The Ultimate Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Limited Set Review

Last updated on February 27, 2024

Andúril, Flame of the West | Illustration by Irvin Rodriguez

I’ve never been much of a Lord of the Rings fan. I know, I’m a bad geek.

But whether you love it or not, there’s no denying the profound cultural impact that this classic fantasy series has had. These novels basically wrote the template for all “swords and sorcery” fantasy series since, and every fantasy property (Magic included) can trace its origins back to J.R.R. Tolkein.

Today I'm talking about Limited. Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth is fully draftable and will be available on MTG Arena, so we absolutely want to know what we’re doing with it. So here we go, our usual card-by-card breakdown of this awesomely flavorful and unique Magic set!

Rating Breakdown

Sauron, the Dark Lord | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

As always, I want to remind you that this is a review based on initial impressions of the cards. It's hard to figure out how these cards will play out without knowing things like the speed of the format or the relative power levels of the colors and archetypes. My reviews are largely based on the card’s quality in a vacuum or assuming that their specific archetype is playable.

I'm using a comparative rating system on a scale of 0-10, with each rating meaning the following:

• 10: The absolute best of the best. 10s will make a meaningful impact on any game regardless of when you play them and will be extremely tough to beat. These include cards like Sunfall and Zephyr Singer.
• 8-9: Extremely good cards, usually game-winning bombs, and the most efficient removal spells, though not quite good enough to be a 10/10. Think cards like Hoarding Broodlord and Invasion of Fiora.
• 6-7: Important role-players. These are typically going to be the best uncommons that really drive you towards playing a particular color, like build-arounds and good removal. Cards like Preening Champion and Volcanic Spite fall under this category.
• 3-5: The average Limited card. Most commons and uncommons will end up in this range, and most of your Limited decks will be made up mostly of these. These are cards like Swordsworn Cavalier and Meeting of Minds.
• 1-2: These cards are generally pretty bad and you won’t play any of them. They should be kept in the sideboard and might be useful in specific situations. Think cards like Crystal Carapace and Burning Sun's Fury.
• 0: Absolutely awful cards. These are virtually unplayable in every scenario and you should never put these cards in your main deck. Cards like Invasion of Arcavios and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur go here.

Set Mechanics

This set brings back a couple mechanics plus a very unique one just for this set, so let’s have a quick look.

Amass Orcs

Amass makes a return since its first appearance in War of the Spark. If a card instructs you to “amass X”, you create a 0/0 Army token and then put X +1/+1 counters on it. But if you already control an Army, you just put those counters on that instead. This time around the Army you make will be an Orc Army rather than the original Zombie Army.

This mechanic was very interesting to play with the first time around. Amassing is naturally stronger when you don’t already have an Army, since it’s creating an extra creature for you. This incentivizes you to trade off your Army in combat or sacrifice it to maximize your future plays, which is a really fun and complex play pattern.

Food Tokens

Returning from Throne of Eldraine, Food tokens are a strong mechanic that give you a constant stream of life to keep you in the game for longer. It’s not just life though; they’re artifacts too, which offers some fantastic synergy that the set takes advantage of.

Historic Cards

We last saw this in Dominaria. A “historic” card is anything that's legendary, an artifact, or a saga. It’s as simple as that.

This set has a ton of each of these, so it makes sense that we also have cards that care about historic cards as well as each of these individual types. There's also a Draft archetype in black and white that seems to care more about legendary creatures than others.

The Ring Tempts You

Now we get to the meat of this set. It’s not enough to just print The One Ring, the Ring has to be interwoven throughout the set. This is a very complicated mechanic, so let’s take it piece by piece.

First, a lot of cards in the set say “the Ring tempts you” as part of an effect. When this happens the first time, you need to do two things: you choose a creature you control to become your Ring-bearer, and you get an emblem called The Ring with its first ability active. From then, each time The Ring tempts you again, you can choose a new Ring-bearer or keep the same one, and the next ability opens up on The Ring emblem. The Ring has four abilities for you to unlock, and beyond that you can always keep choosing new Ring-bearers.

This mechanic is just strange. If you have small creatures then the first The Ring ability is good enough, but if you’re doing it with larger creatures then you need to get the second or third before it starts to make sense.

We’ll see how it plays out, but I’m skeptical until I get to see it in action.

The Draft Archetypes

This is a traditionally designed set, which means that there are 10 2-color Draft archetypes that are focused on. These are:

• Azorius (): Midrange fliers and “draw a second card” matters
• Dimir (): Control and amass
• Rakdos (): Aggressive amass/orcs/goblins and sacrifice matters
• Gruul (): Big creature aggro
• Selesnya (): Hobbits/halflings and Food
• Orzhov (): Legends and tokens matter
• Golgari (): Sacrifice and Food matters
• Simic (): Elves and scrying matters
• Izzet (): Instants and sorceries matter
• Boros (): Go-wide human aggro and equipment matters

Okay, let’s jump in and start with the white cards.

White Cards

Banish from Edoras

Rating: 5/10

As far as 5-mana removal spells go, at least you’re exiling the creature outright. White doesn’t get access to something like this often, but it’s a welcome sight for a color which often struggles to get removal spells.

The Battle of Bywater

Rating: 7/10

This is an interesting board wipe. The hobbits/halflings of this set are all very small, so in that deck in particular this will absolutely shine. It should be relatively simple to turn this into essentially a 3-mana Plague Wind and that potential is incredible.

That being said, given that this will be stronger against some decks than others, don’t be afraid to sideboard it out when it ends up much weaker.

Bill the Pony

Rating: 5/10

I’m sold. I want to be a Lord of the Rings fan now.

Bill the Pony is breathtakingly adorable, and not too bad a card in general. Two Food tokens up front is decent and assuming you can keep it fed, it's a 4/4 for four, which is an okay floor.

Where Bill will shine is in a deck that has some of the set’s bigger treefolk, so you can really take advantage of this ability.

Boromir, Warden of the Tower

Rating: 7/10

We mainly care about two of Boromir’s abilities here: being a 3/3 vigilance for three mana and flavorfully sacrificing himself to protect your creatures. Both of those make for this being a very solid card and a good addition to any white deck.

Dawn of a New Age

Rating: 7/10

At first, it looks like you need to have a bunch of creatures in play for this to be good, but that’s just not the case. This is perfectly reasonable if you just play this early with a couple of creatures out and you just draw a few cards.

It’s an incredible deal which any white deck would be grateful to get. It is really bad when you draw it late, as it only gives you advantage slowly, but any other time it’s a great card to see.

Dúnedain Blade

Rating: 4/10

+2/+1 is a decent enough buff for an equipment to give, so if I have a good amount of humans to reduce the equip cost, then I’m very interested in this.

Eagles of the North

Rating: 3/10

This looks like one of the weaker landcyclers that we’ll see in this set. White is the color least likely to want a 6-drop in the first place. The ability on it is strong, but something you’d rather be paying about four mana to get. I think this is one landcycler you’re going to play a lot less often than the others.

Eastfarthing Farmer

Rating: 4/10

A sorcery-speed +X/+X boost is not something we care too much about, but this is a free bonus on something we’d already be happy playing in a deck that cared about Food or tokens. It’s not exciting, but probably a reasonable curve filler for those decks.

East-Mark Cavalier

Rating: 4/10

Your white decks are going to want 2-drops and there are likely enough goblins and orcs in the set that this is often a little better than your average 2-drop.

Éowyn, Lady of Rohan

Rating: 6/10

Giving a creature first strike or vigilance each turn is a really nice place to start. Éowyn can make good use of this herself, given her stats. Then, if you happen to be in the equipment deck, this gives enough extra advantage that she becomes a highly desirable build-around.

