Commander Overview
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant is a true lifegain machine and a deck that is truly a blast to play. Celebrating Bilbo’s birthday by getting to 111 life is not only a fun goal for the game but a very fun thematic goal as well. Bilbo is in a mixed role within this deck: we don’t need them, as the deck can function perfectly fine without them, but obviously, having them is great for our deck. We are a little bit different than a traditional lifegain deck because of how Bilbo is worded, he cares about individual triggers of life which will give us an extra life, we are heavily leaned into that with a ton of individual lifegain triggers from cards like Essence Warden, Soul Warden, Lunarch Veteran and Suture Priest which will all trigger on their own and give us Bilbo’s trigger every time. Getting to 111 is easy in this deck, and once we dump our whole creature base on the field, we can have a ton of success with both Moonshaker Cavalry and Craterhoof Behemoth! It’s time to celebrate Bilbo’s birthday, and you are all invited!
Creature 33
Instant 13
Artifact 6
Enchantment 8
Land 35
EDH BRACKET
Beyond the strength of an average precon deck.
- Late Game 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Mass Land Denial
- Up to 3 Game Changers
- No Chaining Extra Turns
How to Play the Deck
Playing the deck overall is pretty easy; you mostly want to keep your life total high and use awesome payoff cards like Archangel of Thune and Treebeard, Gracious Host as ways to make creatures bigger and make them great attackers/blockers. Even though we are at a high life total quite often, we do try to block as much as we can; our primary game plan of getting to 111 is always there, and we are always looking for it. Because of the late-game combos in the deck, I would say this deck is good for an intermediate player and up. This is not a deck I would hand to a new player; a lot is going on, and it can be quite hard to follow.
Synergy’s in the deck
Our only real synergy in the deck is our life gain, and Bilbo is a huge part of our synergy! Adding 1 to all of our individual triggers of life gain lets us get up there really quickly and always have a pretty high life total. We also have cards like The Wind Crystal and Rhox Faithmender, which provide some awesome lifegain doublers and can get us to the 111 threshold very quickly. We also have cards like Serra Ascendant, which are turned on from the start but are a great attacker/blocker at any stage of the game. Well of Lost Dreams is by far one of my favorite synergies in the deck since it does the one thing we aren’t super great at and gives us a ton of card draw.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: While we aren’t a very aggressive deck, we can easily start our lifegain off with early-creatures like Essence Warden and Soul Warden, which allow us to gain some early life, and when we can get out Bilbo on turn three, we can make it even more! We don’t attack a lot and aren’t super aggressive at this stage of the game, but we can still get our life total high.
Mid-Game: The mid-game is where things start to get a lot better for us, just like most decks. We get bigger, get a higher life total and more importantly start to get some of our bigger and badder creatures out, cards like Sunscorch Regent can get huge really quickly and be extremely formidable attackers, as mentioned previously Archangel of Thune can get our whole board huge super quickly and can easily be a game-ender at this stage of the game.
Late-Game: We are perfectly ok with the game going long and we in fact encourage it, as the game goes on our life total gets higher and our board gets bigger, as long as an opponent doesn’t have a humungous attack we can survive a bunch of late-game attacks from our opponents, stick to the core gameplan, gain that life, be a little aggressive and you should be just fine.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
We don’t ramp at all in this deck, but a low overall cost combined with a three mana commander means we are perfectly ok with hitting our land drops and taking what our deck gives us. We also have a good showing in the early game and are perfectly okay to wait for our bigger and more expensive stuff. Even though we don’t ramp in all of my testing games, I had no trouble.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
Well of Lost Dreams is by far the best source of draw in the deck, it is cheap and easy a mana for a card, and since we gain a ton of life on our turns and throughout the game in general, I found that this is a great source of card draw for our deck. Since we are in Abzan, we have the benefit of being able to run some awesome card draw like Night's Whisper and Read the Bones, which are both easy ways to get some cards with minimal drawbacks. While we aren’t like a blue deck and going to be drawing a million cards, we are good at keeping our hand full.
