8/10

It turns out that many of the storied cards in The Hobbit don’t give you that much of a bonus for getting your enduring story. But then there’s Fíli the Pathfinder. +1/+1 to your whole team is a very strong bonus, and being a pair of 2/2s for 4 mana is a very sturdy baseline. This looks very strong for most white decks, and it even looks very possible that you’ll be able to enable storied as soon as it hits the table.

Gleaming Splendor

Rating: 0/10

Not only can your opponent just play around this whenever they like, but getting Treasure tokens isn’t that big of an upside for this. Gleaming Splendor is very clearly designed for Commander, and I’m sure some people will pay a lot of money for it, but it should probably never be in your main deck in Limited.

Iron Hills Blacksmith

Rating: 6/10

A 1/1 with double strike for just 2 mana is already a very reasonable creature to run out, so getting an equipment token alongside it is just free value. This set has a lot of support for both dwarves and equipment, so the fact that Iron Hills Blacksmith is both of those in a single card sounds pretty good to me.

Kíli the Resourceful

Rating: 8/10

A dwarven version of the classic Puresteel Paladin sounds really good to me. Kíli the Resourceful even draws you a card whenever you play any dwarf, which makes it a very powerful early play even if you don’t have any equipment for its other abilities. This is a great card for any dwarf deck, though not a card you’d be happy to play outside of that.

Lake-town Lookout

Rating: 3/10

If you end up discarding a nonland card to this recruit ability, then Lake-town Lookout essentially functions like a Doomed Traveler, a very good card in its own right. Still, it’s not always going to be quite that good on the board. It just looks like a reasonable 1-drop that you’re probably not unhappy to play.

Lake-town Toymaker

Rating: 2/10

+3/+0 and first strike is a really big buff to have on a creature like this, but hiding it behind the paywall of needing to have drawn an extra card before going to combat I think is too much to get around. Lake-town Toymaker looks very powerful, but far too often it’ll just be a vanilla creature with no way for you to trigger it, and that’s just not good enough.

Magnificent End

Rating: 4/10

Two mana for 5 damage is a very good rate, even if it only targets a tapped creature. At 5 mana, this is kind of on par with some red removal for the same cost, which is actually interesting. I’d rather it outright destroyed a creature, like previous versions of this effect have done, but Magnificent End is still a solid white removal spell.

Moment of Glory

Rating: 1/10

Casting Moment of Glory for 1 mana is really weak and flashing it back for 5 mana is wildly over-costed. I just don’t think you’re going to need a card this weak in this format. There are simply better payoffs available for going wide with your creatures.

The Mountain-king’s Return

Rating: 4/10

The fact that you can use the recruit ability from the first chapter to discard the creature you want to reanimate with the second makes this a very neat little design. Basically, if you have a 3-drop in hand, then by playing The Mountain-king's Return instead, you ultimately get that 3-drop alongside a 1/1 token, an extra card, and a +1/+1 counter. That’s perfectly fine, though the setup cost might hinder it a bit in practice.

Ori, Keeper of Songs

Rating: 2/10

A 3-mana 3/3 with some very minor upsides is really not where we want to be these days. What I do like about Ori, Keeper of Songs though is the fact that it’s a relatively cheap legendary creature at common, which could be key in helping to enable storied decks.

The Queen of Dale

Rating: 3/10

A general rule of thumb is that if a card is looking for your opponent to do a thing, then it’s probably not very good. For the most part, if you play The Queen of Dale, your opponent can probably just ignore it and run out their creatures on curve.

Even worse, as a vanilla 2/1, this noble doesn’t even brawl very well when they do that. This is definitely a card that was designed more with Commander or Constructed in mind, and I don’t think it’ll be that impactful in Limited.

Roads Go Ever, Ever On

Rating: 6/10

This is essentially just a white Divination for 2 mana. Yes, it only draws two Plains and there’s a delay on it, but 2 mana for two extra cards is excellent. Sure, your opponent could disrupt it by destroying Roads Go Ever, Ever On, but then they’ve still traded one-for-one with your 2-drop, which I reckon is a really good deal. I haven’t even mentioned the fourth chapter, but getting a nice +3/+3 buff onto an attacking creature for that turn is obviously a good upside to have.

Settle the Wreckage

Rating: 9/10

Settle the Wreckage is an incredibly powerful Magic card and is responsible for the single greatest bluff in the history of the Pro Tour. If you get your timing right, this can be a Plague Wind for a simple 4 mana. Even if your opponent gets a bunch of lands in exchange, it’s really not a fair trade for them, and it’ll still be very hard for them to get back into the game after a blowout like this.

Stone by Sunlight

Rating: 7/10

About 10 years ago, Valorous Stance was a card that managed to see Constructed play due to its flexibility. It’s a situational removal spell that’s pretty much never dead in your hand, because you can also protect one of your creatures. Stone by Sunlight is basically the same card. Although it’ll only rarely be able to trade off for more than one card, that flexibility is a big deal and this is likely one of white’s best uncommons.

Thorin’s Last Stand

Rating: 2/10

Inspired Charge has been a playable common in several Limited formats in the past, and Thorin's Last Stand is a strict upgrade. While the +2/+1 mode is the main reason you want to play the card, having it be a Disenchant in a pinch is a nice little bonus.

An Unexpected Party

Rating: 10/10

What an incredible way to end a game! First, At the Door is a great token creator that for 6 or more mana is going to give you a nice load of 2/2 Dwarf tokens. But then, you get to cast An Unexpected Party on the next turn and they all become 4/4s? United Front was one of the best cards in Avatar for a reason, and this card is probably just as powerful. And don’t sleep on the fact that you could just run this out on the anthem side and swing a combat in your favor.

Velvetwing Butterflies

Rating: 4/10

Back in Throne of Eldraine, Ardenvale Tactician was white’s best common. The ability to interact with combat and then become a threat on the board makes this a remarkable creature. Velvetwing Butterflies is only a little bit weaker than the Tactician was, but it should still pull its own weight in The Hobbit Limited.

Vow to Erebor

Rating: 1/10

+2/+2 for 2 mana isn’t a good enough combat trick. A free equip and untapping the creature aren’t enough of an upside to graduate Vow to Erebor into a card I’m willing to play in the main.

Blue

Bilbo, Luckwearer

Rating: 7/10

We really have come a long way since Looter il-Kor haven’t we? An unblockable 1/1 that loots when it connects is a really powerful card that helps to smooth out your hand and make it so that your future turns are more consistent. But on top of that, Burglar’s Plot can let you swap some useless 1/1 for their 5/5, which makes Bilbo, Luckwearer a great card to draw at any time. If you’re designing an uncommon based around the main character of a Universes Beyond IP, you can’t do much better than this.

Bilbo, Thief in the Night

Rating: 6/10

This mythic version of Bilbo has a lot of potential. The ability to cast a spell from the graveyard when it attacks reminds me a lot of Dreadhorde Arcanist, an extremely powerful card from War of the Spark. Bilbo, Thief in the Night looks considerably better than the Arcanist to me, but being a 2/2 does make it difficult to find good windows in which it can attack. Of course, you can use this Bilbo to cast removal spells on potential blockers, but what if there are two 3/3s to get past? This will be an interesting one to see play out for sure, so I’m leaning a little towards the conservative side with the rating for now.

Bilbo Baggins, Burglar

Rating: 6/10

Not only does Bilbo get to be blue’s best uncommon, it looks like he’s blue’s best common, too!

Time and time again, we’ve seen 3-mana 2/1s that draw a card on entering, possibly with a bit of selection, and they’ve always been incredible. From Inspiring Overseer to Sibsig Appraiser, these cards are great to see in any set. Bilbo Baggins, Burglar only draws you a card, but if you slot its Take a Glance adventure spell into the mix, you get that little bit of extra selection, too. This is an awesome card, and I can’t wait to draft a lot of them!

Confusticate and Bebother

Rating: 1/10

Convolute is a very reasonable counterspell for Limited, though nothing too special. Confusticate and Bebother has a nice alternate mode, but if your deck doesn’t want a counterspell, which I don’t think a lot of decks will, then you don’t want this.

