Goals of the Deck

This deck takes the Commander precon deck Food and Fellowship as a base to dive deeper into the lifegain and token synergies. My goal wasn't to optimize the deck for competitive play but raise its power level a little bit without breaking the budget or introducing unfair two card combos to the deck except for Walking Ballista (which you could replace with fun cards like Elanor Gardner, Inspiring Statuary or some other food / lifegain card) and Heliod, Sun-Crowned). At the same time I tried to use a lot of LOTR cards to stay on flavor which is why I chose Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant as commander because he fits the lifegain and LOTR theme better than Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant.

Lifegain Synergies

The precon deck relied too much on food tokens to genrate life which is why I added more well-known ways to generate life like Soul Warden or Suture Priest. These work fine with our other cheap creatures but also with creature token generators: Farmer Cotton, Merry, Warden of Isengard, Gwaihir, Greates of the Eagles, Dawn of Hope and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit. Then you have the food generator and accidental lifegain cards like Cosmic Rebirth or Crypt Incursion (big potential) to fuel the win conditions of the deck which I found lacking in the precon variant of the deck.

Token Synergies

When playing the original precon deck it was often hard to generate lots of food tokens to sacrifice to themselves or other cards. That's why I added Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus and the less powerful but on theme Peregrin Took to enable an occasional food explosion. Also they boost other cards generating tokens which we have a few: Assemble of the Entmoot, Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, Field-Tested Frying Pan, Dawn of Hope, Gwaihir, Greatest of the Eagles, Academy Manufactor and Merry, Warden of Isengard. 

Win Conditions

The main concept of winning the game is alway to gain life and convert the gained life into an advantage. There is the ability of Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant which is able to create an overwhelming board presence and assemble various creature based combos. But it isn't very consistent because you need the creatures to be still in your deck when you are most likely already in the endgame, it's hard to attack through the defense of your opponent or you can run into a board wipe. It's a fun ability able to kill but also very inconsistent. 

You can win by buffing up your creatures or playing big ones and simply attacking. Banquet Guests, Trelasarra, Moon Dancer, Rapacious Guest and the tokens of Assemble the Entmoot can get very huge and pummel your adversaries. Pippin, Warden of Isengard, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Rosie Cotton of South Lane, Lathiel the Bounteous Dawn, Treebeard, Gracious Host, Cleric Class, Call for Unity pump your army of creature to overrun opponents.

Another way to win is to drain or ping opponents to death. Boost up your Walking Ballista occasionally and shoot your opponents down (there is also an infinite game winning combo in the next section), drain you opponents everytime you gain life with Sanguine Bond, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Gollum, Obsessed Stalker or Dina, Soul-Steeped, drain your opponents everytime you create a token with Mirkwood Bats.

Combos

You can also win with combos. The main combos of the deck revolve around giving Walking Ballista lifelink, pinging opponents for one life and generating new +1/+1 counters for free. Heliod, Sun-Crowned can give Walking Ballista lifelink, Walking Ballista shoots an opponent for one damage, you gain a life, Heliod, Sun-Crowned triggers, you put the counter on Walking Ballista, repeat on infinite killing all your opponents. Same principle applies to Cleric Class and Walking Ballista. It's quite strong and kills all opponent's at once and there is very little you can do to break up the combo. Try the combo in a game of Commander with your friends and you can decide as a group if this combo is too powerful and kills the fun or you like this style of Commander. Then you can just replace Walking Ballista or break the infinite combo otherwise.

The next combo is very popular in Modern right now and revolves around Samwise Gamgee, Viscera Seer and Cauldron Familiar which you need on the battlefield in addition of at least one food token. Sacrifice Cauldron Familiar to Viscera Seer, return Cauldron Familiar to the battlefield by sacrificing a food token, Cauldron Familiar gains you a life, drains the opponent for one and Samwise Gamgee creates a food token to start the loop once more, repeat until all you opponents are at zero life. To make the combo more consistent I add Ranger of Eos to tutor up two of the three combo pieces. 

There are enough lifegain combos out there to turn this deck into a pure combo deck and raise its power even more. But if you're into that you'll need to research online. 

Fun Cards I Want to Talk About

Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit

I enjoy this card but as a commander it was way too often targeted by my friends in my commander group. But I like the quest the cards puts you on to let the ring tempt you enough times to turn this version of Frodo into a card draw engine. If the board is clogged with one tougness creatures you can use Access Tunnel or Rogue's Passage (also applicable to Gollum, Obsessed Stalker) to still use Frodo. You can tutor him up with Sam, Loyal Attendant which is a good card by itself and I hope that Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit will be less of a target when it's just a complicated way to draw cards and trigger ring temptations.

Academy Manufactor

I love value, artifacts and drawing card. This cards does it all and turns every meal into a feast. 

Trail of Crumbs

One of my favorite cards from Thrones of Eldraine. It creates a food which we can always use and it is a fair, fun, little draw engine. 

Cosmic Rebirth

It gains life, it reanimates important creatures, it's instant speed. I like everything about it. 

The One Ring

This card proved to be stupid good in all legal formats. It's good in every deck and we can mitigate its drawback in this deck by gaining the life back we're losing from The One Ring.

Outlook

Wilds of Eldraine will soon release and hopefully bring new cards to the table using food, also there are new LOTR cards to come in the future. Maybe I will update this deck when there are new cool cards available. Also I'm thinking about to turn the Food and Fellowship precon into a treefolk and halflings deck (please Wilds of Eldraine and future LOTR MTG products give me more halflings and treefolk). Another fun angle is to tune the deck to focus on the ring tempting mechanic, Frodo, Sauron's Bane is a nice card for example.

If I forgot combos, cool play patterns, made mistakes or you have more cool ideas for this deck, let me know in the comments.