2:04:32 just a small remark: Celeborn is pronounced as Keleborn and not Seleborn. Third option is of course just to call him with his name in the Telerin language, which is "Teleporno", if that is easier to remember.
I was so skeptical and assumed that they would mess up this universe's beyond idea....but this set up but actually seems like the perfect amount of draftabilitly and nods to the source material. So actually interested to see how this set plays out and ages.
With cards like Long List of the Ents, that are amazing on T1 and awful later, gotta consider that ring tempting gives everybody easy access to looting. High upside cards like these are significantly better in this set, since you can pretty much always loot them away.
I don't play any limited whatsoever but I love your limited set reviews. Hearing your analysis and reactions to cards is a great way to spend my time. Hope to see more.
That it's based on the book makes this a lot more interesting actually for me. I enjoy the movies but I'm cool to see a different take on it with this set.
I love the LR content and religiously watch the set reviews and am very grateful to have them however it would be amazing if you guys could sync up the overlay that shows the cards with the ones you’re talking about. It’s very difficult for me to follow along without seeing it
Yup, same here, big fan, but it's extremely difficult for me to "listen to a card" and my brain parses it much better when I can read it myself, so it's kind of bad when they forget to put up the card they are talking about (and that happens rather often...)
It’s never really gotten any better either, it’s incredibly distracting and I hope they see these messages and fix the issue because these set reviews are awesome
It's nice that they realized food is at best annoying and not that great, because man oh man does it suck. Same for scry's "I just need these 5 cards to never be targeted" stuff.
Yeah, in hindsight the UG elf-deck just needed multiple pieces to really pay off. The payoffs are all on the rares/uncommons and the actual triggers are few; there's a common 1/3 that swings once per turn, a common 4-drop that ETBs and that's it, a rare that's NOT IN THE DRAFT SETS, an overpriced ability on your uncommon, a rare saga, and a few sorceries you're unlikely to draft tons of. There's a couple other things that scry in colorless (Lembas, Mirror) but ugh... the mirror is expensive as hell to trigger the scry and the lembas I'm not excited to play. If it pays off, sure... but it's so susceptible to getting sniped with removal spells, especially out of black, and just getting shafted on the draft part of the process. There may just not be an Elrond in your pod. There may not even be an Arwen in your pod! Later in the set I found the green stuff was more playable in paper, if only because people are passing all the green stuff so you can likely assemble more pieces than your opponents can of red/black or blue/black. It's possible to win but feels uphill as heck. Meanwhile the green-white food archetype's game plan is "maybe I'll draw out this round if I go to turns because I take forever to lose". A couple of the pieces in white-green are okay but it's all the ones that avoid food lol. Frodo and Aragorn make a nice little combo to keep the Tempts coming and soup up your legends, but that might as well be "get Great Hall of the Citadel and go 5-color Legends".
The Bath Song is from when the Hobbits had left Hobbiton and spent the night in Bucklberry. They sang a song and had a great dinner. Then set out on the real quest in the morning into the forest
Frodo eats 1/1s at lvl 1. Stage one of the ring stops the bigger creatures from blocking him, so if the only 1 power creature they have is a 1/1, Frodo can force it to block.
1:54:20 Entish Restoration isn't a strict upgrade to Harrow, because the lands come in tapped. One of the somewhat-common play patterns with Harrow is to play a Harrow into a 2-drop on 3 or a 3-drop on 4, but you can't do that here. That said, I still like the Restoration's upside more than Harrow's untap feature.
Also of note for prerelease weekend, specifically 2-headed giant, is being hit by a full tempted creature is going to be 6 damage plus the power of the unblocked creature, or the amount of power that trampled through if the Ringbearer got trample.
I think Long list of the Ents is going to be really good. I actually think it’ll play well in the late game. It’s one mana, make all the rest of your topdecks better.
They didn't note that chapter 1 of the saga triggers the turn you play it. So when you draw it in the mid or late game, if you have any creature you're going to cast that turn, it will get a +1/+1 counter.
I was so skeptical and assumed that they would mess up this universe's beyond idea....but this set up but actually seems like the perfect amount of draftabilitly and nods to the source material. So actually interested to see how this set plays out and ages.
Honestly, I'm kind of done with those "rulebook token/emblem" type of mechanics. I already barely remember 20% of what the Undercity does and the effects on the Ring just aren't that intuitive either. Really hope none of those cards is strong enough for cube, I just groan whenever I see one of those in my pack. Horrible new player experience too. I could really do without them.
