The Crowd's $542 Thorin Deck Has One Combo, and Thorin Isn't In It

Commander · by Nora Kessler · September 14, 2026

EDHREC's average Thorin, King of Durin's Folk list costs $542, runs exactly one infinite combo, and Thorin isn't in it. One $13 card, Cloudstone Curio, loops the King off Dwarves the deck already owns; a different single card turns one combo into four. Neither moves the bracket, and we show which card does.

The Crowd's $542 Thorin Deck Has One Combo, and Thorin Isn't In It

Turn six. You've got Thorin, King of Durin's Folk on the table, five Dwarves beside him, nine Treasures you've been too disciplined to crack, and every one of those Dwarves is swinging for nine more than it says on the card. It's a great feeling, and it's also the whole deck. Take the Treasures away and the Dwarves are Dwarves again. Take Thorin away and the Treasures are just mana. There's no second act, and the crowd knows it: EDHREC's average Thorin list, the one 6,260 builders have been converging on since The Hobbit landed, runs exactly one infinite combo when you feed it to DeckCortex's engine, and the King isn't in it. Hours later, the same average list had shuffled eleven slots and the count was zero.

That's the gap this guide closes. One card puts Thorin himself into a loop. A different single card turns the one combo into four. Both cost less than the list's Mithril Coat. What they do to your bracket is the part nobody mentions, so we'll do that too.

Who Thorin is right now

for , a 4/4 Dwarf Noble, and two lines of text that only make sense together. Whenever Thorin or another Dwarf you control enters, create a Treasure token. Other Dwarves you control get +1/+0 for each artifact token you control. Not each Treasure, each artifact token: the Axe tokens from Dáin Ironfoot and Iron Hills Blacksmith count, Clues and Food would count, and the fourteen Treasures that fall out of There and Back Again when its Smaug dies count fourteen times. The tension is right there on the card. Every Treasure you spend is a point of power you take off every other Dwarf you own.

Builders have voted. As of September 13, Thorin sits on 6,260 EDHREC decks, the most-built commander from The Hobbit Eternal and second across the whole Hobbit release behind Thranduil, the Elvenking at 8,613. He was ranked 640th in EDHREC's July window and 36th in August, and this past week he was the sixth most-built commander on the whole site, 1,335 new lists, one place behind the Frodo-and-Sam pairing and one ahead of Cloud. (All EDHREC counts are external, pulled September 13, and moving daily.) There is no precon: The Hobbit shipped two Scene Boxes and no Commander decks, the same blank page we worked from in the Thranduil guide. So "the deck" here means the crowd's average list, which we imported into DeckCortex this morning and priced at $541.59 across the hundred cards at Scryfall's paper aggregate. Dáin of the Ancient Halls is the biggest line on that bill at $66.82. Thorin himself is $10.43.

Here it is, clickable:

What the engine says about the list you'd actually build

We ran the full hundred through the combo engine and the bracket-fit model. Three findings, in order of how much they should change your shopping.

One complete combo. Gleaming Splendor plus Smothering Tithe plus Goldspan Dragon. Pay into Splendor to make two opponents each draw a card; Tithe triggers twice, and each opponent either pays or hands you a Treasure; with Goldspan on the table each Treasure taps for two mana of one colour, so two Treasures pay for the next activation with one to spare. The catalogue calls it "near-infinite" for the honest reason that every trigger offers the opponent a way out, and it ends the moment they can pay. In practice an opponent's untapped mana runs out long before your loop does, and then they're drawing their library. Notice who isn't in that line: your commander. He's a bystander to the deck's only loop.

And it's already gone from the average. The list we imported this morning had Goldspan Dragon. The average list EDHREC served a few hours later had swapped eleven cards, Goldspan out and Academy Manufactor in among them, and we ran that version too. Zero complete combos. The crowd's Thorin deck is a fair deck that occasionally, accidentally, contains a combo depending on which hour you copied it.