Elrond, Moon-Reader

Rating: 5/10

Having access to a creature with an activated ability is far from trivial, which is exactly what you need for Elrond, Moon-Reader to do something in the early game. It’s nice that it can trigger itself, so you do get to at least draw a free card whenever you flicker two things, but 7 mana is a lot to spend on that. In fact, for 7 mana, on a mythic rare card, why can’t it flicker lands? You know, to trigger the elf theme of the set? Seems like a massive oversight if you ask me.

Elven Raft-Steerer

Rating: 5/10

Proactively tapping down a blocker or untapping a creature after it attacks is pretty good when you get it for free, which is exactly what Elven Raft-Steerer is capable of doing. If you can get multiple land drops in one turn, then getting to tap down multiple things is also really nice, allowing you to apply a lot more pressure, or even win in one attack.

Elvenking’s Harper

Rating: 2/10

For a long time, Elvenking's Harper is only going to be a vanilla 2/2. Deep into the late game it can become a legitimate threat, especially as it can make any of your creatures unblockable and not just itself. That means this is probably worth playing from time to time, but you also won’t miss it if you don’t have access to it.

Enchanted River’s Grasp

Rating: 5/10

Just like Frozen in Ice in MSH, Enchanted River's Grasp is a very strong 3-mana removal spell in a color that doesn’t always get strong removal. This ought to be a high priority when you’re drafting blue.

Fateful Discovery

Rating: 0/10

This is one of the simpler, yet more interesting cards in the set, but only for Constructed formats. In Limited, it matters far too much that Fateful Discovery is a 5-mana enchantment that does nothing when you play it. Even if you got it to work, you need to draw minimum four cards to make it at least as good as Tidings, and I just don’t see that happening.

Gandalf, Wandering Wizard

Rating: 3/10

Gandalf, Wandering Wizard really begs the question: “How much mana am I willing to spend to draw three cards?” I’d normally say 11 is too much, but in this case I’ll make an exception. What’s funny is that as long as you’re holding open the 6 mana to shuffle away Gandalf, your opponent can’t kill it. If they point removal at it, they have to pay the ward cost first and then you can choose just to draw the three cards.

Even after all that, Gandalf is still a clunky 5-drop, so you won’t always want it, but there’s some sweet potential here for sure.

Great Gilded Boat

Rating: 7/10

Getting to curve a 2-drop into Great Gilded Boat on turn 3 sounds pretty great to me. The fact that it triggers whenever you attack with anything, not just itself, is a huge boon to the card. While it’s certainly not broken or a lock to win you a game on its own, it’s a very nice value engine and basically any blue deck will be happy to play it.

Lakeshore Apothecary

Rating: 1/10

I’m not a fan of 2-drops that aren’t good enough until you put some work in. Atlantean Cavalry was bad in Marvel Super Heroes, but at least it started out with defensible stats for a 3-drop. Lakeshore Apothecary doesn’t, and I don’t think it’s going to make the cut.

Lake-town Mariners

Rating: 4/10

I’ve been waiting for a sweet Ghostly Flicker reprint for quite some time, but Gone Fishing really isn’t what I’m looking for. Still, flickering two creatures should be able to generate some good value and flickering lands can help to trigger landfall abilities, so running out Lake-town Mariners later in the game is also a nice win condition. This is a pretty good card all round, but a bit too expensive to be particularly exciting.

Long Lake Nuisance

Rating: 2/10

A 3-power flier for 4 mana used to be a good deal. Now, not so much. If you can get the 1/1 token from the recruit ability, then Long Lake Nuisance looks like a pretty good deal for the mana, but when you don’t, it just looks mediocre. One toughness makes this creature so vulnerable to removal and other 1/1 fliers that it just won’t be good enough a lot of the time.

The Lord of the Eagles

Rating: 9/10

I really love cards like this. The Lord of the Eagles is obviously very powerful if you can cast it. An 8/8 with flying will win the game in no time, and it even has flash so that it can eat an attacking creature.

However, we need to build around it to make it work, because 9 mana is absurdly expensive. A single flier with 3 power turns this into a 6-drop, and already I’m happy with that. Add in some more and we might even get it down to as cheap as 4, 3, or even 2, and at that point this card is ridiculously broken. You’ll need to make sure your deck has enough flying creatures to support this, but if it does, then you’re really in for a treat.

Master’s Councillors

Rating: 4/10

Master's Councillors starts out as a halfway decent defensive option and eventually turns into a pretty good threat in its own right. Mill cards have an inherent issue that if you’re not milling out your opponent entirely, then you might end up helping your opponent, but this card at least becomes a 3/3 or a 5/3 once you’ve triggered it enough times, so you can play this in plenty of blue decks, especially if you have recruit to trigger it.

Mirkwood Meditator

Rating: 1/10

Mirkwood Meditator is simply a bad vanilla creature that can turn itself into a different bad vanilla creature when you play a land. That sounds terrible, and I won’t be playing this card.

Most Decrepit Old Bird

Rating: 4/10

This is clearly a design for some sort of spells-based deck, which none of The Hobbit’s archetypes are really set up to do. Still, Most Decrepit Old Bird is a solid 1-drop flier that gets a bit bigger later in the game. Even if it doesn’t line up with any of the set’s archetypes, that’s still good on its own, and when you draw it late, the Speak Secrets adventure helps to enable the threshold ability a little faster.

Old Fat Spider Can’t See Me

Rating: 4/10

I just… what is with this name? Old Fat Spider Can't See Me might just be the weirdest name I’ve ever seen on a Magic card. The card is certainly not bad though. The first two chapters give very minor effects, but then it eventually draws you two cards by the time it’s finished. Yeah, it’s worth playing, but that name….

Plunder the Trollshaws

Rating: 4/10

Back in the day, I was always a big fan of Think Twice. Plunder the Trollshaws feels like the second coming of the Time Spiral classic, a Think Thrice if you will. It’s never that great to cast this from your hand; it’s really the flashback part that we like the most, but that just means that it’s a great option to discard to a recruit ability and get that 1/1 out of it.

Ravenhill Flock

Rating: 5/10

Ravenhill Flock is a functional reprint of Oneirophage from Modern Horizons. In that set, it looked bad at first but ended up overperforming. It’s simply that a 1/2 flier for 4 mana looks scarily bad to play out, but as long as you can afford to play such a bad creature, you’re rewarded for it in the long run. Next turn, after you draw for turn and use a recruit ability, it’s already up to a 3/4, not to mention how big it might get over the next few turns. This really is the kind of flying creature that eventually demands an answer, which is bound to be worth playing.

Riddles in the Dark

Rating: 5/10

I think one of my favorite types of card in this game is the Fact or Fiction variant. I was a big fan of Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths when it was in Standard, and this card looks very cool, too. At 3 mana, your draw spells need to give you at least two cards, which Riddles in the Dark does very easily, as you can split the four cards into two piles of two. But then, we can get a bit spicier with it. What if we split three and one? Maybe we see two really good cards, so we show one of them on its own face-up and put the other one in the face-down pile of three. What should your opponent choose then? Effects like this are a huge skill test, both for the choice of how to split the piles and which pile to take, and I’m all here for it.

Roll-Roll-Roll-Roll

Rating: 4/10

Roll-Roll-Roll-Roll is a wonderfully flavorful design that shouldn’t be too hard to get to work. Of course, it does nothing by itself; you need to have at least one good thing to flicker before it actually does anything. That might be a good enters the battlefield trigger or two, but it could also be a good landfall trigger. Assuming you have enough of either of those in your deck, then Flicker-Flicker-Flicker-Flicker looks like a decent card to play.

Sound the Trumpets

Rating: 2/10

You really don’t want to spend your 3-mana spell to answer a 2-mana one, and getting to recruit for doing so is nowhere near enough upside to warrant it. The real question with Sound the Trumpets is whether your deck wants a Cancel, which some will, but many more won’t.

Thranduil’s Decree

Rating: 5/10

We really have come a long way since Spelljack haven’t we? Thranduil's Decree is mostly just a functional reprint of this classic spell, and I’m all here for it.

Now, 6 mana is a hell of a lot for a counterspell, but by exiling the spell and letting you cast that for free, it’s also giving you a whole card back as well as a mana rebate. So as long as you counter something that costs about 3 mana or more, you’re getting very well paid off.