But whats the problem? Nobody needs to know what the undercity does, MTGO and arena will just tell you. In paper, 99% of the time you are provided the rules token in draft events or the player who is using these mechanics will know whats going on. Its not that hard :D
@@ich3730 There are a lot of problems. (Excuse the wall of text, but this has been a topic that has been bothering me for a while) 1.) Reading the cards doesn't tell you what they do anymore. We have that issue to a slight degree with keywords already, hence why they tend to write-out keywords in sets where there are not enough cards to have reminder text on them. With Initiative and the Ring, there CAN'T be reminder text cause it wouldn't fit. 2.) They are the opposite of "lenticular design" (MaRo talks about this a lot): Magic's best designed cards tend to be seemingly simple effects with a lot of depth to them. Look at Giant Growth, the OG of magic design philosophy. One line of text, so many possibilities. On the other hand, last time I heard LSV talk about dungeons for forgotten realms he was like "yeah, just act like they said 'scry 2' or something instead of venture into the dungeon, doesn't matter". 20 Lines of text, no real depth. "They give you advantage, whatever, don't worry about it" is not good design in my book. 3.) The aforementioned new player experience is horrible. Usually I just go "just ignore those/don't play them" and if they still happen to play them, it is usually followed by a sigh and a "oh boy, hope you have your smartphone handy". 4.) The more of them we have in the game, the worse the problem becomes. With Monarch, Dungeons, Initiative, The Ring, Day/Night, whatever else there is we are closing in on an entire sideboard of extra rule cards already. And even if one of those cards ends up being generally good, it becomes a toll on the game. E.g. Suspicous Stowaway is such a bummer to see played in a Commander round. It makes individual cards carry a bunch of rules-burden and 10 years down the line, you basically need a companion app to just play. Sure, in a world were everybody has their aluminium suitcase with custom inlay to bring to every nerd session, that seems ok, but there was a time where you could just find a shoebox full of cards, grab two random colors and just play without any periphery. That not being the case anymore is not an advantage. 5.) Digital Magic solves those issues for you, yes, but paper magic still exists and I would say might still be the "gold standard" to Magic Arena's credit card, in more than one way. Paper magic is the beating hard of magic and compromising it for really not that great designs in the first place is a mistake. 6.) And the worst: It's just an excuse for lazy design. Why find a good, snappy and maybe even flavorful template for an effect when you can just throw everything at the wall. Rules textbox knows no bounds anymore, just write it all out, you can have as many rules tokens as you want. It makes design's inelegant, clunky and plain boring. Look at this set. "Oh, you want a cool Top-Down design for Sauron and Frodo and Ringwraiths and Gollum and whatnot? How about we slap "the ring tempts" you on all of them, let the rules token figure some flavor out! It takes the "Bear with set-ability" meme and turns it to 11. And I swear, stuff like this only gets a pass because they need to get a set out the door every month now. If you look at MaRo's "20 years, 20 lessons", those rulebook emblem cards break like half of them. So sure, there are ways to figure out what those cards do, but are they worth all of the issues they have? I for my part haven't had a single one of those cards evoke some kind of positive emotion, apart from "oh yeah, this card's powerlevel is pushed, I better play it"
@@shadowphoenixxx There's always been rules that were not spelled out on cards. That's the whole point of Keywords. Mechanics like the Undercity are designed for a specific casual format. You are choosing to play a format that allows every single card ever, even without these mechanics the game's complexity will increase inevitably.
I think there are enough instants and sorceries that make tokens that The Ring Tempts You mechanic might still be playable in a spell slinger focused deck. This set looks really fun
I'm happy that you guys are giving gwaihir windlord the respect he deserves. everyone else gives him a D or D- but to me he is easily C+ or even B- if you have lots of birds and card draw
you're not gonna have a lot of birds tho. idid a draft where i picked him and i only managed to pick two other birds, even tho i focused really hard on them and probably should've picked something else
I feel a bit anxious when Marshal says stuff like "they wouldn't put this build around in the set if it wouldn't work". Always remembers me of Streets of new Campenna
I think part of the problem with that draft format was the designers probably played it straight to much. I get the feeling that they drafted the way the set was intended, 3 colors and just never drafted the 2 color pairs enough. It’s something that testing isn’t always going to catch either unless they use the same testers a ton which isn’t what happens. You tell your testers “hey check this cool 3 color set out” they are in all likelihood drafting 3 colors. If you start playing that set with everyone playing the family’s it slows the format down and suddenly most of those build arounds are playable
The fact that there are enough birds that plenty of gamee will just be ended with a bird ring bearer flying over the opponent's orcish armies to end the game makes me chuckle.
51:22 I think the idea is he's racing for kills. If he's killing one when he swings then ambushing for a second, he's probably winning the on-board race for kills.
elven farsight is better when you draw a card I agree, and most of the time you will get it but if I play it and flip 3 lands off the top, im probably still happy i got to get those out of the way.
Great Review as always! I wonder about Grond, the gatebreaker you rated it pretty highly. Isn't it concerning though that it can never be a blocker without crewing it?
With Celeborn the Wise saying “number of cards you see” this means if you choose to top the card on your first scry and then scry 3 more times you’ve only seen 1 card, is that correct?
No- when you scry 4, you look at all four at the same time. If you scry 1 four times, you still resolve Celeborn's ability 4 times and it does not matter whether it's a new card.
You still have two requirements: 1. A creature at all, sometimes you don't; or they remove your creature when you put this on the stack. 2. You need to have that creature be of the color of the card you want to get.
Hey guys, love the set review, thanks again. You dismissed the artifact mana rocks however just wanted to point out inherited envelope comes in untapped and tempts you. 3 mana rock might have been bad but think of it like this. At a minimum it's a 3 mana untapped mana rock that pays back 1 of any color and makes a creature unblockable by larger power. Tempted twice its a 3 mana repays 1 makes a creature unblockable by larger power and loots. If you've been tempted 3 times it's a 3 mana pays back one makes a creature unblockable by larger, loots and destroys anything that could block And 4th tempted it's a 3 mana pays back one, makes a creature unblockable by larger power, loots, destroys anything that could block and deals 3 damage to the opponent. Not to mention it enables you to pull in a third color which gives synergies for esper, grixis and jund
Regarding the note in the beginning about feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of sets. Not only do I feel overwhelmed but I have felt that way ever since I started actively playing during the original Ravnica. And it has gotten SO MUCH WORSE since then. I try to keep my eternal decks up to date and slot in new cards that fit their strategies as they come out, but the problem is that Magic is very much just a side hobby for me and these huge new releases keep piling up so quickly that with the time I have alotted for it, I can't keep up. I just don't have the time (or the disposable income). It's like an embarrassment of riches, really, but it is still quite frustrating. A new set coming out should make me feel giddy and excited to see what they have to offer, but instead I go "oh god! another one already!?" as I prepare to browse through hundreds of cards to find the 10 that I will actually use (or can afford to spend money on).
