I am a massive Lord of the Rings fan so I've always wanted to build a commander deck that featured one of the several legendary creatures that were released within the Tales of Middle Earth set. I finally got around to building one recently and chose Galadriel, Light of Valinor to lead it. She does everything that I love to do in a game of commander. Ramp, card draw, and +1/+1 counters just for having creatures enter the battlefield. Her abilities only trigger once per turn, but lets try to make her trigger on everyone's turn.

She has three powerful abilities that can be used once per turn so getting a minimum of three creatures to enter the battlefield will exhaust them. The strategy here is to deploy creatures and creature tokens evenly over the course of several turns rather than all at once. Her abilities refresh on each upkeep so we can utilize them on our opponents turns as well. She costs 5 mana to cast so we will need to ramp in the early game to ensure that we get our gameplan going early. The best way to do this is with low cost mana dorks such as birds of paradise, delighted halfling, noble heirarch, and elvish mystic. Using creatures

She costs 5 mana to cast so we will need to ramp in the early game to ensure that we get our gameplan going early. The best way to do this is with low cost mana dorks such as birds of paradise, delighted halfling, noble heirarch, and elvish mystic. Using primarily creatures to ramp instead of spells will help us in two ways. When we cast Galadriel, we want to already have creatures in play so that we can immediately make use of her ability that puts +1/+1 counters on creatures. Secondly, after she is in play, drawing a mana dork will help trigger her abilities. I'd much rather draw a sakura-tribe elder than a rampant growth.

Once Galadriel is in play it's time to start bolstering our army and our card advantage. We can use cards like Wolverine Riders, Tendershoot Dryad, Rhys, the Redeemed, and Faerie Artisans to get creatures entering on our opponents turns for extra value. I've also added a couple ways to make duplicates of our commander without sacrificing her to the legend rule by including Sakashima the imposter and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces. Another card that pushes the deck over the top is Danny Pink. Watch your opponents sigh in disbelief as you place +1/+1 tokens on 7 creatures and draw 7 cards every turn.

performing this many game actions and drawing this many cards will draw the ire of the table. You will be targeted for removal. If we still need a little more time to ensure a win I've included a protection package that includes things like galadriel's dismissal, teferi's protection, flawless maneuver, and akroma's will. Phasing our creatures out has become increasingly valuable due to the ever-present farewell seen in my playgroup and likely yours as well. We are also running some cheap counterspells like swan song and arcane denial.

Now that we have established and protected a commanding board presence it's time to finish off our opponents. If they are lacking in blockers we may already be in a position to win but to avoid a standoff the deck can drop nukes such as craterhoof behemoth and moonshaker cavalry. Our hand will be full of answers and with passive creature creation we will likely have untapped mana to cast them. I'm excited to start playtesting this deck that seems to do a little of everything and embodies the legend of Galadriel.