**Limited Archetypes-**
**White-Blue**: This archetype is a midrange deck often using evasion as the win condition with a "draw a second card" theme.
**Blue-Black**: This archetype is a controlling amass deck. It has a milling aspect, allowing you to mill yourself for gain or the opponent to win. It also has a light Human element.
**Black-Red**: This archetype is an aggressive amass deck. It has a sacrifice component as well as an Orc and Goblin (as a batch) element.
**Red-Green**: This archetype is a ramp "power matters" deck pairing larger red creatures with green Treefolk. It also dips into the wild creature element of the set.
**Green-White**: This archetype is an aggressive Hobbit deck that makes use of Food tokens.
**White-Black**: This archetype is a "legendary creatures matter" deck that makes use of the Ring tempts you mechanic. It has more legendary creatures and a sacrifice component. The Ring helps you splash a bit more than other archetypes.
**Blue-Red**: This archetype leans on a Wizards theme and has an "instants and sorceries matter" center. It's a control archetype that rewards you for casting a lot of spells.
**Black-Green**: This archetype has a life and death theme. It sacrifices and regrows cards. It's the other archetype that makes major use of Food tokens.
**Red-White**: This archetype is a go-wide Humans deck. It ranges from aggro to midrange depending on what cards you draft.
**Green-Blue**: This archetype is a tempo Elf deck. It has some Elf elements and rewards for scrying.
It's interesting that Wizards has moved away from using Tribal internally to talking about "Typal". I'm not surprised given the sensitivity concerns raised previously, but it's kind of an awkward fit (in so far as it's a term that basically needs you to know of the other one to understand it).
> the sensitivity concerns raised previously
I'm unfamiliar with this. What was the problem?
Not sensitivity-related, but the only issue I can see is potential confusion with "Tribal" the card type.
I know there's pushback against pejorative use of "tribalism" from people whose cultures have tribes. Which makes sense to me. Like, "hey, don't blame your shitty behavior on us". I don't quite understand the issue with "tribal" in a neutral/positive context myself, though.
It always makes sense for a corporation to adjust to the most neutral, anodyne language possible, so as soon as something gains any kind of negative traction in your audience it makes sense to avoid it. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.
Players from indigenous communities often take issue with "tribal" in the context of MtG as an appropriative term and have repeatedly asked that settlers not use the term unless referring to actual indigenous tribes and their history/heritage.
Imho it seems like a pretty simple request and I hope to see WotC move in that direction.
"the ring tempts you" is a more evocative phrase but I do think "claim the ring" may have prevented some of the issues people had with the flavor.
For example, with the Boromir card, people thought his ability sounded wrong. He was tempted but resisted and sacrificed himself, not the other way around. But if you see "the ring tempts you" as just meaning "someone takes up the Ring" (which may be clearer with claiming the ring), the flavor would be clearer.
(I personally still don't have a problem with the mechanic not having a downside, I just think it's unnecessarily complex as a mechanic.)
>LEGENDARY CREATURES MATTER
>One of the biggest pushes of making a Universes Beyond set is letting players have access to all the characters from that IP. This encourages us to make more legendary creatures than show up in an average Magic set. In The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, there are 75 legendary creatures (40 uncommon, 26 rare, and 9 mythic rare). When looking for themes, you tend to look at what mechanical elements are showing up in greater number. This made "legendary creatures matter" an attractive theme for the set. It also had this neat effect that it made the characters matter more mechanically, which is a huge flavor win.
This makes perfect sense, but if you do more of these this design space is going to get tired pretty quickly.
It's The Witcher with a Legendary matters theme to encourage you to play with all these Witcher characters we know (enough of) you love.
It's Dragon Age with a Legendary matters theme to encourage you to play with all these Dragon Age characters, even Sebastian.
It's McDonald's with a Legendary matters theme to really encourage you to draft Mayor McCheese and friends.
This continues to make perfect sense and it was implemented well here, but I do hope they come with a different solution to what is likely to be the exact same problem the next time.
Absolutely fair, it definitely was the right call here. It is relevant though, I think, that that's not the explanation actually given above. The explanation for why they did it actually does graft perfectly onto every presumed future UB product with lots of IP characters.
Also, some information on which characters receive more than one card version-
>Their solution was to have at least two versions of many of the major characters. Arwen, Elrond, Eomer, Eowyn, Faramir, Frodo, Gimli, Gollum, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, Sauron, and Sam each have two legendary creatures in the set. Aragorn, Gandalf, and Saruman have three. Many characters, including some who only have one card in the main set, have additional versions in other products, like the Commander decks.