You aren't supposed to keep up. They make cards for a variety of interests. It's just like many other hobbies, you aren't supposed to keep up with every new movie or every video game.
@@Mordalon That is an unfair comparison as movies and video games are being developed by a wide array of entirely separate companies. And as someone who does keeps a wide array of different kinds of decks and that likes to keep them somewhat up-to-date, I feel like I can't ignore any new set or I will miss out. And that is probably the designers' intention as well. I can't recall any MTG product in the past few years that didn't contain at least some card which fits the "every serious deckbuilder should own a playset of this" -category. I sincerely believe that there can be too much of a good thing.
@@Sicktoid The number of people making the thing has no bearing on the amount the consumer is intended to experience. Those different studios still spread out releases to avoid competing with each other too much, so they work together on that front. You simply started when Magic's audience was much smaller and haven't adapt to the change, where as Wotc has adapted and is meeting the demands of the growing playerbase. Just as news used to be delivered in a very limited number of channels or video games were a niche hobby that had a narrower audience, but the growth in audience and technology meant those had to adapt and expand.
I want to play „Long List of the Ents“ and then naming Balrog or something like that, then playing like an elf and my opponent holds his counterspell for the Balrog that isnt even in my deck, haha.
I agree scry is most powerful in Limited. I was a bit disappointed you didn't look at the engine cards and know the payoffs for food and scrying before jumping into the review. If a set is aggro synergy isn't too important (not sure what is important there, maybe combat tricks and removal so you should know the removal and say what something dodges, I'm a commander player and there isn't much removal) but if a set has draw discard and scry synergies people will play more low drops because they can search deeper for bombs.
I think what you're missing is that they do know.. They are talking through their thoughts and feelings about the cards rather than just reading a card and saying a grade. They want people to understand how to evaluate cards on the fly and understand what makes them good or bad and in what situations. These are teaching podcasts as much as grading grading podcasts. For instance, if you listened to this podcast and were like "man, Marshall keeps forgetting how certain cards work," you are missing the deeper level. He knows how they work, he's just pointing things how that some people will miss/forget about. He's doing it in an interesting way that forces a discussion and causes things to stick in people's minds.
I love how Marshall hems and haws over the spells that require legends....."I dunno...how often will you have legends around?" and then when we get to errand rider of gondor it's like "...there's legends ALL OVER THE PLACE!". Classic...
Because he's not in White, Red or Black. The same concept can be expressed mechanically in different ways. Both White and Green get lots of archers, yet Green expresses that through Reach and "deal damage to flyers" while White does through First Strike, deal damage to attackers/blockers, and tapdown effects.
@@Mordalon Hey that's neat and all but the color pie has already been atrociously broken for this set. Even so, archers are supposed to have a tap to damage ability and this set calls for cross-color abilities. Furthermore, the color pie used to be different, for example in olden mtg blue cards are your secondary source of direct effect damage. Imagine if Guttersnipe was also in blue?
@@iBloodxHunter Name 1 color pie break in this set. And besides, 1 break doesn't justify others. Archers don't HAVE to have a tap damage ability. it's one of multiple ways Archery is represented in the game. Magic design isn't as rigid as you seem to think. They also are designing these cards for Limited, not in a vacuum. You also show a fundamental misunderstanding of how the color pie works. Blue's damage effects were before the color pie was defined, those effects are strict breaks. The color pie does change, but not arbitrarily. They still consider color's intended weaknesses.
@@Mordalon It's not a misunderstanding kiddo, I know fully well the design philosophy that made the game explode between 08-11. I also understand the design philosophy that led to the game being popular when Alpha was released and why some of the sets released not long after were so unpopular. What you're over here defending is called bad design all for the sake of drafting. Furthermore, one break MIGHT, justify others because it recontextualizes the entire color pie for the set when you make one. It's like you're not even thinking when you come at me with that.
I'm also not sure what Marshall meant about that Frodo "being it". He seems to know there are multiple versions of the characters in the set, so him thinking that's all Frodo does is baffling.
The limit clause on Nazgûl would be a downside. I legitimately would play 23 Nazgûl and 17 lands if I could. Only cutting any of them for premium removal spells. But any creature, even a bomb, is just worse than a 23rd Nazgûl would be.
If you're looking at a board with a 1/3, a 2/3, a 2/4, and a 1/4 the card doesn't kill any of them on its own, in which case it becomes an awful after combat removal spell. Now that looks like a corner case, but it's likely since those types of creatures are the best in the set (barring flying) because ringbearing values that type of creature. Also the card never, ever kills their best creature without extra help. Also also, the decks that it works best against are the red decks with big amass and aggro creatures, but you're in red if you're playing this meaning your pool of opponents in paper is smaller. This isn't even close to a B card. Almost nobody ran Mutiny in its limited format. This is a little better than that, but 1 extra mana to Tempt almost certainly isn't worth it.
Update to this thread. This got cast against me yesterday 4 times and it never, ever worked. I just played a pump spell in response every single time. And sure that sounds fine, you still went 1 for 1 and allowed your opponent to dictate your play, but it usually worked out in my favor by making my opponent's attacks bad afterward and I always got a mana advantage. Playable card, but just be aware that it does have multiple points of weakness.
The wording on 'You cannot pass!" is super ambiguous, I read the first part as 'if any creatures blocks any creature' and only the second "blocked by" part seems to apply to legendary creatures
It's not ambiguous. The target has to have blocked or been blocked by a legendary creature. Magic uses this wording in literally every set for listing out things. If a card said "target creature that blocked or was blocked by a creature", do you think something other than a creature blocked? Legendary is just added as a condition. If they want everything in a list to have a different condition, they spell out each condition for each thing in that list. You see this in Sunder the Gateway from MOM, which says "destroy target nontoken artifact or enchantment", as only the artifact has the condition of being nontoken.
