Delighted Halfling
– The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth
Date Reviewed: December 21, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.13
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.50
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
This card was #4 on my Top 10 list.
Considering how many of Wizards of the Coast’s people have complained about Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves ending up as the best green creatures in various Standard formats, it came as somewhat of a surprise that Tales of Middle-earth had such a powerful variant in the form of Delighted Halfling. I think they figured it was going straight to Modern, Legacy, Commander, and large-card-pool casual formats, and it’s been adopted quite readily in those settings. Legendary creatures have become very diverse in terms of mana cost, and haven’t been restricted to high-cost game-enders like Legends‘ multicolor characters or Onslaught‘s legendary pit fighters for a long time. The inevitable result of this is that people want to play a lot of them together, and since they still have lots of variety in color and color intensity, a card like Delighted Halfling is a gift from the Valar for anyone who likes Magic’s interesting characters. And on top of all the benefits you get, it still provides an extra colorless mana for other spells – and an extra point of toughness compared to Llanowar Elves. Which sounds crazy, but you’ll recall that Gandalf considered hobbits to be the most underestimated people of Middle-earth, and the books basically proved him right!
Constructed: 4 (you might think of weird Kethis combos, but remember that Yawgmoth, Sheoldred, Thalia, and Omnath all end games)
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4.5 (the minimum is protecting your commander from Counterspell, and the maximum is enabling a deck that goes to 11 on the dial)
This card was not on my Top 10 list, but I did have it on the long list for inclusion.
Delighted Halfling is the latest member of the “one mana mana dork” club, a fairly lengthy list at this time, but it’s in contention for being one of its best members. Granting a legendary spell uncountability for no additional cost is massive and a good way to force progress past walls of countermagic and the like. That the mana is any color is also big, letting Delighted Halfling supplement the likes of Birds of Paradise in decks where their talents are valued. It’s not a strict upgrade over Birds, and there are reasons to run any of the mana elves (mostly owing to their elf-ness), but Delighted Halfling is a strong, efficient mana ramp creature a wide variety of decks can benefit from.
Constructed: 4.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.25 (this Limited did love its legendary creatures)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 4.5 (you’ll always have a least one spell this can benefit, and more mana dorks rarely hurt)
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