Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[DirkGently]

I'm a bit low on Gríma, Saruman's Footman - Chaos Wand has consistently underperformed for me, so I value having some selection on my free stolen stuff pretty highly. It's possible that he's better in practice though, given that you don't have to spend extra mana on him.

It's free plus it comes stapled to a very solid sword-carrier. 4 is a nice mv for it since you can ramp on 2, play him on 3, and then play/equip a sword on 4.

The actual value of the ability is probably between 1-2 cards worth (though you do have to love those high rolls...), but that looks a lot better when you're getting it for free than when you're paying 4 for it every time. Evaluating the effect in a vacuum isn't really fair, the economy matters a lot.

I don't think you need to get a huge hit for it to be good in the context of Grima. Like if you always hit Rampant Growth or Ponder, I think that would be worthwhile, and those are pretty weak hits. If you play creature-light you can also minimize the number of total bricks by not minding wipes. And if you're playing voltron you'll be getting sword triggers even if you miss on his innate trigger.

Although one downside compared to chaos wand, at least when you're using him as a voltron, is that there's a potential bit of a conflict between who you want to kill and who is likely to have the best targets. Like if Jon is playing his Zaxara, the Exemplary deck, it's going to suck to swing at him lol.

[Dunharrow]

Frodo Baggins is a pretty good card. I am really happy with how it plays.

Aragorn, Company Leader is super cool, but since there are so few 'ring tempts you' cards it is basically a really good counter-theme general, and very little 'ring tempts you' triggers will happen. Still fun to play with.

Saruman of Many Colors is really not that impressive. You are too reliant on your opponents having good things.

[DirkGently]

Frodo Baggins is a pretty good card. I am really happy with how it plays.

In limited? Or in the 99? I have a hard time believing you mean in the CZ.

[Hawk]

Frodo Baggins is a pretty good card. I am really happy with how it plays.

In limited? Or in the 99? I have a hard time believing you mean in the CZ.

I'll say this for Frodo Baggins - there's only 49 cards that cause the Ring to Tempt You, and he's the only one of them that can easily and reliably trigger more than once per turn cycle. Bilbo, Retired Burglar requires a lot of flickering/blinking, Sauron, Lord of the Rings is hard capped by your opponent's commander access and your ability to kill them, and everything else is an instant or sorcery, a permanent that does it only on EtB/death, or has some sort of limiting text like "At the beginning of your end step" or "when ~ attacks".

That being said, I don't think the Ring is good enough to care that much about it even though a deck based around it clearly wants it in the command zone. Frodo Baggins at your helm means you just have Aragorn, Company Leader as your primary pay-off for ring play, and don't get to have access to stuff like Sméagol, Helpful Guide, Call of the Ring, Ringwraiths, or Frodo, Sauron's Bane as strong pay-offs for tempting. If you want to utilize the mechanic it seems to me that Sauron, the Dark Lord and Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit // Sam, Loyal Attendant are the ways to go since they make the mechanic as a whole better as strong payoffs that also have a way to tempt.

[Guardman]

Frodo Baggins is probably the best Ring enabler. And if you are playing a lot of creatures that wouldn't mind getting skulk, I could easily see Frodo as a good commander choice. The Ring might not be game ending, but it is a great smoothing mechanic. Frodo is probably one of the better legends in the set because of these two facts. At the very least, he is an easy cheap payoff that encourages unique deck building.

[Dunharrow]

Frodo Baggins is a pretty good card. I am really happy with how it plays.

In limited? Or in the 99? I have a hard time believing you mean in the CZ.

I put him in the 99 and was pretty happy with how he performed. Honestly the 'provoke' aspect to him can help you snipe some creatures (and there are always some worth killing) and even just looting is decent.
I will say that Aragorn, Company Leader is at his best with Frodo out.

[TheGildedGoose]

Relic of Sauron is really good, actually. A big mana rock that doesn't enter tapped and taps for colored mana of any type you need and generates card advantage in the late game? I'm going to have to build a big rock Grixis deck now. With Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and even Prismatic Geoscope there are a decent amount of these to run to fulfill a niche role in nongreen late game ramp decks.

