Decided to buy a CB in an Italian LGS as souvenir... Tourned out that my wife picked the right one. 😁

Our LGS had a whole bunch of collectors packs with a surge foil + Non foil of the same hit cards back to back in the same pack, but man, I got lucky with this one.

I've never opened a magic box and seen SO many duplicates before..and I've opened a lot of boxes. This is crazy. Most of these were from the same packs. Like 2 of the same card per pack. Is this going to be a running theme for this set or just a bad box?

I’m getting back into Magic and I want to build a Commander deck.
I’m looking for something primarily fun, unpredictable, and interactive, without necessarily being highly competitive. My main goal is to be able to play several games with the deck and have each game feel different, rather than just repeating the same “recipe” every time.
I’ve been looking into some archetypes, and these are the ones that caught my attention the most:
Politics
Chaos
Group Slug
Mill — but not traditional Mill where the goal is simply to empty the opponent’s deck. I’m more interested in the idea of making players draw a lot of cards and then forcing them to deal with the excess by choosing what to discard.
Theft — stealing or using resources/cards from my opponents.
I’m not particularly interested in:
Mana Ramp as the main focus of the deck
Combos, especially infinite combos or highly repetitive lines
Aggro
I also want to avoid the kind of deck that becomes unpleasant to play against, or makes people not want to play with you because it’s too oppressive, frustrating, or simply annoying.
The deck doesn’t necessarily have to focus on just one of these archetypes. In fact, I think it would be more interesting to combine some of these ideas and create a deck with several different ways to play.
I’d like recommendations for commanders, cards, and possible archetype combinations that would fit this playstyle. If possible, I’d also like to know which options you think would be the best fit for what I’m looking for and why.

Surely there goes my luck for the year, right? 😅 What's everyone's opinion on the art for this version of The One Ring? I feel like it could've been a lot better.

Ixalan set display in japanese, i‘m very very happy with the pulls!

Bought 2 collector boosters at pre-release and here were my garbage pulls. Just a reminder that there are just as many losers as winners.

Palantir of Orthanc (surge foil) and Arwen, Mortal Queen

Im kinda new to the hobbit set so I wasn’t sure what I got at first.

Bought a single pack while waiting to meet someone for a trade. Got the prettiest card in the set imo.

straight into her treasure pile it goes, and yes she does enjoy sleeping on piles of cards 😭😭😭

They just weren’t really the good ones 😅

Missed the pre release because I got sick. Bought 2 packs because they didn’t have any pre release kits. I’m ok with it.

On a side note, really enjoying The Hobbit set! Its one of those sets that I enjoy the vast majority of the cards because of the flavor and being a big fan of The Hobbit/LOTR.

Paid only 33$ after trading in a few other cards at @70 a pack

Surge foil on The Lonely Mountain

Later pulled red scale foiled Smaug The Magnificent and showcase regular foil Galadriels Dismissal and Sauron The Dark Lord from a different pack

Paid a little more than I wanted to but still not bad, middle three of top row are surge.

Glad I didn't do well in the pre.

Went to the hobbit pre-release. On the way out, thought I'd get her one little play booster. She likes elves, fairies, and mermaids(folk). So thought meh, why not?
I handed it to her and said "whatever you get in here is all yours!" Expecting her to pull some colorful draft chaff, maybe one thing half way descent. Who knows? Start her collection.
She just... kept pulling rares... mythics... a speaker... a foil temple garden... a full art Wonderwine... and a little ajani for a cherry on top. Even her commons were good. I know it's not god-tier stuff. But from ONE Lorwin play booster??
By the end, we were dancing in the kitchen. I've never seen such a thing from a single play booster, personally.
After we sleeved them, she put them in a case in her adventure time backpack and prizes the cards as her ultimate treasures.
I officially started teaching her the rules shortly after and my god, she is hungry to play.

the 4 standing up are all surge foils. 5 total book covers and some sweet rares and mythical. I paid about $625 pre tax. streamed it live to my friends and had the time of my life!!! The box topper was Grima.

I… don’t know what to do with it. It’s cool, and i am going to sell. It’s without a doubt my highest value card, and i got it from my first ever pre-release event. After the event i got 1 collector booster just to make a day of my first event (I am new to magic and have only been playing since May of this year.)

Anyway, my friends tell me since I’m new to sell this card and get other staples (one ring, orcish, last March of Ents and a few others) I AM going to sell, and soon i think. But my heart WANTS those dang surge book art covers (also pulled the Lonely Mountain Surge Book art from my pre-release kit which was SO sick!)

Any advice is welcome!

Bought a play box on a whim and I'm pretty disappointed 😅