It's not a flavor fail. Look up archers in Magic's history. There's multiple ways to communicate the same concept through mechanics. Having reach and being able to ambush attackers is enough for an already good uncommon. SOME green archers ping, but only Flyers.
@@MordalonI feel like green cards often have some sort of negative effect to creatures with flying right? Spiders and such with reach and “pay something to deal a damage to a flyer” etc. 🤷♂️
@@trevorsmith8903 There's still rules to what colors can and can't do. Green doesn't get to just do anything as long as it's killing a flyer. Damage is not the same as -x/-x.
LSV has some of the most baffling takes on cards for someone who proports to be a game designer. UG Legolas just being a 2/3 vigilance that grows would be a piss poor signpost uncommon for Simic elves. The fact the untap ability gets the player thinking "how can I best use this" is part of the fun of the card, just like 1 power creatures with Trample and no inherent way of pumping themselves challenge the player. Also, he doesn't seem to understand the point of big creatures with tap abilities. Obviously it's better for big creatures to be about combat and small creatures to have the utility effects, but that's the tension, do you use this for combat or for utility, and sometimes a 4/5 still isn't big enough to get through so it can at least do something.
Bill the Pony being one of the best creatures to snipe all the 1/3 ringbearers is hilarious. Sauron shoulda corrupted the pony.
Bill put in work for me at pre release
I ran Great Hall of the Citadel in my 5 legend splash sealed pool and it fixed fine for me. Glad I had it over a 3rd land of my splash color.
2:04:32 just a small remark: Celeborn is pronounced as Keleborn and not Seleborn. Third option is of course just to call him with his name in the Telerin language, which is "Teleporno", if that is easier to remember.
To be fair, teleporno probably didn't have its modern connotation when Tolkien first made his name 😂
@@ben_clifford lol, probably not. Maybe we will get the Teleporno version of Celeborn in a future secret lair... 🤣
Same thing at 3:47:48 with Cirith Ungol (promounce as Kirith) :)
I was so skeptical and assumed that they would mess up this universe's beyond idea....but this set up but actually seems like the perfect amount of draftabilitly and nods to the source material. So actually interested to see how this set plays out and ages.
With cards like Long List of the Ents, that are amazing on T1 and awful later, gotta consider that ring tempting gives everybody easy access to looting. High upside cards like these are significantly better in this set, since you can pretty much always loot them away.
Also the prevalence of green cards with Scry. I think situational cards need to be evaluated differently in this set.
I don't play any limited whatsoever but I love your limited set reviews. Hearing your analysis and reactions to cards is a great way to spend my time. Hope to see more.
That it's based on the book makes this a lot more interesting actually for me. I enjoy the movies but I'm cool to see a different take on it with this set.
By the artstyle doesn't seem like it based on the books either.
@@TheRedGauntlet the art style looks great, stop being a party 💩er
@@hil449 Is not when is completly wrong
I love the LR content and religiously watch the set reviews and am very grateful to have them however it would be amazing if you guys could sync up the overlay that shows the cards with the ones you’re talking about. It’s very difficult for me to follow along without seeing it
Yup, same here, big fan, but it's extremely difficult for me to "listen to a card" and my brain parses it much better when I can read it myself, so it's kind of bad when they forget to put up the card they are talking about (and that happens rather often...)
It’s never really gotten any better either, it’s incredibly distracting and I hope they see these messages and fix the issue because these set reviews are awesome
I feel like someone is inserting these in post? But they should just do it live so we are seeing the same thing they are reading.
"This is magic. It could be dogs made out of mushroom" LOL
with rise of the witch-king, keep in mind that you can discard something huge from the 2nd ring effect, to set up the reanimate
It's nice that they realized food is at best annoying and not that great, because man oh man does it suck. Same for scry's "I just need these 5 cards to never be targeted" stuff.
Yeah, in hindsight the UG elf-deck just needed multiple pieces to really pay off. The payoffs are all on the rares/uncommons and the actual triggers are few; there's a common 1/3 that swings once per turn, a common 4-drop that ETBs and that's it, a rare that's NOT IN THE DRAFT SETS, an overpriced ability on your uncommon, a rare saga, and a few sorceries you're unlikely to draft tons of. There's a couple other things that scry in colorless (Lembas, Mirror) but ugh... the mirror is expensive as hell to trigger the scry and the lembas I'm not excited to play.
If it pays off, sure... but it's so susceptible to getting sniped with removal spells, especially out of black, and just getting shafted on the draft part of the process. There may just not be an Elrond in your pod. There may not even be an Arwen in your pod!
Later in the set I found the green stuff was more playable in paper, if only because people are passing all the green stuff so you can likely assemble more pieces than your opponents can of red/black or blue/black. It's possible to win but feels uphill as heck.
Meanwhile the green-white food archetype's game plan is "maybe I'll draw out this round if I go to turns because I take forever to lose". A couple of the pieces in white-green are okay but it's all the ones that avoid food lol. Frodo and Aragorn make a nice little combo to keep the Tempts coming and soup up your legends, but that might as well be "get Great Hall of the Citadel and go 5-color Legends".
this will be my first tabletop sealed play since covid. very excited for it, tks for the timely video!
Interesting to see that luis and reid have different takes on Esquire of the king. I also think +1+1 to the team is very strong
The Bath Song is from when the Hobbits had left Hobbiton and spent the night in Bucklberry. They sang a song and had a great dinner. Then set out on the real quest in the morning into the forest
Four hours of L(ot)R content!? My body isn't ready for this Ring to tempt me...