[Mookie]

Relic of Sauron is really good, actually. A big mana rock that doesn't enter tapped and taps for colored mana of any type you need and generates card advantage in the late game? I'm going to have to build a big rock Grixis deck now. With Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and even Prismatic Geoscope there are a decent amount of these to run to fulfill a niche role in nongreen late game ramp decks.

Yeah, I like it a lot for Kess - generates mana, draws cards, fills the graveyard... lots of good stuff. It's a bit more fragile than Skyclave Relic, but definitely worth consideration.

[DirkGently]

The value in these boosters is so bad lol. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the packs were normally priced. Draft participation is ROUGH. The second prerelease we only had 4 people, and both FNM and saturday release-weekend drafts have had 4 people - including the TO who played to make the event fire.

@Dunharrow yeah if you're trying to fill up ways to get tempt triggers he is a rare repeated source. Not many people playing Aragorn company leader though. And besides Frodo are there many reasons to play legends in that build?

@Guardman Sauron, the Dark Lord seems like the obvious best commander for a tempt-focused deck. He gives both setup and payoff and does something that's at least potentially good in commander.

Frodo is very very very small ball. Creatures that want skulk? Okay, but it's a pretty weak form of evasion and you only get to give it to one creature anyway. Sure, Frodo can give looting, but that requires at least one additional legend. He makes more sense in the 99 to me - and to be clear I think he's extremely niche in the 99 as well.

The 3 other frodos are okay though. Frodo, Determined Hero is maybe the best mono-white voltron commander, and Frodo, Sauron's Bane can OHK people relatively easily I think. I'm not that big on the partner version but it's a lot stronger than the uncommon, and also sets up a tempt deck if you really want to use that mechanic in particular.

@TheGildedGoose its a very nice card…with very annoying CI restrictions. Without that damnable blue pip it'd jump into my Kaervek deck posthaste. As-is, pretty niche.

[Dunharrow]

The value in these boosters is so bad lol. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the packs were normally priced. Draft participation is ROUGH. The second prerelease we only had 4 people, and both FNM and saturday release-weekend drafts have had 4 people - including the TO who played to make the event fire.

that's unfortunate! I know in Montreal a couple stores started dropping prerelease prices last weekend as they realized they weren't going to sell as many kits.
I think long-term the value will be decent. Like in 10 years. Because none of this will be reprinted and magic will continue to grow. But right now it's really low value. They definitely should have included some better lands IMO. That would have been a start.
The One Ring seems really powerful to me so far. Might be the best card in the set.

@Dunharrow yeah if you're trying to fill up ways to get tempt triggers he is a rare repeated source. Not many people playing Aragorn company leader though. And besides Frodo are there many reasons to play legends in that build?

Not as many as I would like, but definitely enough for it to be a theme.
Shalai, Voice of Plenty
Arwen, Weaver of Hope
Hamza, Guardian of Arashin
Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion
Mikaeus, the Lunarch
Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
Boromir, Warden of the Tower
Samwise the Stouthearted
- that covers cards that synergize with Aragorn


But then you can get into generically good legendary creatures. Toski, Bearer of Secrets, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Loran of the Third Path... Thalias and Elesh Norns.. Kataki, Teeg, Skrelv, Defector Mite

Put it this way - only Frodo is going to enable you to have a first strike deathtouch vigilance creature in play.

[DirkGently]

Put it this way - only Frodo is going to enable you to have a first strike deathtouch vigilance creature in play.

I think Aragorn is probably more effective to brew by ignoring the tempt trigger, but I'm a sucker for ability counters and FS + DT + LL + vigilance is a preeeetty sweet combo. It's a combo that takes a lot of effort to assemble, doesn't accelerate your clock, and gets blown up by any random removal spell, but I can definitely understand wanting to live that dream. It's too bad you don't have black for Call of the Ring.

