Sets (LTR) The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth

Velrun

Velrun

Onderzeeboot said:
To be fair, they only stopped doing blocks like, what, five years ago?
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Pretty accurate.
The last block that was an actual block was Ixalan + Rivals of Ixalan from September 2017 and January 2018.
It was a 2-set block.

Before 2-set blocks they did 3-set blocks for two decades.
The last 3-set block was Khans of Tarkir + Fate Reforged + Dragons of Tarkir from September 2014, January 2015 and March 2015.

Magic's first block was Mirage + Visions + Weatherlight from October 1996, February 1997 and June 1997.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Rusje said:
Do I remember it wrong that the ring has many downsides?
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This is one of those "it's up to interpretation" things, since Tolkien tended to be pretty vague about what his magic does.

However, the way I interpret it is that the Ring itself has only one drawback (the fact that it's sentient, malicious, and desires to be reunited with Sauron). Everything else is actually just a side effect of its core temptation (which is enhancing your natural abilities and tendencies, not invisibility per se — remember that all three of the characters that we see turn invisible when they put it on are hobbits, who are noted for being naturally stealthy). If you actually look at the story, there's surprisingly little fighting over the Ring itself (outside of the central conflict, which can be summarized as "Sauron would like the bling that he shoved a good portion of his natural power into, please and thank you") — you essentially just have Smeagol killing Deagol and Boromir demanding the Ring from Frodo. There are some other minor instances (from Bilbo, Frodo, and Smeagol), but in all of those cases they each had the Ring for years... but those are the only two instances of people fighting over it.

The Ring is fundamentally about the temptation of evil/power, which doesn't really work if the drawbacks come into play immediately. Heck, it's important to consider that the mechanic is called tempted by the Ring and not, say, possession of the Ring. It's offering power so you do stupid stuff and take it closer to Sauron.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Mown said:
Do you think that maybe you're setting the bar a bit low if any piece of equipment that grants evasion is considered to sufficiently capture the one ring?
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That's not actually what I said. If you look at the Ring mechanic right now (your ring-bearer starts with the ability to become invisible and then grows progressively more powerful as the ring tempts you until it either dies or loses the ring), it's honestly not a bad approximation for what the One Ring actually does. Sure, there's a whole lot more it could do, and it doesn't fully capture the negative aspects of the ring beyond making the opponent want to find and kill your ring-bearer, but I think that would be hard to capture in a way that is fun and not broken. WOTC worked on this set for like 3 years, which is about 50% longer than the normal development cycle for a Magic set. Given how the Tempted by the Ring mechanic fits in with the rest of the set so far, I don't think they would have gone this route if it didn't make for decent gameplay.
Mown said:
One of, if not the, major defining trait of it is that everyone wants it. It's an object that people fight over, obsess over. We have several of those in magic already, between Coveted Jewel, Contested War Zone, Avarice Amulet and the monarch mechanic. The ringbearer isn't something you fight over, just something you try to get rid of, and ideally without putting anything in its way since they'll get edicted.
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The problem is that the "trade control" mechanics don't play well in 1v1 (see: several years of people complaining about The Monarch and ~ 1 year of the initiative taking over eternal formats), so trying to do something like that for this set which is designed to be playable with only two players doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense.

Mown said:
With how high of a complexity budget the mechanic has, I can't see this execution of it as anything but rather mediocre. (Although I must admit I like it more than Rusje's wall of text.)
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That's fine. I honestly didn't love how the mechanic read either before getting to see how it fit in with the rest of the set. Even now, I'm still probably not including any cards that tempt players with the Ring simply because I don't need the extra complexity. But I don't agree with the notion that this mechanic is a major flavor failure as many are insisting. I think it does a reasonable job of capturing many of the core components of the One Ring's abilities, given the constraints of the set and Magic's rules system. Arguably the biggest problem with the mechanic is that it's not powerful enough to mirror the mythos of The One Ring... which is probably for the best, considering that this set is going to exist as part of Magic forever now.
 
Velrun

Velrun

I think I will run this card



And of course The Ring itself which has nothing to do with the mechanic



I have tested the enchantment in 1v1 Duel Commander and it’s very strong. You might consider it @blacksmithy
 
Zoss

Zoss

Blistering hot centrist take here, but I think I need to try The Ring Tempts You before I make any decisions about it in the same way that I needed to play a bit of AFR to understand Dungeons--and I mean this on both mechanical and flavor axes. There are some mechanics we can draw good analogies between like Prototype and Kicker, but then there are some mechanics like Companion that are nothing like existing mechanics, and I think the ring's call is one of the most extreme examples of the latter we've seen in comparison with the pool of existing mechanics at the time of its release. I agree that on paper it looks underwhelming (again, both on flavor and mechanics), but I also know that I'm a bad enough player that I can't evaluate it fully until I've seen how it ticks. Incubate seemed like a flavor fail until I tried it, for example, and that turned out to be an incredibly threatening mechanic that gives your opponent that sense of looming dread that came out of Infect. I'm genuinely on the fence here and could see it being either great or terrible! That said, I imagine I'd want to include multiple cards if I'm including one and that makes me a little less enthusiastic about this mechanics future in my cube regardless of its flavorful failings or successes




On topic, does anyone still run Human tribal? Theoden looks like a great intersection of a lot of themes that hit WR, with the double strike working especially well with equipped creatures and the ETB triggers working well with White' blink themes, kind of like a fixed Winota (though they'd be gross together). Does anyone else have visions of using this to make you Monastery Swiftspear hit for 6 or 8? Because I sure do.

j7qugry8ls3b1.jpg
 
Velrun

Velrun

Look at this

We magic players like our legendary artifacts with spherical art :p This one looks epic.