On the other hand, 6 mana is still a lot, so if I’m massively wrong about any card’s grade in The Hobbit, it’s bound to be this one.

Uncover the Moon-Letters

Rating: 2/10

Okay, this is a really weird card to evaluate. On the one hand, Uncover the Moon-Letters has the downside of every other enchantment of its kind; it costs a lot and doesn’t affect the board in any way. That’s obviously really bad, so does it give us an advantage worth that cost?

If your deck is set up for it, it kind of does. If you can cast a meaningful 5-mana spell, it draws you five new cards and you discard two, which is a really incredible effect to get. Plus, it keeps triggering on future spells cast.

I’m not exactly sold on this and it’s probably unplayable, but I think there just might be enough going on here to warrant trying it out.

Uneasy Partings

Rating: 5/10

Oh look, it’s the generic 4-mana blue spell that puts a creature on the top or bottom of its owner’s library. Uneasy Partings, like all of its predecessors over the last few years, will probably be one of the best blue commons and that’s that.

Wizard’s Staff

Rating: 1/10

This is a really cool design, but in a set with very few wizards or ways to enable prowess, Wizard's Staff looks like it’ll fall very short of where it needs to be. It should be a cool card for Constructed, but I don’t like it here in Limited.

Black

Along the Crooked Way

Rating: 5/10

Along the Crooked Way is remarkably similar in design to Gathering of Darkness. I think this card is better, as it’s cheaper, but not by a whole lot. No matter what the cost, getting a creature back from the graveyard while affecting the board in a meaningful way is good, so you should absolutely play this card.

Azog, Moria’s Ruin

Rating: 5/10

You’d think I’d love a 3-drop that kills any creature on entering, but here we are. Azog, Moria's Ruin is a weird card, because letting that creature’s controller amass an army that was just as big as what they lost is often going to mean that you’re barely downgrading their creature. If you’re struggling with a big 5/5 flier, then you’re still likely to struggle with a 5/5 army token.

It’s certainly not without its uses though. Some creatures will be good enough that downgrading them is actually preferred. You can kill your own army to draw a card and make a new one of the same size.

There’s all sorts of ways to use this. Just don’t sleep on that very significant drawback.

Bilbo’s Deadly Slice

Rating: 5/10

At this point, Murder is a classic Magic card and the gold standard for common removal spells. Bilbo's Deadly Slice is the exact same card, so we know exactly how good it’s supposed to be. It cleanly answers any creature for just 3 mana, so any black deck will want to play it.

Crude Bent Blade

Rating: 2/10

Now this is a nice design. Equipment removal spells are always nice to see, as they give you a way to put an equipment in your deck that actually does something before you equip them to a creature.

That said, Crude Bent Blade being an edict effect is one of the worst kinds of removal you can get, and also not in the colors that care the most about equipment. This feels like a bit of a miss, but certainly not an unplayable one, and you might need this in BG if you fall short of 4+ power creatures.

Desolation Prowler

Rating: 5/10

A strict upgrade to Putrid Leech wasn’t on my bingo card for 2026, but this is pretty sweet. Desolation Prowler is a very difficult creature to get into combat with since it can become a 4/4 without spending any mana, so it won’t be outclassed for quite some time. This looks like a very powerful 2-drop in the format and a great addition to the ferocious decks in particular.

Down, Down to Goblin-town

Rating: 4/10

Coercion effects tend to be pretty bad in Limited, but Down, Down to Goblin-town really ups the ante by giving you some good extra bonuses after you take a card from your opponent’s hand. A 1/1 Goblin Army plus two life drains over the next few turns is definitely enough upside to warrant playing this.

Dreaded Bat-Cloud

Rating: 4/10

4/2 is a very weird stat line for a flying creature, but there we go. Between trading creatures in combat, removal, and sacrificing your armies, it shouldn’t be too difficult to turn on the cost reduction for Dreaded Bat-Cloud, at which point it looks like a very aggressive flier that can trade one-for-one with any big flier. Doesn’t seem too bad, but you really need to be able to enable that cost reduction.

Front Porch Sentries

Rating: 4/10

Two-drops tend to be outclassed by most 3s and 4s, but Front Porch Sentries isn’t. That extra -1/-1 lets it trade up for bigger creatures or even threaten a two-for-one trade against an X/1 creature. A very solid 2-drop for any black deck.

Gathering of Darkness

Rating: 4/10

The reason that Gravedigger is so good is that while it two-for-ones, it’s also a creature that you can recur, flicker, and whatever else. Gathering of Darkness is certainly good, but it does lack that little extra punch that a typical gravedigger has. It’ll probably be a good card, just not an exceptional one.

Gnashing of Teeth

Rating: 5/10

Three mana to give -5/-5 is a very good rate for a removal spell. Tack on the ability to clean up a bunch of small creatures and Gnashing of Teeth looks very solid overall.

Gollum, Riddle Master

Rating: 6/10

This is a really cool design for a Gollum card, but at mythic rare this just feels a little underwhelming. Gollum, Riddle Master is very likely to trigger at least once. If you’re on the play and you cast it on turn 2, you can name “even” and your opponent can’t cast a 2-drop without giving you a free card. Similarly, if you’re on the draw, you name “odd” and your opponent will trigger Gollum if they play their 3-drop on curve.

Until we start to play with The Hobbit, it’ll be hard to know what the best choice will be in a vacuum, but I’d guess “even” for now, simply because of how important 2-drops tend to be.

Gollum, Silent Slinker

Rating: 1/10

Neither Gollum, Silent Slinker nor Meager Meal are particularly good. A 4/3 menace creature for 4 mana is pretty weak, and so is a 1-mana spell that only gives you a +1/+1 counter and 2 life. The combination of them does make this card a little more interesting, but not enough to warrant putting it in most decks.

Gollum the Abandoned

Rating: 4/10

A creature that can potentially keep coming back but can’t block is fairly limited in scope. Gollum the Abandoned looks like a very aggressive creature for the right deck, but your average black deck shouldn’t just play it on a whim. More than likely, this means that black/red goblins will like it, but black/green ferocious won’t.

Great Fierce Bee

Rating: 1/10

We’ve seen pretty much this exact design before and it wasn’t good then. Great Fierce Bee is just far too small to make any sort of meaningful impact at 3 mana, and its extra ability is so mediocre that you’d barely notice it was there.

Great Ugly-Looking Goblin

Rating: 4/10

Great Ugly-Looking Goblin is very weak for a 6-drop, but fortunately, that’s not all that relevant here. What’s relevant is that its adventure spell, Clap! Snap!, is a 2-drop. This isn’t just a bad 6-drop with an adventure spell attached, rather it’s a reasonable 2-drop that then has a free 6-drop attached for later, which is actually a pretty good deal.

Head of the Hunt

Rating: 9/10

Just in case you’ve never had the misfortune of playing against Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, let me tell you it is really damn annoying. Sure, Kalitas could also turn itself into a huge lifelinker, but Head of the Hunt has the upsides of enabling ferocious abilities and the ability to ambush attackers for value. This just looks like a busted rare to me, and there’s no way you can realistically beat it if it goes unchecked.

Inside Information

Rating: 4/10

Inside Information is a pretty cool card that’ll probably be good somewhere, but I think it’s lacking a bit for Limited. It’s a really bad card when you’re behind in a game, as you won’t be able to afford to pay too much life. It’s great when you’re ahead, or in a board stall, but it costs a lot of mana and isn’t even guaranteed to do much for you.

I think this’ll be cool to cast, but this is pretty far from being the almighty Villainous Wealth.

The Master of Lake-town

Rating: 5/10

Weirdly, drawing The Master of Lake-town late sounds the most appealing. I’d much rather draw it when both players’ graveyards are full, allowing me to trade it off and draw two cards. The symmetrical Mindcrank ability is good for enabling this, but putting this out and having it die for no value sounds pretty weak to me.

Nighthowl Pursuer

Rating: 6/10

Playing this on turn 1 sounds like a nightmare to deal with. It’ll easily get a couple of hits in before you have access to two blockers, at which point it’ll probably become a 3/3 and need to trade for one or both of those. Nighthowl Pursuer is a great aggressive option for black/green and might even be good enough to play elsewhere, too.