Anyway I can definitely see Frodo having a niche role in decks like that, no disagreement there. But I do think that qualifies as extremely niche, and I do think running him at the helm sounds really underwhelming. But, as I say, the other Frodos are in the "decent" to "pretty strong" range, so it's not like you can't make a good Frodo deck. I'm just kinda annoyed that the best name (imo) got used on the least playable version.

---

To put a bit of a coda on the many-versions issue, I can understand why it was done the way it was done a bit better now that I have a thorough understanding of where each version of each character can be found. There are 4 Frodos, yes, but only 2 are available in draft, 1 in the commander precon, and 1 in the starter decks. I think those starter decks cards in particular are really confusing because afaik they haven't really done anything like that since the old PW decks, and they share the same set symbol etc etc, plus the jumpstart cards (which were more expected but also add to the confusion). In the actual draft, I don't think anyone has more than 3 versions, and anyone not-named-Gandalf has at most 2 versions (I think). So within that context, it's not really that bad. But I do think it looks fairly ridiculous from a constructed POV when there are so many different versions that are all apparently part of the same set, and the plethora of different products just adds to the confusion.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

The value in these boosters is so bad lol. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the packs were normally priced. Draft participation is ROUGH. The second prerelease we only had 4 people, and both FNM and saturday release-weekend drafts have had 4 people - including the TO who played to make the event fire.

that's unfortunate! I know in Montreal a couple stores started dropping prerelease prices last weekend as they realized they weren't going to sell as many kits.
I think long-term the value will be decent. Like in 10 years. Because none of this will be reprinted and magic will continue to grow. But right now it's really low value. They definitely should have included some better lands IMO. That would have been a start.

That's kinda wild, because where I'm at its the opposite. The LotR prereleases here were so popular they had to offer additional days to participate because the fri/sat/sun tickets had all sold out. When I went to my LGS on Wednesday to play EDH, we actually had to forfeit our table (in a fairly massive game room too) to make more room for their prerelease players. When I left, there had to have been at least 80 people there. For a Wednesday prerelease. Wild times.

[duducrash]

Here too. The lgs I went too fired back to back pre releases until sunday when they had no more kits to do so, and then did a sealed thing that also fired at least twice

[ironic gesture]

I'm in California and our largest LGS had big turnouts for all prereleases and also draft for fnm last night (which relegated us commander players to a side room for the first time in memory).

[Dunharrow]

The value in these boosters is so bad lol. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the packs were normally priced. Draft participation is ROUGH. The second prerelease we only had 4 people, and both FNM and saturday release-weekend drafts have had 4 people - including the TO who played to make the event fire.

that's unfortunate! I know in Montreal a couple stores started dropping prerelease prices last weekend as they realized they weren't going to sell as many kits.
I think long-term the value will be decent. Like in 10 years. Because none of this will be reprinted and magic will continue to grow. But right now it's really low value. They definitely should have included some better lands IMO. That would have been a start.

That's kinda wild, because where I'm at its the opposite. The LotR prereleases here were so popular they had to offer additional days to participate because the fri/sat/sun tickets had all sold out. When I went to my LGS on Wednesday to play EDH, we actually had to forfeit our table (in a fairly massive game room too) to make more room for their prerelease players. When I left, there had to have been at least 80 people there. For a Wednesday prerelease. Wild times.

To reiterate - my LGS was charging 45$ for prerelease and was full.
Two others were charging 60$ and started dropping prices on Saturday.
(Canadian dollars)

I think Montreal has too many LGSs and some bigger stores thought they could get away with higher prices and just lost business to smaller stores.

[DirkGently]

To reiterate - my LGS was charging 45$ for prerelease and was full.
Two others were charging 60$ and started dropping prices on Saturday.
(Canadian dollars)

I think all stores in NZ were doing $70 NZD prereleases. Less than 60 Canadian, but only by a couple bucks. Really hurts when you know it's basically impossible to get even close to that in value.

Draft have been 30-35, but both places I play allow 3 packs + $10 and I have a lot of extra packs from my league winnings.

