Of all the new Magic cards spoiled from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, the most eye-catching is The One Ring itself. Potent, mechanically unique and with a mind-bogglingly valuable serialized Elvish printing to be found who wouldn’t be tempted by such a treasure?!  All I’m saying is if my cousin was as annoying as Deagol, I’d probably ... Read More...

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth brings us the newest Magic mechanic “The Ring Tempts You.” Naturally, once players saw the ring tempts you in stages on a track that exists outside the game, comparisons to the Initiative mechanic started flowing.  Is being tempted by the ring going to be as format defining in Modern as taking the ... Read More...

For most Magic sets, the proportion of players that care about the flavor of the cards is relatively low compared to those who seek to evaluate them for their gameplay potential — but for Tales of Middle-earth, that’s very much not the case. Lord of the Rings is a cultural classic, and for every Magic player who loves those stories, ... Read More...

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth is our first Universes Beyond set that goes straight to Modern. Since it’s unprecedented, players have wondered since its original announcement how it would pan out in the format. Well, today we’re taking a look at three cards that could change up the format and open new styles of decks. Stern Scolding ... Read More...

While Commander’s grassroots origins make it different from many other Magic formats, it still has a ban list like the rest of them. However, since Commander is not a format with tons of tournament data to back up banning certain cards, some players are unsure why certain offenders end up on the list. Today, we’re going to look at Upheaval ... Read More...

Jump-Start appears on instants and sorceries, and functions from the graveyard. When a card with it is in your graveyard, you may cast that spell by paying its mana cost and discarding a card from your hand as an additional cost. You still have to follow any normal timing restrictions on the card. If you do cast a card using ... Read More...

Quick question for the Commander players in the audience: without checking, what percentage of cards in your deck non-permanents? Does 50% sound right? 75%? Even higher? I know there’s some blue/red spellslinger players or cEDH decks with tons of instant interaction helping keep the averages down, but I’d guess most other decks the number is closer to 80% than 50%. ... Read More...