facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

Hidden Treasures Sale ends Sunday!
   Sign In
Create Account

The Mechanics of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth

Reddit

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth remains one of Magic's more successful Universes Beyond sets, but its mechanics are pretty underrated. As someone who built an entire Frodo Baggins deck, I think I have a good grasp of what the mechanics are and what they do. Let's take a deep dive into what you can expect from The Lord of the Rings mechanically.

The Ring

The One Ring

What would The Lord of the Rings be without The Ring? Now, busted The One Ring card aside, The Ring Tempts You is a mechanic included in the set that's not that intuitive. Breaking with the tradition of "reading the card explains the card," The Ring Tempts You needs a token to track progress, but the mechanic is pretty interesting and has several lines of play and payoffs within the set.

The Ring // The Ring Tempts You (Token)

The mechanic centers on a single creature called The Ringbearer, a nod to the flavor of The Lord of the Rings itself. Depending on how many times the ring tempts you per game (up to a maximum of four) you get benefits to your ringbearer. The progression is as follows:

  1. Your Ringbearer is legendary and can't be blocked by creatures with greater power.
  2. Whenever your Ring-bearer attacks, draw a card, then discard a card.
  3. Whenever your Ring-bearer becomes blocked by a creature, that creature's controller sacrifices it at the end of combat.
  4. Whenever your Ring-bearer deals combat damage to a player, each opponent loses 3 life.

Avid Magic fans will notice that this tops out at four activations, and can't be interacted with once it's started, a lot like the Aetherdrift Start your Engines mechanic. However, what happens if you have a ringbearer on level 4 of the ring and they remove it? Further activations of The Ring Tempts You can assign a new ringbearer, but it won't increase the value for tempting above 4.

The mechanic is flavorful and gives the spirit of the ring tempting the player, but unlike The One Ring it doesn't actually punish the player for activating it. Aside from getting a few Izzet Wizards to carry the ring, what can you do with it?

Galadriel of Lothlorien
Gandalf, Friend of the Shire

Several creatures in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth have payoffs for when the ring tempts you, or give you activations for the ring. By stacking up a few of these creatures, each time The Ring Tempts You, you'll be rolling in value.

Amass Orcs

Barad-dur
Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant
Saruman, The White Hand

Long-time Magic players will be familiar with the Amass mechanic from War of the Spark, which created a 0/0 Zombie Army token with a counter on it or added a counter to an existing zombie army. The Lord of the Rings expands on this idea with Amass Orcs. Essentially, it's the same mechanic, but replacing the Zombie Army token with an Orc Army token. Saruman can get pretty out of hand with the right build.

Flavor-wise, this is pretty cool, especially since several cards that create orc armies are in-lore orc army creators. Sauron and Saruman, in particular, are great options for commanders who focus on orc army creation. Add in a bit of proliferate for fun, and you could have a powerful orc army barreling down your enemies before you know it.

Tokens (Food and Halfling)

Field-Tested Frying Pan
Meriadoc Brandybuck
Peregrin Took

I slotted these into the same section because they're complimentary. Fans of The Lord of the Rings will know how much halflings like second breakfast, and it shows in their love of food. While there are only a few cards in the set that focus on halfling token production, a much larger subset creates food tokens.

Food tokens are a returning mechanic, first seen in Throne of Eldraine, but it makes a splash in this set. Payoffs like Peregrin Took turn food into card draw, and Meriadoc Brandybuck helps your halflings make more food simply by attacking. Even spells like Revive the Shire, which help you get a creature from the graveyard to hand, drop off a food token as a bonus.

Legendary Creatures

Frodo Baggins
Flowering of the White Tree
Gandalf the White

A lesser-recognized (but no less powerful) mechanic in this set is legendary creatures. With such a star-studded cast of heroes, it's not surprising to see so many legendary creatures coming out to play. Frodo Baggins combines the Ring Temps You mechanic with legendary creatures, making for a powerful interplay.

Urza's Ruinous Blast

Legendary creatures also play nicely with historic-centric decks, since legendary creatures count as historic permanents as well. If planning to build into legendary creatures, cards like Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle and Havi, the All-Father work as great reanimation cards for a Commander deck-build.

What's Next?

The Lord of the Rings is still a very in-demand set with some of the cards holding a lot of value. Yet there's still a huge potential for Commander builds based around some of those cards. Hopefully you'll spend some time exploring Middle-earth through the set and maybe even develop your own deck from some of these amazing cards.

CoolStuffCon Orlando a new FREE experience featuring Magic: The Gathering! Enhance your experience with a CommandFest Package, participate in an RCQ, or play with friends!

Send us your cards, we'll do the rest. Ship It. No Fees. Fast Payment. Full Service Selling!

Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus