Tom Bombadil in Magic: The Gathering

Creature spells in Magic: The Gathering that require mana from more than two colors to be cast exist with a duality. They’re tedious to build a deck around but often come with great benefits. Tom Bombadil is such a card in MTG. However, it can be a powerful Commander.

What Is Tom Bombadil in MTG?

Tom Bombadil is a Legendary Creature—God Bard that has a mana cost of one white, one blue, one black, one red, and one green mana (five total). This card was released in 2023’s The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Universe Beyond expansion. Jolly ol’ Tom has two effects, the first of which grants Bombadil two excellent defensive abilities:

As long as there are four or more lore counters among Sagas you control, Tom Bombadil has hexproof and indestructible.

Tom’s other effect is all about perpetuating the above effect as much as possible.

Whenever the final chapter ability of a Saga you control resolves, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a Saga card. Put that card onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. This ability triggers only once each turn.

Why Tom Bombadil Is So Powerful

Let’s start from the top. Five mana—albeit all from different colors—is a pretty low cost for Tom’s mighty traits. While you’re building up your mana pool, you’ll likely be casting Enchantment—Saga spells to get ready for Tom’s entrance onto the battlefield. As such, you’re not simply waiting around for enough mana to cast Bombadil; you’re setting the stage for him.

Then notice that Tom gets Hexproof and Indestructible whenever you have four or more lore counters across all your active Sagas. Your Sagas automatically increase their number of lore counters, so you’re almost giving Bombadil the aforementioned abilities for free. Paying mana to cast Sagas is usually fairly painless, and many of them come with multiple great effects. From summoning creatures to locking down your opponent’s side of the battlefield, Sagas are very versatile.

Last but most certainly not least you have Tom’s last effect, which lets you search your library for more Sagas. Once you find one, Tom’s second effect lets you get to cast any Saga found this way for free! Even though you can only do this once per turn, it easily lets Bombadil maintain his Hexproof and Indestructible abilities.

Tip

Stagger casting Sagas—at least one per turn—so that you always have four lore counters on the board at a time.

Indestructible makes Tom invulnerable to damage, which, combined with the way Hexproof works in MTG, means Bombadil can’t be targeted by spells or abilities either. That way, your opponent can’t even lock Tom down with spells like Petrify which prevent attacking and blocking.

How to Build a Tom Bombadil Commander Deck

Clearly, Tom Bombadil is all about Sagas, so you’ll want to stick a bunch of them in your deck. On top of that, support for Enchantment cards (all Sagas are Enchantments) is highly recommended. This means through Creatures, Artifacts, and more.

Due to the ease with which Tom Bombadil becomes basically invincible, you’ll want to cast him as soon as possible and attack repeatedly. If you buff Tom enough, you can hit your foe for 21 damage with Bombadil alone in a short time. Winning through the Commander Damage rule is the quickest way to achieve victory with a Tom Bombadil Commander deck.

Tip

Cast spells that give Tom Bombadil Trample to deal more Commander Damage quicker and easier.

Before you can start slinging Sagas to and fro, or even cast cheery Tom, you’ll need mana of every color. That means inserting a balanced number of lands of each type. In such a colorful deck, don’t use Basic Lands. Instead, use Dual Lands and Commander format favorites like Command Tower.

The Best Enchantment—Sagas

You want a variety of Sagas. Ideally, possessing an equal number per mana color would help you cast them all efficiently. On top of that, you want to balance the low-cost and high-cost Sagas for the same reason. Heavily consider Sagas with more than three lore counter stages, as they help Tom maintain his first effect.

Depending on your style and preferences, you’ll want different Sagas than even other Tom Bombadil Commander decks. With that in mind, we’ll give you a few suggestions to get you started.

If you’re looking for some low-cost Sagas, consider Azusa’s Many Journeys, Arni Slays the Troll, and Michiko’s Reign of Truth. Each of these costs two mana each, so you can toss them onto the battlefield easily.

Azusa’s Many Journeys is great for the early parts of a game because its first lore counter lets you play an additional Land during that turn. Not just a Basic Land—any kind of Land. That’s great for getting an early lead in Land-count, which is particularly important for five-color decks. The second lore counter gives you three life points; not great but not bad either. Lastly, the final lore counter spawns an Enchantment Creature that lets you untap up to three Lands when blocked, which is handy for getting out more Sagas even at the cost of this Creature’s life.

Arni Slays the Troll is a solid pick for letting you buff Tom Bombadil, gain one red mana, use Tom’s near-perfect invulnerability to destroy an opposing creature, and gain a bit of life to boot!

Michiko’s Reign of Truth’s first two lore counters grant a target +1/+1 counters for each of your Artifacts and Enchantments for a turn. Since you’re planning to run a lot of Enchantment—Sagas in this deck, this is a nice way to buff Tom by some noteworthy figures. The Enchantment Creature you get later parallels this boon.