Rage into the Valley

Rating: 5/10

While Rage into the Valley isn’t exactly a Phyrexian Rager, it makes a close enough impression of one to make me very excited for it. This is likely one of black’s best commons; a creature that draws you a card is just very solid and highly sought after in any Draft format.

Ravening Warg

Rating: 4/10

I’m always a big fan of cheap deathtouch creatures and on Ravening Warg, that deathtouch helps to elevate what could be a mediocre 2-drop to a very valuable one. Since it trades for basically any creature, it’s good to draw early and late, which is really all you need to see out of a solid 2-drop.

Reverent Howl

Rating: 3/10

Painful draw spells and lifelink combat tricks are both only situationally good, which means they don’t often get played. Reverent Howl ups the ante by including both on the same card, so if you don’t need one, you can probably use the other. Of course, you might not want either, but both modes are powerful enough that I imagine this’ll be playable more often than not.

Rhovanion Rampager

Rating: 8/10

I assume there’s a lore reason for why this card is a wolf that works best in the goblins deck, but there we go. Anyway, let’s ignore the first ability for a second. Without it, Rhovanion Rampager is a 3/2 that dies into a 3/3, which is an incredible deal for as little as 3 mana.

Now, bring the first ability back into play and this is also a sacrifice outlet that’s going to be hard to block. If you can sacrifice your army token, it essentially makes those counters pull double duty, since they go on this creature and then onto the army it amasses later.

This is a great card overall, and one of the best build-arounds that the goblins deck seems to have.

The Sackville-Bagginses

Rating: 7/10

Given that many black decks will have amassed army tokens and will be looking for ways or reasons to sacrifice them, The Sackville-Bagginses solves both of those problems by being a one-time sacrifice enabler and a nice payoff, too. Its abilities are only minor, but it’s a 2-drop at the end of the day, so it’s really good for its cost.

Stir Up Trouble

Rating: 4/10

Some kind of Bone Splinters variant is always nice to see and the amass mechanic in this set gives us a very real incentive to want to sacrifice our creatures. Stir Up Trouble won’t be able to go into every black deck, but it’ll excel in the decks that really want it, namely the black/red goblins decks.

Stony-Voiced Goblins

Rating: 4/10

Ravenous Rats variants are usually great in Limited. You should be able to make use of the 1/1 and having your opponent discard a useful card is practically the same as you drawing one.

Stony-Voiced Goblins looks like one of the best things a black deck will be able to do on turn 2, and then you can sacrifice it for value on a later turn. It’ll be a premium common in The Hobbit.

Supper for Spiders

Rating: 0/10

Having to rely on your opponent’s creatures dying at the right time and then only reanimating them as food adds up to a situational card that I don’t want to play. Supper for Spiders is a nice card for Shelob enjoyers in Commander, but otherwise it looks basically unplayable.

Red

Balin, Loremaster

Rating: 1/10

Any potential a design like Balin, Loremaster might have had is plagued by all of its downsides.

It’s a 5-mana 4/4, which is terrible. You discard your hand to draw the same number of cards, so you’re never actually going up on cards and not even necessarily improving the quality of your hand. Since Balin comes down for 5 mana, by that point you rarely have a lot of cards left anyway. Finally, having an enduring story doesn’t actually improve the ability; it just tacks on a meager amount of damage.

I could be wrong, but none of this looks very good to me. I’d just avoid it.

Bombur, Gentle Dreamer

Rating: 2/10

There’s really very little difference between a 5/3 and a 3/3 in Limited. Enough so that putting a very real downside on this card feels a little bit like overkill. There are a few good 3-drops for dwarves, but Bombur, Gentle Dreamer just looks worse than the rest.

Bothersome Noisemaker

Rating: 6/10

Now this is a build-around I can get behind. There is sadly no noncreature spell theme in this set, but the rate on Bothersome Noisemaker is so good that even one or two triggers from it makes it a worthwhile play. I doubt you’ll want to play this in red/white too often, but black/red goblins are going to love it.

Burn, Burn, Tree and Fern

Rating: 5/10

Four mana for 6 damage is a very reasonable burn spell and the number of equipment cards throughout The Hobbit makes me think this’ll probably destroy one of those, too. Even if you can only kill a creature and then get a little mana rebate later, Burn, Burn, Tree and Fern is still a good removal spell for your red decks.

Dáin Ironfoot

Rating: 7/10

In a vacuum, Dáin Ironfoot is a 2/4 double striker for just 3 mana, which is pretty solid, though nothing too special. On top of that, it also leaves the Axe token behind and can give double strike to other creatures on your board. That’s a nice package overall, even if it’s a bit vanilla.

Desert Were-Worm

Rating: 4/10

In your average 2-color Limited deck, you’d reasonably expect to have three Mountains in play when you cast a 6-drop, making Desert Were-Worm a 6/5 most of the time you play it. It can be bigger, but without any evasive keywords, like trample or menace, it could be a 20/5 and a lot of decks probably wouldn’t care. You really need to make use of the extra combat ability, but there’s also no guarantee that you’ll enable it or that it’ll even work the way you want it to. This looks like a lot of wasted potential on what will only end up being an average playable.

Desolation of Smaug

Rating: 3/10

Four mana is kind of expensive for a 3-damage sweeper. Zero mana is obviously obscene, but for it to do that you need to both have a dragon in your deck and to have drawn it, which seems incredibly unlikely to me.

If you get to pull that off, then great, but I think Desolation of Smaug feels more like a powerful sideboard card that might be good enough to play in the main if your deck isn’t too vulnerable to it.

Dori, Bearer of Friends

Rating: 4/10

This card reminds me of Plundering Barbarian, a card that pretty much always created a Treasure token and was very good for it.

Dori, Bearer of Friends is a good size for a 3-drop and the Treasure token it gives you will let you accelerate into a 5-drop on 4, or just go into your stash to buff one of the many cards that care about the number of Treasures you have. Also, since it’s legendary, it contributes two permanents towards the three you need for storied, so that’s pretty nice.

Dwarven Mauler

Rating: 5/10

A 1-mana 2/1 is already a good start. I think what really stands out about Dwarven Mauler though is the fact that so much of the equipment in The Hobbit is quite expensive to equip, which makes a mana discount like this incredibly valuable. The dwarf decks are going to want plenty of good creatures for their equipment, and this one definitely qualifies.

Gandalf, Goblins’ Bane

Rating: 8/10

Neither Gandalf, Goblins' Bane nor Flameshape are all that exciting on their own, but getting both of them on the same card looks very good. If you get to cast both, then Gandalf will end up being a pretty decent prowess-esque creature that also drew you two cards, which is a really awesome deal.

Gandalf feels like more of a Constructed card, but there’s more than enough value here to make it good in Limited, too.

Gandalf, Spark Starter

Rating: 6/10

Six mana is a lot for a Flametongue Kavu, but there’s a reason why good ol’ FTK is one of the best nonrare creatures in the history of Limited. The fact that Gandalf, Spark Starter will often be a two-for-one but can sometimes kill multiple creatures or even send its damage directly to your opponent means that it’s a valuable addition to any red deck.

Getaway Barrel

Rating: 0/10

So, you’re telling me that I have to pay 4 mana for a Getaway Barrel. It does nothing. Then I have to sacrifice it. And all I get in return is a random creature? Yeah, that’s not even remotely playable.

Glóin the Mighty

Rating: 2/10

Once again, this is an adventurer card where both modes are pretty mediocre, and I don’t think the combination of both adds up to very much at all. Glóin the Mighty is just far too small for a 4-drop creature, even if it does give you extra free mana next turn, and Easy Pickings is incredibly over-costed for what it does.

I don’t like this one at all. You can do much better.

Goblin-town Flunkies

Rating: 4/10

Two mana for a pair of 1/1 goblins is usually a great deal. Goblin-town Flunkies is a great way to start a game on 2 mana in any red deck, but of course the goblins deck in particular is going to absolutely love it.

Gundabad Opportunist

Rating: 3/10

There’s nothing much wrong with a decently sized 4-drop that impulse draws you a card on entering. I played a fair few Crimson Operatives back in Marvel Super Heroes, and I imagine I’ll play a few Gundabad Opportunists in this format as well.

