Tom, Bert, and William Commander Deck Tech

Tom, Bert, and William | Art by Leonardo Borazio

Dawn take you all, and be stone to you! - Gandalf the Grey, The Hobbit

The recent MagicCon: Las Vegas featured sneak peek at cards from upcoming sets this year, and like many of you I was excited to see some cards from The Hobbit! You can see all the cool things revealed that weekend here, but today I'm bringing you a deck tech featuring everyone's favorite argumentative Trollish threesome: Tom, Bert, and William!

Like many Magic fans, I can trace my Magic: The Gathering origins back to reading J.R.R. Tolkien books. When I was a kid, my uncle Gary used to read a chapter a night to his boys, my cousins, from Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, starting with The Hobbit and then continuing with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I would go to visit them a few times a year, and so I’d get a random peek into this fantastical world of Hobbits, Wizards, and Rings of Power. When I got old enough, I read the books myself, and it ignited a love for fantasy stories, which led to my love of Dungeons & Dragons, which eventually led me to a long-time love of Magic: The Gathering. The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth was one of my all-time favorite Magic sets, filling me with so much beloved nostalgia, and I have no doubt The Hobbit will do the same.

What Does Tom, Bert, and William Do?

Tom, Bert, and William is such a flavorful design! SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT IF FOR SOME REASON YOU HAVEN'T READ THE HOBBIT: in the story, the three Trolls have captured Bilbo's Dwarf companions and are planning to cook them and eat them. This is realized in the sacrifice another creature ability. When the Trolls are slain they turn to stone, which is represented by their ability to return from the graveyard when they die but as a noncreature artifact. This nicely sidesteps commander tax every other time it gets destroyed.

There's another reason why Tom, Bert, and William is so resonant to me: it's basically Greater Good stapled to a commander. Now, Greater Good is one of my all-time favorite Magic cards and was my signature card both in tournament decks and the casual multiplayer decks I played before EDH was a glimmer in Sheldon Menery's eye. In particular I played it alongside two other cards that nicely synergized with the enchantment.

The idea was to get Greater Good on the battlefield and sacrifice Weatherseed Treefolk to it, drawing five cards, discarding three, and then getting Weatherseed back to your hand. If you had time and mana for it, you could enchant Weatherseed with Rancor first, sacrifice it to draw seven cards, discard three, and return Weatherseed and Rancor to your hand. I even had an old Standard deck with that key idea called "Maro-geyser" that I talked about in one of the earliest Magic writings of mine back in 2000: The Tragedy of Bad Rares, Part Deux.

Tom, Bert, and William's comparison to Greater Good is close but not exact. Both let you draw cards equal to the sacrificed creature's power, but the Troll makes you spend a generic mana to activate, while the enchantment has no mana requirement. The enchantment makes you discard three cards after you draw, while the Troll only requires you discard one card. The Troll takes two destroy effects before it's removed from the battlefield, but if it's your commander you can simply redeploy from the command zone.

A deck built around Tom, Bert, and William is going to want to have a plenty of high power creatures to sacrifice and draw a bunch of cards. Luckily Golgari has no shortage of those sorts of creatures up and down the mana curve.

Golgari has a lot ways to utilize the graveyard, including reanimation strategies and this commander can certainly power that strategy quite well. For this deck, I've only got a light touch of that; instead, I'm focusing more on drawing cards and leveraging synergies with creatures dying.

Key Cards for Tom, Bert, and William

One thing I always look to add to a deck that draws a fair number of cards are ways to make extra land drops. Wayward Swordtooth and Exploration are excellent ways to do just that. Plus, Swordtooth is a high power creature you can sacrifice to the commander in a pinch!

In addition to Rancor, I want a few other ways to increase a creature's power. Think of Invigorate as "give an opponent three life, draw four extra cards." For no mana! Briarhorn might be a little too cute, but I love that you could flash this out for just , stack the evoke sacrifice trigger and the enters ability to give itself +3/+3 and then sacrifice to the Troll to draw six cards before it otherwise sacrifices itself. Or target some other creature with the boost to sacrifice to the Troll, or make it a combat trick.