The Best Saga Support

As with listing great Sagas to put into a Bombadil Commander deck, we won’t list every single viable option. Instead, we’ll suggest a few to help guide you on your deckbuilding journey!

In terms of Creatures, Sorceries, and Artifacts, you’ll want to focus on those that’ll let you manipulate lore counters, as well as protect and retrieve Sagas. With this in mind, we’re recommending Satsuki, the Living Lore, Eerie Ultimatum, and Power Conduit as top-tier Saga support.

Satsuki, the Living Lore is a useful Creature for ramping up how many lore counters are on your Sagas. This, in turn, further ensures that Tom Bombadil never loses his Hexproof and Indestructible abilities. What’s more, if Satsuki gets destroyed, you can put a Saga back in your hand or retrieve one from the graveyard. Both of which are handy in this type of deck. All that for only two mana is awesome.

Eerie Ultimatum is helpful in a similar manner. However, instead of grabbing one Saga from your graveyard, you can return all of them to the battlefield. Following this, your opponent will suffer mental overload from all the different effects getting triggered. So much so that they may get triggered as well! This is a fair psychological tactic. Also, since we’re in the Commander format, you’re only going to have one of each card, so Eerie Ultimatum’s “different names” criteria won’t be a hindrance at all.

Power Conduit is a solid pick for manipulating lore counters. Since all your Sagas automatically gain lore counters after each draw step, there’s no harm in trading one in for a permanent +1/+1 counter. This lets you continuously buff Tom every turn to make him a true juggernaut.

The Best Lands

Once again: don’t bother with Basic Lands in this type of deck. You need more color variety. Use Dual Lands and those with good utility effects to gather as much mana as you can sooner rather than later.

While there are tons of great Land options, the top three we’re recommending are Serra’s Sanctum, Karn’s Bastion, and—the format classic—Command Tower.

Serra’s Sanctum is a cheap and easy way to get tons of white mana every turn. The more Sagas you have in play, the more white mana you get. Then, you can cast more Sagas, and then get even more white mana next turn—so on and so forth. There’s a snowball effect here that’ll increase in efficiency every turn.

Karn’s Bastion is a way for you to use Proliferate to speed up your Sagas. Since there’s no limit on how many permanents are affected by Proliferate, you can advance your lore counter total by one per Saga every turn if you so wish. It takes four mana of any color to do so, but it’s worth it if you have a bunch of Sagas on the battlefield.

Command Tower needs no introduction or explanation. It’s simply an excellent Land to have in your Commander Deck because of its supreme versatility. This is even more true in a deck where your Commander has all five mana colors. Tap it and add one mana of any color—period.

Tips and Tricks for Winning With a Tom Bombadil Commander Deck

As mentioned before, this deck is an awesome one for focusing on the Commander Damage win condition. As such, in addition to the plethora of Sagas and Saga support, you’ll want some quick and easy buffs for Tom Bombadil himself. Using a few tricky Instants here and there can help you net a win in no time.

This section of our article is even more subjective than the former ones, so take our top choices with a grain of salt. That said, here are some handy spells to consider putting into your Tom Bombadil Commander deck: Massive Might, Aether Tunnel, and Flicker of Fate.

Massive Might can let you finish a game after you’ve already built up a lot of Commander Damage. Your opponent is most likely going to block Tom as much as possible—maybe with weak token creatures. If all you need is a couple more points of Commander Damage to win, cast Massive Might on Bombadil as your foe blocks with a puny Creature. The Trample ability is a great way to dish out a bit of extra damage.

Aether Tunnel is another tricky tactic that can let you rack up even more Commander Damage easily. Although it’s not an Instant (meaning you can’t surprise your foe with it during a block), it still lets Tom hit your opponent. Plus, Bombadil gets one more power, aiding in your primary goal.

Flicker of Fate is a solid counterplay option if your adversary tries to mess with Tom (while he’s vulnerable) or one of your Sagas. This can occur if one of the aforementioned is being targeted or if it’s already bogged down by a negative Enchantment or some kind. Exiling and returning Tom or a Saga to the battlefield cleanses them of any awkward afflictions.

Tom Bombadil MTG Prices

As of writing this, for the basic, nonfoil version of Tom Bombadil in MTG, you’re only looking at 1$-2$ USD. However, prices can (and will) fluctuate. Thankfully, even if it does, you won’t have to spend a lot to get your hands on this God Bard. Even a foil version of the fancy borderless poster Tom Bombadil will only run you around $40-$50.

While you’re putting together your Tom Bombadil deck in MTG, consider tossing in some flavorful combos. One such card is Magic: The Gathering’s The One Ring—although Tom would never canonically use it in Middle-Earth. What’s more, we can’t have an article about dear Tom without mentioning Goldberry, who has her own MTG card with decent synergy alongside Bombadil.