I feel the same way, and I'm probably not gonna even play with the set!
Frodo eats 1/1s at lvl 1. Stage one of the ring stops the bigger creatures from blocking him, so if the only 1 power creature they have is a 1/1, Frodo can force it to block.
All the 1 mana cyclers might honestly by B- in terms of winrate, people are just too hesitant to give higher scores to excellent filler
1:54:20 Entish Restoration isn't a strict upgrade to Harrow, because the lands come in tapped. One of the somewhat-common play patterns with Harrow is to play a Harrow into a 2-drop on 3 or a 3-drop on 4, but you can't do that here.
That said, I still like the Restoration's upside more than Harrow's untap feature.
Also of note for prerelease weekend, specifically 2-headed giant, is being hit by a full tempted creature is going to be 6 damage plus the power of the unblocked creature, or the amount of power that trampled through if the Ringbearer got trample.
I dont usually do the in between sets but...here I am!
I'm gonna start calling Gimli Grimly now.
Thx for your review. There was one very important topic that you dodged tho. Where was Gondor when....
Early morning Magic discussions are certainly a vibe. Great video as always guys.
3:39:00 It's insane how often LSV's jokes go over the head of Marshall lol
Love these set reviews! Going straight from this to LSV's new video "the first draft from LOTR"
whoever was in charge of putting cards up on screen, failed spectacularly.
Want to see someone get 10 nazgul in a draft now, amusing how Marshall totally missed what LSV was getting at
I think Long list of the Ents is going to be really good. I actually think it’ll play well in the late game. It’s one mana, make all the rest of your topdecks better.
They didn't note that chapter 1 of the saga triggers the turn you play it. So when you draw it in the mid or late game, if you have any creature you're going to cast that turn, it will get a +1/+1 counter.
having oath right after bat is just perfect order :D
This set looks so fun! 🎉been hyped since it was first announced
I was so skeptical and assumed that they would mess up this universe's beyond idea....but this set up but actually seems like the perfect amount of draftabilitly and nods to the source material. So actually interested to see how this set plays out and ages.
Thanks for doing this guys!
Honestly, I'm kind of done with those "rulebook token/emblem" type of mechanics. I already barely remember 20% of what the Undercity does and the effects on the Ring just aren't that intuitive either. Really hope none of those cards is strong enough for cube, I just groan whenever I see one of those in my pack. Horrible new player experience too. I could really do without them.
Great thing about cubes is you can choose to not play them
@@cyruslyday9112 Not on the mtgo cube you don't. EDIT: well, you still can choose to play suboptimally and ignore them in the packs yeah.
But whats the problem? Nobody needs to know what the undercity does, MTGO and arena will just tell you. In paper, 99% of the time you are provided the rules token in draft events or the player who is using these mechanics will know whats going on. Its not that hard :D
@@ich3730 There are a lot of problems. (Excuse the wall of text, but this has been a topic that has been bothering me for a while)
1.) Reading the cards doesn't tell you what they do anymore. We have that issue to a slight degree with keywords already, hence why they tend to write-out keywords in sets where there are not enough cards to have reminder text on them. With Initiative and the Ring, there CAN'T be reminder text cause it wouldn't fit.
2.) They are the opposite of "lenticular design" (MaRo talks about this a lot): Magic's best designed cards tend to be seemingly simple effects with a lot of depth to them. Look at Giant Growth, the OG of magic design philosophy. One line of text, so many possibilities. On the other hand, last time I heard LSV talk about dungeons for forgotten realms he was like "yeah, just act like they said 'scry 2' or something instead of venture into the dungeon, doesn't matter". 20 Lines of text, no real depth. "They give you advantage, whatever, don't worry about it" is not good design in my book.
3.) The aforementioned new player experience is horrible. Usually I just go "just ignore those/don't play them" and if they still happen to play them, it is usually followed by a sigh and a "oh boy, hope you have your smartphone handy".
4.) The more of them we have in the game, the worse the problem becomes. With Monarch, Dungeons, Initiative, The Ring, Day/Night, whatever else there is we are closing in on an entire sideboard of extra rule cards already. And even if one of those cards ends up being generally good, it becomes a toll on the game. E.g. Suspicous Stowaway is such a bummer to see played in a Commander round. It makes individual cards carry a bunch of rules-burden and 10 years down the line, you basically need a companion app to just play. Sure, in a world were everybody has their aluminium suitcase with custom inlay to bring to every nerd session, that seems ok, but there was a time where you could just find a shoebox full of cards, grab two random colors and just play without any periphery. That not being the case anymore is not an advantage.
5.) Digital Magic solves those issues for you, yes, but paper magic still exists and I would say might still be the "gold standard" to Magic Arena's credit card, in more than one way. Paper magic is the beating hard of magic and compromising it for really not that great designs in the first place is a mistake.
6.) And the worst: It's just an excuse for lazy design. Why find a good, snappy and maybe even flavorful template for an effect when you can just throw everything at the wall. Rules textbox knows no bounds anymore, just write it all out, you can have as many rules tokens as you want. It makes design's inelegant, clunky and plain boring. Look at this set. "Oh, you want a cool Top-Down design for Sauron and Frodo and Ringwraiths and Gollum and whatnot? How about we slap "the ring tempts" you on all of them, let the rules token figure some flavor out! It takes the "Bear with set-ability" meme and turns it to 11. And I swear, stuff like this only gets a pass because they need to get a set out the door every month now. If you look at MaRo's "20 years, 20 lessons", those rulebook emblem cards break like half of them.
