MTG Salvation

I love the lands with the map of middle earth. I wouldn't be surprised if they also sell the full artwork as a panorama.

Man, I really don't like Universes Beyond... but I can grudgingly admit these are kind of cool.

The one ring and Aeon Hub BFF. Although honestly, that title probably should go to Mind Over Matter, for infinite cards.

I love those lands

Gandalf seems pretty mediocre, but the One Ring seems potentially good and definitely on theme. I would have thought "Spirit Wizard" or just "Wizard" for Gandalf, but "Avatar Wizard" does make sense.

The one ring infinites with mind over matter

Quote from Ryperior74 »

The one ring infinites with mind over matter

Well, not infinite... you die (or win) after you draw your deck. But yeah. MoM can do lots of nuts things.

It's not quite "draw your deck in one turn" but I'm salivating at the one ring for my Vilis, Broker of Blood commander deck... with or without Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

Quote from sleeper agent 2.0 »

Quote from Ryperior74 »

The one ring infinites with mind over matter

Well, not infinite... you die (or win) after you draw your deck. But yeah. MoM can do lots of nuts things.

Notably, you can't necessarily draw your entire deck. You can draw only certain numbers of cards (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78), meaning there are situations where your Laboratory Maniac is, say, the 79th card in your deck and you'll need a backup plan.

See, this is where Universes Beyond annoys me. If they didn't do as much of it in such a shameless way I could get behind it more. Instead of doing occasional crossovers that feel special and carefully chosen, they feel more churned out and more of a cash grab. I also like the idea of a LotR set that they are doing here but it feels like first and foremost just another dart they're throwing at the board to try to pick up as many audiences as possible. Like, a crossover set is always going to be decided based on cashing in on the success of the other property over it being a labour of love, because capitalism, but it would be nice if it felt like they were trying a little harder with it.

Anyway, I do like the lands, it's a cool aesthetic choice to go with the world, I wonder what the other land arts will be like.
The One Ring is a flavourful and fun risk/reward card. Slightly surprised it doesn't have 'the ring tempts you' mechanic that was on the leaked frodo card.
Gandalf is interesting. The first two modes seem kinda weak given you can't spam them, third mode seems the easiest to get use of, fourth mode is a downside that I guess you can activate as a way to keep recurring him especially if he's about to die. Hmm.

I'm a bit torn on the lands. On first glance they look great and I like the idea to go with the map here. On the other hand, the focus seems a bit off for most of them.

• The Shire works well as plains flavorwise, but they could have chosen the section of the map better, the one they went with is bit too wooded (feels more like a WG dual land imo)
• The island mostly works, though an actual island instead of a coastline would fit even better. Numenor would be an option here
• Mordor's landscape strikes me as more of a mountain area than swamp (again feels more like a BR dual land), but it probably works for the color scheme and "eternaly shadowed land of the dark lord" flavor
• The mountain is all over the place... it's mountains, woods, plains and a bit of sea, nothing of which feels really dominant here. Strongest argument would be the written "white mountains", but that feels like writing "mountain" with a sharpie on an island and calling it a day. Going by the art alone, I would guess it's not a swamp, but otherwise it could be pretty much everything
• The forest feels pretty evenly split between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains (im repeating myself, but yeah, feels like a RG dual land). Just moving the map section a bit to center more on the actual forest would fix this imo

Again, I like the general look, but for me, focussing more on terrain fitting the actual land types and/or "zooming in" on the map a bit would have worked better here then trying to cram all relevant locations onto the cards.

The One Ring is just annoying with blink strategies.

Here's to hoping all of the cards are mostly junk, but I'm sure WotC shoved at least half a dozen broken cards in here just because.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

The one ring infinites with mind over matter

Eh, Throw Platinum Emperion or Platinum Angel in there.

Yeah, still not into UB and every release drives me futher to returning to MtG as a game, because I'm just not interested in playing Smash Bros: The Card Game. (Talking about casual play)

Aside from personal preferences, the cards are neat I guess. For the Ring, I feel like it would've been more flavorful to be able to repeat the "putting it on" ability, since the invisibility part is pretty much the only clear-cut "ability" the ring grants in the story. I don't see why it gives you knowledge. But then again, easily repeatable protection from everything for a turn would probably have been too powerful.

Kind of confused on Gandalf... Does each of those triggers trigger only once per turn or ONLY once while he's out?

If it's only once each time he's out the only way to get constant uses out of him are to blink him.

Might make an Izzet blink Commander deck.

Gandalf being a Avatar is a nice touch :). The lands are okay. I am not crazy about them.

Quote from KickinChicken »

Kind of confused on Gandalf... Does each of those triggers trigger only once per turn or ONLY once while he's out?

If it's only once each time he's out the only way to get constant uses out of him are to blink him.

Might make an Izzet blink Commander deck.

Only once. It's the same phrasing as Sol'Kanar the Tainted with a different trigger.

Quote from Dontrike »

The One Ring is just annoying with blink strategies.

Well, the 'if you cast it' clause means you can't only recur it with return to hand or the like and not blink.

These are ****IN' SWEET. Just like the Warhammer decks. BUUUUT it still doesn't justify watering down magic into a catch-all property. Can we just copy-paste that into every thread until spoiler season ends?

jk, spoiler season never ends.

Quote from DJK3654 »

Quote from Dontrike »

The One Ring is just annoying with blink strategies.

Well, the 'if you cast it' clause means you can't only recur it with return to hand or the like and not blink.

Yep, I'm stupid. Totally forgot about it as I posted hours after reading it.

I can't quite place it, but Gandalf being Blue/Red just doesn't feel right to me. It feel more like Wizards saying "Wizards are Blue/Red so Gandalf is Blue/Red." rather than what alignment his personality would be. I'm pretty sure there will be a Gandalf the White that will be Jeskai but Gandalf always felt like a White/Green character with a splash of blue in him.

Quote from DarthRevan0609 »

I can't quite place it, but Gandalf being Blue/Red just doesn't feel right to me. It feel more like Wizards saying "Wizards are Blue/Red so Gandalf is Blue/Red." rather than what alignment his personality would be. I'm pretty sure there will be a Gandalf the White that will be Jeskai but Gandalf always felt like a White/Green character with a splash of blue in him.

I realize this is the wrong book, but there's got to be some red in the guy that shows up unannounced with a bunch of dwarves who trash your house and take you off on some quest.

Quote from Grixh »

Quote from DarthRevan0609 »

I can't quite place it, but Gandalf being Blue/Red just doesn't feel right to me. It feel more like Wizards saying "Wizards are Blue/Red so Gandalf is Blue/Red." rather than what alignment his personality would be. I'm pretty sure there will be a Gandalf the White that will be Jeskai but Gandalf always felt like a White/Green character with a splash of blue in him.

I realize this is the wrong book, but there's got to be some red in the guy that shows up unannounced with a bunch of dwarves who trash your house and take you off on some quest.

There's got to be a little red in you if you 1v1 a Balrog too hehe

Gandalf definitely has layers. And while I think there is an argument for green-white, as you say, checking the custom cards made for the character in the past certainly only seems to indicate one thing: Gandalf doesn't belong into black.