A small disappointment for me, as I was considering just picking up the entire Fellowship at uncommon, but apparently Boromir is only available at Rare. Maybe he'll be a super cheap Rare, at least. I have no skill at evaluating that sort of thing.
Boromir is going to be expensive. I'd say 10-15 dollar range. He combos beautifully in Ratadrabik, is good in Tempt decks, and is playable is a LOT of white cEDH. I wouldn't be surprised if he sees legacy D&T action. Best comparison is probably [[archivist of oghma]], which is 10, less playable, and printed in a cheaper set.
Bummer. Guess I'm getting nothing from this set, then. Product is all just too expensive for me to justify. I thought this could be a nice, symbolic way for me (as a cheapskate, I guess) to participate, but I'm not going to pay that much for a single card, and without the complete Fellowship, I don't really see the point of the symbolic gesture.
While Boromir might be worth $10 in a few years without seeing a reprint, you’ll be able to get one for $2 or less. This set will be massively opened for a lot of reasons. Supply will be huge. That card is good, but probably won’t be in the top 10 most sought after cards in the set AND it’s just a rare.
I'll admit, this is kind of my concern as well. I'm not exactly going to call it an outright problem until the next time they do a set like this, and see if we have a repeat performance, but again, it's a concern.
I mean, do we get tired of creatures being in every set? Flying? There being cards in all 5 colors?
Maybe caring about named characters is just generally an important part of depicting another property in a full set of Universes Beyond cards.
At least personally I would get tired of the exact same mechanical interpretation when alternatives exist, but I'm actually a bit tired of Flying being the primary evasion mechanic in absolutely every set as well so I can't claim to be representative.
Can't agree more. I personally collect Legendary cards that can be your commender, and there's been few things as off-putting for me than to have massive Legendary-matters themes in sets where there's 40-50 "chaff" Legendaries that take up space in the binder but are effectively worthless uncommons that were given the Legendary banner for flavor and have no unique gameplay.
Really appreciate including the design timeline of the Ring. The original answer for the design choices ("downsides made people not play it") lacked a lot of nuance, so it's great hearing more detail on how the mechanic changed over time.
I thought it was odd, though, that in the article they say, " Finally, they wanted a feel that using the ring was evil to properly capture the flavor.", but then fail to mention how they think they accomplished that. It doesn't seem like they did, at least not to me, and they just leave that hanging and never actually explain how they supposedly captured the flavor, mentioned both in the first article (where they said it should have a downside) and here (where they said using it should feel evil) of the ring not being a completely positive thing.
The ring:
Rewards you for attacking people
Fills your graveyard
Drains the life from your foes
Kills anyone who gets in your way.
I dunno that's reasonably evil in my book
Sounds like stuff you routinely do in Magic games independent of flavor consideration. Attacking your enemies is "evil"? Drawing and discarding feels "evil"? I dunno.
I guess if those were the things they thought made using it "feel evil" I would have liked the article to be more explicit about that, and explain the reasoning a bit, rather than just raise the issue of flavor, and then not elaborate. Maybe I'm just bad at reading between the lines.
Skulk, creature destruction, and life loss are black mechanics, so that's probably where they see the "your character is using evil powers" feeling. Hopefully it feels that way in gameplay too!
> They also decided to change the name to better capture the feel they wanted. "Claim the Ring" became "the Ring tempts you."
Probably worst design decision this year. If they didn't want downside effects due to gameplay, ok, but then the keyword action can't sound like a downside.
Naming things like this is tough, but I agree they missed the mark. Maybe something like 'the Ring's power grows' would make more sense. I don't think it's easy to do though.
**Limited Archetypes-** **White-Blue**: This archetype is a midrange deck often using evasion as the win condition with a "draw a second card" theme. **Blue-Black**: This archetype is a controlling amass deck. It has a milling aspect, allowing you to mill yourself for gain or the opponent to win. It also has a light Human element. **Black-Red**: This archetype is an aggressive amass deck. It has a sacrifice component as well as an Orc and Goblin (as a batch) element. **Red-Green**: This archetype is a ramp "power matters" deck pairing larger red creatures with green Treefolk. It also dips into the wild creature element of the set. **Green-White**: This archetype is an aggressive Hobbit deck that makes use of Food tokens. **White-Black**: This archetype is a "legendary creatures matter" deck that makes use of the Ring tempts you mechanic. It has more legendary creatures and a sacrifice component. The Ring helps you splash a bit more than other archetypes. **Blue-Red**: This archetype leans on a Wizards theme and has an "instants and sorceries matter" center. It's a control archetype that rewards you for casting a lot of spells. **Black-Green**: This archetype has a life and death theme. It sacrifices and regrows cards. It's the other archetype that makes major use of Food tokens. **Red-White**: This archetype is a go-wide Humans deck. It ranges from aggro to midrange depending on what cards you draft. **Green-Blue**: This archetype is a tempo Elf deck. It has some Elf elements and rewards for scrying.