So sure, there are ways to figure out what those cards do, but are they worth all of the issues they have? I for my part haven't had a single one of those cards evoke some kind of positive emotion, apart from "oh yeah, this card's powerlevel is pushed, I better play it"
@@shadowphoenixxx There's always been rules that were not spelled out on cards. That's the whole point of Keywords. Mechanics like the Undercity are designed for a specific casual format. You are choosing to play a format that allows every single card ever, even without these mechanics the game's complexity will increase inevitably.
I think there are enough instants and sorceries that make tokens that The Ring Tempts You mechanic might still be playable in a spell slinger focused deck. This set looks really fun
I'm happy that you guys are giving gwaihir windlord the respect he deserves. everyone else gives him a D or D- but to me he is easily C+ or even B- if you have lots of birds and card draw
you're not gonna have a lot of birds tho. idid a draft where i picked him and i only managed to pick two other birds, even tho i focused really hard on them and probably should've picked something else
The bird part is meh the rest is sweet
I feel a bit anxious when Marshal says stuff like "they wouldn't put this build around in the set if it wouldn't work". Always remembers me of Streets of new Campenna
I think part of the problem with that draft format was the designers probably played it straight to much. I get the feeling that they drafted the way the set was intended, 3 colors and just never drafted the 2 color pairs enough. It’s something that testing isn’t always going to catch either unless they use the same testers a ton which isn’t what happens. You tell your testers “hey check this cool 3 color set out” they are in all likelihood drafting 3 colors. If you start playing that set with everyone playing the family’s it slows the format down and suddenly most of those build arounds are playable
There's a difference between not working at all and not working good enough.
Re: What to name with long list of the ents. "Coward" is my personal favorite.
But what if you wanna cast Wormtongue 😉
gotta evaluate creatures with low power, high toughness higher because they're better ringbearers. the inverse should also be considered
black looks like the best color by far
Lots of fire breathing effects. Will be fun to update the fire-breathing edh deck with some of this
When Stalwarts of Osgilith get a +1/+1 counter their pauldrons get even bigger
oops all pauldrons
The fact that there are enough birds that plenty of gamee will just be ended with a bird ring bearer flying over the opponent's orcish armies to end the game makes me chuckle.
Treason of Isengard would combo with another copy of it, so I get the idea to change where the card goes.
I already know I’ll be forcing 5-color green at the beginning of this format
I’ve been unable to figure this set out. Wondering what it takes to get more than one win in a limited environment
51:22 I think the idea is he's racing for kills. If he's killing one when he swings then ambushing for a second, he's probably winning the on-board race for kills.
Flamesmith = Firebrand Archer, and that was pretty good.
54:20 - It is relevant for killing protection from red creatures which have 1 toughness.
that's not a thing in this Limited format.
elven farsight is better when you draw a card I agree, and most of the time you will get it but if I play it and flip 3 lands off the top, im probably still happy i got to get those out of the way.
Warbeast of Gorgoroth stacks with itself. imagine getting 4 copies in a deck
I feel Marshall is way underrating the ring bearer + the ring tempts you in limited formats?
@limitedresources should clip 46:50 as a short; that clip should be pushed and that joke should be shared across youtube 😂
Great Review as always! I wonder about Grond, the gatebreaker you rated it pretty highly. Isn't it concerning though that it can never be a blocker without crewing it?
Every vehicle can't block without crewing. This is a vehicle with upside.
I was just waiting to see the guys' faces when they read Long List of the Ents xD
Excuse me if I am wrong, but wasn't the last name of Peregrin Tuk, not Took?
Uh.. No.
It is so weird to be watching a review of a set with flavor that I know nothing about aside from knowing that LotR is like the Ur fantasy setting
With Celeborn the Wise saying “number of cards you see” this means if you choose to top the card on your first scry and then scry 3 more times you’ve only seen 1 card, is that correct?
No- when you scry 4, you look at all four at the same time. If you scry 1 four times, you still resolve Celeborn's ability 4 times and it does not matter whether it's a new card.
@@seanmullin4736 okay thank you!
How many people tried to wipe the black spot off their screens? the button on the raincoat next to LSV's face....
Couldn't LSV wait for Marshalls streem where he tried his Lembas control deck?
Regarding ringsight, dont the ring make the creature legendary? Do you not than always have a legendare creature for ringsight to trigger of?
They say that in the video. That still isn't great to them. Tutors are rarely great in Limited.
You still have two requirements:
1. A creature at all, sometimes you don't; or they remove your creature when you put this on the stack.
2. You need to have that creature be of the color of the card you want to get.
I foresee control decks running 2x treason of isenguard for loop
I love the losing streak on the lore guesses "o this is probably when they took a bath with the dwarves", "I guess this guy is a horse trader", etc.
4c legends + aragon matters looks accessible with entish restoration and all the other mana fixing
love that 'meaning of haste' trivia. Edit:Why the heck does my username have a number at the end of it!?
Hey guys, love the set review, thanks again. You dismissed the artifact mana rocks however just wanted to point out inherited envelope comes in untapped and tempts you.
3 mana rock might have been bad but think of it like this.
At a minimum it's a 3 mana untapped mana rock that pays back 1 of any color and makes a creature unblockable by larger power.
Tempted twice its a 3 mana repays 1 makes a creature unblockable by larger power and loots.
If you've been tempted 3 times it's a 3 mana pays back one makes a creature unblockable by larger, loots and destroys anything that could block
And 4th tempted it's a 3 mana pays back one, makes a creature unblockable by larger power, loots, destroys anything that could block and deals 3 damage to the opponent.
Not to mention it enables you to pull in a third color which gives synergies for esper, grixis and jund
did you really need to write out all of the steps of the ring tempting you?
@@jeffe2267 yes
@@oDMACo I guess that's why they call you Dick
Hithlain Knots wasn't graded?