I’m also paying attention to the fact that she can equip Dúnedain Blade for free.

Errand-Rider of Gondor

Rating: 6/10

While it’s clearly better to just outright draw a card, I’m extremely happy playing this card at any point. Most decks are likely to have a bunch of legends in them anyway, but putting a land on the bottom of your library will often not be much different. This is one of the best white commons by far.

Escape from Orthanc

Rating: 3/10

One mana for +3 toughness will at least help most creatures survive a combat, which is the thing you want most out of a combat trick. I don’t tend to like cards like this, though I know I’m likely to lose a lot of creatures to these when I play.

Esquire of the King

Rating: 2/10

I’m still getting used to the idea that 1-drops aren’t awful anymore, but this still looks bad. It has a medium ability that is only relevant in the late game and as a 1/1 with no keywords, it does next to nothing in the early game.

I wouldn’t be happy to play this, but maybe I’ll come around by the end of this format.

Faramir, Field Commander

Rating: 6/10

Faramir isn’t particularly big, he’s only a Hill Giant, but as long as you can reliably get either of its abilities to trigger often then he really pulls his weight. It shouldn’t be too hard to sacrifice creatures or trade them off in combat, so even if you have very few ways for the Ring to tempt you, you should at least have that part nailed.

Flowering of the White Tree

Rating: 10/10

This card is absolutely exceptional. A 2-mana Glorious Anthem would already be busted, but an additional +1/+0 and ward to all legendary creatures when there are half a dozen of them in each color at the uncommon level pushes this way over the top.

Fog on the Barrow-Downs

Rating: 5/10

This is basically just Luminous Bonds, one of the most boring Pacifisms ever. Removing the creature’s types is barely even a bonus as none of the tribal archetypes are so greatly pronounced that this would even set them back.

Forge Anew

Rating: 1/10

The thing is, equipment cards are extremely unlikely to go to your graveyard. Unless this is reanimating one for you, it’s not worth spending a whole card just to get the last two abilities, even in a deck with a heavy equipment focus.

Frodo, Sauron’s Bane

Rating: 6/10

The rare Frodo looks quite strong. Assuming you can activate its first ability, he can be a 2/3 lifelinker swinging in on turn 2. I don’t think you’re very likely to literally win the game with his second ability, especially as triple black is a very hefty cost to overcome, but Ring-bearers are very hard to block, so it might happen every now and again.

Gandalf the White

Rating: 7/10

The mythic Gandalf card does a lot of things, but they’re a little too situational for us to be interested in them in Limited. Rather, a 4/5 flash creature which gives some of your other cards flash is quite strong and we are pretty happy with that. We can ambush attacking creatures, leave counterspells and interaction open and so on.

I’m not sure how often we will be able to make use of the doubling of triggers, but I don’t think it will happen often enough to factor into how you evaluate it.

Hobbit’s Sting

Rating: 6/10

While this is clearly a spell that could do nothing at all, the fact that your opponent won’t be able to do much to control your Food tokens means that this seems very unlikely to me. Assuming you are in the Food token, this card looks great, but I would be worried about playing it anywhere else in great quantities.

Landroval, Horizon Witness

Rating: 5/10

Attacking with multiple creatures each turn is not a trivially easy thing to do, but Landroval’s raw stats are already good enough that this slots into a lot of decks and will then do some work every now and again.

Lost to Legend

Rating: 5/10

This is as close to hard removal as it gets for effects like this. There are enough historic permanents to care about in this set that I am probably fine with one copy in my white decks and possibly a second, depending on how the format shapes up.

Nimble Hobbit

Rating: 3/10

Tapping down a creature so that it can’t block is a very powerful ability, though needing to pay three mana or sacrifice a Food each time is too high a price for this to be a consistently good card. This just isn’t up to par and while it’s not completely useless, I just don’t think I’m that happy to play it.

Now for Wrath, Now for Ruin!

Rating: 2/10

Cards like this always feel like a trap to me. Your opponent sees how big your creatures are before they block and you only get a good enough payoff if you have several creatures out. I prefer something like an Inspired Charge, but if you have the right deck it’s not horrible.

Protector of Gondor

Rating: 4/10

Two bodies for one card is usually a good deal, even for four mana. It also triggers token synergies and gives you two human creatures for the tribal decks.

Reprieve

Rating: 7/10

Remand is a hell of a Magic card. Color-shifting it into white does make it worse, since white can’t really take advantage of it to the same extent, but the tempo swing this provides is too powerful to ignore. Say for example on turn 5, you play a 3-drop and leave this open to counter their 5-drop and you draw a card. You basically just played a Time Walk and drew a card. This is likely one of the best Constructed cards in the whole set and I think it should be a great Limited card too.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane

Rating: 5/10

It’s nice that the Food token that Rosie creates will trigger her ability, but since she can’t put a counter on herself, she is only good if you have another creature out. Yeah, that’s likely to happen, but it will mean that missing your 2-drop when you want to play Rosie on turn 3 will be devastating.

Rosie looks like a solid build-around for token decks, but has enough of a downside that you should be aware of them when playing her.

Samwise the Stouthearted

Rating: 5/10

Sam is probably my favorite LotR character, like I’m sure he is for many others. Sean Astin brought the character to life in the movies and is one of the things I enjoyed the most about them. Our uncommon Sam is really nice. A 2/1 flash creature can always just function as an Ambush Viper if you want him to.

The upside of him being a mini-Gravedigger is a huge bonus if you can set it up. Trading off a creature with a good enters the battlefield or death trigger and then getting it back with Sam is exactly the kind of play I’m looking for in any Draft format.

Second Breakfast

Rating: 2/10

Sadly, the most meme-worthy card in the set is just not that good. +2/+1 isn’t a big enough boost that it even swings most combats in your favor. Hence, while this has the potential to be a two-for-one play, it’s too hard to set up and will more often just be a weak combat trick.

Shire Shirriff

Rating: 7/10

I am all for a 2-drop Banisher Priest, even if it requires an extra cost. This set is overrun with tokens, from 1/1 humans to Treasure and Food tokens, so it should be pretty easy to use.

Slip On the Ring

Rating: 3/10

A simple Cloudshift is only ever as good as the quality of interactions you have with it. If you have a bunch of sweet ‘enters the battlefield’ triggers, this card’s value goes way up. Otherwise, the card isn’t good enough to play. Being tempted by the Ring is a nice bonus, but you really need to want the flicker effect to play this at all.

Soldier of the Grey Host

Rating: 3/10

Everything about this card screams mediocre. There are some epic creature combat tricks in the game, like Briarpack Alpha. But unlike those good ones, this is both a weak combat trick and a weak creature. I would be satisfied if it was at least decent at one of those, but I don’t like it if both sides are weak.

Stalwarts of Osgiliath

Rating: 2/10

You’re not going to want many 5-drops in your white decks, if any at all. This is quite weak, so you’re never going to want to prioritize it. Though it can top your curve and be fine if you need it to.

Tale of Tinúviel

Rating: 2/10

Since you’re paying five mana, you really need to be able to reanimate a creature with chapter two or you aren’t getting enough return on your investment. I don’t think you’re likely to be in the market for this and I think I’ve run out of finance metaphors.

Took Reaper

Rating: 3/10

Every good white deck will need 2-drops, and while this isn’t particularly good, it can definitely serve its purpose.

