The Elven Council deck is one of 4 preconstructed Commander decks in the Lord of the Rings set. It’s a Simic (Green and Blue) color identity deck with a heavy Elf theme and minor voting and big creature sub-themes out of the box. The deck also contains 20 new cards, and we’ll break down and evaluate the ones that are worth remembering.
Arwen is a solid piece, at her baseline she’s essentially a 3 mana anthem effect that still gives out her buff if she gets removed since she hands out counters, which is already completely playable. If you can do things like target her with her counterpart Arwen Undómiel though, she can get very scary very quickly.
This is an interesting political card that can offer the table a way to let the person farthest behind catch up. Just be careful not to let the person running away with it get a free permanent or wind up with 4 new cards! I’m not sure if this will stay in the deck long term for me personally, but I want to see how it actually plays before taking it out.
At worst this is going to be you getting 3 tokens and then an anthem effect, which isn’t great but also isn’t terrible. You’re an Elf deck, so ideally the mana cost doesn’t matter to you as much. If you manage to catch a Voltron player without extra creatures in play though, this spikes upwards hard.
If you fully lean in to voting this isn’t bad in a vacuum, I just don’t think the voting deck is all that great.
This card, however, is bonkers. Fog effects are already criminally underrated, and this letting you not only fade a probably game winning attack but also make a bunch of on-tribe tokens and kill a bunch of their stuff for free is outstanding.
The face card for the deck, I think she’s okay in the 99 but as your commander I think she’s kind of slow and doesn’t do enough when she does actually trigger to be worth running the show.
Very cool card, and absolutely a viable direction to build the deck in. Cast big beaters and copy them sounds extremely fun, though obviously I don’t love giving up cards to our opponents.
Haldir is basically a 2 turn, highly telegraphed Overrun unless you have an absolute ton of mana, which in fairness isn’t that unusual in an Elf deck. Even so, I’d much rather be getting it done in one.
This deck in particular is going to wind up with a lot of legendaries, so Legolas can grow to a decent size if you get him out early. Secret reach is nice, as is not being able to be chump blocked, and pretty soon they will have to decide between using real creatures to block or trade with him or letting you draw cards.
This is a cute bit of removal but there’s a lot working against you here. At minimum it’s 5 mana and an attack trigger towards the specific player, and unless your engine is churning already your Elves may well not be big enough to kill the thing you want dead, or to survive the ensuing combat.
Not terrible and if you leave it in because it came in the precon I can respect it, for me though this is a lot of mana and I don’t think there will be that many occasions where this is going to do enough fast enough for you to justify it not being an Eternal Witness or similar instead.
The thought is fine for the political angle this deck wants to take, but only targeting one creature is a pretty sizeable downside.
If you actually lean hard in to voting this probably stays in even though 3 mana rocks aren’t great nowadays. Otherwise it’s an easy cut.
This may actually be my personal favorite Legendary in the deck, not because he’s crazy powerful but rather crazy fun, plus regular readers know I love any chance to build Bird decks. I thought about going this direction with the upgrade, but after tossing a quick list together it’s much more of a wholesale reworking of the deck than an upgrade. Still can’t wait to put a personal list together.
Sorcery speed is obviously not amazing, but the ability for a one-sided board wipe always is. Absolute game ender when it lands which for 5 mana is pretty great.
Another interesting political piece but this just has way too much upside for our opponents for me.
Again not terrible but just doesn’t do enough to make the cut I think.
Cute and thematic but I’d much rather just actually deal with the problem at hand, rather than simply delaying it for at most 3 turns. Does nothing against creatures with problematic abilities either, which is going to be a huge number of the things you actually want to interact with.
6 mana to probably get your best card back and get 3 lands? Seems like a pass to me, I think going from 6 to 9 is frequently not going to matter in a fairly low to the ground Elf deck.
This kind of feels like a better card for the out of the box deck that still has a mix of big creatures, but it does still offer you a way to pick off pesky utility creatures and make a few extra tokens in the streamlined Elf-centric version.
Upgrading the Deck
The Elven Council deck has some really good bones and I think you can certainly make the face commander (Galadriel, Elven-Queen) work if you lean in to a kind of more political and grindy, less explosive Elf-ball deck, but I’m doing something a bit different and somewhat unusual. Instead of using any of the myriad of possible commanders already in the deck, I think this deck is much better off as a great way to pivot into a Galadriel of Lothlórien list. The political stuff is largely still in the deck since they are useful effects, but to me they don’t read as powerful enough on their own, and there still kind of isn’t enough support for voting decks for it to feel up to snuff for my playgroup pivoting in that direction. While there isn’t a massive amount of support for having the Ring tempt you in these colors either, there IS a bunch of support for scrying, and that already makes Galadriel the superior choice. Toss in the few best tempt synergies and all of the existing Elf synergies, and you get a really solid deck that still puts a unique twist on the typical Elf list and retains the flavor of the precon while functioning much better.
Typically the mana bases are a place that can use a good bit of upgrading in the precons, but I actually don’t feel the need to tweak much on this one. There are a couple of unconditional enters tapped lands that should go, but other than that I really only cut a couple of basics to include utility lands I wanted. The cycling lands could go if you absolutely never want a tapped land, but the number of times where you won’t have a spot to play them without messing up your curve is very small, and being able to get the draw later is great.
After that, there are about a dozen cards that are meant for those who want to build the Gandalf, Westward Voyager / Radagast, Wizard of Wilds half of the deck, so those are easy cuts. In their place we slot in more of the legendary Elves from the main set, as well as typical big mana Elf deck support like Priest of Titania. We then upgrade the removal / defensive suite for more efficient spells, things like swapping Devastation Tide out for Cyclonic Rift. Finally we add in the best of the scry pieces we have like Retreat to Coralhelm and Season of Growth, great draw pieces like Beast Whisperer and Kindred Discovery, and Hour of Promise to fetch our non-basic lands like Rivendell that can really supercharge our turns.
Cut List
- 1 Colossal Whale
- 1 Erestor of the Council
- 1 Elvish Piper
- 1 Gandalf, Westward Voyager
- 1 Haldir, Lorien Lieutenant
- 1 Hornet Queen
- 1 Mirkwood Elk
- 1 Mirkwood Trapper
- 1 Radagast, Wizard of Wilds
- 1 Realm Seekers
- 1 Devastation Tide
- 1 Lorien Revealed
- 1 Seeds of Renewal
- 1 Sylvan Offering
- 1 Travel through Caradhras
- 1 Inscription of Abundance
- 1 Learn from the Past
- 1 Mystic Confluence
- 1 Sail into the West
- 1 Trap the Trespassers
- 1 Lothlorien Blade
- 1 Model of Unity
- 1 Lignify
- 1 Song of Earendil
- 1 Thornwood Falls
- 1 Forest
- 1 Woodland Stream
- 1 Island
Add List
- 1 Elrond, Lord of Rivendell
- 1 Elrond, Master of Healing
- 1 Arwen Undomiel
- 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
- 1 Priest of Titania
- 1 Beast Whisperer
- 1 Realmwalker
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 1 Marwyn, the Nurturer
- 1 Cyclonic Rift
- 1 Mystic Speculation
- 1 Elven Ambush
- 1 Hour of Promise
- 1 Season of Growth
- 1 Birthday Escape
- 1 Dissolve
- 1 Serum Visions
- 1 Soothing of Smeagol
- 1 Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
- 1 Dunedain Rangers
- 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero
- 1 Rivendell
- 1 Castle Vantress
- 1 Kindred Discovery
- 1 Wirewood Lodge
- 1 Sylvan Anthem
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