Bracket 3, and not for the reason you think. Our deterministic replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model returns a floor of 3, "Upgraded", for the list, and the cap that binds isn't the combo. It's Smothering Tithe, a Game Changer, limit zero at Bracket 2. Every upgrade below leaves that floor exactly where it is; the only change that moves it is cutting the Tithe. We'll come back to that, because it decides which of the two fixes you should buy.

The engine that's already in the box

Before you add anything, look at what fires on a Dwarf entering. Thorin makes a Treasure. Fíli the Pathfinder makes a 2/2 red Dwarf token whenever a nontoken Dwarf enters, and that token is a Dwarf, so Thorin makes a second Treasure. Giott, King of the Dwarves lets you discard and draw. Kíli the Resourceful draws you a card, once a turn. Balin, Loremaster offers to wheel your hand and, with an enduring story, deal that much damage to each opponent. Bifur, Melodic Rider, with an enduring story, makes every one of those Dwarf triggers happen twice, Thorin's included. Storied is trivial here; three artifacts, legendaries or Sagas is a turn-three board in this list.

Five payoffs for "a Dwarf entered" and not one way to make a Dwarf enter twice. That's the missing card.

The one card that puts the King in the loop: Cloudstone Curio

$13.23 for the black-bordered Ravnica Remastered printing, $12.43 if you'd rather have the Middle-earth borderless one from the Tales of Middle-earth Commander decks. The text: whenever a nonartifact permanent you control enters, you may return another permanent you control that shares a permanent type with it to its owner's hand. Every Dwarf in the list is a nonartifact creature. Read on.

The catalogued version, the one the engine confirms the moment the pieces are in the list, wants two one-mana Dwarves:

  1. With Staunch Shieldmate already on the battlefield, cast Toolcraft Exemplar for . It enters. Thorin triggers: create a Treasure. Curio triggers: return the Shieldmate to your hand.
  2. Tap and sacrifice the Treasure for . Cast Staunch Shieldmate. Treasure, bounce the Exemplar.
  3. Repeat. Each cast costs one and pays one, so nothing runs out.

That is infinite Dwarves entering, infinite Dwarves leaving, infinite Treasures being made and spent. The two one-drops cost $0.37 and $0.19 together; the catalogue says this exact line lives in three decks in its whole database, which is the point. With Reckless Fireweaver ($0.43, one damage to each opponent per artifact entering) or Impact Tremors ($2.83, one per creature) beside it, that's the game. The engine's line stops at "infinite enters"; the damage is on the payoff's card text, and either one does it.

Now the version the catalogue doesn't know yet, because it hasn't caught up with The Hobbit's Dwarves, and which the list already owns almost entirely. Goldspan Dragon turns every Treasure into two mana of any one colour. Two mana of one colour pays for any two-drop whose cost is a single colour or a hybrid, and the list has seven of those Dwarves: Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills, Iron Hills Blacksmith, Kíli the Resourceful, Magda, Brazen Outlaw, Óin the Brave, Dwalin, Weaponmaster and Nori, Teller of Tales. Not Giott, not Dáin's Company, not Thorin Oakenshield: needs two colours and one Treasure only makes one. So with Thorin, Goldspan and Curio on the table, any two of those seven loop each other for free, and Bofur, Reliable Guardian // Concerted Care at nets you a mana every time he comes back.

What the list does with a loop, without buying anything else:

One card. Everything else was in the box. If you want the engine to count it, add the two one-drops for fifty-six cents; if you'd rather keep the slots, trust the card text, which is what we did above, step by step.

The other one card: Aggravated Assault, one to four

$27.36 for the Explorers of Ixalan printing. Add it to the list and the engine's count of complete combos goes from one to four, and none of the three new ones needs a card you don't already own:

Notice, again, who isn't in any of them. Assault makes this a deck with combos; Curio makes it Thorin's deck with combos. That's not a small difference at a table that reads your commander to decide how scared to be.