War of the Last Alliance

Rating: 5/10

This card is a tad too situational for a lot of decks, but assuming that you have a lot of legendary creatures in your deck, this is essentially four mana to draw two of your best cards. Double strike to your team is a nice extra bonus, especially if you have the mana to cast the creatures you tutored for.

One of these to give you a bit of card advantage in the late game sounds perfect assuming you’re not a hyper-aggressive deck.

Westfold Rider

Rating: 4/10

3/1 creatures can be a liability, as they trade up for 3/3s on defense but often trade down for 1/1s on offense. But being a 2-drop makes it important for most white decks and the upside of being able to kill an artifact or enchantment will come up often enough that you’re happy putting this card in your deck.

You Cannot Pass!

Rating: 5/10

I am much more interested in blocking a big creature and using this to kill it for one mana, but even with the huge number of legendary creatures in the set, this is likely too situational. The first copy is likely quite strong, but I don’t think you can afford to put too many of it into your deck.

Blue Cards

Arwen’s Gift

Rating: 3/10

I don’t Foresee being able to cast this for its reduced cost very often. If the format ends up being slow enough, then this should be good enough. But against any kind of aggressive format where you’re facing down three creatures by the time you can play this, it’s just a liability.

The Bath Song

Rating: 4/10

As far as draw spells go, I much prefer this to Arwen's Gift. Four mana to draw four cards and discard two is a very nice deal. Shuffling your best interactive spells back into your deck gives you huge late game inevitability. If the format is too fast for this card, then it will at least be an incredibly powerful sideboard card for slow mirror matches.

Bewitching Leechcraft

Rating: 6/10

I had to read this a few times to figure out exactly what this is trying to do. Essentially it’s a 2-drop Claustrophobia for any creature that doesn’t have +1/+1 counters on it.

Even then, if you untap something by removing a counter, this aura sticks around and will then keep it locked down if you do attack with it. While Claustrophobia has gotten a lot weaker in recent years, we’ve still seen cards like Winter's Grasp be exceptional, so I have high hopes for this removal spell.

Bill Ferny, Bree Swindler

Rating: 3/10

Giving your opponent a horse seems… extremely weak. And not even something you can do very often. This is a 2/1 for two that gives you a Treasure when it gets blocked. That’s fine, but nothing special.

Birthday Escape

Rating: 4/10

I think you’ll play this quite often. One mana to draw a card is fine, though not something you go out of your way to pick up. But since this allows you to choose a new Ring-bearer, this will often play out more like “draw a card and make a creature unblockable”.

Borne Upon a Wind

Rating: 5/10

These spells usually only let you cast sorceries at instant speed, but getting to cast an instant-speed creature is a huge upside. Flash creatures can ambush attacking creatures and give you a massive tempo swing.

It’s a little bit situational, but it’s still cheap enough and always draws you a card so it will never be that bad.

Captain of Umbar

Rating: 3/10

Merfolk Looters that you have to pay mana for are not particularly desirable. Especially when they don’t fit into any of the particular archetypes that blue has on offer. This is passable, but I don’t think I would ever prioritize taking it in a Draft.

Council’s Deliberation

Rating: 4/10

Casting this is extremely unexciting, but you could always discard it to some other effect. Doing so gives you potentially a lot of advantage because in the blue/green scrying matters deck, this is poised to give you free cards just for doing what you were going to do in the first place.

This looks like a sick card for Constructed and if you can put the effort in, it might also work in Limited.

Deceive the Messenger

Rating: 4/10

I’m a big fan of these cheap spells that have the potential to give you a huge advantage. This, for example, can ambush and kill a 3/1 for just one mana, leaving behind a 1/1 for you to use later. It takes effort, but there are many avenues open for you to create a two-for-one swing and that’s a lot for a simple one mana instant to do.

Dreadful as the Storm

Rating: 2/10

Blue is the color that least wants combat tricks. We have found that when they cantrip, like Suit Up, they become very strong, but having the Ring tempt you is nowhere near a whole card’s worth of value, so I doubt it’s enough to make this stand out. It’s at least a guaranteed +5/+5 when used on an army token, so that is something going for it.

Elrond, Lord of Rivendell

Rating: 6/10

Given that blue/green has a theme based around scrying, Elrond looks like the perfect enabler for that theme. Every creature you play triggering a scry will really help your deck’s payoffs to work. Even when you don’t have any payoffs, the multiple scrys will help dig you to them.

Gandalf, Friend of the Shire

Rating: 7/10

I’ve already talked about how good flash creatures are, so you get that upfront on this Gandalf card. What I really like about him though is that he appears to be a very good payoff for the Ring tempting you. Drawing a card each time assuming you have any other creature in play is a great deal.

I don’t care too much about giving my sorceries flash, but I’m already happy with the rest of the card so I’ll take a free bonus.

Glorious Gale

Rating: 5/10

Essence Scatter is already really good, so when you give me a strictly better version I’m absolutely interested in it. Great card for sure.

Goldberry, River-Daughter

Rating: 6/10

This is an incredibly interesting build-around card. This can remove counters from sagas to keep them triggering the same ability each turn. You can move +1/+1 counters around to influence combat. All while drawing extra cards every now and again. I’m not saying this is likely to work every time, but it should only take a little bit of effort to make this stand out.

Grey Havens Navigator

Rating: 4/10

In any other set, this might be a little bit below what you want a 3-drop to do, but considering all of the cards that pay you off for scrying, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this overperform in the format.

Hithlain Knots

Rating: 3/10

Tapping a creature to draw a card isn’t great. Pressure Point has been really mediocre whenever we’ve seen it. That being said, we have the scry decks, draw two decks and the spells matter decks and this enables all of them, which is quite nice.

Horses of the Bruinen

Rating: 5/10

Undo is quite the Magic card. Even at five mana, it’s still a strong card despite losing some of that efficiency. Where this card will be especially good is an aggressive deck that can take advantage of the huge tempo swing that an effect like this provides.

Hopefully you can use this and waste a good 8-10 mana’s worth of creatures that will take too long for your opponent to replay.

Ioreth of the Healing House

Rating: 5/10

3-drop mana dorks are pretty strong in Limited, especially when they’re actually good at blocking. You also have the ability to untap creatures to give them pseudo-vigilance, so all round this is a nice little package. 

Isolation at Orthanc

Rating: 5/10

Four mana is a lot, but it’s a price worth paying for some really solid removal in blue. Much like Run Out of Town, I would expect this to be a standout in most blue decks you draft. The blue/red deck in particular will be very happy to see these.

Ithilien Kingfisher

Rating: 4/10

About ten years ago, this would be one of the best blue commons. Times have changed now, and this is just fine. Far from bad, but still a decent curve filler.

Knights of Dol Amroth

Rating: 3/10

This is a functional reprint of Lat-Nam Adept, which I don’t remember as being a particularly strong card. I doubt this will be much better this time round, but the set looks to be quite low in terms of power level, so we might have to reexamine that.

Lórien Revealed

Rating: 4/10

This is a curve ball for me. Five mana to draw three cards has become really weak in recent years, but given the islandcycling, I want to imagine that it’s enough to make it good again. The blue/red spells deck is especially likely to want this, so I’m intrigued to see where it lands.

Lost Isle Calling

Rating: 5/10

This card looks really fun to play. I like that it lets you play a kind of subgame where you’re really trying to get up to the seven verse counters so you can get that extra turn. But unlike other archetypal build-around cards, it does absolutely nothing until you get to that point.

The immediate parallel I can draw is with Dragonspark Reactor, which was a very good card, but much easier to enable and to cash in earlier for some value.

