Throughout Magic's history, dwarves have been primarily printed in red and white. There are a few exceptions, like The Lady of Otaria, who is red and green, but the vast majority of Dwarven commanders are either mono red, or red and white.

Many dwarven legendary creatures also tend to care about artifacts. Sometimes they care about vehicles, like Depala, Pilot Exemplar, sometimes they care about treasure tokens, like Magda, Brazen Outlaw, most frequently, though, they care about equipment.

Bruenor Battlehammer powers up each of his controller's equipped creatures, and allows one equip cost to be ignored each turn, which is pretty terrific if you've got a Colossus Hammer hidden somewhere in your deck.

Giott, King of the Dwarves draws and discards cards whenever his controller plays either a dwarf or a piece of equipment. He also has double strike, making him an ideal target to wield some big weapons. Then there's Koll, the Forgemaster, who prevents creatures that are equipped or enchanted from going to the graveyard. He ensures that destroyed creatures, armed with equipment or enchanted by an aura, are returned to his controller's hand instead.

These are just a few examples of dwarven legendary creatures that incentivise an equipment based strategy. Many of the dwarves printed in The Hobbit continue this trend, so if you want to brew around some new cards, there'll be plenty of pre-existing dwarves to slot into your deck. Alternatively, if you've already built a Bruenor Battlehammer deck, then The Hobbit has a lot of additions that can fit in quite naturally.

As one of the main characters of The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield received a a whole selection of cards representing him in the set. The most significant are: Thorin, King of Durin's Folk, Thorin, Mountain-king, and Thorin, Company's Leader.

Thorin, King of Durin's Folk generates masses of treasure to reward players for filling their decks with dwarves. While Thorin, King of Durin's Folk is in play, whenever another dwarf enters the battlefield alongside him, he creates a treasure token. Not only that, but he also grants other dwarves +1/+0 for every artifact token owned by his controller. This includes not only treasures, but also clues, food, blood tokens, and any other artifact tokens that the cards in your deck can generate.

Thorin, Mountain-king is a tried and true dwarven equipment commander. The monored king under the mountain has an impactful enter the battlefield ability that automatically attaches as many pieces of equipment as you want to one of your creatures, then deals damage to a creature that an opponent controls equal to the power of whoever you've just kitted out. This version of Thorin is all about cheating around high equip costs, and making a giant voltron doom creature to finish off your opponents.

Finally, there's Thorin, Company's Leader. Currently this card is exclusive to Collector Boosters, but it's due to see a full release in the upcoming Battle of the Five Armies Co-Op Kit, which will launch in 2027. This is another version of Thorin that loves generating treasure. This time, he produces two treasure tokens whenever a dwarf that you control damages an opponent or a battle card that they control (presumably the Battle of the Five Armies Co-Op Kit will contain some new battle cards, which were last seen in March of the Machine). For 10 mana, this company leader can also grant all of your creatures double strike, which is powerful by itself, but also doubles the amount of treasure tokens generated by his first effect.

Of course, Thorin isn't the only dwarf included in The Hobbit.

Dáin of the Ancient Halls offers a formidable aggro build for anyone hoping to use dwarves to rapidly deal damage. For five mana, Dain is a vigilante and hasty 4/5, and whenever he attacks, he deals damage to each opponent equal to the number of dwarves that you control. Thanks to haste, Dain can start swinging in and dealing this damage as soon as he enters play. Use cards like An Unexpected Party to generate a lot of dwarves quickly, and then take advantage of effects that grant multiple combat phases in a single turn, like Seize the Day and Relentless Assault, to get as much as possible out of Dain's effect in a single turn.

Speaking of effects that generate dwarves quickly, Fíli the Pathfinder creates a 2/2 dwarf token whenever a nontoken dwarf enters play under his owner's control. This means that every dwarf that you play from your hand will be accompanied by an additional 2/2 companion. As well as this, if you have 'an enduring story' (meaning that at some point during the game you controlled 3 artifacts, sagas, or legendary creatures in any combination), then Fili provides a +1/+1 buff to your entire board, effectively turning the tokens that he creates into 3/3s.

Fili's brother, Kíli the Resourceful, also offers a beneficial selection of effects. He provides card draw the first time that you play a dwarf, or a piece of equipment, during a turn and can negate the cost of the first equip ability that you activate during your turn if you have an enduring story. Given that both of these brothers are monowhite, you won't want to load them into the Command Zone of a Dwarf Typal deck, but they can still provide significant aid as support cards.

The pair both come together on the card Fíli and Kíli, Joyous. Here, their colour identity changes to monored, and they can generate two mana a turn to help cast dwarves, equipment, and sagas. This can be useful if you're running a lot of high cost weaponry like Embercleave or Kaldra Compleat.

Finally, let's close out with a quickfire round up of some of the remaining Dwarves that are on offer.

Dáin's Company is a two mana 2/2 that allows you to grab additional dwarves, or pieces of equipment, from the top of your deck as it comes into play. It also gains lifelink if you control another dwarf alongside it which isn't essential, but is a nice bonus.

Dáin Ironfoot is a three mana 1/4 that creates an equipable axe token as he comes into play. More importantly, he also grants all of your equipped creatures double strike when he attacks, rapidly upping the damage output of an equipment based dwarf deck.

Dwalin, Weaponmaster also supports equipment based strategies. He's a two mana 2/1 with first strike that places 'hone counters' on every piece of equipment that you control when he enters play and when he attacks. True to their name, these hone counters sharpen up your weapons, permanently granting them +1/+0 for every hone counter that they collect.

Balin, Loremaster offers a repeatable wheel effect, allowing his controller to optionally discard their hand, and then redraw a new one of the same size whenever he or another dwarf enters play. The opponent also takes damage equal to the number of cards discarded this way if Balin's controller has an enduring story. Balin may be the most unconventional card this article has covered, encouraging a plan centered on discarding and loading up the graveyard.

Iron Hills is a budget tapland that's strictly better than a Stone Quarry in a Dwarf typal deck, since you can sacrifice it later on during a game to place two +1/+1 counters on a dwarf that you control.

Hopefully, reading this has given you some inspiration to brew a dwarven deck of your own. If not, never fear, because The Hobbit also has plenty to offer players who favour elves, goblins, humans, or even wolves.

You can read more about the typal gameplay encouraged by this expansion in our article: Exploring the 5 Draft Archetypes in the MTG The Hobbit Crossover.

For more updates about Magic: the Gathering, board games, and other TCGs make sure that you subscribe to the Magic Madhouse newsletter down below, and to follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.