(Eowyn, Shieldmaiden | Art by Craig Elliott)

Hello all! I'm Bert from the Scrap Trawlers, where we do EDH on a budget. Today we're taking a look at the Riders of Rohan precon from the Tales of Middle-earth Commander decks. Our face commander this time around is Eowyn, Shieldmaiden, placing us in the Human archetype. Let’s do what we always do and go over how the deck plays, the strengths and weaknesses, and which new and reprinted cards are going to be worth looking at. Let’s Ride!

Inspiring Leader

So taking a look at our face commander again, Eowyn, Shieldmaiden is a five mana Jeskai commander that provides us with some Human synergies. She provides us with incentive to play a Human before combat so that we create even more creatures and maybe even draw a card. It may only trigger once per turn, but this effect is something to be reckoned with in the span of a game. Eowyn wants some quality Humans that will trigger her ability and provide support for the tokens that she's creating. Army in a can doesn’t even do her justice with the amount of tokens that she can create. With all this in mind, let’s take a look at the list.

With the list in front of us, I believe we have a good shell for a Humans deck that has the capacity to create creatures and increase our board state to the point where it will be a problem for our opponents. We not only accomplish this by the power of our commander, but also with the value creatures throughout the deck. Before we get to specifics though, let’s take a look and see where our deck excels!

Kindred Charge

This time around we are an aggro deck that aims to swarm the board with Humans and power them up to stampede over our opponents. The average mana value makes me pretty happy sitting at a nice 3.31 out of the box. This means that after turn three we have a pretty high chance of us playing out our creatures, and with 31 of them in our deck (28 of them being Humans), we're set up for a great time with our commander.

So how are the vitals of the deck? Well, in the ramp department we're looking pretty healthy sitting at eight ramp sources, one being a synergistic Human, Weathered Wayfarer. This is a good starting point for ramp and means that we'll have an easier time casting not only our commander, but also those value Humans littered throughout the deck. The deck also has a couple of board wipes, one of which is Supreme Verdict, a solid unconditional way to rid the board of creatures.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the state of the deck, but where are some places the deck needs help? What it really needs is that good old card draw. I feel conflicted about this because out of the box we have a number of Monarch cards that allow us to draw that extra card at the end of our turn. However, it's always my goal to have unconditional card draw that will give us cards no matter what. There will be times where we are unable to reliably hold the Monarch and that will make it tough for us to get that extra card per turn. There's even card draw on our commander if we have a staggering six Humans on the field, which in this deck should be pretty routine. But, call me greedy, I say we need more card draw. Vanquisher’s banner is included, which is a great start, but it's not quite enough. That's actually the only “problem” that I have with the deck, so let's move on to talk about some of those fancy new commander cards that were printed for this deck, shall we? 

Fresh-Faced Recruits & Veteran Soldiers 

With there being so many new cards, let's go over the ones that I feel will be seen throughout the format. We can’t get too far into this section without talking about our alternate commander, Aragorn, King of Gondor, a four mana 4/4 with vigilance and lifelink. He makes you the Monarch when he enters and his third line of text makes it harder for your opponents to block, or makes them unable to block at all if you're the Monarch.

The Saga Oath of Eorl is also a power house in this deck, making a total of four creatures for five mana and making a Human (hopefully our commander) indestructible. Riders of Rohan is also a powerful card due to it having the Dash ability, making it almost a modular spell where you have to decide which “mode” you're going to cast it in. Using the Dash mechanic makes it so that you can accumulate more power over time, or if you just need it then and there you can cast it for its normal cost.

Forth Eorlingas! is one of my favorite cards in the deck. It gives us a way to create a board state, but also gives us incentive to attack so that we can get access to the Monarch. Theoden, King of Rohan seems strong for an uncommon. So long as a Human enters the battlefield he'll be able to give double strike to a creature we control. Call for Aid is a cute card, but not one of my favorites. It definitely has the power to swing a game into our favor, but we can’t attack the player whose creatures we stole, so that makes winning with it a lot more difficult. 

With new cards comes reprints of old ones. Our deck didn't win the lottery in the reprint department, but we definitely have some solid ones. Combat Celebrant is a card that I'm excited to see, especially in a deck where it can shine. An additional combat in this deck may be that extra push that we need to win. It being a 4/1 can be a bit of a detriment at times, however we are in a Human deck with a ton of synergies, so I imagine that it'll live for longer than we think. Another reprint that I'm happy to see is Supreme Verdict, which is just a clean and efficient board wipe. There's also the awesome reprint of Vanquisher's Banner, which I mentioned earlier but is still nice to see in the reprint department! I talked about ways to power up our Humans and a prime example of that is the card Door of Destinies. The more Humans we cast, the stronger our humans get and this is the way we want our deck to play. There are also a ton of cheaper reprints with a couple of my favorites being Weathered Wayfarer, Talisman of Progress, and Clifftop Retreat.

Final Thoughts

The Riders of Rohan deck is my favorite precon in a while. So much so that I believe that I'll build a budget version of it for myself. The deck is very cohesive and has synergies including room for you to add some of those of your own. I love the deck, be sure to let me know what you think of it in the comments! Come back next time so we can go over some upgrades for the deck.

Make sure to check back for more precon guides from us Scrap Trawlers. The other Trawlers are coming up with the guides for the other decks, so be sure to check them out. You can also check out our budget content over on Twitch and YouTube and follow us on Twitter.

Scrap Trawlers

Scrap Trawlers is a Magic: The Gathering budget EDH streaming and video group, with gameplay, deck techs, chats, and more. Catch our videos at youtube.com/scraptrawlers. Andy, Lenny, and Bert.