Meneldor, Swift Savior

Rating: 7/10

The best part about this card is that even if you can’t make full use of the repeatable flicker ability, four mana for a 3/3 flier is still really decent. Then, if you have anything with a good ‘enters the battlefield’ trigger, this will give you free value every turn that it gets to attack and hit the opponent.

Nimrodel Watcher

Rating: 4/10

There are a lot of scry enablers in this set, so making this a 3/1 unblockable creature should be fairly easy. It’s aggressive, so make sure it goes into an aggressive deck and it should do fine.

Pelargir Survivor

Rating: 5/10

I think I’m biased but I love cards like this. It’s a solid mana dork for the spells deck, which would already be okay, but it actually turns into a win condition in the late game. It’s a slow card, for the exact kinds of decks I like to draft, so I really like it.

Press the Enemy

Rating: 4/10

We have seen a few cards like this in the past and while they’ve never been incredibly powerful, they’ve certainly been good. A bounce spell that hits both permanents and spells is very flexible and if you can cast any extra spell with it, then it becomes cheap enough to be well worth it too.

Also gives you the bonus of triggering the various Saruman cards that care about casting two spells in the same turn, if that’s what your deck is looking to do.

Rangers of Ithilien

Rating: 8/10

A Sower of Temptation with a big restriction on what it can steal is still a Sower of Temptation. You may only be stealing a small creature, but there are a lot of them in this set with some quite potent abilities.

Ideally we will want a way of using that creature before we lose the Rangers and have to give it back, but even without that, this will be an extremely powerful card.

Saruman the White

Rating: 3/10

Casting two spells per turn is obviously something we’d like to do, but even if we aim for it, we can’t make it happen too reliably. There are a few cheap cantrips in the set to enable this, but I don’t think you’ll be amassing too often off of Saruman.

Saruman’s Trickery

Rating: 6/10

“Do we want Cancel?” is a worthwhile question for any Limited format. But the fact that this also amasses makes it basically a 3-drop Mystic Snake, which is a fantastic card.

People slept on Callous Dismissal back in War of the Spark, but then realized it was a 2-drop Man-o'-War and it quickly became the best blue common in the set.

Scroll of Isildur

Rating: 5/10

Without knowing how many artifacts you’re likely to come up against, it’s hard to know how useful the first ability is even likely to be. However, the next two abilities are pretty good, especially for the cost you’ve paid.

Based on that I’d probably be happy to play this card, but if I ended up with it in the sideboard, I’d bring it straight in if I saw something I could steal with chapter one.

Soothing of Sméagol

Rating: 3/10

While I like being able to bounce creatures at instant speed, two mana is a bit too much to do that and being tempted by the Ring isn’t enough to make up for that. It’s still a card I’m likely to play, I’m just not excited to pick it up in the Draft.

Stern Scolding

Rating: 5/10

This is essentially a 1-mana counterspell that counters near enough any creature that costs about three mana or less. That sounds pretty good to me. The fact that it’s so cheap means it’s very easy to leave open on key turns and will almost always trade up for something more expensive. It’s still too niche to want in great numbers, but it still looks solid.

Storm of Saruman

Rating: 0/10

This is just not even remotely playable. It’s a 6-mana enchantment that does literally nothing when you play it. Casting two spells in a turn is quite hard to do, but the payoff for doing so is just getting to copy one of them? When I’ve already invested six mana and a card, I want a hell of a lot more than that.

Surrounded by Orcs

Rating: 3/10

The base rate of this is a 3/3 for four mana that mills a player for three cards. If there were other mill cards in the set, then I would be more interested, but it’s pretty underwhelming as is. The only saving grace for this is that it really stacks up in multiples and might turn into a spicy win condition if you have a big enough army token.

I’ve drafted decks before that picked up five or six Dreadwaters, a card that looked unplayable by itself but turned into a win condition when you had a bunch of them.

Treason of Isengard

Rating: 3/10

I really hate these abilities that put spells from your graveyard on top of your deck. I get it, Archaeomancer is very powerful, but this compromise is just far too weak. That being said, this is on a 3-drop sorcery that nets you a 2/2, so it might be ok.

The Watcher in the Water

Rating: 0/10 – 7/10

I don’t do this kind of grade often, but I want to highlight that this card is utterly unplayable unless you can support it. Five mana for a 9/9 that stays tapped for nine turns is nowhere near good enough.

But if you have multiple ways to draw cards on your opponent’s turn and make some tentacles to get those stun counters off early, then it becomes quite a powerhouse.

Willow-Wind

Rating: 5/10

It’s back! For anyone who didn’t play Dominaria in 2018, Cloudreader Sphinx was the best blue common. Not only is this an exact reprint, but there’s a perfect scrying matters archetype for it to slot into.

It has to be said that the Limited sets in the last few years have been of a much higher average power level than Dominaria was, but this set looks to be of a similar power level, so I think this should absolutely stand out.

Black Cards

Bitter Downfall

Rating: 7/10

The ability to make this card cost three less is next to useless. I simply don’t want to have blocked a creature, lost my blocker and then kill theirs just to save on mana. It’s similar to a Spark Harvest, but one that requires a lot more setup.

Despite that this is still a splashable, unconditional removal spell and that is enough to make it one of the best non rares in the set.

The Black Breath

Rating: 3/10

This is much more of a sideboard card, but there are quite a few things that make 1/1 tokens in this set and the hobbits are also very small, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I started putting it into some main decks by the end of the format.

Call of the Ring

Rating: 6/10

This card really presses you to decide how good being tempted by the Ring is. The fact that this will get you to that fourth Ring ability really quickly I think is a big selling point for it. Also giving you the option of drawing a card whenever you choose a new Ring-bearer means you should be paid off well enough for playing it.

A big knock against it though is that it’s a terrible topdeck in the late game, but I think there’s enough upside to balance that out.

Cirith Ungol Patrol

Rating: 4/10

You really want sacrifice outlets to be small, so a 5-drop one wouldn’t normally look interesting. Thing is, drawing a card and making a Food token is a really big reward, so I could definitely see this topping the curve of some of those sacrifice decks.

Claim the Precious

Rating: 6/10

It may not be an instant, but three mana to destroy any creature is an excellent rate and having the Ring tempt you as well is a nice bonus that I didn’t need to get for this to go in every black deck.

Dunland Crebain

Rating: 5/10

This is an excellent common. Three mana for a 1/1 flier and a 2/2 army is a great deal, no matter what kind of black deck we end up building.

Easterling Vanguard

Rating: 4/10

Any cheap creature that leaves behind a creature token when it dies is already fantastic. It works perfectly with sacrifice abilities, stalls nicely in control decks and just gives you great value with a lot of other cards.

Gollum, Patient Plotter

Rating: 6/10

I don’t think having the Ring tempt you when Gollum dies is all that useful, but I’m very happy with a 2-mana 3/1 that I can return from my graveyard by sacrificing a creature. This will mean that you can have the Ring tempt you several times and give you easy access to a sacrifice outlet that your opponent will struggle to interact with.

Gollum’s Bite

Rating: 7/10

Being strictly better than a card that was already busted is a great place to start. Disfigure is an amazing Limited card, as it not only kills two toughness creatures but also ambushes bigger creatures as a combat trick, all while costing only one mana.

Exiling it from your graveyard to have the Ring tempt you is a very minor upside, but a welcome one given we would be slamming this even without that ability.

Gorbag of Minas Morgul

Rating: 5/10

Needing your creature to deal combat damage to a player is unintuitive given that you want to sacrifice it. Your 1/1 sacrificial lamb isn’t going to be able to connect and a creature that is big enough to get through is probably better to stay in play than to be turned into an extra card or Treasure.

