The Hobbit (HOB) marks Magic's triumphant return to Middle Earth and it has provided an exciting number of new cards to help power up your favorite archetypes and offer some high fantasy goodness to your most powerful cubes.

Every Cube is different and every designer prioritizes unique objectives when they design a Cube. A "Power-Maxed" Cube is any Cube where the objective is to create the most powerful play experience with the available cards. Whether that is a blinged-out Vintage Cube with all of the Power Nine or simply the 360 most powerful cards you have access to, that is a power-maxed Cube and this article is for you.

15 Cards from The Hobbit Worth Testing in High-Powered Cubes

1. Head of the Hunt
2. Sting, Bilbo's Sword
3. Smaug the Magnificent
4. Radagast of Rhosgobel
5. The Eagles Are Coming!
6. Rhovanion Rampager
7. Most Decrepit Old Bird
8. Thorin, Mountain-king
9. Bilbo, Thief in the Night
10. The Sackville-Bagginses
11. Beorn the Fierce
12. Bilbo's Gambit
13. The Queen of Dale
14. Gandalf, Goblins' Bane
15. Wizard's Staff

These cards are dripping with equal parts flavor and power and will have your drafters scrambling to add one to their own collection.

15. Head of the Hunt

Head of the Hunt plays much better than its bulk rare status might imply. The combination of Flash, token generation, and graveyard hate makes this card incredibly potent in most cubes. In many circumstances, it will feel like a Grave Titan that brings two friends along to the party, and notably these Creatures snowball as they attack on the following turn. The true icing on the cake is the exile effect that turns your average Doomblade into a permanent answer that doesn't allow your opponent to reanimate the Creature or delve it away for later value.

14. Sting, Bilbo's Sword

Sting, Bilbo's Sword will be overlooked by many drafters because it is not your typical flashy win-more Equipment that closes out an already won game. When dropped onto a board clogged up by Creatures it will break a stalemate, and its ability to auto-equip at Instant speed lets it function like a combat trick in a pinch. It is also worth noting that in the right deck it can continue to scale with cards that Proliferate. Sting pushes through a surprising amount of damage and its colorless requirements let it be played in any deck looking to turn Creatures sideways.

13. Smaug the Magnificent

Smaug the Magnificent is the bridge card that big Red decks have been waiting for. The aggressive archetype leverages mana rocks and treasure tokens to ramp out large threats that overwhelm the mid game. Smaug combos with the various Treasure generating cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Big Score your deck is already looking to run, and swings for a significant amount of damage the turn it comes down. If Smaug manages to stay in play for more than a turn or two it will completely take over the game, by throwing around increasingly larger amounts of damage at Creatures and players alike.

12. Radagast of Rhosgobel

While Radagast of Rhosogobel screams "Timmy Commander", its stats make it a real synergy piece in more powerful cubes. Giving Flash to any Creature changes the texture and tempo of games, making combat a nightmare for opponents to navigate. Discounting those Creatures means any amount of untapped mana is a threat. For instance one available Green mana could easily represent an Instant speed Reclamation Sage that blows up an Artifact and trades with another Creature mid combat or a Rishkar, Peema Renegade to grow your team before blocks.

11. The Eagles Are Coming!

The Eagles Are Coming is flexible, powerful and a little unintuitive the first time you play with it. On its surface it looks like it will play out similarly to a Kor Skyfisher that lets you recast your best Creatures, but the real value comes when this card is kicked during your own turn. There are two specific things most people are misevaluating about this card. Firstly, its trigger works with tokens, meaning that you can transform a 1/1 soldier token into a 4/4 Flying bird soldier. Additionally, it states that the eagles appear at the beginning of the next upkeep, not your upkeep, meaning that if you cast it on your turn you'll have them around to block on the following turn, and attack the turn after that.

10. Rhovanion Rampager

Rhovanion Rampager offers very little risk for a whole lot of reward. It slots nicely into any aristocrat's deck looking to sacrifice Creatures for value by both giving you a sacrifice outlet and a pay off. Paired with cards like Mayhem Devil it will likely deal incredible amounts of damage. More importantly, it plays like an incredibly powerful Doomed Traveler that replaces itself when it dies while still being small enough to be targeted by cards like Helping Hands and Unearth .

9. Most Decrepit Old Bird

Despite being one of the most powerful colors in the most powerful environments, Blue offers very few good Creatures in the one drop slot. Delver of Secrets is unreliable outside of a dedicated deck, and Pteramander is never as good as it seems. When you assess the data Spectral Sailor is the unexciting but consistent king of the Flying Men . Most Decrepit Old Bird is here to change that. In the right decks the adventure half of this card offers incredible card value and selection. Self-mill can easily power out an early Treasure Cruise or Murktide Regent , making this old bird an incredibly important tool in most spell based Blue decks.

