168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering has been a hit-or-miss with its new products in recent years. For every banger like Set boosters and the 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit, we’ve also had stinkers like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:March Of The Machine: The Aftermath, and set-specific Jumpstart packs.
Fortunately, it looks like Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth’s holiday rerelease this November is set to bring more of the former, with new ‘Scene Boxes’. We’re still 🦋months away from getting our hands on them, but I already can’t wait to see where the idea goes next.
A big part of Tales Of Middle-earth is the introduction of ‘Borderless scene cards’, which can be put together to make a larger image. For instance, the four ⭕cards found in booster bundles can be put together to make a scene of Mount Doom, while 18 cards from the set will all make up the Battle of Pelennor Fields.
It’s a cool idea, but always felt a little gatcha-esque for me, even by TCG standards. Getting one fancy alt-art card can be difficult enough, but once you’ve got it, you’re done. With scenes, Lord of the Rings is hoping you crack packs to get 18 of them to see the full art. I𒁃t’ll be a cool thing for the hardcore collectors, but for everyone else it kind of feels like getting a jigsaw puzzle from your local charity shop and finding it&r🃏squo;s missing half the pieces.
Enter Scene Boxes. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Launching in November, these boxes feature four exclusive scenes not found in the main set: Aragorn At Helm’s Deep, The Might of Galadriel, Gandalf in the Pelennor Fields, and Flight of the Witch-King. Each includes foil versions of all six cards that make up the scene, and three Set booster packs. Most interestingly, though, is that they also include a paper easel with six textless, frameless art cards on them that show the sce🧸ne, unobfuscated by all that MTG stuff.
I’m not a Tolkien nerd; I couldn’t tell you a single thing about 🍷what these scenes signify. Yet I absolutely adore this new way of using art cards, which were first introduced back in the original Modern Horizons in 2019. Mounting them on an easel makes all the difference – now what has long been just pack filler y🌃ou’d throw away has now become a real collector’s treat to display and appreciate. I don’t need to know who Galadriel is or what happened at Helm’s Deep to know I love Magic art and want these to put on my shelf of gaming memorabilia.
In some ways, MTG is taking a leaf out of Pokemon’s playbook. All of Magic’s normal ‘special releases’ are just different art treatments of cards. Maybe, at a push, a fancy spindown counter to sweeten the deal. On the other hand, Pokemon does pins, figurines, deck boxes, coins, counters, sleeves, and all sorts of other (highly collectible) accessories, making the special sets feel like more than just yet more cards. While yes, an easel is just a way to deliver cards, it’s a small trinket that isn’t a game piece or something to shove in your 👍trade binder.
I hope this continues for sets after Lord of the Rings. I’d love to be able to display a panoramic shot of Eldraine on an easel, or a sprawling cavern of Ixalan. It doesn’t even need to be a full scene, if Wizards is intent on keeping that specific to Middle-earth. Boxes with thematically similar art cards pre-mounted should become a regular part of every set, and I’d lap it up. Even just including an easel designed with that set’s aesthetic in mind would🦩 be cool, so you can slot your own art cards in instead.
Of course, there’s still a chance Wizards flubs this by making it far too expensive. This is a neat collectible, but it’s still just paper and cardboard. For three booster packs and a few loose singles, anything over $30 would be a tough sell in comparis♉on to a Bundle box, which has more packs in it and an included scene of its own.
If Wizards prices this correctly, Scene boxes could become an all-timer product to match the introduction of the Set booster or the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Commander precon. It’s endless🍎ly replicable and doesn’t need to be limited to just Lord of the Rings – this is the perfect chance to celebrate Magic’s strongest asset, its art, and I hope we’ll be seeing those cute little easels🃏 for some time to come.