That being said, you can turn random 1/1s into Ring-bearers and they will probably be able to hit then, so that might be a nice synergy, but otherwise I think this is a little too difficult to enable.

Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant

Rating: 7/10

Two bodies for one card is already good, but giving all creature tokens deathtouch is what we really like here. Because of how amass works, we really want to trade off our tokens as often as possible so that each new amass effect creates a new creature rather than just growing one we already had.

Deathtouch enables that perfectly. Vizier of the Scorpion enabled this in War of the Spark and I think Gothmog will do the same here.

Gríma Wormtongue

Rating: 6/10

A 1/4 for three is a really good stat line for a defensive sacrifice outlet. Having your opponent only lose one life isn’t the best of upsides, but there are quite a few disposable legends that can turn this into a huge advantage on key turns, making it a card I am very interested in for the sacrifice deck.

Grond, the Gatebreaker

Rating: 5/10

A 5/5 trample for four mana is clearly above rate, even if it isn't any good at blocking. Controlling an army should be fairly trivial for a black deck and even if you need to crew it, the rate you get is likely worth trying it.

Haunt of the Dead Marshes

Rating: 4/10

Three mana is quite a lot to ask for, but given that this provides a bit of extra advantage when you play it and can then be brought back again and again to be sacrificed, that three mana is well worth it.

This is no Sanitarium Skeleton, but I’m hoping it will play out at least similarly.

Isildur’s Fateful Strike

Rating: 5/10

This is not a card that was designed for Limited. Odds are, your opponent will not have more than four cards in hand. That’s just not how games of Limited go. In about 95% of cases, this is a simple, instant-speed Impale with the downside of requiring a legendary creature in play to be cast.

That’s a bit restrictive, but still a fine card given how many legendary creatures are in this set.

Lash of the Balrog

Rating: 5/10

These removal spells always overperform. Not only do you get a Bone Splinters for the sacrifice decks, but you also get a somewhat flexible removal spell for any deck. Should be a highly sought after common for black decks.

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

Rating: 7/10

Since Lobelia is a 3-drop that gives you back about three Treasures on average, it’s not hard to set her up as essentially a free creature. But also one that can ramp you to a bigger play on the following turn.

Even if you just trade off your 2-drop on your opponent’s third turn, flash her in and get a couple Treasures, that gives you the ability to play a 6- or 7-mana spell on turn 4, which black decks really don’t have the ability to do otherwise.

March from the Black Gate

Rating: 5/10

Attacking with your army to amass will usually mean that you will always just be growing that army. That’s not bad, but we would prefer to be making a new creature. With an instant-speed sacrifice outlet, we can absolutely do that, which will turn this into a way of getting a free creature each turn.

At the end of the day, I would be happy enough to settle for this if it only grew an army. For two mana, it starts by making a 1/1 that then becomes a 2/2 when it attacks, which most aggressive decks would be happy playing.

Mirkwood Bats

Rating: 4/10

I’ve already seen some hype for this in Commander, as it hits each opponent and does so with relative ease. In Limited, it’s still fairly solid. It has a good size for a 4-mana creature and hits for some free damage over the course of a game, so I’m pretty happy playing it.

Mordor Muster

Rating: 5/10

This is essentially a Dusk Legion Zealot, and in this set it has some great synergies with the amass and spells matter themes. This should be an exceptional common in the set and one that I’m happy to play in any black deck.

Mordor Trebuchet

Rating: 5/10

I love cards like this which give you access to a defensive creature that still applies good pressure for your aggressive decks, like Brimstone Trebuchet from Throne of Eldraine. Attacking with a goblin or orc is fairly trivial so this will be triggering often and getting in a lot of extra damage.

Morgul-Knife Wound

Rating: 6/10

If you’ve never played with Stab Wound before, let me tell you it is a lot more busted than it looks. This is quite a bit better I think, as your opponent is much more highly incentivized to just exile their creature as soon as possible. Sure, they could keep it around for blocking, but it costs them a ton of life to do so. Add all that up and you essentially have a two mana spell that exiles any creature.

And it’s common. The only downside is that you can’t proactively remove a creature and attack past it, since you have to wait a turn or two for it to leave the board, but assuming you’re a slow deck you don’t even care.

Nasty End

Rating: 4/10

We usually get some variant of Village Rites in each set and it’s usually fine. Getting an extra card by sacrificing a legendary creature is definitely a nice bonus, especially since they’re more likely to have removal pointed at them and you can get a huge bonus from sacrificing them in response.

Nazgûl

Rating: 6/10

The idea of playing all nine variant arts of this in the same Commander deck sounds sweet to me. In Limited, these are quite powerful. The first one you play triggers itself and becomes a 2/3 deathtouch for three mana that also tempts you.

I like that a lot, but the second one you play, if you’re lucky enough to get more of them, triggers both and leaves you with a 4/5 and a 3/4. Even if you only get one, the stats are great and if you get any others they get exponentially more broken.

Oath of the Grey Host

Rating: 2/10

The first two chapters here are aggressively mediocre. The third one is pretty decent, but having to endure the first two is likely too much, especially when you don’t even get to block with the tokens right away.

This reminds me a lot of Chainer's Torment, which was wildly unplayable in Dominaria, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was equally terrible.

One Ring to Rule Them All

Rating: 5/10

The flavor is a big win here, but I don’t think this card is quite that good. The trick is that by turning one of your creatures into a Ring-bearer, it will be legendary and therefore not be destroyed by the second chapter. But there are a ton of legendary creatures in this set, so I don’t think this is likely to sweep away many good creatures.

It is also something your opponent will see coming, which removes a lot of the power of a board sweeper.

Orcish Bowmasters

Rating: 7/10

Without anything else happening, this is a pair of 1/1s and a one damage ping for just two mana. I’m already on board. Flashing this in in response to a draw spell is absolutely disgusting. This looks genuinely good in Constructed formats and while it’s not that likely to trigger in Limited, it looks like it will do enough to be a high pick regardless.

Orcish Medicine

Rating: 2/10

Giving indestructible or lifelink is too minor of an effect to be all that useful as a combat trick. If you can line it up right and create a 1/1 token with it, then maybe you’ve got something there, but I don’t think that effort is ultimately worth it.

Sam’s Desperate Rescue

Rating: 3/10

Raise Dead isn’t a terrible spell by all means. It truly excels when you get a version that can pick up two creatures. Sadly, this one doesn’t do that. But I do think that having the Ring tempt you is bound to be enough of an advantage that you’re happy to play this.

Sauron, the Necromancer

Rating: 6/10

Sauron has a lot of things going on. Attacking and getting a free reanimate (effectively) is a very high upside. However, he has no way of making himself the Ring-bearer, so you’ll need something else to actually keep the creature.

Also, needing to attack is a much bigger cost than you realize. It gives your opponent a big window in which to kill Sauron before you get any triggers, and as a 4/4 he’s not that hard to block, even with menace. While Sauron has a strong effect on the board, he has some big downsides that keep him from being a bomb rare.

Shadow of the Enemy

Rating: 3/10

Essentially, this is a big 6-mana draw spell. Some decks are going to love that, especially if you top deck it on turn 10 after a big grindy game, it will basically win it for you. Sadly, modern Limited sets don’t usually lend themselves to wanting this, though the slower the format is, the better this card becomes.

Shelob’s Ambush

Rating: 2/10

Deathtouch tricks aren’t all that good unless you’re getting an extra bonus. In the right deck, getting a Food token will be enough of a bonus, but most of the time this is probably just a mediocre spell.

