General (LTR / LTC) Lord of the Rings Testing/Includes Mega Thread!
- Thread starter TrainmasterGT
- Start date
Wait they printed Remand again AND IN WHITE?
Yep! It's actually arguably better than Remand because it doesn't counter.
Personally, I feel like it was a long time coming, and hope we see more white counters/pseudo-counters coming up. It'll be nice to be able to support some Wx control decks that can fight on the stack.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
So at time of recording Nazgul is "worth" between 10 and 12$ USD. This is preorder price, set comes out tomorrow, but I still think that's a travesty.
If you are someone who wants to play with the nine, may I recommend this:
Link to imgur album with both images
Some people will want one of each of the nine arts, but I like my card art unified. Maybe you're the same.
If you are someone who wants to play with the nine, may I recommend this:
Some people will want one of each of the nine arts, but I like my card art unified. Maybe you're the same.
i am testing...
White Remand, even though i'm not on Blue Remand, because it's really nice in white proactive decks that can clock you and get value from more free attacks.
Minas Tirith because it's a mega sick utility land and my list of those is shorter for white than other colors, and
"Devour Food 3 Hobbit" because its a super nasty goyf and i have lots of incidental food creation that doesnt currently go very many places. i think more people should be looking at this one. it is a deece goyf that has a HUGE and really funny ceiling. and evasion!
(also looking at bowmasters, but a little weird cuz of the unique token, and im just gonna run wizards rockets. i already run arguably worse chromatic star and LOVE it)
White Remand, even though i'm not on Blue Remand, because it's really nice in white proactive decks that can clock you and get value from more free attacks.
Minas Tirith because it's a mega sick utility land and my list of those is shorter for white than other colors, and
"Devour Food 3 Hobbit" because its a super nasty goyf and i have lots of incidental food creation that doesnt currently go very many places. i think more people should be looking at this one. it is a deece goyf that has a HUGE and really funny ceiling. and evasion!
(also looking at bowmasters, but a little weird cuz of the unique token, and im just gonna run wizards rockets. i already run arguably worse chromatic star and LOVE it)
huh. The European prices on Cardmarket are closer to 4 euro per, but still I'm surprised about the number. Might just go ahead and put the copy I got from the prerelease into my trade binder..
I mean the set isn't even technically out yet and there's no decent draft set coming out for a while (Commander Masters will likely be a trash draft format like every other Commander set) so I would expect Nazgul to fall in value pretty quickly. There is going to be a lot of the set opened with Collector Boosters and the like until The One Ring is found. I wouldn't worry too much about the new cutesy Shadowborn Apostle or Relentless Rats variant being too expensive once in print; I think they're not going to be worth much at all a few weeks from now. But I would expect it to rebound after the Fall set and steadily increase over time with collectability.
I'm going to collect all 9 of them like they're the infinity stones and then put them all in the same 3x3-page in my binder and just wait a few years until the price goes back up (they are uncommon after all)
Time for Cube Cobra's Most Cubed Cards of the New Set During Release Weekend, a statistically useless but practical and fun way to explore some level of meta-trends!
Caveats:
1. Cards spoiled early are always over-represented, as they're on Cube Cobra for much longer.
2. There are many types of Cubes on Cube Cobra with hugely different goals, so things like cards optimised for Commander Cubes and Pauper Cubes are relatively over-represented compared to what I'm most interested in (cubes designed for 1v1 with more sensible restrictions than the color of the expansion symbol).
3. The quantity here is not terribly high, making it over-representative the most industrious cube curators. A few thousand cubes are updated every month on Cube Cobra, but the highest here, Reprive, is only in 360 cubes at present, and the top card from spoiler season proper, Mount Doom, is only in 77 cubes (also, see caveat #1).
4. I only just updated my own cube on the site today! And during that exciting, is not functioning at the moment, which indicates that perhaps other cards may not be in the system as well.
Takeaways:
1. Most of the top cards are, as usual with this point in a set's release, reflective of wtwlf's updates to his own cube. As the most popular "thought leader" in the cube space online, this is, like I said, pretty normal and not really worth too much commentary beyond just acknowledging this trend, but I am sad that his great advocacy for one of my favorite cards in the set, The Balrog of Moria, has not made it into the public "consensus" yet -- or even his own list! I am delighted that we got such a cool and interesting card for an equally cool and interesting character, and hope that it can continue to gain interest from the community at large.
Broadly, I also imagine that these cards will not continue to stay at the top as more people with a more diverse set of goals as wtwlf update their lists on the platform.
2. You can basically ignore the face cards for the intro decks here in the form of Aragorn and Arwen, Wed and Sauron, the Lidless Eye, as they certainly will not remain as popular cube cards...I think it's honestly just a handful of over-eager themed or commander lists propping them up in the rankings.
3. Very happy to see Samwise Gangee on the list, as one of the most interesting cards printed in the expansion, and an early favorite of mine in the set's retail limited format.