[yeti1069]

Finding myself very interested in Sméagol, Helpful Guide, but not sure if it warrants building its own deck, or merely being worked into my existing Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck (which itself warrants some alterations of late in any case).

In particular, the idea of running the Nazgûl alongside Smeagol looks interesting (if not necessarily good). Has anyone else been looking at this?

So far the other cards I'm interested in building around, like Sauron, the Dark Lord, I'm holding off on until after I get some play time in with the commander precons (if they ever arrive), and are likely going to be edits to those decks, rather than all new ones.

[DirkGently]

Am I missing something or is Sail into the West just about the worst card ever? Symmetrical AND the table gets to vote? Why would anyone play this card?

And then to add insult to injury, the recursion mode self-exiles (what are we worried about here? Time warp recursion combos? Won't you just get outvoted?) and the wheel mode is optional so it can't disrupt enemy hands.

[onering]

And the art, like so much of this set, is more WoW than LotR

[GuJiaXian]

Am I missing something or is Sail into the West just about the worst card ever? Symmetrical AND the table gets to vote? Why would anyone play this card?

And then to add insult to injury, the recursion mode self-exiles (what are we worried about here? Time warp recursion combos? Won't you just get outvoted?) and the wheel mode is optional so it can't disrupt enemy hands.

I think the card is intended for political and group-hug strategies.

And the art, like so much of this set, is more WoW than LotR

I suppose some of it is. I have to assume that the WotC art department found it difficult to find their own take on Middle Earth that didn't mimic Alan Lee, the Hildebrandts, the film adaptations, and so on. Also, for better or worse, WoW with its massive pauldrons and such has strongly influenced what younger generations expect of fantasy art.

[DirkGently]

I think the card is intended for political

No.

and group-hug strategies.

that's an oxymoron.

[Venedrex]

And the art, like so much of this set, is more WoW than LotR

I'd say its more like ChatGPT (Yes I know they don't use it in digital art let me be snide. As far as I know anyway, for WOTC) than WoW. Glorfindel, Dauntless Rescuer looks like a triangle. That's the effect of digital art done badly, not big pauldrons. Although he does have big pauldrons. But that's not what makes that art bad, it's the fact that his face is and body look like someone tried to intentionally achieve the uncanny valley effect, or the perspective is wrong, or he has no depth, I dunno I'm not an artist. But I can tell bad art when I see it.

Meriadoc Brandybuck, or Pippin's Bravery are examples of why I dislike the art in this set. It just looks off to me.

TLDR, don't blame World of Warcraft for leading to LOTR MTG having choppy digital art. That's like blaming Avengers Endgame for why Quantumania has bad CGI. Quantumania has bad CGI because they rushed the artists and forced them to churn it out at light-speed, not because a past CGI fest influenced them negatively. It was also a bad movie in general, imho, but I digress.

Its the same reason most of the alchemy art is.... bad, it's the slush and digital art that didn't make the cut for "real cards".

[yeti1069]

I think a lot of the art in the set is fantastic, but agree that some is pretty terrible. Maybe due to more art being commissioned here than for a normal set? I imagine there was a shallower pool of stockpiled art that could be used, and basically every reprint across the set and commander decks got new work done, right?

[yeti1069]

I think the card is intended for political

No.

and group-hug strategies.

that's an oxymoron.

While I also think the card is pretty bad, it can absolutely be used politically, and while I hate group hug decks, this certainly seems like a perfect fit for that style of deck.

Conversely, you can also make this a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of card. If you're running effects that exile graveyards and punish/steal/turn off extra draws, it can read as either you get 2 cards from your yard, or you wheel and everyone else discards their hands and draws 0 or 1 cards. I think there are certainly better cards for this approach, but I can see it.

Also...One With Nothing exists.

[GuJiaXian]

and group-hug strategies.

that's an oxymoron.

How so? Is it that a group-hug situation cannot be strategic? Or is it the idea of a "group hug?"