The doublers, priced honestly

Xorn, $12.23, is the quiet third option. It's the one Treasure doubler the engine recognises as a second Tithe combo (Splendor + Tithe + Xorn, 1,758 decks), and it fixes the Curio arithmetic on its own: two Treasures per Dwarf entering means the one-drop loop nets mana and the two-drop loop is free even without Goldspan. Academy Manufactor, $8.32, is what the crowd's list actually gained a few hours later, and it's a different card here: a Clue and a Food beside every Treasure is three artifact tokens per Dwarf for Thorin's anthem, but only the Treasure makes mana, so it fattens the alpha without touching the loop. Anointed Procession at $60.08 is the luxury version of both and the engine files it next to Xorn on the Tithe line. Buy Xorn.

Two cards the research keeps recommending that we're not: Clock of Omens plus an artifact Dwarf like Universal Automaton is a real Magda line, but the list runs neither piece, so it's a two-card add for a combo that ignores Thorin. And no, Mayhem Devil is not a payoff for this deck. It's black.

What actually decides your bracket

This is the part to read twice. Every version above, base list, Curio, Assault, Xorn, comes back from the bracket-fit model at the same floor: 3, "Upgraded", binding on the same cap. Smothering Tithe is a Game Changer, and Bracket 2 allows zero. The combo count moves from one to four and the floor doesn't blink.

So the honest decision tree:

What kills it

An opponent's overloaded Vandalblast destroys each artifact they don't control: your Treasures, your Curio, your Equipment and the loop in one card, and since your own list plays it, assume the table does too. Farewell does the same with the creatures on top. Collector Ouphe stops Treasures from being sacrificed, which switches off both loops and Goldspan at once, though Thorin's anthem still counts the tokens. Cursed Totem does nothing here: Thorin has no activated ability, and neither loop uses one.

The answers are already in the list. Flawless Maneuver and Boros Charm for indestructible; Mithril Coat with flash on the King in response to anything that says destroy (it does nothing against a Swords to Plowshares, so keep the Greaves conversation open); Bofur's Concerted Care for one hexproof, indestructible artifact or creature, which is exactly the Curio when someone points a Vandalblast at it; Lightning Greaves if you'd rather he simply can't be targeted. What the list lacks is a second Curio, and there isn't one. Protect it like a commander.

The decision

| You want | Add | Costs | Engine count | Floor | |---|---|---|---|---| | Thorin in a loop | Cloudstone Curio (+ Toolcraft Exemplar, Staunch Shieldmate to make the catalogue count it) | $13.23 (+$0.56) | 1 → 1 catalogued, Thorin's line from card text; 2 with the one-drops | 3 | | The most combos per dollar | Aggravated Assault | $27.36 | 1 → 4 | 3 | | Both loops fed | Xorn | $12.23 | 1 → 2, and the Curio loop pays for itself | 3 | | Bracket 2, honestly | Cut Smothering Tithe, add nothing above | −$61.30 | 0 | 2 |

The crowd built a Treasure deck and forgot to give the King anything to do with the Treasures except spend them. Rebuild the list in DeckCortex before your next pod, add the one card you've picked, and run the scan: if the loop is there, the engine shows it, and if your table said Bracket 2, the model will tell you which enchantment to take out before anyone else has to.

Data notes: EDHREC deck counts, ranks and the average decklist are external figures retrieved September 13, 2026, and move daily; the imported list is the average deck as served that morning. Prices are Scryfall paper-aggregate asks via the DeckCortex proxy on September 13, 2026, black-bordered printings where the default printing was unpriced. Combo lines and counts come from DeckCortex's spellbook engine on the exact hundred cards named above and on each variant list; catalogue popularity is a relative deck-inclusion signal, not a win rate, and "near-infinite" is the catalogue's own label for loops an opponent can pay to stop. The Goldspan-powered two-drop loop is our reading of the Oracle text, spelled out above, and is not a catalogue entry. The bracket floor is our deterministic replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model, a lower bound, not the final 1–5 bracket. Thorin appears in 0 of the 22,497 cEDH lists in DeckCortex's corpus, June 15 – September 13, 2026.

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