8. Thorin, Mountain-king

Thorin, Mountain-King stands out as a testament to a lesson most cube designers already know; sometimes the right card is not the best one. A typical problem with most cubes looking to support an Equipment theme is that the best Creature to equip also happens to be the best Creature in general. Thorin fills a specific role by being great in Equipment decks and unexciting to the rest of the field, meaning it will reliably wheel around the table. One part Flame-Tongue Kavu one part Sigarda's Aid , this is the card to add to your cube if Equipment decks never seems to come together during the draft.

7. Bilbo, Thief in the Night

Let's start by addressing the rules clarification in the room, Bilbo, Thief in the Night gets around timing restrictions. Alongside Magic's most powerful cards, Bilbo enables some truly backbreaking gameplay by allowing you to recast some of the strongest game pieces Magic has to offer. While the first ability is useful, the real show comes from the second ability that triggers when Bilbo attacks, not when Bilbo deals damage. This means that before damage, Bilbo lets you recast everything from Time Walk , to Ancestral Recall, all the way to the iconic Black Lotus , three cards that have become the hallmark of the most powerful vintage cubes.

6. The Sackville-Bagginses

Otho and Lobelia may not be the most respected characters in Tolkien's novels, but The Sackville-Bagginses is a card that demands respect in powerful cube environments. In the right deck, this pair of halflings offer an incredible amount of value in the form of card advantage, ramp, and late game Reach. This unassuming pair slots directly into t-any token or sacrifice strategy, replaces itself on ETB and allows you to close out games with incremental damage through every sacrifice. It shines alongside the extra Treasures, Clues, Blood, and Food tokens already running rampant through most powered cubes.

5.Beorn the Fierce

Beorn the Fierce reads like another Commander card that lets you play all your favorite bears, but in reality it is the best Green card from the set and likely to end the game the turn after it resolves. It hands out Trample, pumps your team, and with very little effort draws you multiple cards each turn. All of this is already attached to a five mana 6/6 that your average ramp deck can cast on turn three or four. Whether you are playing it alongside Studious First-Year or Lumra, Bellow of the Woods this card immediately adds a huge amount of power to the board and replacing itself. Beorn is a must kill threat that is much more flexible than it looks.

4. Bilbo's Gambit

White gets access to another counterspell that doesn't actually counter the spell with Bilbo's Gambit . This tempo spell gets around cards like Toski, Bearer of Secrets that specifically can't be countered by simply returning the card to hand. Like Reprieve this interactive spell buys you time to close out a tight game or look for more answers. Bilbo's Gambit truly shines in high powered cubes due to its ability to fizzle a combo turn where an opponent is looking to storm off or cast multiple cards in the turn to win. They must either do it in response to Bilbo's Gambit or waste potential time and resources.

3. The Queen of Dale

Death and Taxes players rejoice! The Queen of Dale is here to ensure you never run out of gas again. Recruit is an incredibly powerful ability in the right decks and no deck is better positioned to take advantage of all its options like White Weenie. The Queen of Dale will play out like an Esper Sentinel that provides more interesting choices for your drafters. Curving this spell into an Adaline, Resplendent Cathar or Hero of Bladehold will end the game, and if your opponent does manage to counter those spells you get to keep digging through your deck while potentially growing an army of your own.

2. Gandalf, Goblins' Bane

Gandalf, Goblins' Bane is the spells matter card powerful cubes have been waiting for. Functioning as both card draw and pay off, Gandalf ensures that you are never light on options. The combination of Prowess plus direct damage each time you cast a noncreature spell means that this creates incredible pressure if it manages to stick around. Whether you are sitting back and casting Counterspell [/mana ]or getting aggressive with Lightning Bolt [mana], Gandalf makes sure the game comes to an end quickly.

1. Wizard's Staff

You wouldn't deprive an old man of his walking stick? Players likely won't have time to answer that question because attaching this Wizard's Staff means ending the game in short order. At its base level this Equipment will always give the attached Creature double Powess which is scary enough on its own. If that Creature had prowess already it now has quadruple prowess. Many popular cards in the spellslinger deck happen to be wizards, meaning that the equip cost will often be . The true power of this card comes from its ability to push nearly any Creature to incredibly high heights. Primeval Titan now finds four Lands, Sheoldred the Apocalypse swings drains four life, and Kitsa, Otterball Elite very likely wins the game with a single burn spell.

Conclusion

The Hobbit (HOB) has a lot to offer players who are looking to use the strongest cards ever printed. Thanks to its high fantasy setting and influence on Magic as a narrative world, even players who don't love Universes Beyond will find so much to love about these cards and the excitement they can bring to their cube.