As of 8 AM the day of my first The Hobbit (HOB) prerelease, I barely knew any of the cards. With sets coming out on an average of one and a half months this year, it's hard to keep track of every card that's been printed.

I've been playing a ton of Marvel Super Heroes Limited, as I'm battling it out with my teammates in the current season of Los Angeles' Team Draft League. However, I hadn't thought I was even going to make a single prerelease event for The Hobbit.

My First Hobbit Prerelease

Since Drafting has been my primary way of playing Magic: The Gathering as of late, I didn't think to read the spoiler until my two friends hit me up to catch a ride with them to our local game store.

With an hour to spare, I pored over the visual spoiler for The Hobbit, talked on the car ride with my friend who had won prerelease the day before, and sat down and sleeved up my first Hobbit Limited deck.

The gist I got from my teammate was that Black, Red, and Green had the strongest cards in the set, while Blue and White were lacking. While the cards in this set feel overall stronger Limited-wise compared to the last Middle-earth set, The Lord of the Rings, Tales of Middle-earth (LTR), the color pie disparity feels actually similar.

In Lord of the Rings, Black-Red was by far the best thing to be doing, and color combinations like Blue-Green and Blue-White were close to unplayable. My Hobbit prerelease deck from both events I played is a testament to this.

After opening a somewhat lackluster pool, I ended up with this as my deck for my first event:

While this deck looks strong on the surface, I actually wish I had better Black cards. According to my teammate, one of the early standout cards for him was Crude Bent Blade. Crude Bent Blade on its surface looks weaker than a similar card from Magic's past, like Fleshbag Marauder.

You would also think this card wouldn't be good in a format where Recruit and Amass Goblins are major mechanics -- you might just have to use your Blade to kill a Creature token. However, the real power and why this card is so incredible is in its second ability.

+2/+1 is a pretty incredible set of stats to power up any of your Creatures, whether they are Evasive or just a 1/1 token. You can, for only two mana, turn random tokens or your early drop Creatures into actual threats, or sizable blockers.

Ordinary Bear becomes a 6/6, Bilbo, Luckwearer becomes a 3/2 Unblockable attacker, and Ravening Warg as a 4/3 triggers Ferocious off itself. It's pretty incredible how big of a stat boost this card gives for just two mana.

In addition, you can utilize Crude Bent Blade with Equipment synergies in Red and White. Cards like Iron Hills Stalwart, Dain Ironfoot, and Kili the Resourceful. Blade also can count towards your permanents with Enduring Story.

The cooler thing you can do, however, is replay your Crude Bent Blade with cards like Mirkwood Nurturer. Overall, this Common card is just a house and I think it is a defining reason why Black is one of the best colors in this set.

Okay, back to prerelease. I ended up going 3-0 with this deck, beating a Black-Red deck, a Blue-White deck, and another Black-Red deck in the finals. There are a couple of key lessons I learned from playing this deck.

Lessons Learned

While I faced two other Rakdos decks in this tournament, the hardest matchup I actually played against was against a Bant deck. The card that totally dismantled me in our game two was Thranduil's Decree.

My opponent was able to counter my Gundabad Opportunist, cast it on their next turn for free, then hit a Thranduil's Company and was able to completely overpower my board. It was honestly backbreaking.

I actually wonder if you can stitch together some sort of Blue/Green/Black deck in this fashion to combat the Red decks in the format. Blue will probably be under-drafted in this set if Rakdos is the premier archetype to be in, meaning you can try and wheel or get powerful Uncommons late into the draft.

Green is probably necessary since it provides a lot of the powerful bodies in the format, like Ordinary Bear. Black is a hotly contested color, but if you're able to pick up decent removal spells and cards like Crude Bent Blade, you can do so without diluting your gameplan when Black is contested over.

Like I mentioned before, you can replay your Crude Bent Blades with Mirkwood Nurturer, and with a set of Common Dual Lands and Hobbit Hole in the format, you probably have more flexibility to be a three-color deck. Sultai might not be the best deck in Hobbit Limited, but that might be something to consider when drafting the format.