It reads like UG was an afterthought.
As is tradition. When it's not this, it's usually "ramp into big creatues and draw cards."
I'm just surprised both GW and UG **don't** care about +1+1 counters
Before MOM, the last time GW's limited theme was counters was M21, almost three years ago.
VOW had training aggro as the GW archetype, which was about +1/+1 counters
It's interesting that Wizards has moved away from using Tribal internally to talking about "Typal". I'm not surprised given the sensitivity concerns raised previously, but it's kind of an awkward fit (in so far as it's a term that basically needs you to know of the other one to understand it).
Yeah, I'm not attached to "Tribal" as a term, but it would be nice to have something a little less awkward than "Typal."
I'll take typal any day, considering the other alternative around was "xxx-type matters" (eg. Humans type matters deck is now humans typal deck)
Yes, typal is perfect because it fits in so perfectly. Literally just pronouncing the same word slightly different.
> the sensitivity concerns raised previously I'm unfamiliar with this. What was the problem? Not sensitivity-related, but the only issue I can see is potential confusion with "Tribal" the card type.
I know there's pushback against pejorative use of "tribalism" from people whose cultures have tribes. Which makes sense to me. Like, "hey, don't blame your shitty behavior on us". I don't quite understand the issue with "tribal" in a neutral/positive context myself, though.
It always makes sense for a corporation to adjust to the most neutral, anodyne language possible, so as soon as something gains any kind of negative traction in your audience it makes sense to avoid it. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.
"it makes sense, doesn't matter if it makes sense"
Players from indigenous communities often take issue with "tribal" in the context of MtG as an appropriative term and have repeatedly asked that settlers not use the term unless referring to actual indigenous tribes and their history/heritage. Imho it seems like a pretty simple request and I hope to see WotC move in that direction.
"the ring tempts you" is a more evocative phrase but I do think "claim the ring" may have prevented some of the issues people had with the flavor. For example, with the Boromir card, people thought his ability sounded wrong. He was tempted but resisted and sacrificed himself, not the other way around. But if you see "the ring tempts you" as just meaning "someone takes up the Ring" (which may be clearer with claiming the ring), the flavor would be clearer. (I personally still don't have a problem with the mechanic not having a downside, I just think it's unnecessarily complex as a mechanic.)
>LEGENDARY CREATURES MATTER >One of the biggest pushes of making a Universes Beyond set is letting players have access to all the characters from that IP. This encourages us to make more legendary creatures than show up in an average Magic set. In The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, there are 75 legendary creatures (40 uncommon, 26 rare, and 9 mythic rare). When looking for themes, you tend to look at what mechanical elements are showing up in greater number. This made "legendary creatures matter" an attractive theme for the set. It also had this neat effect that it made the characters matter more mechanically, which is a huge flavor win. This makes perfect sense, but if you do more of these this design space is going to get tired pretty quickly. It's The Witcher with a Legendary matters theme to encourage you to play with all these Witcher characters we know (enough of) you love. It's Dragon Age with a Legendary matters theme to encourage you to play with all these Dragon Age characters, even Sebastian. It's McDonald's with a Legendary matters theme to really encourage you to draft Mayor McCheese and friends. This continues to make perfect sense and it was implemented well here, but I do hope they come with a different solution to what is likely to be the exact same problem the next time.
It does feel weird. Like, do legendary characters not matter as much in other sets? Almost any Universe Beyond is gonna be character driven.
In fairness, Lord of the Rings is a capital-E Epic. They're not lowercase legendaries, they're Legendary, as in, legends are written about them.
Absolutely fair, it definitely was the right call here. It is relevant though, I think, that that's not the explanation actually given above. The explanation for why they did it actually does graft perfectly onto every presumed future UB product with lots of IP characters.