Snarling Warg

Rating: 4/10

A 3/4 menace for four mana is pretty decent and will fill your curve out quite nicely and you’ll certainly be happy if it can be a 4/4 reliably.

The Torment of Gollum

Rating: 3/10

Coercion effects have never been all that good, especially when they cost four mana. However, if you also get an amass 2, then I think that swings the card towards being playable, though I also wouldn’t be surprised if I never put this card into a deck.

Troll of Khazad-dûm

Rating: 4/10

Our swampcycler is a little on the weak side, but it’s still functional. A 6/5 for six mana that is nearly unblockable is perfectly fine, but this might be one that we don’t care about very much.

Uruk-hai Berserker

Rating: 4/10

It doesn’t get much more basic than this. Simple 3-drop with a minor additional ability. I’m sure this will find a home in plenty of black decks to fill out their curves.

Voracious Fell Beast

Rating: 6/10

Cruel Edict effects aren’t that great in Limited, but tack one onto a decently sized big flier and you’ve got a nice two-for-one deal!

Witch-king of Angmar

Rating: 9/10

The simple fact that this is a big 5-mana creature that is basically unkillable is all I need to know. You can’t realistically attack into this, since it will eat the creature it blocks and then you’ll have to sacrifice a creature that got through.

It’s also a 5-power flier, which clocks the opponent really quickly. This has pretty much everything I’d like to see in a bomb rare.

Red Cards

Battle-Scarred Goblin

Rating: 5/10

This ability looks weak, but when we’ve seen it before it has massively overperformed. This creature trades for 3-toughness creatures, can’t be blocked by one-toughness creatures and makes double blocks difficult too. It’s only a 2/2, but the ability is very dangerous.

Book of Mazarbul

Rating: 6/10

This looks very solid in aggressive decks. By itself, you’ll be attacking with a 3/3 army the turn after you play it and then your team gets menace the turn after. Sounds good, and that army could easily be bigger depending on what you play before it.

Breaking of the Fellowship

Rating: 5/10

You don’t have much control over this card unfortunately. If there’s a creature on board that you want to kill, this won’t always be able to do it, though that’s partly true of all burn spells.

You will often not be able to kill the biggest creature they have out, but I think this will work enough of the time that it’s worth playing at least one copy of. I'd however prioritize burn spells that I know how much damage they will deal at all times.

Cast into the Fire

Rating: 1/10

These modes are both far too situational that I don’t think you should play this in your main deck. It does seem like a solid sideboard card if you come across the right deck.

Display of Power

Rating: 1/10

In theory, you only want to play this when you have good instants or sorceries in your own deck, to guarantee that you always have something good to copy. Except, you also have to have three extra mana when you cast something, and have drawn this at the same time.

These downsides make it so that copy spells are really bad in Limited and this one is likely no different.

Éomer, Marshal of Rohan

Rating: 8/10

A 4/4 haste for four hits really hard. Triggering his ability is quite difficult to do, and it is on your opponent to do it, so unless you have a sacrifice card it’s not likely to happen. But you don’t need to trigger him for him to be a very solid creature already.

Éomer of the Riddermark

Rating: 7/10

A 5/4 haste for five is really beefy and would be a decent Limited card by itself. Given that it has five power, the triggered ability is very often going to get you a free 1/1 when it attacks too, which now turns it into a great deal for the mana you just paid.

Erebor Flamesmith

Rating: 5/10

This is something you definitely want in the spells matter archetype. It’s weird that it’s not a wizard, but we’ll take it. The gradual, slow burn adds up quicker than you realize and as a 2/1 for two it can definitely get into the red zone when you need it to.

Erkenbrand, Lord of Westfold

Rating: 6/10

At first glance, a 4-mana 3/3 with what seems like a minor ability is just not what an aggressive deck would be looking for. However, that minor ability goes to another level when you consider that you can keep retriggering it each turn.

Assuming you can keep playing humans each turn, this will function less like a weak common (such as Inspiring Captain) and much more like a tribal lord.

Fall of Cair Andros

Rating: 1/10

I have a mono red Commander deck that this will fit perfectly into, but it’s just terrible in Limited . It’s a 3-mana enchantment that doesn’t do anything until you do another thing. You’re then not that likely to even do that thing. It becomes somewhat powerful if you can get to eight mana, but that is an amount of mana you can’t rely on getting in any given game.

Fear, Fire, Foes!

Rating: 7/10

It has been a while since we saw a Blaze that could only hit creatures. They usually play out okay, even though they have become worse in recent years. The added bonus of clearing out small creatures will probably be relevant enough to push this up the pick orders though.

Fiery Inscription

Rating: 6/10

Assuming that your deck is very heavy on instants and sorceries, this looks like a very powerful build-around. While it doesn’t affect the board in any way, two damage to the face for each spell you cast will add up extremely quickly.

It certainly has limitations, but as a pure win condition in a deck that can support it, I think it should be quite good.

Fire of Orthanc

Rating: 1/10

It has been years since WotC put a Demolish variant in a Limited set. It’s still terrible, nothing has changed. I like that this can also be played as a Falter, but paying four mana for that is a bit too much.

Foray of Orcs

Rating: 8/10

This is something that War of the Spark’s amass theme was missing. A goddamn Flametongue Kavu. This card is fantastic. Even if you haven’t built up a big army, it’s still a 2/2 that hits a creature for two damage.

Because of the wording, it can be disrupted (having the army token shrunk after the amass 2 for example), but that’s not enough to stop this being an absolute banger.

Gimli, Counter of Kills

Rating: 6/10

Perhaps one of the most memed moments from The Two Towers, it’s great to see Gimli and Legolas (we’ll see his card in the multicolored section) get cards that represent that scene. Gimli’s card is quite strong, as the raw stats of a 4/3 trampler for four mana are pretty good.

The trigger is not that strong, but it definitely adds up over time and also heavily punishes the sacrifice deck for simply applying their usual strategy.

Gimli’s Axe

Rating: 3/10

There is an equipment theme in red and white, and I think this is efficient enough that it will be a good card in that deck. There are also a lot of small goblins and the like that will benefit from picking up a +3/+0 equipment.

Equipment are difficult to slot into most Limited decks, so this will probably end up on the weaker side, but it seems to have enough going for it if you think your deck could use it.

Gimli’s Fury

Rating: 2/10

Two mana to give +3/+2 is just not a very good rate on a combat trick. It’s fine and it will do the job if you need it to, but a card as mediocre as this would be very low down my list of priorities.

Glóin, Dwarf Emissary

Rating: 7/10

At the end of the day, you can’t go too wrong with a 3/3 for three that has upsides. Getting some free Treasure is nice, and goad has some interesting applications in a two-player format like this. Forcing a creature to attack lets you essentially kill it for free, assuming you have a larger creature to block with.

If this stays on the board for long enough, it should be a really big nuisance for any deck that wants to keep creatures back as blockers or to use their abilities each turn.

Goblin Fireleaper

Rating: 5/10

A 2-mana Goblin Arsonist is already a desirable card, especially in sacrifice decks. Leaving mana open with this card out also makes it impossible for your opponent to attack profitably into it, lest they lose a couple of their creatures or one big one for doing so.

Grishnákh, Brash Instigator

Rating: 7/10

A 1/1 plus amass 2 is decent for three mana. The Enthralling Victor ability is a little situational, but a nice upside for sure. This will be especially powerful in a sacrifice deck, where you not only get to sacrifice the creature you steal, but you also get two bodies to sacrifice in later turns.

