I am TheGamer’s Number Two Big-Time Card Boy (official title) after 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:TCG extraordinaire Joe Parlock, and each of us has very different interests in the hobby. Joe is a crunchy numbers guy that likes to study the meta and build competitive decks, and I like shiny cardboard that changes color when it catches the light just right. Consequently, Joe largely focused on Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!, while I tend to stick to Pokemon, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Disney Lorcana, and these Xena: Warrior Princess trading cards ༒I found near a dumpster.
Normally, I’m happy to leave Magic to the expert. I see how much work it takes to keep up with WotC’s endless spoiler season, and I say no thank you. I know I’d enjoy the strategic complexity of playing Magic, but it’s just too big, too old, too intimidating. The only thing that could ever tempt me to dip my toe into MTG would be if Wizards did a massive crossover with a familiar IP that I already k♚now and love, something that could be played on its own without needing to invest too much, and something that was highly collectible that would satiate my endless hunger for holographics. It also wouldn’t hurt if all the characters were extremely sexy. Yes, I spent the last week ripping The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth pack𝕴s. It’s been overwhelming, confusing, exciting, and I only regret it a little bit.
Let’s start with overwhelming. My shipment came with a prerelease kit, a starter deck, a commander deck, four jumpstart boosters, a set booster bundle, and a whole mess of loose packs. Other products I didn’t get include the Gift Edition Bundle (which releases on July 7), and collector boosters. I’m vaguely aware of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the different kinds of packs a🍸nd decks because of my job, but I had no idea where to start or what I was looking for. There’s only one kind of Pokemon pack, which makes it prettℱy easy to figure out what to buy. All these different products are probably great for people that know Magic, but if like me you’re just looking for Aragorn with his shirt off, it might be hard to figure out where to start. The bundle looks the most like a Pokemon Elite Trainer Box, so I opened that first.
Credit where credit is due, WotC made a noticeable effort to make people like me feel included with this set. The first thing I pulled out of the box was a paper envelope containing holographic cards of Frodo, Sam, Gollum, and The One Ring that all fit together to recreate the scene of Frodo casting the ring into the fire of Mount Doom. They’re stunning, I want to frame them, and I just might. The envelope also included four൩ copies of each land card in holographic, as if I didn’t already feel like I had gotten my money’s worth.
There’s eight Set boosters in the box, and the first one I opened included a rule set for a pack battle-style mini-game in which both players make a grid of cards and ta👍ke turns revealing and comparing the stats on each. I love this so much. It gave me a fun way to turn opening packs into a game (since I’m probably never going to play the actual game) and extended my enjoyment of opening the packs I have. The most enjoyment I&r🍷squo;m ever going to get out of the set is from opening product, so it’s really lovely that Wizard’s put in the extra effort to try to make that experience as special as possible. This was a cooler experience than any Pokemon ETB I’ve ever opened - and I haven’t even mentioned the giant d20-style spindown life counter it comes with, but it’s great too.
The starter kit is also incredibly thoughtful. It comes with two themed decks - one representing the Fellowship and one representing Sauron’s army - as well as a pair of deck boxes and a LOTR-themed rule book. It’s a great self-contained game that keeps things relatively simple and easy to learn, and while I’m sure there are bespoke LOTR games out there, Magic is such a tried and true game that I’d have to recommend this starter kit above all others. Both decks have their own playstyle that makes them unique to play, and if I wasn’t a𒁏lready aware of the dark side of Magic, this might even ꧂have convinced me to start playing.
The massive sprawl of products is still Magic’s main barrier to entry, even in the Lord of the Rings set. I opened six different types of products for this review, and not a single one of them even contained the possibility of finding the one-of-one version of The One Ring, the golden ticket Wizard’s stuffed into a single pack that has turned this entire set into a giant lottery for content creators and online resellers that’s only found in a Collector booster. It would be very easy to buy the wrong thing here and cheat yourself out of a chance to find the card everyone is after. Not that you ever will, but that’s how gambling works; it’s not about winning, it’s about the chase. I’m not thrilled that Wizard’s has intentionally incentivized Twitch streamers to buy up tens of thousa൩nds of dollars worth of carꦓds either, especially seeing t💛he damage that content creators did to the Pokemon market a few years ago.
There may still be too much baggage preventing me from getting drawn into the world of Magic, but I can’t deny that the quality of this set is second to none. Wizard’s has done an incredible job capturing the world of Middle-earth while reinterpreting the characters in its own unique style, and every pack I’ve opened has been filled with wonderful art to discover. This is a crossover made with care, and I doubt even the mౠost knowledgeable Tolkien fan would be able to find much here to critique. I’ve never liked the way past Universes Beyond themes like Transformers were shoehorned into other sets, but if this is what the future of Magic crossovers is going to look like, I can’t wait to see what Wizard’s does next with Final Fantasy, Assassin’s Creed, and Doctor Who.