Iron Hills Stalwart

Rating: 1/10

Reach and trample is a nice combination of abilities that makes a creature good on both offense and defense. Sadly, at only a 4/5 for 5, Iron Hills Stalwart just isn’t the best equipped to use those abilities and doesn’t have enough else going on for it to make up for that. The random free equip is very underwhelming, and I don’t expect this card to see much play.

Last Light of Durin’s Day

Rating: 1/10

Last Light of Durin's Day is basically unplayable in Limited. You can’t reasonably expect it to get up to six quest counters in a game, even if you played it on turn 2. Even if you did, you’d then need a dragon in your deck and to not have drawn it already. Its only saving grace is the fact that you can mountaincycle it if you happen to need an effect like that, but otherwise it’s awful.

The Misty Mountains Cold

Rating: 4/10

So you’re telling me I get Treasures, but I’m not supposed to use them? Well, as nice as a 6/6 dragon is, I think I’d much rather just spend the Treasures.

If you cast The Misty Mountains Cold on turn 3, then you’ll have two Treasures by your next turn and could use them to cast a 6-drop on turn 4! Of course, you could just stockpile them and go for the dragon token, or add in Treasures from other sources and get multiple dragons.

There’s a lot to like with this card and it has a ton of potential if you can build around it in any way.

Misty Mountains Raider

Rating: 3/10

Five-drops are a dime a dozen these days, with some decks not even wanting them. I think you’re likely to find something much better to fill this slot on your curve, but Misty Mountains Raider could be good in a pinch. I mean, Bolg of the North is very powerful and also costs 5, and I don’t think I’d want to play both.

Óin the Brave

Rating: 3/10

As a 1/3 that can rummage away cards, Óin the Brave is a very nice little 2-drop that I think most decks would be happy to play. It can even be useful in discarding excess copies of itself and turn them into playable cards.

Picking up an extra point of power and haste with your enduring story is actually very powerful and really helps it to stay relevant when drawn in the late game, so this looks like a very nice common all round.

Pinecone Strike

Rating: 6/10

I say this in just about every set review, but 3 damage for 2 mana is just a very good rate. Pinecone Strike should be able to kill a lot of creatures in The Hobbit, and exiling them gets around death triggers and the like. Destroying an artifact token is bound to come up from time to time, but since it’s a free bonus, we’ll gladly take it.

This is red’s best common and you should take it highly.

Ragged Short Spear

Rating: 3/10

Tormenting Voice is a card that tends to see play every now and again, but it appears in basically every set. Much like last year’s Melded Moxite, Ragged Short Spear looks like a very good variant of this effect because it gives you a very real permanent in addition to the draw two. Sure, 3 mana is a lot to equip, but you did get this for free, so that’s not a big issue.

Smaug, the Great Calamity

Rating: 4/10

In most sets these days, red usually gets a 5-mana burn spell that does about 5 or 6 damage with a very minor upside. In this case, Spew Flame gives us perhaps the biggest upside we’ve ever seen, in the form of a 5/5 flying dragon for you to play later!

Smaug, the Great Calamity looks really excellent, and it’s something I’d be very keen to ramp into. It’s hard to get solid two-for-ones at the common level, and this very much is one, despite the amount of mana it costs.

Smaug the Magnificent

Rating: 10/10

Well, Bilbo’s mythic rare wasn’t very impressive, so Smaug has to make up for it, right? It’s very hard to argue with a 4/3 haste, flying dragon for only 4 mana and Smaug the Magnificent brings a lot more to the table, too.

It ramps you, hits for extra damage on future turns, combines very well with anything that makes Treasure, and so on. There’s really no way to play it badly. This Smaug is just really busted, and a great Headliner for The Hobbit.

Smaug’s Fury

Rating: 1/10

Sure Strike has been a reasonable combat trick in some past sets, but never very exciting. Smaug's Fury is no different, so it’s the kind of card you end up playing if your creature-based deck is low on removal, but one that you’re never too happy to actually play.

Snowslope Hunter

Rating: 7/10

Magic has a resource system for a reason. Everything you do costs some amount of mana to balance actions against each other. Whenever you get to do something without spending any mana, you ought to pay attention to that.

Snowslope Hunter is a very good sacrifice outlet that costs no mana to use each turn, making it a highly desirable card for the amass decks. Not only is it free to activate, but you get a very real benefit from it as well. This is an exceptional card, and one that I imagine will be a premium pick up for goblin decks.

Stone-Giant of High Pass

Rating: 9/10

Seven mana might be a lot to spend, but Stone-Giant of High Pass is well worth that investment.

If you get to untap with it in play and attack, you’ll have created two Stone Boulder tokens, giving you fuel to hit two targets for 4 damage each, which is exceptionally powerful. Even if you don’t get that far, at least it gave you one of those Stone Boulders when it entered as a down payment.

This is expensive, but a very powerful rare that will be hard to deal with effectively.

Thorin, Mountain-king

Rating: 9/10

Even if it requires you to have some sort of equipment in play, Thorin, Mountain-king is yet another Flametongue Kavu, only this time a much more efficient one.

Note that it can always target itself, so you don’t even need another creature out, and Thorin has a decent amount of power to throw at something even before it becomes equipped.

This Thorin is a very exciting bomb rare for the red/white dwarves deck, though you can probably only play it there due to always needing equipment.

Tidings of War

Rating: 3/10

Casting this for 1 mana doesn’t look very appealing, but the fact that it can be two whole creatures out of one card actually is. The best use of Tidings of War is probably to discard it to a rummage effect of some kind and then get value from the flashback, but either way, this is a solid card that just looks a bit innocuous at first.

Green

Attercop

Rating: 4/10

Just like I said for its black counterpart, cheap deathtouch creatures are always nice to see. Attercop even doubles up as a somewhat aggressive creature for the early turns of the game. I like this a fair bit, and it should be a good way to start your curve in most green decks.

Bejeweled Warg

Rating: 6/10

Bejeweled Warg is a great cheap creature that really rewards you for protecting it and making sure it can damage your opponent. Once it hits for the first time and picks up a +1/+1 counter, it increases to 4 power, enabling all of your ferocious abilities and making it that much harder to stop on the next turn. If left unchecked, this wolf really will run away with the early game and give you a very solid lead.

Beorn, Reluctant Host

Rating: 4/10

Few 5-drops also give you the ability to ramp into them early on. Explore is a very powerful ramp spell, so now imagine if instead of drawing you a random card, it drew you a guaranteed play for turn 5. That’s exactly what you get with Till and Tend, ramping into Beorn, Reluctant Host a little later, which is something I’m very interested in doing.

Beorn the Fierce

Rating: 10/10

This is probably my favorite card in The Hobbit. Bears are just really cool!

To start, let’s imagine you have no bears. Beorn the Fierce can come down on turn 5, give a trample counter to one of your creatures, which turns it into a bear and gives it +2/+2 from Beorn’s static ability. That represents an incredibly big tempo swing just on its own.

Now, if we factor in having other bears, all you need is to control one bear and any other creature when you cast Beorn and it immediately draws you two cards if you put the trample counter on the non-bear creature. Not only that, but if your opponent doesn’t have an answer for Beorn, you keep drawing two more cards every turn.

Beorn the Fierce looks like what you’d get when a casual player designed their own custom card for their favorite creature type and just gave it every ability they could possibly want, and I’m all here for it!

Beorn’s Hospitality

Rating: 4/10

Beorn's Hospitality is basically just Final Fantasy’s Ride the Shoopuf. That’s pretty good, especially since the elves deck is based around landfall and this is a strong payoff for that. I shouldn’t need to say much more than that; this is a decent card, and you should definitely put it in your landfall decks.

Boughside Wanderers

Rating: 4/10

A 6-mana common really needs to do a lot of work if it’s not going to be an enormous trampler, and boy does Boughside Wanderers manage to do that. It may only be a 4/4, but the landfall trigger should make up for that.

The first ability really catches my eye here. Right away, this creature replaces itself with the best permanent out of your top four, and that’s a good enough ability to make me happy with a creature of any mana cost.

Cantankerous Keepers

Rating: 5/10

Even with affinity for elves factored in, Cantankerous Keepers feels a little bit over-costed. A 4/3 for 4 or more mana just isn’t very good, but are we really going to be able to control the three or more elves required to make it cost a more reasonable amount? I don’t think that’ll happen all that often, so this card likely won’t live up to its full potential in this format, but it’s still worth trying to see if you can high roll on it.