Removal
This is a great aspect of our deck and another good reason that we are in Abzan, we do have some removal that synergizes directly with all of our lifegain in Mortality Spear which is almost always a two-mana generous gift which feels really good and is a great way to take care of a problematic non-land permanent our opponents have. We also have Despark and Assassin's Trophy, which are both cheap and strong removal spells for very little mana investment for our deck. We, of course, have Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile, just additional pieces of extremely cheap removal for our deck. While we aren’t a control deck, we can take care of the worst of the worst that our opponents will throw at us.
Protection
We aren’t amazing at protection. Still, we do have some options that help, while not directly a piece of protection I really like Congregate especially if an opponent has a ton of creatures we can mostly invalidate their combat, we also have Riot Control and Blunt the Assault which are both a little pricey for a Fog effect but the lifegain we get from them is great and helps us a ton towards our overarching goal of celebrating Bilbo’s birthday and getting to that coveted 111.
Utility / Support
Let’s highlight some of my favorite cards in the deck! One of the coolest is Aetherflux Reservoir absolutely. Since we are almost always at or above 50 life, we pretty much hold the button and can take out an opponent whenever we want, whether we end the game or play the political game. This is a great card for the deck. Test of Endurance is another very good card for our deck; it can be an easy way to win the game, since we are almost always quite above the overall threshold, and getting back to our turn is not the toughest thing to do. Elenda's Hierophant is another really cool card; it’s actually wild how high we can get this evasive creature and how many tokens they can pop out, which directly synergizes with Archangel of Thune once Hierophant dies. We have a ton of tokens on the board.
Mana Base
We don’t have a ton of interesting nonbasics. Still, we do have a very efficient manabase, with all the shocks, bonds, and fetches, as well as Indatha Triome, allowing us to establish all our colors very quickly. I tested quite a few land counts in this deck and found thirty-five worked well.
Win Conditions
We have quite a few combos in the deck, mostly involving Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond effects. We have a ton of different versions of these combos, and there are currently 17 infinite combos in the deck. Since we have so many, I will not list them all. Still, they are great ways for us to end the game. Bilbo’s ability is also a great way to end the game, being able to grab all of our creatures as well as Moonshaker Cavalry and Craterhoof Behemoth can end games very easily.
Strengths of the Deck
Our lifegain is one of our biggest strengths, especially against combat-focused decks since they often can’t deal with our high life total.
Even though we are primarily a lifegain deck, we are quite good at combat and can be formidable at both attacking/blocking.
Weaknesses of the Deck
Bilbo is a huge part of our deck, and they get killed a lot; our protection package is not enough to save them a lot of the time.
Decks that don’t care about combat or are also combo decks are good against us because they don’t care what we do, and we don’t have a lot of ways to stop them.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant. Matchup Record: 3-0
I had no trouble with this matchup. Ghalta is a big attack deck, but they really can’t get through all of our life, and we can often outpace all of their lifegain. A lot of our flying creatures are a great way to deal damage to them, since very few Ghalta creatures fly. This is a great matchup for our deck.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Aetherflux Reservoir, Champion of Lambholt and Fumigate.
Game 2: Vs Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Matchup Record: 2-2
A split matchup that wasn’t amazing for us, their landfall stuff can get pretty out of hand, and they can take a few turns and mount a huge attack against us. Being aggressive while they are just ramping is key to this matchup, and the best way for us to get a win.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn and Venser's Journal.
Game 3: Vs Eriette of the Charmed Apple. Matchup Record: 1-3
A pretty rough matchup for our deck, Eriette has so many ways to lock down our creatures or give them no abilities, and they get a ton of value and advantage from doing that. Being a creature-focused deck like we are makes this a terrible matchup. While we don’t care much about the passive drain and gain they have, if they take away the abilities of our best creatures, we can certainly struggle.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Assassin's Trophy, Mortality Spear and Teferi's Protection.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed Bilbo’s birthday celebration has been a ton of fun. Still, the party is coming to an end, Bilbo is by far one of the coolest lifegain decks I’ve played, their first ability is awesome. Abzan is an awesome color combination for our deck to be in. There are so many great options in this deck, and it can compete with the best of bracket three.