Regarding the note in the beginning about feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of sets. Not only do I feel overwhelmed but I have felt that way ever since I started actively playing during the original Ravnica. And it has gotten SO MUCH WORSE since then. I try to keep my eternal decks up to date and slot in new cards that fit their strategies as they come out, but the problem is that Magic is very much just a side hobby for me and these huge new releases keep piling up so quickly that with the time I have alotted for it, I can't keep up. I just don't have the time (or the disposable income).
It's like an embarrassment of riches, really, but it is still quite frustrating. A new set coming out should make me feel giddy and excited to see what they have to offer, but instead I go "oh god! another one already!?" as I prepare to browse through hundreds of cards to find the 10 that I will actually use (or can afford to spend money on).
You aren't supposed to keep up. They make cards for a variety of interests. It's just like many other hobbies, you aren't supposed to keep up with every new movie or every video game.
@@Mordalon That is an unfair comparison as movies and video games are being developed by a wide array of entirely separate companies. And as someone who does keeps a wide array of different kinds of decks and that likes to keep them somewhat up-to-date, I feel like I can't ignore any new set or I will miss out. And that is probably the designers' intention as well. I can't recall any MTG product in the past few years that didn't contain at least some card which fits the "every serious deckbuilder should own a playset of this" -category. I sincerely believe that there can be too much of a good thing.
@@Sicktoid The number of people making the thing has no bearing on the amount the consumer is intended to experience. Those different studios still spread out releases to avoid competing with each other too much, so they work together on that front.
You simply started when Magic's audience was much smaller and haven't adapt to the change, where as Wotc has adapted and is meeting the demands of the growing playerbase. Just as news used to be delivered in a very limited number of channels or video games were a niche hobby that had a narrower audience, but the growth in audience and technology meant those had to adapt and expand.
I love these!!!
"There's already so much text on Magic cards"
*Laughs in Yu-Gi-Oh*
I want to play „Long List of the Ents“ and then naming Balrog or something like that, then playing like an elf and my opponent holds his counterspell for the Balrog that isnt even in my deck, haha.
You need to play the creature straight away to get the counter, so the bluff won't work
Balrog isn't a creature type. The Balrog is an Avatar Demon.
a decent 1 mana counter and essence scatter dear lord
New modern/legacy staple 1 mana counter
@@Wicked_Carnifex im not surprised
The letter C in Elvish always makes a K sound and never an S sound. This applies to Celeborn and Cirith Ungol Patrol. I'm sorry. Blame Tolkien.
It's a good thing we speak English and not Elvish.
"Frodo Bag-dat-azz-up-ins"
So, if the set is Modern legal, where will it fit on Arena?
Legal in Alchemy and Historic
@@marcozarantonello2180 Alchemy is Historic. You're thinking of Explorer.
(Shelob poisons people and then turns them into food)
High quality thumbnail.
I agree scry is most powerful in Limited. I was a bit disappointed you didn't look at the engine cards and know the payoffs for food and scrying before jumping into the review. If a set is aggro synergy isn't too important (not sure what is important there, maybe combat tricks and removal so you should know the removal and say what something dodges, I'm a commander player and there isn't much removal) but if a set has draw discard and scry synergies people will play more low drops because they can search deeper for bombs.
I think what you're missing is that they do know.. They are talking through their thoughts and feelings about the cards rather than just reading a card and saying a grade. They want people to understand how to evaluate cards on the fly and understand what makes them good or bad and in what situations. These are teaching podcasts as much as grading grading podcasts.
For instance, if you listened to this podcast and were like "man, Marshall keeps forgetting how certain cards work," you are missing the deeper level. He knows how they work, he's just pointing things how that some people will miss/forget about. He's doing it in an interesting way that forces a discussion and causes things to stick in people's minds.
making frodo anything other than just a dude that interacts with the ring in a unique way would be silly.
I love how Marshall hems and haws over the spells that require legends....."I dunno...how often will you have legends around?" and then when we get to errand rider of gondor it's like "...there's legends ALL OVER THE PLACE!". Classic...
How does Legolas not have First Strike?!
Because he's not in White, Red or Black. The same concept can be expressed mechanically in different ways. Both White and Green get lots of archers, yet Green expresses that through Reach and "deal damage to flyers" while White does through First Strike, deal damage to attackers/blockers, and tapdown effects.
@@Mordalon Hey that's neat and all but the color pie has already been atrociously broken for this set.
Even so, archers are supposed to have a tap to damage ability and this set calls for cross-color abilities.
Furthermore, the color pie used to be different, for example in olden mtg blue cards are your secondary source of direct effect damage. Imagine if Guttersnipe was also in blue?
@@iBloodxHunter Name 1 color pie break in this set. And besides, 1 break doesn't justify others.
Archers don't HAVE to have a tap damage ability. it's one of multiple ways Archery is represented in the game. Magic design isn't as rigid as you seem to think. They also are designing these cards for Limited, not in a vacuum.
You also show a fundamental misunderstanding of how the color pie works. Blue's damage effects were before the color pie was defined, those effects are strict breaks. The color pie does change, but not arbitrarily. They still consider color's intended weaknesses.
@@Mordalon It's not a misunderstanding kiddo, I know fully well the design philosophy that made the game explode between 08-11. I also understand the design philosophy that led to the game being popular when Alpha was released and why some of the sets released not long after were so unpopular. What you're over here defending is called bad design all for the sake of drafting.
Furthermore, one break MIGHT, justify others because it recontextualizes the entire color pie for the set when you make one. It's like you're not even thinking when you come at me with that.
Why should he have first strike? You seem to think it's a given. He's not Han Solo. Why do you think Legolas is a first striker!?