Dancing from Dark to Dawn

Rating: 8/10

I’ve had to say this a few times already, but expensive enchantments that don’t affect the board right away are very bad. Except when the things they do are as powerful as this

This first ability can dish out an unbelievable number of +1/+1 counters with each creature you play. There’s the obvious downside that you might not have a creature to put them on, but it mostly solves that issue too by giving you a 2/2 Bear token on landfall.

Dancing from Dark to Dawn reminds me a lot of Primeval Bounty, one of the best cards in M14 when it was first printed. Yes, times have changed in the last 13 years, but this should still have more than enough power to still be relevant in 2026.

Down in the Valley

Rating: 7/10

If you make the most of Down in the Valley, you’ll end up paying 3 mana to get a land from your deck along with at least two Elf tokens (more if you can get some extra land drops somehow) and a nice little power buff to your team. That’s some very good value from a simple 3-mana saga, and it’s definitely worth picking highly.

Galion, Elvenking’s Butler

Rating: 3/10

Turning another creature you control into a base 4/4 for the turn isn’t nothing, but it’s also not something I’m willing to pay much to get. Galion, Elvenking's Butler is really held back by the fact that it’s a 4/4 for 4 with no keywords to help in combat, because it just gets outclassed too easily. It’s nice that any buffs you put on it also end up getting transferred to the creature it targets, but it’s so weak without that that Galion doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

Gigantic Big Bear

Rating: 5/10

Unlike a certain other big bear, Gigantic Big Bear is missing one very important keyword that stops it from being a ridiculous bomb in The Hobbit. Can you tell which one? Ding, ding, ding! That’s right! It’s missing trample…. A 10/7 with haste is still good and catches opponents off guard, but the fact that this could just be blocked by an Attercop or a Ravening Warg and not get any damage through really holds it back.

Guardian of the Halls

Rating: 2/10

I do like my 2-drops to still be good when I draw them late, but 7 mana is a lot to pay just for some late game relevance. Guardian of the Halls is fine, but I do think the incredibly powerful activated ability just costs a bit too much for this to be an exciting card.

Little Bear

Rating: 3/10

What’s not to love about Little Bear? It’s adorable, tricksy, and a very reasonable play to ambush opposing attackers. You can also just run it out as your 3-drop to start applying pressure. Not a bad card at all.

Mirkwood Pathmaker

Rating: 4/10

Obviously, this only starts out as an average 3/3 for 3 mana, but drawing it late game and having it be a 6/6 or 7/7 sounds fairly good to me. Just like Gigantic Big Bear, Mirkwood Pathmaker is missing trample, or any other annoying combat keyword to help you really make use of that large body. But when you invested so little mana into it, that’s not enough to stop you playing it.

Nasty Little Rabbit

Rating: 7/10

Back in Theros Beyond Death, Nessian Hornbeetle was a powerhouse of a card, becoming an insurmountable threat in just a few short turns, which was incredible for such a small mana investment.

Nasty Little Rabbit might be even better. If you cast it on turn 1, it’s possible to trigger it as early as turn 2 thanks to Desolation Prowler, but it’s far more likely on turn 3 or 4. Also, unlike the beetle, it sees itself for its own ability, so once it hits 4 power, it just keeps triggering.

Honestly, this also feels a lot like Sazh's Chocobo, since you’ll run it out early and it’ll eventually become impossible for some decks to deal with.

The Notary Hobbits

Rating: 6/10

The Notary Hobbits has already generated a lot of buzz on social media as a 5-mana creature that effectively taps for 9 mana. Of course, it’s fairly easy to disrupt, but that rarely matters in games of Commander.
The problem for me is that once we get to 5 mana in Limited, we rarely need another 9. It does allow you to double or triple spell from the next turn onwards, and there’s value in a 5-mana spell that gives you three 1/1s, but sadly we won’t be able to fully utilize this in the way that Constructed decks will.

Old Fat Spider

Rating: 4/10

The Old Fat Spider is a pretty solid 6-drop that looks good on offense and defense.

It may not have trample, but small creatures not being able to block it should mostly eliminate the deathtouch creature problem and also makes it harder to chump block. Then, having reach and being a 6/7 makes it a very nice blocker, especially because it’s hard to answer without giving your opponent a free card.

It’s still not exceptional, but certainly a good creature for the top of your curve.

Ordinary Bear

Rating: 2/10

Oh boy, is that a vanilla creature? Believe it or not, vanilla creatures used to be a big part of Limited, yet WotC decided to phase them out entirely. Ordinary Bear is probably not good enough in 2026, but a 4/5 is at least a good size for a 4-drop. It also enables ferocious and bear typal synergies, so it might be worth playing in the right deck.

Part in Friendship

Rating: 0/10

Part in Friendship does a lot of stuff, but it largely looks like something your opponent can avoid. I made the mistake of assuming that Thunderbolts Conspiracy might be a playable card, and this looks even worse. A 5-mana enchantment that doesn’t do anything until you trigger it, and even then only does something entirely random, doesn’t usually add up to a playable Limited card.

Quarrel

Rating: 5/10

Instant speed “bite” spells are exactly what we like to see out of green’s common removal. Especially potent with deathtouch creatures, Quarrel is just a solid removal spell for whatever green deck you’re drafting.

Radagast of Rhosgobel

Rating: 6/10

Radagast of Rhosgobel is an interesting creature that looks like he it was made for Constructed, but it’s actually really decent in Limited, too.

The combination of giving flash and a mana discount to your first creature spell in a turn can actually allow you to get two discounts in a turn cycle by casting a creature on your turn and then again on your opponent’s turn.

The fact that this allows you to start double spelling is exactly what makes Radagast look like a premium green creature.

Through the Forest Gate

Rating: 0/10

Nope, not a chance. Eight mana is far too expensive for a card that just puts a bunch of lands into play. For 8, you really need to be winning the game. We won’t be going Through the Forest Gate any time soon.

Troll Negotiations

Rating: 6/10

There was a time when Hunt the Weak was a fairly commonly printed removal spell for green and it wasn’t too bad. The +1/+1 counter does a good job of helping your creature win the fight most of the time. So of course, two +1/+1 counters will be even better. Now, a 3/3 can beat a 4/4 in a fight. That should open the doors for Troll Negotiations to kill off a wider variety of creatures, and it should be very effective.

Warg Tactics

Rating: 1/10

Warg Tactics is clearly an excellent sideboard card, but is it worth playing in the main? I’m not convinced that it is.

It’s a 2-mana Snakeskin Veil, but often the power of that is that it’s so cheap. Plummet is also a card that isn’t good enough in most main decks. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being main deckable, but for now I’ll start it in the side.

Wargling

Rating: 3/10

Wargling feels like a very solid 2-drop. It’ll only attack for 2 in the early turns, like most other 2s, but it soon picks up an extra point of power and puts on quite a bit more pressure. It’s not an exciting card to see, but it’s a good way to start your curve.

Wilderland Scrounger

Rating: 6/10

What makes this creature stand out to me is its incredibly high toughness. Once enabled, a creature like this might be in danger of dying in combat once you attack with it once, but Wilderland Scrounger will be a 4/7 in that combat and very hard to remove. Also, you only need to enable it once, because now it’ll have the four 4 power it needs to enable itself. That all sounds very powerful to me, and this looks like a great top end for the warg decks.

Wood Elves

Rating: 6/10

Wood Elves is a classic Magic card that dates all the way back to 1997’s Portal set. Three mana 1/1s that accelerate your mana like this have always been very good. Of course, this doesn’t fix your colors like a Farhaven Elf might, but Wood Elves is a perfect fit for the blue/green elf deck where it accelerates you but also enables landfall.

Woodland Weavemaster

Rating: 7/10

Everything that Woodland Weavemaster offers looks very impressive. It’s worth nothing that if all this did was tap for mana, that would be enough for a high grade. Instead, it allows you to cast as much as 5 mana’s worth of spells on turn 3 and even attack for some damage while you’re at it. This is a potentially very powerful mana dork, and I can’t wait to see how I can pop off with it in the format.

