The 5 Best MTG Hobbit Cards So Far

There's nothing that dragons love more than hoarding treasure and breathing fire. Smaug the Magnificent perfectly demonstrates both of these characteristics and shows off why he's such a formidable villain.

During each of your upkeep steps, Smaug generates a treasure token. Then, every time he attacks, he deals damage equal to the number of treasures that you control to any target. This, combined with his aggressively costed statline of being a 4/4 with flying and haste for only four mana, makes him a force to be reckoned with that can burn away opposing creatures, and even opposing playeres, with ease if you can pile up enough treasure to enable him.

As Magical Tolkienian artifacts go, The Arkenstone may not be as famous as The One Ring, but it still provides plenty of power.

The Arkenstone offers several impactful effects all combined into a single card. 'Seek The Heart', the adventure spell built into The Arkenstone, allows you search through your deck for a legendary creature. You can use this to grab a combo piece, or just a powerful threat. Then once you actually play the Arkenstone itself, it provides a +1/+1 buff to each of your creatures, ensuring that they'll be combat ready. Finally, it provides some card draw at the end of your turn, thematically recreating the effect of the Monarch mechanic to demonstrate that the bearer of the Arkenstone is King Under the Mountain.

You may remember Tom, Bert, and William as the three trolls that attempted to cook and eat Bilbo and the rest of his companions. They've been recreated here as a Black and Green sacrifice commander that's both powerful and also deeply evocative.

For a single mana, these trolls can sacrifice any creature and then provide card draw equal to that creature's power. By playing these bickering trolls alongside a selection of low cost but high power creatures like Kalakscion, Hunger Tyrant, and Rotting Regisaur you'll be drawing more cards than you could ever possibly need. It's true that you also have to discard a card once you've used this effect, but you can turn that discard to your advantage by working some reanimation spells into your deck, to bring the creatures that you discard straight into play.

What makes this card a flavour win, is the fact that they turn into an artifact when they get dest, representing how these three trolls were petrified and turned to stone by the rising sun in the story of The Hobbit.

Gandalf, Party Guest is the headliner card from the Crack the Plates scene box, and it's perfect for anyone looking to gather some wizards and sling some spells.

At the beginning of combat on each of your turns, Gandalf, Party Guest allows you to cast an instant or sorcery spell from your hand for free. The only condition is that this spell must have a mana value of X or lower, where X is twice the number of legendary wizards under your control.

This means that even if Gandalf is the only wizard in your deck, you'll still be able to cast Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Pongify, and any other instants and sorceries that cost two mana or less for free. The more wizards that you can get sitting around the table, though, the more powerful this effect becomes, until eventually you're casting colossal game ending spells without needing to tap down a single land.

Orcrist, Goblin-Clever is a powerful treasure generating piece of equipment that's reminiscent of The Reaver Cleaver from Dominaria United. Whoever wields this glowing greatsword gains +2/+2 and trample, and whenever they damage an opponent, they create a number of treasure tokens equal to the number of creatures you control that all share a specific creature type.

Despite being designed to slay goblins, Orcrist is actually surprisingly effective in goblin decks. Since cards like Krenko, Mob Boss can churn out Goblins incredibly quickly, you'll be able to generate plenty of treasure if you hand this sword over to one of Krenko's cronies and then swing in to attack with them.

Of course, this card is meant for more than just Goblins. The Hobbit set seems to be encouraging players to use it alongside dwarves, who have an equipment wielding theme. Any creature type will work, though, particularly those that can flood the board quickly. Whether it's Squirrel Girl or Lathril, Blade of the Elves you'll find plenty of worthy wielders out there for this weapon.

While The Hobbit doesn't until August 14th, if you're looking to get your hands on some Tolkienian cards as soon as possible, pre-orders are currently open.

For more MTG updates, as well as news about other TCGs, make sure that you scroll down to the bottom of this page and sign up for the Magic Madhouse newsletter. You can also follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for the latest from the MTG Multiverse and beyond.