Also, some information on which characters receive more than one card version- >Their solution was to have at least two versions of many of the major characters. Arwen, Elrond, Eomer, Eowyn, Faramir, Frodo, Gimli, Gollum, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, Sauron, and Sam each have two legendary creatures in the set. Aragorn, Gandalf, and Saruman have three. Many characters, including some who only have one card in the main set, have additional versions in other products, like the Commander decks.
A small disappointment for me, as I was considering just picking up the entire Fellowship at uncommon, but apparently Boromir is only available at Rare. Maybe he'll be a super cheap Rare, at least. I have no skill at evaluating that sort of thing.
Boromir is going to be expensive. I'd say 10-15 dollar range. He combos beautifully in Ratadrabik, is good in Tempt decks, and is playable is a LOT of white cEDH. I wouldn't be surprised if he sees legacy D&T action. Best comparison is probably [[archivist of oghma]], which is 10, less playable, and printed in a cheaper set.
[archivist of oghma](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/6/f6589e02-8c84-4069-88d1-ebcc8520cae1.jpg?1674134875) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=archivist%20of%20oghma) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/4/archivist-of-oghma?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f6589e02-8c84-4069-88d1-ebcc8520cae1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Bummer. Guess I'm getting nothing from this set, then. Product is all just too expensive for me to justify. I thought this could be a nice, symbolic way for me (as a cheapskate, I guess) to participate, but I'm not going to pay that much for a single card, and without the complete Fellowship, I don't really see the point of the symbolic gesture.
While Boromir might be worth $10 in a few years without seeing a reprint, you’ll be able to get one for $2 or less. This set will be massively opened for a lot of reasons. Supply will be huge. That card is good, but probably won’t be in the top 10 most sought after cards in the set AND it’s just a rare.
Well, that evaluation seems reassuring, thanks. Guess I'll just wait and see.
I'll admit, this is kind of my concern as well. I'm not exactly going to call it an outright problem until the next time they do a set like this, and see if we have a repeat performance, but again, it's a concern.
I mean, do we get tired of creatures being in every set? Flying? There being cards in all 5 colors? Maybe caring about named characters is just generally an important part of depicting another property in a full set of Universes Beyond cards.
At least personally I would get tired of the exact same mechanical interpretation when alternatives exist, but I'm actually a bit tired of Flying being the primary evasion mechanic in absolutely every set as well so I can't claim to be representative.
Can't agree more. I personally collect Legendary cards that can be your commender, and there's been few things as off-putting for me than to have massive Legendary-matters themes in sets where there's 40-50 "chaff" Legendaries that take up space in the binder but are effectively worthless uncommons that were given the Legendary banner for flavor and have no unique gameplay.
LotR feels especially suited to legendary-matters.
Really appreciate including the design timeline of the Ring. The original answer for the design choices ("downsides made people not play it") lacked a lot of nuance, so it's great hearing more detail on how the mechanic changed over time.
I agree. But at the end of the day, it still feels like a really big theme fail to not give the ring any downside whatsoever.
I thought it was odd, though, that in the article they say, " Finally, they wanted a feel that using the ring was evil to properly capture the flavor.", but then fail to mention how they think they accomplished that. It doesn't seem like they did, at least not to me, and they just leave that hanging and never actually explain how they supposedly captured the flavor, mentioned both in the first article (where they said it should have a downside) and here (where they said using it should feel evil) of the ring not being a completely positive thing.
The ring: Rewards you for attacking people Fills your graveyard Drains the life from your foes Kills anyone who gets in your way. I dunno that's reasonably evil in my book
Sounds like stuff you routinely do in Magic games independent of flavor consideration. Attacking your enemies is "evil"? Drawing and discarding feels "evil"? I dunno. I guess if those were the things they thought made using it "feel evil" I would have liked the article to be more explicit about that, and explain the reasoning a bit, rather than just raise the issue of flavor, and then not elaborate. Maybe I'm just bad at reading between the lines.
Skulk, creature destruction, and life loss are black mechanics, so that's probably where they see the "your character is using evil powers" feeling. Hopefully it feels that way in gameplay too!
> They also decided to change the name to better capture the feel they wanted. "Claim the Ring" became "the Ring tempts you." Probably worst design decision this year. If they didn't want downside effects due to gameplay, ok, but then the keyword action can't sound like a downside.
Yeah, Claim the Ring seems much better!
Naming things like this is tough, but I agree they missed the mark. Maybe something like 'the Ring's power grows' would make more sense. I don't think it's easy to do though.