Ten New Brews For The Lord Of The Rings: Brews 1-5 For Historic!

Posted on June 23, 2023

Warning!

The decks you are about to see are mostly untested first drafts! They were played Wednesday and Thursday on stream on the release days for The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth on MTG Arena and Magic Online and are my first stabs at the new The Lord of the Rings Historic and Modern formats. Most are brews jam packed with The Lord of the Rings cards, while there are also a few updates to previously established archetypes, but it's important to note that these are the first steps and not finished products! Use them as stepping stones for your own deck brewing process, but play them card for card at your own risk!

The Lord of the Rings, the great granddaddy of them all.

If you told me 20 years ago that future Jim would be playing in the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour: The Lord of the Rings, I probably would have laughed at you. The idea that two such massive franchises with massive fanbases could collide in a way that's not some sort of fan-made set or design is, frankly, wild to think about, but here we are with a full 281 card set full of all our favorite characters, locations, and situations, lovingly crafted and absolutely oozing with flavor.

I mean, at the prerelease someone killed my foil showcase Sauron, the Necromancer with a foil Isildur's Fateful Strike and we literally had to stop to take a picture because it was so cool.

There are all sorts of moments like this in Tales of Middle-Earth, a set that is more concerned with flavor and storytelling than cramming as many words on both sides of every card as possible, and it's a very refreshing experience. Many of the cards are fairly simple, but in a charming and flavorful way.

However, there are of course cards that will be making an impact on Constructed formats, as this is a straight-to-Modern and other eternal formats set that is going to also be legal on MTG Arena in Historic and Alchemy, as well as being a fully featured draft format. It's not very often we get cards injected straight into these powerful formats, so there's a lot to take in!

Today we are going to go over the first five of the ten decks I played as part of my Ten New Brews on YouTube and stream, briefly going over each list and my thoughts on how it was, giving it a letter grade, and talking about what kind of potential it has going forward. Today I will be going over the five Historic decks, as well as giving some general thoughts on the format, and next week I'll be going over the five Modern decks and doing the same. I played three matches with each deck in best of three so the deck's record will also be included, but do note that these matches were played on the open ladder not during the Early Access event. I was Mythic at the time of playing these so my opponents were all good players playing mostly meta decks.

Let's go!

One Ring Ramp | Historic | Jim Davis

Sorceries (6)
2 Extinction Event
4 Thoughtseize

Deck's Record: 3-0

Deck's Grade: B+

Deck Potential: Medium

Standout Card: The One Ring

You would naturally expect the most powerful card in the The Lord of the Rings set to be based on The One Ring, given that it's the central focus of the entire story, but I think during preview season many content creators (myself included) were sleeping on the card.

Well, no more!

So uh, they kinda took Time Walk and Ancestral Recall and just stapled them both onto a four mana legendary artifact with upside that you actually want to draw multiples of.

While The One Ring looks slow at first glance, you're effectively getting three cards for four mana upfront, with a turn of immunity sandwiched in there to make sure you've got a chance to use them. And then from that point, you can use those three extra cards to ensure that you get to see another turn, where you'll be drawing three more cards. Eventually you can find another copy of The One Ring, reset it, and do it all again.

Melding this into the once popular but forgotten Colorless Ramp archetype was seamless, as the deck is already playing a ton of mana rocks and leading into a big endgame, but was lacking card draw as well as midgame protection. When it comes to endgames it's hard to top Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and Karn, the Great Creator has more than proven its worth in various formats.

The Black splash helps to shore up a lot of the deck's weaknesses, with Thoughtseize providing all around interaction that's especially good against combo and counterspells and Extinction Event giving the deck a sweeper against more aggressive decks. On top of that, the new Orcish Bowmasters is a real nice one here, providing a similar role in that it's great against small creature decks that may get under us as well as control decks looking to draw a lot of cards.

We cruised through the three matches here and it's very clear that The One Ring is the real deal.

The Nine | Historic | Jim Davis

Companion (1)
1 Jegantha, the Wellspring

Instants (6)
2 Fatal Push
4 Collected Company

Sorceries (3)
3 Thoughtseize

Enchantments (2)
2 Call of the Ring

Lands (22)
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
1 Hive of the Eye Tyrant
1 Lair of the Hydra
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Darkbore Pathway // Slitherbore Pathway
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Overgrown Tomb

Deck's Record: 2-1

Deck's Grade: B+

Deck Potential: Surprising!

Standout Card: Nazgul

The nine Nazgul cards from Tales of Middle Earth feel like a flavorful meme.

With nine different arts and an ability very similar to casual favorites like Relentless Rats, Nazgul just has the look of a "silly and fun casual card." However, the rate on Nazgul is actually pretty solid.

At face value you're getting a 2/3 deathtouch for three mana that starts your Ring Tempts You emblem. This is obviously below rate, but once you start stacking them up things get wild quickly. The next one you play makes them both into 4/5s and pushes you further along The Ring path, and things scale wildly up from there. While there aren't actually any other non-Ringwraith wraiths currently in Historic, there are changelings which also pick up the bonus.

The natural direction for the Nazgul deck to go is Collected Company, as you want to get as many of them in play as possible and Collected Company is one of the most powerful cards available to creature decks. The excellent Faceless Agent finds you a Nazgul almost every time while picking up the counters, and great creatures like Orcish Bowmasters and Delighted Halfling fill out the curve, with Smeagol, Helpful Guide helping out with some extra Ring Tempts You triggers.

It is unfortunate that we are unlikely to see any more cards with The Ring Tempts You on them, meaning it will be hard for this deck to grow, but it was both competitive and a blast to play! However, definitely get some copies of Mutavault in there!