Multicolored

Bard, King of Dale

Rating: 2/10

A token doubler as well as a card draw doubler is a really cool creature, though this was clearly designed for Commander. Bard, King of Dale is over-costed, has weak stats, and barely affects the board for the investment you commit to it. Bard doesn’t seem completely unplayable, especially when you consider how well it works with recruit, but I’m certainly not clamoring to pick it up early in a draft.

Bard the Bowman

Rating: 4/10

Bard the Bowman starts out far too small to make much of an impact on the board, so you really have to focus on its ability. It’s definitely a powerful one, made easier to trigger by the existence of the recruit mechanic. Getting a couple of triggers out of Bard should help you win a lot of damage races because lifelink is one of the most powerful abilities in Limited and you can put it on whatever creature you see fit.

Bard’s Company

Rating: 8/10

Giving +1/+1 to all your creatures is a very powerful ability and getting to flash it in as a combat trick is exceptionally strong. I’m already sold on Bard's Company on those details alone, but throw in some free recruits and you’ve got yourself an extremely powerful rare.

Bifur, Melodic Rider

Rating: 4/10

I don’t think dwarf decks are likely to want a 6-drop, but Bifur, Melodic Rider seems like a good option if they do. For one thing, we’ve seen how easy it’ll be to get your enduring story, so Bifur should be doubling dwarf triggers as soon as it enters, including its own. At that point, Bifur probably enters as a 6/7 and potentially attacks as an 8/9, which is definitely not a bad start, but doubling the triggers on your other dwarves should come in handy, too.

Bolg of the North

Rating: 6/10

As we’ve gone through The Hobbit, we’ve seen a lot of ways for this black/red goblins deck to sacrifice its army token for value, and Bolg of the North looks like one of the better ways to do it.

Assuming your army is sufficiently big, you can essentially skim some counters off it to destroy an opposing creature. This is a very good trade off, and there are a lot of other creatures that like you to sacrifice them for value, too.

If only this ability weren’t so situational, we might have been looking at a mythic uncommon, but Bolg is still very good.

Bolg’s Company

Rating: 4/10

We don’t often find ourselves needing a burst of mana like this in a game of Limited. Of course, mana dorks are very good, but not at the expense of our creatures. Bolg's Company is the sort of card that shines when you can build around it, which you can only do so much in Limited. Still, it sacrifices something for free and can just be a 2/2 haste creature, so it definitely has its uses.

The Chief Warg

Rating: 6/10

Ideally, you’ll already have a ferocious creature waiting to attack before you play The Chief Warg. That way, you can cast it and immediately draw a card when you attack with that creature. Even if you can’t, getting to draw a card is a very good ferocious ability and we’ve seen how easy these abilities actually are to enable, which makes this a very powerful build-around for black/green.

Chief Warg’s Company

Rating: 9/10

This card is absolutely ridiculous. I’m used to seeing expensive enchantments that churn out free creature tokens every turn, but this ability rarely appears on a creature itself.

Chief Warg's Company is probably the biggest creature I’ve ever not wanted to attack with, because I simply don’t want to expose it to a combat where it might die. I’d much sooner just let it churn out free 2/2s every turn. It’s also big enough to enable ferocious very early on.

It’s highly vulnerable to most removal, so I don’t think I can give Chief Warg’s Company a full 10/10, but it’s incredibly busted and must be answered.

Dáin's Company

Rating: 6/10

Dáin's Company is basically an Augur of Bolas for dwarves, which is definitely not a bad place to be. Looking at the top four cards when about 3/8 of your deck is likely to be dwarves or equipment does make it reasonably likely that you find something. Even if you miss, a 2/2 lifelinker for 2 mana is a pretty good compromise.

Duskwatch Hunter

Rating: 3/10

The best part about Duskwatch Hunter is that you can have it put the counter on itself, which enables your ferocious abilities as early as turn 3, but it also has the flexibility of buffing something else. Getting around army tokens is also a nice bonus, so this looks like a solid playable to me.

Dwalin, Weaponmaster

Rating: 5/10

First strike on a 2-drop can be a very dangerous ability. It makes it so hard to deal with it in combat until you get much deeper into the game. Dwalin, Weaponmaster is also one of only two cards in The Hobbit to use hone counters, which is frankly an embarrassing number for something touted as a brand new mechanic. Still, if you have several equipment on the board in the late game, those counters really begin to add up.

Eagle’s Rescue

Rating: 6/10

If you’ve read any of my previous set reviews, you may know of my utter disdain for auras that only buff creatures. I will, however, make a small exception for Eagle's Rescue.

Granting +2/+2 and flying is very powerful in Limited and should turn just about any creature into a must-kill threat. Then, when your opponent does kill it, you can keep bringing it back to buff your small creatures, almost as though it were a powerful equipment still on the battlefield.

I know I’m going to lose to this a lot, but I hope I get to win just as many games with it on my side.

Fearsome Goblin Pair

Rating: 5/10

It looks like our army token won’t be the only thing we’ll enjoy sacrificing for value. Fearsome Goblin Pair is a simple 1/1 that creates a 4/4 when it dies, which looks like a great deal for only 3 mana. As I say, all you need is a way to kill it off, which this set has an abundance of.

Goblin Plate Mail

Rating: 4/10

Goblin Plate Mail is an obnoxiously annoying little 2-drop. It starts out as just a 2/1 with menace, but you can of course amass further onto that army token. When it eventually dies, it leaves behind a very annoying equipment. Yes, 4 is a lot to re-equip it, but you got it for free, so that shouldn’t matter. Wait, I’ve said that before, haven’t I?

The Great Goblin

Rating: 7/10

Both abilities trigger when you do things you were going to do anyway, which makes The Great Goblin a highly desirable payoff for the goblins deck. It’s a shame that it does nothing to enable them, but the triggers are powerful enough that I don’t think that matters. We’ve seen plenty of amass and sacrifice enablers already, so it’s just a matter of putting them all together.

Large Bear

Rating: 7/10

Back in Ixalan, there lurked a dangerous dinosaur that took the Limited environment by storm. It was splashable, it had haste and trample, and it was also a 5/5. Its name was Charging Monstrosaur. Ever since then, I’ve always referred back to this whenever big 5-drops with haste and trample show up, and today is no exception.

Large Bear hits incredibly hard right from that first attack, but reach even gives it the ability to sit back and defend you if it needs to. Better yet, it’s the perfect creature to cast on a turn when you were going to swing with everything anyway, and it really should take the opponent by surprise when you do so.

Mirkwood Nurturer

Rating: 4/10

The obvious play here is to return a land so that you can retrigger a landfall ability next turn, but you can of course return a good enters the battlefield trigger, like Bilbo Baggins, Burglar, or an adventurer card to reuse the adventure spell. What’s more, this is easily playable in black/green to enable ferocious, too. Mirkwood Nurturer looks like an exceptional common with a lot of possibilities to it.

Nori, Teller of Tales

Rating: 3/10

You probably want to give Nori first strike itself, because first strike on an early attacker like that makes it very hard for an opponent to brawl with. Nori, Teller of Tales may only be a simple 2-drop, but first strike is extremely powerful, especially in the early game, and Nori looks like a great way to start any aggressive curve.

Patient Instructor

Rating: 2/10

Like a lot of these other recruit cards that we’ve seen, it does appear as though the recruit ability is quite overvalued in the card’s cost. It almost assumes that you’ll always get the 1/1 token, but of course that always involves discarding a card you’d like to cast.

Patient Instructor just looks bad to me, but I hope I’m valuing the recruit incorrectly somehow, because I do want it to be good.

Silvan Reveler

Rating: 6/10

I think we all enjoyed playing H.E.R.B.I.E. Scout Unit in Marvel Super Heroes. Well, Silvan Reveler looks like a nonflying version that can keep coming back from the graveyard, which sounds very good to me. As a blue/green player at heart, I just love creatures like this that keep coming back over and over again. I just can’t see anything wrong with it.

Smaug, Wicked Worm

Rating: 8/10

The Dockside Extortionist text here is mostly for Commander, where players often control a bunch of mana rocks and the like. In this Limited format, it might not actually do anything, but against some decks it should be able to create a couple of Treasures thanks to all of the equipment lying around.

Smaug, Wicked Worm is honestly worth playing as a big flying creature anyway. Then sometimes, you’ll be able to trigger it for extra value, and it’ll really start to shine.