Now, back to the cards I played in my deck. Thror's Map is incredible. This card is such an easy way to splash a third or even fourth color, and the fact that you get to Loot for only two mana with this card makes it so you can mitigate flood in the later stages of the game -- an invaluable resource in a slower format like Sealed.

Long-Bodied Grey Dog was pretty good filler. This card isn't a game-ending card by any means, but it is quite tricky. In addition to helping fix your mana or contribute to cards that utilize Treasures, Long-Bodied Grey Dog's real power is in it having Flash.

I was able to Flash in this card multiple times throughout the day to destroy an Old Thrush or profitably block a Long Lake Nuisance. It's not the best card by any means but it's a nice way to fix and also include a Reach Creature in your deck.

In a similar vein, Little Bear is a nice Flash Creature. In one match I got to not only Flash it in to straight up destroy a Bard the Bowman, but I also got to untap my Creature that was tapped down by an Enchanted River's Grasp.

Grasp is also just a weak card in general, as it can get stopped by so many cards in this set, including Mirkwood Nurturer. Blue having a bad removal spell is what makes it much weaker than a color like Black, with Crude Bent Blade at Common.

My Uncommons were powerhouses, specifically The Chief Warg and Large Bear. The Chief Warg not requiring you to attack with it to trigger it makes this card so powerful, as I was able to just net a card by having my Duskwatch Hunter target itself or hit Land four for Mirkwood Pathmaker.

Overall, while I wasn't super impressed with this deck initially, I was blown away by the power in my Uncommons and my ability to ramp into my game-ending Rares. I did a lot of deliberating between a handful of cards also in my pool:

I actually boarded in the Boughside Wanderers against the Black-Red decks, as an additional source of card advantage. The Ordinary Bears came in when I needed just better attackers, and I boarded in Smaug's Fury once against the base Blue-White deck.

Wood Elves was a consideration, just as another way to get to my two copies of Stone-Giant of High Pass, but ultimately, I decided it was worse stat-wise compared to Long-Bodied Grey Dog and Dori, Bearer of Friends.

My Second Hobbit Prerelease

For my next prerelease, well, the pool kind of built itself...

It's actually kind of funny how this deck came together. I decided to jump in on another prerelease on Monday when my friend Paul texted me. Funny enough, we both opened the same three Smaug cards.

Looking at both of our pools we honestly didn't see how we both couldn't play Black-Red. Paul ended on a much more aggressive build with multiple copies of Goblin Plate Mail, whereas my deck was a little more grindy, with two copies of Great Ugly-Looking Goblin, a Crude Bent Blade, and The Misty Mountains Cold.

I also just had really great removal in Stir Up Trouble, Burn, Burn, Tree and Fern, and Gnashing of Teeth -- a stark difference from my removal suite from my previous deck.

Not only did Paul and I both 3-0, but the four remaining 2-0s were all playing Black-Red. What a shocker. I did get got by an Inside Information that stole not only my Mirkwood Pathmaker, but I sadly was beaten to death by my own Smaug the Magnificent.

However, I was able to cobble together an aggressive start in game three, utilizing Bothersome Noisemaker and two copies of Great Ugly-Looking Goblin's Adventure spell, Clap! Snap! to cobble together my own 6/6.

Overall, Black-Red stands out to me as the premier color combination in The Hobbit Limited. Black-Red just has so many great two-for-ones and ways to snowball an advantage.

You can stretch your mana a bit, whether you're base Black-Red or base Green-Red to play high impact Black or Green cards, like The Chief Warg and Bolg of the North.

However, this is a small sample size and honestly I would like to be proven wrong. But again, I still can't believe Crude Bent Blade only costs to Equip!

Conclusion

I think if I had to rank my top 5 Limited cards so far of the set, not including Rares or Mythics, it would look like this:

1. Ravening Warg
2. Stir Up Trouble
3. Desolation Prowler
4. Thror's Map
5. Crude Bent Blade

It was nice to return to an in-store prerelease after not having played one since Edge of Eternities (EOE), almost one year ago! I definitely missed learning new cards on the fly, talking through the set with friends, and playing against new opponents, some who were new to Magic entirely.

I'm looking forward to playing more of The Hobbit Limited in the near future, and I'm hoping to pull off some crazy multicolor piles that can outpace the menace that is Rakdos Goblins.