4. I am somewhat surprised to see reasonable support for the ring tempting mechanic, which has played exactly how I thought it would: totally fine and uncompelling on Arena, and clunky and easy to make a mistake during your first draft in paper and totally fine - if a bit clunky - afterwards. Gollum here is particularly notable, as I don't think it compares all that well to the other ring bearers popular in powermax here.
Cube Survey Responses are out!!!
LTR Review
LTC Review
Want to shout out the great work @landofMordor always does with these articles, and loved the pod episode as always!
No real surprises here, but the ways the responses are so different than the strongly wtwlf-biased early rankings from my last post are always notable. It almost feels like these surveys represent one of the major philosophies about how to build a cube and the powermax folks occupy another and they're all very visible on the LuckyPaper Cube Map and my main cube funny enough sits nearly equidistant between them.
Biggest takeaway though: folks are still sleeping on The Balrog of Moria!!!!!! This might be one of the coolest RB cards we've ever gotten and you're still running Rakdos Cackler??? In 2023? That's OK and I don't judge but ?? (I run him too but I also run THE BALROG!)
LTR Review
LTC Review
Want to shout out the great work @landofMordor always does with these articles, and loved the pod episode as always!
No real surprises here, but the ways the responses are so different than the strongly wtwlf-biased early rankings from my last post are always notable. It almost feels like these surveys represent one of the major philosophies about how to build a cube and the powermax folks occupy another and they're all very visible on the LuckyPaper Cube Map and my main cube funny enough sits nearly equidistant between them.
Biggest takeaway though: folks are still sleeping on The Balrog of Moria!!!!!! This might be one of the coolest RB cards we've ever gotten and you're still running Rakdos Cackler??? In 2023? That's OK and I don't judge but ?? (I run him too but I also run THE BALROG!)
I have to say, the flavor of getting treasure tokens for cycling the balrog is pretty funny. Cycling lets you dig deeper into your deck, and digging deeper gets you treasures, and the treasures get you closer to casting (another copy of) the balrog!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
The Balrog kind of seems like a C+//B- Reanimator target. Is it really going to create more fun than R/B's other popular cards like Kroxa, Kolaghan's Command, and so on? I think The Balrog of Moria falls into the same category as some of R/B's other more niche cards like Ob Nixilis, the Adversery, Oni-Cult Anvil, and Grenzo, Dungeon Warden where it's an option on the table for Cubes where it makes sense, but it's not necessarily getting in everywhere without some macro-level support on the part of the designer.
What does this mean?
Not trying to sound sarcastic or anything, genuinely curious. Is it related to the American grade system in schools?
yeah it's based on school grades.
A+ being the best and F being the worst
A+ > A > A-
A+ being the best and F being the worst
A+ > A > A-
Chris Taylor
Contributor
NGL I had a lot more fun casting 2-3 mana reanimate spells on landcyclers than I ever did Entombing Griselbrand and still losing to a removal spell.
Troll of Khazad-dûm is really castable and pretty unblockable, and Gloomfang Mauler letting you split up the power is really nice (Put those counters on a Vampire Nighthawk last night in a lower power environment!)
Troll of Khazad-dûm is really castable and pretty unblockable, and Gloomfang Mauler letting you split up the power is really nice (Put those counters on a Vampire Nighthawk last night in a lower power environment!)
Lower power and then nighthawk would not be something I expect in the same sentence.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I mean, I think so. Nighthawk has ONE line of text. It does nothing if it's removed. It doesn't kill anyone quickly, it blocks okay, trades one for one if you engage in combat. It makes no additional resources (Unless you count life, which you're going to need some way to convert into a win)
It is no Adeline, no Laelia, no Fury, nor ragavan.
And those are all quite firmly in the post eldraine FIRE design magic, but it's also no Jace, Stoneforge, Ravager, Jitte or Emrakul.
Like sure, it's no Giant Trap Door Spider either (Pro tour top 8 competitor IIRC, back in the necropotence days) but even when printed, Nighthawk was like....fine.
It is no Adeline, no Laelia, no Fury, nor ragavan.
And those are all quite firmly in the post eldraine FIRE design magic, but it's also no Jace, Stoneforge, Ravager, Jitte or Emrakul.
Like sure, it's no Giant Trap Door Spider either (Pro tour top 8 competitor IIRC, back in the necropotence days) but even when printed, Nighthawk was like....fine.
Can you sell me one Wizard Rockets? I got a fancy full-arts on from the pre release.
my favorite reanimate target is probably thragtusk. you get the 5 life back!
It's mostly a delayed cantrip. You play it early or when you have excess mana, you cash it in if you need to fix or if you're just looking to draw an extra card. I had a bunch of limited games where I would just deploy it early with nothing better to do and sometimes just not even get around to it until the late game where I wanted to see another card. It's pretty much another Chromatic Star most of the time except being able to filter more easily.
It's a solid filler card, gets better with anything that cares for artifacts ala Goblin Welder or Emry, Lurker of the Loch.
Chromatic Star is a sick cantrip and Rockets is even better