Haradrim Spearmaster

Rating: 4/10

This ability looks minor, but it can really help to push creatures through blockers. +1/+0 often makes all the difference, pushing a 1/1 into a board of 2/2s and so on. Having reach also gives it some nice, extra utility given it will usually be kept back to block while your other creatures will be the stars of the show.

Hew the Entwood

Rating: 0/10

No.

Okay, moving on…

Improvised Club

Rating: 5/10

Four damage to any target for just two mana is pretty huge. You can even close out a game with this by sending it to your opponent’s face. Sacrificing a creature or artifact is also something that you actively want to do in this set.

Even if you don’t have sacrifice synergies, this being an instant lets you sacrifice anything in response to a removal spell and it’s powerful enough that you should be able to make it work. Heartfire was a great card in War of the Spark and I expect this to shine just as much.

Moria Marauder

Rating: 7/10

Going wide with orcs and goblins seems like a legitimate strategy and having this essentially draw you a card for each one that hits your opponent is very strong. It also draws you two cards itself. It’s even great in an equipment heavy deck thanks to double strike. There’s a lot to like about this card and I think I’d be happy with it in most red decks.

Oliphaunt

Rating: 4/10

This is pretty perfect for a landcycler. It’s a big, powerful creature that hits hard when you play it, while being very easy to throw away for a land if you draw it early. I still think these 1-mana landcyclers will be much better than the ones we saw in March of the Machine and this is a particularly good one.

Olog-hai Crusher

Rating: 5/10

When my four mana gets me a 4/4 with trample, I’m not all that interested in blocking anyway. Though if I need to, this is at least not too difficult to enable, so it looks like an awesome aggressive creature for red.

Quarrel’s End

Rating: 4/10

This is an interesting riff on the classic Tormenting Voice variant that we see in most sets these days. You’re essentially trading this plus a card in your hand for about 2.5 cards’ worth of value. It’s hard to know if that’s worth it for the three mana you spend, but the spells deck should be happy with it at the very least.

Rally at the Hornburg

Rating: 4/10

We’ve seen plenty of Dragon Fodder variants over the years and they’ve always played out really nicely. There aren’t a lot of synergies for it in this set, but two bodies for two mana is always fine.

Ranger’s Firebrand

Rating: 5/10

A sorcery speed Shock is a little below what I would want to see, but having the Ring tempt you should be enough of a bonus to push it back into focus. It’s also worth considering the fact that the hobbits in this set are all pretty small and this takes most of them out in one shot.

Relentless Rohirrim

Rating: 4/10

Four mana for a 4/3 doesn’t quite cut it these days, though the average power level of this set doesn’t look too high. That might play into this card’s hands. Having the Ring tempt you is definitely a bonus and I think that these two things combined push this well into the realms of playability.

Rising of the Day

Rating: 1/10

Even if this was giving +1/+1, helping creatures to survive in combat, it still wouldn’t be that good. Only pumping legendary creatures is too narrow and giving haste to everything is not something I’d be willing to spend a whole card on.

Rohirrim Lancer

Rating: 3/10

1-mana 1/1s still need some help to be good. Menace goes some way towards that for sure, though I’m not sure it will be enough. It might be worth it to get in a little bit of damage early and then sacrifice it off to an effect later and have the Ring tempt you as a nice bonus.

Rush the Room

Rating: 2/10

I’ve never been a fan of Kindled Fury personally. I still don’t think this is good enough and the bonus of sometimes granting haste is really disparate from the goal of a card like this, so it’s not really a bonus at all.

Smite the Deathless

Rating: 7/10

There’s one in every set and it’s always great. Three damage for two mana is just a good rate and you really need ways to kill creatures. There are also quite a few death triggers in the set which this does a nice job of hosing.

Spiteful Banditry

Rating: 8/10

Clearly reminiscent of The Meathook Massacre, this red board sweeper looks like it will bring the heat. for damage to all creatures is a very flexible sweeper that can be cast in such a way as to only kill your opponent’s creatures, or at least leave you with something after it resolves.

It also then sticks around to rebate you with some Treasure tokens over the next few turns, which is a really nice bonus. I would always play this card if I was in red, but in some red decks, with bigger creatures in general, this will be the best card you could hope to get.

Swarming of Moria

Rating: 4/10

Three mana for a 2/2 and a Treasure token is pretty decent. Not only is that Treasure rebating you some of the mana you spent on the card, but it also ramps you into a 5-drop on turn 4.

There and Back Again

Rating: 8/10

The big draw here is obviously creating the Smaug token. A 6/6 with flying and haste is a massive tempo swing and will win you a lot of games. The first two chapters, however, are pretty weak. If you are an aggressive deck then you can definitely make use of a creature not being able to block you, but that’s all that we really care about.

I think playing this and waiting two turns for Smaug is on average a fine play and sometimes the game will just be over.

Warbeast of Gorgoroth

Rating: 3/10

This certainly looks powerful and I would be happy to put one in my deck. The sad truth is though, no deck is going to be happy with too many 5-drops, so there are going to be plenty of times where this gets cut because you already picked something better.

Green Cards

Bag End Porter

Rating: 5/10

A 4/4 for four mana is decent and this will often be able to attack as a 5/5 or a 6/6 with relative ease, making it a very desirable creature for the deck.

Bombadil’s Song

Rating: 2/10

Two mana is a little too much for a hexproof trick and +1/+1 is also dismally low, making this something I’m really not that happy playing. It definitely has its uses and looks like a good sideboard card, but I don’t think it gets any better than that.

Brandywine Farmer

Rating: 4/10

I don’t think I care too much about this unless I actively want the Food tokens. Where this might excel is the black/green archetype which wants both the Food tokens and the spare bodies to sacrifice to its various spells.

I'd definitely want it for that deck, but I would be happy with it in any deck where those Food tokens can be made useful.

Celeborn the Wise

Rating: 5/10

While this looks small at first, the combination of its abilities means it will always attack as at least a 4/4, so that’s something. Given that you can scry a bunch beforehand and get this up even higher, it has the potential to even be a 6/6 or an 8/8, which is very promising.

Chance-Met Elves

Rating: 4/10

Given that you don’t need to invest much mana into this, the scry deck should be happy to have one of these on its curve. It can just sit there picking up +1/+1 counters while you do your thing as normal, giving you some nice advantage without paying mana to do so. I wouldn’t want it anywhere else, but it looks good there.

Delighted Halfling

Rating: 7/10

1-drop mana dorks are exceptionally good in Limited. Most of the time, this will only give you colorless mana, but that’s still absolutely fine. Getting to cast a 3-drop on turn 2 or a 4-drop on turn 3 is a big enough upside that we always want this.

Yeah, it’s pretty bad when we draw it late, but that’s not enough to counteract how busted it is when we draw it early.

Dúnedain Rangers

Rating: 5/10

Four mana for a 4/4 and an upside is very welcome in any green deck. The Ring tempting you is less good when you have big dorky creatures, but still a bonus you’ll be happy to get and the second and third abilities of it will really shine with this creature as your Ring-bearer.

Elven Chorus

Rating: 6/10

This has a lot of potential to effectively draw you a ton of extra cards. Given the blue/green elf theme of scrying, you will have some amount of control over the top card of your deck, which means you should be able to set this up quite often.

I like it, though I’m hesitant to give it a higher grade without knowing the speed of the format.

Elven Farsight

Rating: 4/10

I don’t think this will hit often enough that most decks will be happy using it. However, the elf/scry deck should really like this. Not only should it be heavy on creatures, but scrying for 3 should be a huge play for the deck, especially with the various cards that care about how many cards you looked at.

