Absolutely. With how many higher powered cards that have been introduced in the last 4-5 years, I'm finding it more of a challenge to pick cards that are strong, not just objectively game-breaking, but also fitting a theme of the deck I'm tweaking/brewing.
I like the suggestions you made. I'm glad I'm not the only one wanting to cut Bilbo from the 99. I feel he would be better in a life gain mid range creature beatdown deck. I have been watching this deck in Action and it's really been kicking ass both straight out of the box and minor upgrades. Funny how the Hobbit and Food Deck is really powerful. But these little upgrades you are making are gonna really make it better, And it is still a easy to play deck for beginners and veterans.
Glad you like it. Food decks I've found with these newer cards are pretty strong. I ended up in G/W Food at prerelease and it did some silly stuff and made for fun games even when I didn't win. And yeah, Bilbo in this deck as it's set up, feels like a harder to cast Angel of Vitality with the +1 to lifegain but not much else. He needs a much more dedicated deck to work with to get up to 111 life fast and better things to pull out of your deck that will finish off the game.
Thanks for keeping it mostly new set. I know people do this because it works, but it makes me so annoyed when a new set comes out and people are like “cool new stuff! I’m going to add something broke from the last 5 years”.
I went into these videos with the plan of keeping flavor and themes intact but allow the decks some updating and slice away some of the stuff that just ends up being filler for the most part. I made sure to not use anything that that is MTG specific, like Planewalkers or creatures not found in Middle Earth (I'm looking at you Phyrexians) and weighed if it was a spell or a creature that I might see in this world if it was an older card being suggested.
Samwise is a great card. I had him in my prerelease sealed deck and did some silly things with him and Peregrin Took, chaining a bunch of foods out to do several food synergies and even just outgaining the damage my opponents tried to do. It's a very fun archetype.
No problem. You can really push the deck if you dip into things associated with Magic itself, like Chatterfang, Squirrel General or Academy Manufactor, but they didn't fit my plan on keeping off-flavor things out of the upgrades.
Some sites carried the higher res art and I try to get thematic things when I need them for videos like this. I just googled LOTR MTG Art and several came up. This Samwise art is pretty stellar when blown up, I must say.
I believe the only change you would need to make is to remove Sol Ring and replace it with another card. It's banned in that format. Otherwise the rest of the precon is legal straight out of the box.
Mondrak is a good doubler, but for these Light Upgrade videos, I wanted to stay away from anything that you wouldn't find in Middle Earth, Things like Phyrexians, Planeswalkers, and named legends from older Magic sets were left on the cutting room floor. But for a powered-up build, oh yeah, Mondrak is definitely in consideration.
Any plans for land fixing with lands found in this set? Or replacing those last two cards with others found in the set/not replacing two of the ones already in the pre-con? Not trying to spend $70 on two cards and I'm trying to keep it in the LotR mtg card list!
Entish Restoration is a good mana fix within the list and could be used in place of regular Magic cards. Delighted Halfling can color fix our legends. Might even use Paradise Druid since it has a LOTR art printing. As for lands, Minas Tirith and The Shire are good here as utility and pretty easy to have come in untapped. Not much in the way of duals outside of the precon since none of them cross colors.
What about Gyome master cheff, Academy manufactor, Jaheira friend of the forest, Inspiring Leader and Agent of the iron throne? These are cheap and has an amazing synergy with the whole deck. Since we have 2 commanders, Inpiring Leader and Agent of the iron throne's effects are doubled!
All great suggestions for going with max synergy. For this I was simply doing minimalist upgrades that didn't incorporate cards specific to the planes of Magic, which meant I didn't want to use specifically named Legends from existing sets, cards that mention specific planes that aren't part of Middle Earth, or creature types that wouldn't be seen on Middle Earth. I'll likely be doing a Heavy Upgrades version of these decks in the future that doesn't care about flavor considerations and those cards will be right up there.
I think it's highly doable to only use main set upgrades for most of these decks and still come out with improvements over the base precons. The suggestions are much more minor for this deck than the others I did, but you could lean even harder into the main set and have a great deck.
I didn't include it here as I didn't feel it was something that would be found in the world of Middle Earth, which is the idea on these videos is to upgrade them slightly but not damage the flavor of the world that is built into the Lord of the Rings. But it is a very good choice in terms of power.
There's nothing specific to token doubling from the set itself, but I've recommended things like Delighted Halfling and Paradise Druid (LOTR Printing) for color fixing and in world cards. Entish Restoration would fit here as well to fix mana since we're in 3 colors and goes with the partial Treefolk theme of the deck. Lost to Legend is solid removal I have found as it resets Commanders back to post for 2 mana or tempos down other legends for at least 2-3 turns. Call of the Ring has done good things for me if you want to sneak some of the smaller Hobbits in under bigger blocks by making some of them a ring bearer and gives card draw that the food mitigates the life payments. And of course, the big one from the set, The One Ring. All the lifegain the deck has makes it easy to put it in and draw a ton off it while mitigating the life loss, and if you pair it with Lost to Legend, you can reset the counters if they get out of hand and get the chance to reuse the protection part a second time.
