The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth features beautiful, Tolkien inspired artwork and the latest powerful cards to use in your Magic: The Gathering (MtG) games. The latest MtG set is The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth. It is part of Universes Beyond; the film and tv franchises out of the MtG worlds. The game cards are from Wizards of the Coast. Check out more at: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/the-lord-of-the-rings-tales-of-middle-earth.
The Universes Beyond are not Standard, so not considered to be part of the official Type II MtG play. They include the Secret Lairs and upcoming Warhammer 40,000 and Doctor Who releases. The pre-release tournaments were held on June 16-22. So now they are on sale. The pre-release box. The box has Sauron with a black sword and a hand of fire. The back has rings of fire with Frodo reaching out for The Ring and then a corrupted version, black skin, and glowing eye. This is above a shadowy version of Mordor with Gollum reaching out to Sam and Frodo walking towards Mount Doom.
You have to use the tear strip that opens the box and inside are large good (the West?) and evil (Mordor) tokens. On the flaps are Ring and +1/+1 circular tokens. The outside part of the box opens to four panels with the far left having Gandalf’s saying, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo…” The center panel has a painting of a Hobbit hole. Inside is a reddish-brown box with the Frodo/dark Frodo painting that has the cards and spindown counter. The counter is basically a black, grey-flecked twenty-sided die. It has 6 draft booster packs, a "Traditional Foil year-stamped card from the pre-release cards", I got a Lobelia Sackville-Baggins card, (a black card?, in a way it makes sense), but a swamp Hobbit? They are called Halflings to get the non-LoTR connection in Magic.
Also in the plastic is Bilbo, Retired Burglar, a multi-colored card. "The Ring" card, it has a tear-off part. Then, a full-bleed (all art) card of a Hobbit house with a garden by Lixin Yin. The game basically is two or more players put together decks from cards found in packs or boxes. The strategy is to build a deck to take on your opponents and not be without the right card at the right time! You draw seven cards to make your hand and then play a land like forests or swamps to generate mana (tap or turn the card to the side). This can be used to bring down creatures or to cast spells (Instant or Sorcery). Some cards have mana costs at the top of cards; a number, any kind of mana, or a mana color.
The handy table to put down cards is the battlefield. Used or lost cards go to a pile called the graveyard. Creatures have values on the bottom of the card; Power, how much damage it causes, and Toughness, its defense against attacks. Your creatures can attack the opponent’s creatures or the player who has 20 life. There are multiple ways to defeat an opponent, certain cards have win conditions, run down a player’s life, or cards. The basic part of Magic: The Gathering is that it is easy to play, but experience is needed to master, especially with new sets dropping every few months! The different lands generate different kinds of mana, plains (white), and islands (blue).
You can also use themed decks featuring dragons, angels, vampires, or any of the MtG creatures or card styles. There are no dragons, like Smaug, in this set focused on Lord of the Rings. The rarity of the cards are in the middle of the card; common (black), uncommon (silver), rare (gold), and mythic rare (bronze, looks red to me). Some of the classic creatures are Shivan Dragon, Serra Angel, and Sengir Vampire. Below the card mechanics is flavor text which details the card in the MtG world or in this case, Middle-Earth, so text from the LoTR books. I wonder if there will eventually be a Magic: The Gathering film. A recent set was Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, which adapted the popular Dungeons and Dragons setting, that was also in the latest Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
There was a special set, Secret Lair, that had cards from the movie characters. I took a look at the Tales of Middle-Earth Prerelease Kit with 6 packs. The cards, I think as a Lord of the Rings collectible, at least some of the cards I would say is a must for LoTR fans. The biggest part of such cards is familiar characters. There are multiple versions of characters; Gandalf, Friend of the Shire (uncommon), Gandalf the Grey (rare), Gandalf, White Rider (rare), Gandalf, Westward Voyager (rare), and Gandalf the White (mythic rare). I have not seen most of the Fellowship. So a nice assortment of rarities and artwork with also full bleed variants (like the Meriadoc Brandybuck in the picture). If your hope is to get a particular card or character, there are Commander Decks.
The Enchantment-Saga cards have lore counters each turn that activates abilities. My favorite is Tale of Tinúviel because of the Beren and Luthien story. This set has a strange grayish-black color for black cards, and grayish-white for white cards. I like all black and all white cards to distinguish the colors. The majority of cards follow the LoTR story and characters. I do like the “Ring tempts you” mechanic, if you get such a card effect, then you chose a creature to become Ring-bearer. It has abilities each temptation like “Whenever your Ring-bearer attacks, draw a card, then discard a card.” Very LoTR. Other cards like Ithilien Kingfisher seem like a stretch to fit the MtG mechanics. Magic: The Gathering cards use all depend on the player, but there are some sets with weak cards, Tales of Middle-Earth has a good mix. A strong set.
Five Rings out of Five!
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