Magic: The Gathering has been on a bit of a crossover spree recently, with sets featuring Dungeons and Dragons characters, as well as Transformers being big hits in the past year. But there’s nothing bigger than Lord of the Rings when it comes to the fantasy genre.
This upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth set is going to be the first introduction to Magic: The Gathering for many Lord of the Rings fans, and also an opportunity for fans of elves in Magic: The Gathering to feast.
With that in mind, let’s get to the card reveals. PowerUp! has not just one, but two cards to exclusively reveal today.
Magic: The Gathering Exclusive Card Reveals
The first is Galadhrim Guide, with beautiful art from Inka Schulz.
The card includes a quote from when Haldir was guiding the fellowship into the Galadhrim forest, which is a nice touch. Given Gimli was blindfolded, due to the history between dwarves and elves, it’s a bit funny that the player gets to scry two when this otherwise unremarkable 3G 3/4 common Elf Scout enters the battlefield. Well played, Wizards.
The second card is Lothlórien Lookout, which is another common Elf Scout card.
This one allows the player to scry one whenever they attack with this creature and features serene art by Daniel Correia. It costs 1G, is a 1/3, and the quote at the bottom is from Gimli, as part of a longer quote where he suggested the fellowship seek shelter in the trees.
Mike Turian is a long-standing figure in Magic: The Gathering. A former pro player and inductee into the Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame, he now works as a Product Architect and was one of the leads on The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth set.
He says that the whole team was very aware that this was probably going to be the first introduction to MTG for a lot of people and built-in features to better cater to that audience. “We knew that fans of The Lord of the Rings would be coming to Magic for the first time or trying it again. So we really wanted to go all out capturing the amazing characters of The Lord of the Rings in a way that a new player would say ‘yes! This is exactly how I always imagined Gandalf, Gollum, Frodo…’ or whoever their favourite character is. One of the great things about Magic is how open-ended the game is, so we attempted to offer cards that let our players both learn the game and bring the story to life,” Turian said.
“Another way we attempted to keep the set accessible was by only introducing the Ring Tempts You mechanic, which ties back to resonate The Lord of the Rings connections while using existing mechanics for the rest of the set to help keep complexity in check.”
Fans of elves are, obviously, particularly well taken care of in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth set, as we can see above from the two new common cards. Part of this is seeing elves move into new colours that we don’t often see them in. “Of the creatures in the main set, just over 10% of them have Elf as part of their creature type. You will find elves primarily in green and then blue with a touch in other colours. In terms of rewards, there is a single card in the main set that rewards you for playing with elves but, of course, there are so many Magic cards that reward you for playing a sweet Elf deck! In addition, the Commander decks have a number of new designs for elves as well.”
One tough part of designing the set was assigning colours and powers to characters that fans have such personal attachments to, and vehement opinions on. Players of all five different MTG colour archetypes no doubt want to be able to play with their favourite character, no matter what their usual playstyle is. To cater to everyone, Turian said the set designers found a reasonable compromise. “With The Lord of the Rings being an epic journey, many characters evolved throughout. Additionally, the fact that one of the central themes of The Lord of the Rings is good versus evil complicates things further. One way we managed this is to create multiple versions of characters. For instance, there is a mono-white Frodo, a white-black Frodo, and a white-green Frodo. In this way, we could show Frodo from when he is a simple Hobbit in the Shire all the way through his journey to Mount Doom.”
Another challenge was working out ways to incorporate the feel of different characters from the books without bringing immortality or hairy feet into the mix, which is how mechanics like Scry ended up being surfaced a lot. “We continually looked for themes from the novel that connected well with Magic gameplay. As part of that search, the themes of power and prophecy run throughout the book. By bringing Scry to elves it let us capture the feel of the elves’ immortality, in a way that offers connection to both power and prophecy. From a Magic gameplay perspective, we can’t put indestructible on many cards but we still wanted to capture that feel. Many of the elves, including Galadhrim Guide and Lothlórien Lookout, allow you to scry and then there are additional elves that reward you for scrying.”
For new players, Turian suggests that you start with what you already know you enjoy, and then explore from there. “My advice for players who are picking up the set for the first time is to find a connection to the themes that you most love in The Lord of the Rings and try those out first. If you are a fan of Hobbits, then there is a great Food-based strategy. For those who desire to create a gigantic powerful army, then the appeal of playing Amass Orcs in red, black and blue will be the way to go.
For those players who are looking to win, that really depends on the format that they are going after. In limited, I had a lot of success playing Hobbit-based decks. For Modern players or Commander players though, there are plenty of cards that will impact and change those formats. One of the pieces I’m excited about is to see what creations our players come up with that both bring The Lord of the Rings to life and re-tell the story in their own way.”
The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Magic the Gathering set is in stores June 23.