1:02:23 playable u could end up with alot of them and jst focus on ussing removal on their creatures
Yeah no Planeswalkers is fine BUT WHY THE HELL IS THE BATTLE OF BYWATER A SORCERY!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!??!???!!!!!11!
Glorfindel with two scry makes him unblockable 1:59:44
That's not what happens. First he must be blocked, then he can only be blocked by one creature. He just forces a 1v1 if you scry twice.
@@Mordalon oh read wrong thought it was meance
I fear there are so many 1/2s and 1/3s in this set that the skulk isn't going to achieve anything.
There's a lot, but there's plenty of big Armies, and The Jund colors have plenty of big attackers for the ring bearers to go under.
I'm also not sure what Marshall meant about that Frodo "being it". He seems to know there are multiple versions of the characters in the set, so him thinking that's all Frodo does is baffling.
I love LSV but I can't watch magic online xD
The limit clause on Nazgûl would be a downside. I legitimately would play 23 Nazgûl and 17 lands if I could. Only cutting any of them for premium removal spells. But any creature, even a bomb, is just worse than a 23rd Nazgûl would be.
Y'all have gotten really bad about not cycling to the next card.
The art in this set is definitely hit and miss. Some looks horrible and some looks gorgeous.
agreed, really feels like there's no cohesion. Maybe licensing added extra hurdles and the process was a bit rushed
44:46 lol
2:04:36 Celeborn is pronuonced Keleborn
Well, I prefer Teleporno! 😆
I think breaking the fellowship is great. There aren't planeswalkers in this format it's all creatures. B card
If you're looking at a board with a 1/3, a 2/3, a 2/4, and a 1/4 the card doesn't kill any of them on its own, in which case it becomes an awful after combat removal spell. Now that looks like a corner case, but it's likely since those types of creatures are the best in the set (barring flying) because ringbearing values that type of creature. Also the card never, ever kills their best creature without extra help. Also also, the decks that it works best against are the red decks with big amass and aggro creatures, but you're in red if you're playing this meaning your pool of opponents in paper is smaller. This isn't even close to a B card. Almost nobody ran Mutiny in its limited format. This is a little better than that, but 1 extra mana to Tempt almost certainly isn't worth it.
Worse than the black pick two creatures opponent sacs one from snc and that card was atrocious, I’d never want to play this card
Update to this thread. This got cast against me yesterday 4 times and it never, ever worked. I just played a pump spell in response every single time. And sure that sounds fine, you still went 1 for 1 and allowed your opponent to dictate your play, but it usually worked out in my favor by making my opponent's attacks bad afterward and I always got a mana advantage. Playable card, but just be aware that it does have multiple points of weakness.
Says mushroom watchdogs is a C... Immediately kills someone with a 14/14 dog... classic LSV
That's results oriented thinking.
The wording on 'You cannot pass!" is super ambiguous, I read the first part as 'if any creatures blocks any creature' and only the second "blocked by" part seems to apply to legendary creatures
It's not ambiguous. The target has to have blocked or been blocked by a legendary creature. Magic uses this wording in literally every set for listing out things. If a card said "target creature that blocked or was blocked by a creature", do you think something other than a creature blocked? Legendary is just added as a condition.
If they want everything in a list to have a different condition, they spell out each condition for each thing in that list. You see this in Sunder the Gateway from MOM, which says "destroy target nontoken artifact or enchantment", as only the artifact has the condition of being nontoken.
The fact that Legolas, counter of kills isn't a pinger is the hugest flavor fail of all time.
The other Legolas pings. This one just counts, the flavor is perfect
It's not a flavor fail. Look up archers in Magic's history. There's multiple ways to communicate the same concept through mechanics. Having reach and being able to ambush attackers is enough for an already good uncommon. SOME green archers ping, but only Flyers.
I really feel they should have added at least one Planeswalker. A Tolkien one at least.
Eh, i like it when sets are different from each other, and i feel like this makes total sense for LOTR
Mechanically yes, but flavour wise that'd be a huge fail.
@@jstuckless not if the planeswalker was named j.r.r.
Huge flavour fail.. Gandalf is just a regular old Wizard man? Lol... He is supposed to literally be from another plane, an ageless godlike entity
The Astari (Radaghast, Saruman, Gandalf ect.) Are angels and from another plane.
Also Tom Bombadil.
Legolas:
Whenever you scry, target creature opp controls with flying gets -2,-2.
Fixed it. 🤔 🤷♂️
I also think it’s key to remember if you will have several 1/x beefy bois. So will your opponents so blocking won’t be so hard.
That's not an effect UG gets.
@@MordalonI feel like green cards often have some sort of negative effect to creatures with flying right? Spiders and such with reach and “pay something to deal a damage to a flyer” etc. 🤷♂️
@@trevorsmith8903 There's still rules to what colors can and can't do. Green doesn't get to just do anything as long as it's killing a flyer. Damage is not the same as -x/-x.
HYPE
Hype!
LSV has some of the most baffling takes on cards for someone who proports to be a game designer. UG Legolas just being a 2/3 vigilance that grows would be a piss poor signpost uncommon for Simic elves. The fact the untap ability gets the player thinking "how can I best use this" is part of the fun of the card, just like 1 power creatures with Trample and no inherent way of pumping themselves challenge the player.
Also, he doesn't seem to understand the point of big creatures with tap abilities. Obviously it's better for big creatures to be about combat and small creatures to have the utility effects, but that's the tension, do you use this for combat or for utility, and sometimes a 4/5 still isn't big enough to get through so it can at least do something.
Shadowfax is a C-/D+ guys, not a B. 5 mana 4/4 haste with trinket text doesn’t cut it anymore.
What trinket text? Did you think it only gets out other horses? You just need a 3 power or less creature in hand.
First like!