Legendary Creature — Halfling Horror

Gollum, Patient Plotter

Mana value2EDHREC#4,270

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The Commander

When Gollum leaves the battlefield, the Ring tempts you.

{B} , Sacrifice a creature: Return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Activate only as a sorcery.

Guide

Gameplan

Gollum is a mono-black aristocrats/recursion engine commander that thrives on dying and coming back. Every time he leaves the battlefield the Ring tempts you, building Ring-bearer value, and his graveyard-to-hand ability means you can keep recasting him cheaply via sacrifice. Turn to turn you sacrifice creatures for value, advance the Ring, and grind opponents out with attrition before closing with a sacrifice-based combo or a big finisher.

Strengths

Extremely resilient commander that dodges most removal by returning from the graveyard for plus a creature.
Repeatedly tempts you with the Ring, stacking up evasion, card draw, and sacrifice triggers.
Slots perfectly into aristocrats shells where sacrificing creatures is already the gameplan.
Mono-black gives access to the format's best tutors, removal, and reanimation.

Weaknesses

Low impact on the board by himself—he's an engine piece, not a threat.
Mono-color means no access to blue interaction or other colors' answers.
Relies on having creatures and sacrifice outlets to fully exploit his abilities.
Graveyard hate and exile-based removal shut down his recursion.

Key Cards

The One Ring — Thematic and powerful—protection plus a card-draw engine that pairs with your Ring-tempts synergies.
Blood Artist — Turns every sacrificed creature and every Gollum death into incremental life drain that wins attrition wars.
Phyrexian Altar — Free sacrifice outlet plus mana that lets you loop Gollum and trigger Ring temptations repeatedly.
Viscera Seer — A cheap, repeatable sacrifice outlet to fuel Gollum's recursion and aristocrat payoffs.
Gravecrawler — A recursive sacrifice fodder that mirrors Gollum's grind plan for infinite aristocrats loops.

Upgrade Path

Add fast mana and tutors (Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to assemble engines faster, and lock in a compact combo like Gravecrawler plus Phyrexian Altar plus a Blood Artist effect. Upgrade sacrifice outlets and drain payoffs while adding strong interaction (Toxic Deluge, Damnation) and protection so your aristocrat engine survives, then top the curve with Torment of Hailfire as a reliable kill.

Core Cards

The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.

Win Conditions

▸Aristocrat drain via Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Bastion of Remembrance triggers
▸Infinite sacrifice loops with Gravecrawler and Phyrexian Altar plus a drain payoff
▸Grinding opponents out of resources then attacking with a Ring-bearer or reanimated threat
▸Big mana-value finishers like Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate

Archetypes

Aristocrats — His sacrifice ability and graveyard recursion turn death triggers into a relentless value engine.
Reanimator — Mono-black recursion and self-sacrifice synergize with reanimating big threats from the yard.
Ring-Bearer Value — He repeatedly tempts you with the Ring, snowballing evasion and card advantage each time he leaves play.
Combo — Free sacrifice outlets plus death payoffs enable infinite drain loops with recursive creatures.