When Lorwyn came out I quickly added Deathrender to my Greater Good decks, and I definitely want it here. Dina, Essence Brewer has an excellent draw trigger once a turn when you sacrifice a creature, but it also has a sacrifice ability that lets you gain life and put X +1/+1 counters on another creature where X is the sacrificed creature's power, so if you have enough creatures, you can gain life a bunch of life, make a huge creature, attack with it, and then sacrifice it to your Troll to draw a bunch of cards.

I've got a ton of cards that trigger when a creature dies. Skullclamp equipped to the Troll sacrifice will draw you three extra cards. Journey to Eternity enchanting the Troll sacrifice will bring that creature back and also transform into a land that brings creatures back from the graveyard. Wight of the Reliquary is another sacrifice outlet but perhaps more importantly it will get bigger and bigger the more creature cards you have in the graveyard.

Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat can grind away at opponents' life totals as creatures die, while Pitiless Plunderer makes Treasure tokens.

Grim Haruspex and Midnight Reaper let you draw an extra card when another creature card you control dies, while Spinner of Souls lets you "draw" the first creature you find from the top of your deck to keep the Troll sacrifice party going all night.

Junji, the Midnight Sky and Kokusho, the Evening Star have excellent dies triggers, making for excellent larger creatures to sacrifice to the Troll.

Ghalta, Primal Hunger is huge and loves having high power creatures around to discount its casting cost. Slumbering Trudge can be cast for just one mana if you're going to sacrifice it anyway to the Troll. Outcaster Trailblazer draws extra cards whenever a creature with power four or greater enters under your control.

This deck really takes advantage of every part of The Skullspore Nexus: it gets cheaper by the power of your largest creature, and when a nontoken creature you control dies you get a Fungus Dinosaur token with power and toughness equal to the creature's power and you can activate it to double a creature's power! Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma discounts the mana cost for high power creatures and gives them a boost and trample when it attacks. Hulking Raptor's extra mana is quite helpful for casting a creature, and you still have enough left over to activate the Troll's ability.

Sandman, Shifting Scoundrel and Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar get bigger and bigger over time and ripe for Troll sacrifice, and they both have ways to return from the graveyard. Yargle and Multani's vanilla 18 power makes it a perfect choice for Troll sacrifice to draw so many cards!

I peppered in some ways to double the power of creatures for even more card drawing power. Unnatural Growth and Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus both double each combat, and you can sacrifice two creatures for Zophandrel to gain an indestructible counter. You can even sacrifice Tom, Bert, and William since it will return to the battlefield as an artifact.

God-Eternal Rhonas is fun since you can later sacrifice it to the Troll, then put it in your library third from the top so you can draw it and play it again and again.

For my additional reanimation suite I picked Cauldron of Essence, which also drains life from your opponents when a creature you control dies. Xu-Ifit, Osteoharmonist brings a creature back from your graveyard, and while the creature loses all its abilities, it retains its power, which is really what the Troll wants anyway! Animate Dead is flexible reanimation that can target a creature in an opponent's graveyard if they have something more interesting to add to your battlefield.

How Does This Tom, Bert, and William Commander Deck Win?

Psychosis Crawler has combined with Greater Good to kill people in EDH and Commander for decades now, and it's going to do the trick here, too. I'm running Kozilek, Butcher of Truth in here to discard to the Troll and shuffle my graveyard back into the library to help ensure I don't accidentally deck myself before I can kill everyone.

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and Lord of Extinction is another classic EDH/Commander kill condition, and with the card drawing power of this deck you should assemble this combo relatively frequently. Lastly, I've put a Berserk in here since it can double the power of a creature for just one mana, it gives the creature trample if that makes a difference, and in a pinch you can play it on an opposing creature to destroy that creature.

Tom, Bert, and William Commander Deck List

Conclusion

While this is a Core (Bracket 2) deck, the card drawing power makes it quite powerful and it can probably hang with Bracket 3. If you like drawing cards but don't want to play a blue deck, this could be right up your alley, and if you love Greater Good like I do, you'll absolutely love having it in your command zone! This deck isn't just theorycrafting for me; I will absolutely be building this in paper once The Hobbit hits the shelves. How about you?

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