Thorin Oakenshield

Rating: 4/10

A 3/2 trampler for 2 mana, even on a multicolored creature, is a pretty good way to start your curve. Sadly, that’s about all you get from Thorin Oakenshield. Its enduring story ability is so minor that it barely even registers. Sure, it’ll be a mild annoyance, but we really want more out of an uncommon legend.

Thranduil, Sindarin Liege

Rating: 7/10

I’m calling it right now: This is the set’s mythic uncommon. I’m usually wrong this early on, but Thranduil, Sindarin Liege looks really absurd for an uncommon. A 2/3 that creates 2/2 tokens on landfall is incredibly powerful, and all that after you just drew (hopefully) two extra lands by casting the Silvan Rally adventure spell.

This is a card that demands an answer, or it’ll take over a game in just a few short turns, especially if you start to flicker lands to get more landfall triggers.

Thranduil, the Elvenking

Rating: 2/10

There are only four elves in The Hobbit with activated abilities, and only three other legendary ones. Thranduil, the Elvenking is far from unplayable, but it was clearly designed with Commander in mind, and the three colors it costs to cast it just aren’t worth stretching for given how ineffectual the payoff is.

Thranduil’s Company

Rating: 6/10

You might think that additional land drops are incredibly good for a landfall deck in Limited, but unfortunately you’d be mistaken. All too often, you’ll just run out of lands to play and you’ll find you never even used your additional land drops. It’s only through cards like Icetill Explorer and fetch lands that these abilities really start to pop off. As such, Thranduil's Company is little more than a 3/4 for 4 with a good landfall trigger.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s a good card, but the first ability is almost completely useless and doesn’t really factor into my grade.

Tom, Bert, and William

Rating: 9/10

This format should have enough mana fixing to allow us to play a card like Tom, Bert, and William in a black/red deck where you can utilize its sacrifice ability fully. Even if that’s not the case, having this troll sit in play and getting to sacrifice creatures for value in response to removal is also very powerful.

Artifacts and Colorless

Long-Bodied Grey Dog

Rating: 3/10

A 2/2 plus a free Treasure is honestly a good deal for 3 mana. The flash and reach give Long-Bodied Grey Dog a little bit of extra utility, but it was already looking good without it. This is a nice bit of color fixing and acceleration that any deck is allowed access to.

Old Thrush

Rating: 1/10

I’m really not interested in a land searcher that only puts that land on top for me to draw next turn. For 2 mana, that’s all we can expect, but so far I haven’t seen it attached to a creature that I’d be satisfied playing. Old Thrush is no exception.

Troop of Ponies

Rating: 5/10

Four total mana for a slow Cultivate in any color combination sounds rather good. Troop of Ponies can even get into combat if you need it to, probably most commonly by blocking and then sacrificing itself, which also prevents a bit of damage for you. Given that this can go in absolutely any deck, it looks like a very strong pick up.

The Arkenstone

Rating: 9/10

+1/+1 to your whole team and an extra card at the end of every turn makes The Arkenstone a pretty broken artifact for any deck in The Hobbit. It’s technically an adventure card, but Seek the Heart just isn’t that good of a spell to spend 3 mana on. It’ll be a lot more relevant when you draw it late in the game, but when you play it on curve, you should probably just skip the adventure and jam this on turn 5.

The Black Arrow

Rating: 5/10

There are actually a bunch of creatures in The Hobbit that die to this. There are 20 creatures that start on 1 toughness and four dragons, so I think The Black Arrow looks like a legitimate removal spell that also equips creatures very cheaply for a nice bonus.

Dwarven Mattock

Rating: 4/10

Dwarven Mattock might as well be a gold card, because 3 mana to equip is a little too prohibitive in any deck other than red/white dwarves. Getting the free equip and having access to other ways to bypass the cost makes this a slam dunk for that deck, but it’s kind of weak everywhere else.

Giant’s Boulder

Rating: 2/10

Giant's Boulder is a pretty nice card, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary for a lot of decks to use it for mana fixing. If only the removal mode were a bit cheaper, but sadly it feels a little too prohibitive at 7 mana.

Glamdring, Foe-hammer

Rating: 0/10

There’s no theme in The Hobbit centered around instants and sorceries. Even if there were, only Gleam of Death would be worth casting, and Glamdring, Foe-hammer would be embarrassingly bad.

I don’t think this is worth playing at all, but if you happen to build some sort of control deck with a ton of instants and sorceries, then sure, go nuts.

Key to the Side-Door

Rating: 1/10

If you happen to have several copies of the same legendaries, this could be a nice way to use them up, but spending a whole card just to make creatures unblockable isn’t good enough. Key to the Side-Door is a cool idea, but it seems bad.

My Precious

Rating: 4/10

The Allure of Power adventure spell here is very good in black/red as the rest of the set doesn’t have a similar black spell to sacrifice a creature and draw some cards.

My Precious, despite how iconic that phrase is, is pretty bad by itself. Not that hexproof and unblockable aren’t incredibly annoying, but it’s not worth spending a whole card on it. Fortunately, the adventure spell is worth casting, and then you get The One Ring for free on top.

Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver

Rating: 4/10

+2/+2 and trample are a nice bonus. Getting a couple of Treasure tokens is also pretty good. What isn’t good is the cost to cast and equip this card. Three to cast and 3 more to equip is quite a lot, and it doesn’t feel like what you get for it is all that worth it. This is a mythic rare, yet it feels far too expensive for what it does.

Sting, Bilbo’s Sword

Rating: 1/10

What is this card even doing? It only does anything at all if your opponent has some creatures in play, and then it only gives a presumably small power buff while costing a lot of mana to re-equip.

Sting, Bilbo's Sword may be one of the most iconic weapons in this franchise, but this card is abysmally bad, and you probably shouldn’t play it unless you’re really needing more equipment.

Thrór's Map

Rating: 4/10

I think we’ve gotten used to being able to pay 2 generic mana to search for any basic land these days. Thrór's Map does exactly that, but then it sits in play and lets you use it to improve the quality of the cards in your hand, which makes it a very solid playable for most decks.

Well-Worn Spatula

Rating: 3/10

Poor old Leonin Scimitar. Imagine being outclassed by a Well-Worn Spatula. So yeah, this card is perfectly fine to play, especially in a deck like red/white that wants a bunch of equipment, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being bad just because there are so many other options that come free with a creature.

Lands

Elven Passage

Rating: 7/10

This is a fantastic way to create a typal land for Eeves. With landfall being their main mechanic, Prismatic Vista is a very powerful card for them to have, and that’s exactly what Elven Passage is. Two landfall triggers out of a single card makes this the perfect option to pick up if you’re drafting blue/green elves.

The Common Dual Lands

Rating: 4/10

These are a nice new set of dual lands. It’s always good to have access to common duals to help fix our mana bases, and I say pretty much the same thing in every set. You should take these if you’re in the right colors, but not over any premium cards.

Hobbit Hole

Rating: 6/10

Evolving Wilds is a simple dual land that you can run in any deck and treat basically the same as one of the other common dual lands.

Two things however make Hobbit Hole stand out from its predecessor. Firstly, it obviously has the extra halflingcycling ability, which lets you turn this into a real spell when you draw it late in the game. The best part though is how it can double trigger landfall abilities, which for blue/green in particular is going to make this a very high priority to pick up.

The Lonely Mountain

Rating: 5/10

The Lonely Mountain is a cool mono-red utility land for dwarves in particular. Since equipment sticks around and won't often go to the graveyard, it’s not unreasonable to imagine you’ll have a couple lying around later in the game, at which point activating this should be pretty cheap to do.

Above all else, this is easy enough to put into any red deck, since it’s mostly just an upgrade over a basic Mountain. The key is just to know when to take it in a draft, and I’d say it’s a good idea to take it over most replaceable commons.

Wrap Up

Thranduil's Decree | Illustration by Javier Charro

This set is interesting. The other two small sets we’ve had recently haven’t been particularly good. I’m not super impressed by a lot of what I’ve seen here, but this is a beloved franchise and I’m sure that’ll drive it for a while, at least until we get to Reality Fracture in the autumn. I hope you have fun at the Hobbit prerelease!

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Until next time, take care of yourselves!