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Palantir of Orthanc {3}
Legendary Artifact (Mythic Rare)
At the beginning of your end step, put a influence counter on Palantir of Orthanc and scry 2. Then target opponent may have you draw a card. If that player doesn't, you mill X cards, where X is the number of influence counters on Palantir of Orthanc, and that player loses life equal to the total mana value of those cards.
 
Velrun

Velrun

About the talk of the ring and the temptation

It looks like Wizards has decided the temptation of the ring is pure upside. And the actual ring also has downsides.

Does that make sense to you?
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Zoss said:
On topic, does anyone still run Human tribal? Theoden looks like a great intersection of a lot of themes that hit WR, with the double strike working especially well with equipped creatures and the ETB triggers working well with White' blink themes, kind of like a fixed Winota (though they'd be gross together). Does anyone else have visions of using this to make you Monastery Swiftspear hit for 6 or 8? Because I sure do.

View attachment 8368
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Considering this is basically a 2/3 that gives something double strike when it enters, I think you can try and just run "incidental tribal" in white and red, which seems pretty doable. I'm pretty interested in trying the card out.
 
Rusje

Rusje

Velrun said:
About the talk of the ring and the temptation

It looks like Wizards has decided the temptation of the ring is pure upside. And the actual ring also has downsides.

Does that make sense to you?
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Unpopular opinion but no. Suppose you steal the ring from one of your friends. How do you think the rest of your shared posse will react to you?
 
Velrun

Velrun

Rusje said:
Unpopular opinion but no. Suppose you steal the ring from one of your friends. How do you think the rest of your shared posse will react to you?
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Theft of the ring?
or Temptation of the ring?

I think they are not going to react kindly to stealing. But temptation can be understandable in some cases.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Velrun said:
About the talk of the ring and the temptation

It looks like Wizards has decided the temptation of the ring is pure upside. And the actual ring also has downsides.

Does that make sense to you?
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Yes, because they're supposed to represent different things.

Tempted by the Ring is supposed to represent what happens when one of your creatures is holding the Ring. They end up becoming of increased importance and start gaining more power for as long as they're holding the Ring. If they lose the ring, they end up losing the power they had while it was in their possession.

The Single Pringle is supposed to represent what happens to you while you're using the Ring. The more you give into the Ring's power, the more you're hurt. But if you don't really use the ring, you're fine.

I read MaRo's first design article about this set today, and apparently, the "Tempted by the Ring" mechanic used to just be called "Choose a Ringbearer." It was changed because the new name was deemed more flavorful. While I agree "Tempted by the Ring" is a cooler name than "Choose a Ringbearer," I think the latter does a better job of reflecting what the mechanic actually does. Tempted by the Ring makes it sound like you, the player, is being affected by the Ring's influence, when the mechanic is actually showing what happens when a Creature is holding the Ring. I definitely think most of the negative feelings surrounding the flavor of the Tempted by the Ring mechanic wouldn't be as strong if it was still just called "Choose a Ringbearer."

I do wonder if the mechanic would have been more well received if what tempting actually did was revealed at the same time as the line of text on a card. The fact that we had a month to speculate about what "Tempted by the Ring" meant, only to get something that completely diverges from most expectations, is driving some amount of the bitterness towards the mechanic.
 
Velrun

Velrun

TrainmasterGT said:
Tempted by the Ring is supposed to represent what happens when one of your creatures is holding the Ring.

The One Ring is supposed to represent what happens to you while you're using the Ring.
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Disclaimer: I have changed your quote so the above isn’t your exact words. I did this to highlight what I am replying to now :)

Ah yes. Of course! I should know this and I should have thought of this. I even made the exact same point a few weeks back in another thread. Artifacts are our tools. Equipments are our summoned units’ tools. Thank you Train.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Arwen-Mortal-Queen-LTR-672.jpg

This seems somewhere between "deent" and "great." I don't know how often you're going to be activating the ability, but a baseline 2/2 Indestructible that can throw a bunch of power and Lifelink around seems very good. This also has some nice synergy with Proliferate. I might be testing this if it's not too much money!
 
Brad

Brad

TrainmasterGT said:
Arwen-Mortal-Queen-LTR-672.jpg

This seems somewhere between "deent" and "great." I don't know how often you're going to be activating the ability, but a baseline 2/2 Indestructible that can throw a bunch of power and Lifelink around seems very good. This also has some nice synergy with Proliferate.
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Seems very deent and reinforces some sort of sticky GW aggro.
TrainmasterGT said:
I might be testing this if it's not too much money!
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Proxy gang #fuckwotc
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
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This is kinda sick, right? I certainly don't run any legends this doesn't fix for on it's own, so you could splash some cool shit I'm sure

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Not bad! Hardly the best statline, but the fact you get a trigger when you play him is pretty solid.

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Scratch one off MARO's bingo card, we have our legendary instant :p
This doesn't seem great, but I'm not sure what would really tip the balance of "You need to control a creature, let alone a legendary one" for it to feel good in draft. That would be SOME density.

Sick flavor though. Cutting their hand down to size is one of those "oh yeah, he did literally do that!" moments in game design that just works for me even if the flavor of discarding cards doesn't usually overlap with dismemberment.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
But do they have reminder text :p
Huh, would ward normally have reminder text here or has it passed into the realm flying sits in?
 
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