My Hearties | Historic | Jim Davis

Sorceries (4)
4 Explore

Enchantments (21)
2 The Eldest Reborn
3 The Kami War // O-Kagachi Made Manifest
4 Binding the Old Gods
4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
4 Leyline Binding
4 Tymaret Calls the Dead

Sideboard (15)
3 The Akroan War
4 Hidetsugu Consumes All // Vessel of the All-Consuming
4 Thoughtseize
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Elspeth Conquers Death

Deck's Record: 0-3

Deck's Grade: D

Deck Potential: Low

Standout Card: Binding the Old Gods

Usually I like to go pretty far out on a limb with one of the brews, and jolly old Tom Bombadil was just the thing.

Tom Bombadil is a wild build-around that wants you to play a ton of Sagas, giving himself a buff as well as an endless chain of sagas with his trigger. Ending The Eldest Reborn and flipping over The Kami War // O-Kagachi Made Manifest for free is a pretty powerful thing to build toward, aside from the cards just being solid in and of themselves. Perhaps even more interesting is Goldberry, River-Daughter, who has a wild interaction with sagas as she can remove and add saga counters, allowing you to re-trigger chapters over and over again.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki

There are plenty of excellent sagas to go around, with format staples like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki as well as powerful but more niche cards like Binding the Old Gods and The Kami War // O-Kagachi Made Manifest that are good on their own and even better when being chained with Tom Bombadil or multi-triggered by Goldberry.

However, unfortunately in this three-game set we were unable to put anything together. Missed land drops, awkward draws, and more made for a frustrating experience, but the reality is that the juice isn't really worth the squeeze for a highly thematic five color card like Tom Bombadil.

Leave Tom Bombadil for Historic Brawl or Commander and call it a day.

Merry Men | Historic | Jim Davis

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Gideon Blackblade

Instants (3)
3 Reprieve

Sorceries (2)
2 Urza's Ruinous Blast

Enchantments (2)
2 Flowering of the White Tree

Artifacts (2)
2 Mox Amber

Sideboard (15)
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Gideon Blackblade
2 Portable Hole
2 Loran of the Third Path
2 Declaration in Stone
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Urza's Ruinous Blast
2 Reidane, God of the Worthy // Valkmira, Protector's Shield
1 Reprieve
1 Eowyn, Fearless Knight

Deck's Record: 2-1

Deck's Grade: A-

Deck Potential: High

Standout Card: Merry, Esquire of Rohan

One of the most overlooked and exciting cards on the Tales of Middle Earth card list is Merry, Esquire of Rohan.

While Gandalf, Aragorn, and Sauron get big, flashy four, five, and six mana cards, all serious Magic players know the really important cards cost one and two. Merry, Esquire of Rohan is a very reasonable 2/2 haste for only two mana, but the real draw is the ability to draw a card every time it attacks alongside another legend. There have been a lot of good legends printed in recent years, making filling out a legend deck not difficult at all.

From one to four there's no shortage of great legendary options, but with 10 legendary 1-drops as well as four legendary 3-drops with haste, triggering Merry is almost inconsequential. Once you've drawn your first card off of Merry you're way ahead on rate, and the ceiling is limitless. And that's to say nothing of the bonuses you get from playing high quality cards like Laelia, the Blade Reforged and Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

But that's not all! Flowering of the White Tree has been impressive in small numbers with all the incidental token generation, while the deck is also accidently a pretty good Winota, Joiner of Forces deck with a nice mix of humans and non-humans. Lastly, the deck also makes excellent use of the new Reprieve, giving this Boros deck a level of interaction that it's never really had before.

While finding the right mix will be tough, this is a super exciting one!

United, Unified | Historic | Jim Davis

Deck's Record: 2-1*

Deck's Grade: B

Deck Potential: Medium to High

Standout Card: Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea

*Note that I had my opponent tapped out and dead on board in the game of this set, but blundered my attack and died on the backswing, so this should have been a clean 3-0

Anyone who's familiar with Ten New Brews knows I'm a huge fan of Jodah, the Unifier, and my boy made a few new friends with Tales of Middle-Earth.

Jodah, the Unifier is already a phenomenal top-end card for a legends deck, providing a huge power boost as well as the ability to create both card advantage as well as tempo. The new addition to the Jodah's top-end is Aragorn, the Uniter, a huge 4-drop that benefits heavily from playing multicolored spells. And lastly, we top off on the underplayed Djeru and Hazoret thanks to the deck's ability to accelerate so well.

How are we accelerating so well?

The new Delighted Halfling joins Avacyn's Pilgrim for an awesome 1-drop duo that plays perfectly with all the colors that the deck is playing, and Delighted Halfling is basically Birds of Paradise plus Cavern of Souls with that all important second toughness making it the perfect turn one play. The second part of this one-three-five draw is Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea and Crucias, Titan of the Waves. Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea is something special with Jodah, allowing you to untap immediately and cast a 3-drop to trigger the cascade, and with nine creatures with 5 power she will untap and grow often. Crucias, Titan of the Waves is one of the best cards in the format and slots perfectly in as a second way to go from three to five mana while also ensuring you always have gas.

Fill the deck out with some good legends and excellent mana and you've got a really explosive deck that hits hard and fast but also plays a bunch of really good cards.

So That's Historic!

With ten brews across two formats, I've decided to cover them across two separate articles, which means we'll cover the Modern brews next week!

My love for Historic should be well known at this point, and a set like The Lord of the Rings is a wonderful injection of new and unique cards for the format. While the cream of the crop like The One Ring, Delighted Halfling, and Orcish Bowmaster will see play in Modern and Legacy, Historic can be a great home for the tier 2 cards in the set that likely won't make it in the paper formats and that's awesome!