Enraged Huorn

Rating: 3/10

While green decks are naturally going to be a little more accepting of a 5-drop, this one is just too much on the weak side. When you have big creatures, the Ring tempting you becomes a bit weaker, as the first Ring ability does virtually nothing for you and you need to get to the second and third before you start seeing it do anything for you.

Entish Restoration

Rating: 5/10

Sacrificing a land to go and get two more is a good deal. It ramps you up by one land and also lets you fix your colors if you’re splashing. I don’t put any stock in the possible ability to get three lands, since you often don’t need to be ramping further if you already have a big creature on the board.

Ent’s Fury

Rating: 6/10

+1/+1 and fighting is a fine card. After all, you do need removal in your green decks. The +1/+1 counter mode is a sweet bonus, especially as you’re likely to want to target a bigger creature to make sure your fight goes smoothly. Overall, a very solid removal spell.

Fall of Gil-galad

Rating: 7/10

Considering this is a very cheap saga at just two mana, you get quite a lot for what you paid. Scry 2 is ok, two +1/+1 counters is usually going to be very good, but then getting a fight spell to round it out pushes this over the top.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever make full use of the draw 2 cards mode, but if the situation lines up nicely then that’s even better.

Fangorn, Tree Shepherd

Rating: 5/10

Seven mana is quite a lot in Limited, so we really need to get enough out of it. A 4/10 is a weird stat line and the mess of abilities doesn’t look like enough to reward us for how much mana we’ve spent.

There are some fun combos in the set, like using Bill the Pony to make it a 10/10, but without a tribal focus on treefolk, I don’t think you care too much about this.

Galadhrim Bow

Rating: 4/10

Combat tricks that leave something behind are very powerful. +1/+2, reach, and untap your creature for three mana is kind of weak as far as combat tricks go, but when it leaves behind a very solid piece of equipment, that makes all the difference.

Galadhrim Guide

Rating: 3/10

This isn’t really that exciting. I do want more sources of scry for the elf/scry deck, so this is probably fine there. Elsewhere, it’s just too ineffectual to make the cut.

Generous Ent

Rating: 4/10

Another nice landcycler that I think offers a good enough rate when you play it that we’re happy to play this, though it’s possible it’s worse than it looks, like the March of the Machine landcyclers were.

Gift of Strands

Rating: 4/10

Similarly to Galadhrim Bow, I like combat tricks that leave something behind after doing their thing. While an aura is substantially worse than an equipment, the effect this has is bigger and the scry 2 is going to be very relevant for the right deck too.

Glorfindel, Dauntless Rescuer

Rating: 5/10

I don’t know how aggressive the scry deck wants to be, but even if it isn’t, Glorfindel is just a solid creature for it. They will often attack as a 4/3 that can only be chump blocked and sometimes you can trigger the ability multiple times and create some really difficult decisions for your opponent when they block.

Last March of the Ents

Rating: 5/10

Eight mana is almost uncastable in Limited unless you accelerate into it somehow. However, doing so gives you a spell that is well worth your mana. Needing a big creature in play is another obstacle to overcome, but doing so will let you draw a ton of cards and then play every creature you have for free.

You might even get around 15-20 mana’s worth of creatures for just the eight you put into it. There is a lot that can go wrong, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you get it right.

Legolas, Master Archer

Rating: 7/10

How likely are we to cast spells that target Orlando Bloom? As it happens, there are a higher than average number of fight and bite spells, as well as a few combat tricks, so it might happen quite often.

If you can take Orlando Bloom early and prioritize a bunch of these spells, he turns into quite the powerhouse and will start shooting down creature after creature, turning him into a must-kill threat.

Long List of the Ents

Rating: 1/10

I don’t really get it. So, I play this for one mana and then for the next six turns I can pick a creature type and give a +1/+1 counter to something of that type which I also need to play that turn?

Yeah, I’m not into it. You only get one counter per turn and you also need a variety of creature types each turn to get your counter for that turn. I just don’t think that effort is worth spending a card to get.

Lothlórien Lookout

Rating: 2/10

It might be a repeating source of scry 1, but attacking with a 2-mana 1/3 is not something you’ll be able to consistently do after about turn 4 or 5. Quite disappointing all round and not something I’ll be looking to pick up often.

Many Partings

Rating: 3/10

Lay of the Land is a card that can enable splashes and wacky multicolor brews. There are some nice multicolor legends in this set that will make you want to go for this and making a Food token is also a nice upside to make you want it.

However, you’ll want to find a reason to play it rather than just playing it because you’re green.

Meriadoc Brandybuck

Rating: 5/10

This version of Merry is a really nice little 2-drop that fits nicely into the hobbit/Food deck. There are some powerful payoffs for having lots of Food available and Merry does a nice job of filling out your curve as well as your stomachs.

(I’ll see myself out…)

Mirkwood Spider

Rating: 4/10

If you’ve read any of my set reviews before, you might be familiar with how much I love a 1/1 deathtouch for one mana. The extra ability to give an attacking legend is not great. The value of these creatures is to be able to leave them back to block and control what they trade for.

Attacking takes that control away from you, so it’s not something you want to do too often. But still, this didn’t need to do anything other than be a small deathtouch creature for me to be interested in it.

Mirrormere Guardian

Rating: 4/10

A 3-mana 4/2 is quite nice. Just like a 2-mana 3/1, it often trades down when you attack, but can trade up for 4- or 5-drops if you defend with it. Throw in the ability to tempt you with the Ring when it trades off and I think this ends up good enough for most green decks.

Particularly in the red/green archetype that cares about controlling a four power creature.

Mushroom Watchdogs

Rating: 4/10

How has it taken us this long to get a dog that we can feed treats to? WotC, more of this please… It is also a nice, solid 2-drop for the Food decks that can get very big quite quickly.

Peregrin Took

Rating: 7/10

Pippin’s uncommon card is exactly what these Food decks are after. Not only enabling you to create more Food tokens, but also turning extra Food tokens into extra cards is a huge payoff for the deck.

Pippin’s Bravery

Rating: 3/10

Insatiable Appetite was pretty weak, but this version costing one mana is likely a big upgrade and one that might be good enough to see play.

Quickbeam, Upstart Ent

Rating: 5/10

There are not a lot of treefolk in this set, so Quickbeam’s ability is mostly just one that triggers on them entering, but that’s still something that looks strong to me. +2/+2 and trample to two targets will often give you a powerful attack for that turn and leave behind an okay creature for the counterswing.

Radagast the Brown

Rating: 4/10

There is a lot of text to unpack here and disappointingly it will often amount to doing nothing. The idea is for you to have a deck with a bunch of different creature types, but I don’t think that works in practice.

I think the majority of the time, you’ll play a creature to trigger Radagast, but all the creatures you see will share a type with something you already have. It doesn’t sound like you will draw many cards from these triggers, if any at all. By all means try to prove me wrong, I’m just not seeing it right now.

Revive the Shire

Rating: 3/10

Nature's Spiral isn’t a particularly good card, though we have seen recently that it can become playable if you just tack on a little extra benefit and getting a Food token out of the deal is probably good enough to do that.

The Ring Goes South

Rating: 0/10

So it’s a ramp spell that might get you four or five lands for just four mana? Oh, but most of the time it will only get one or two and often it won’t get any at all. Ramp spells that require you to already have a board presence are just straight up unplayable, so I would avoid this at all costs.

Shortcut to Mushrooms

Rating: 5/10

It should be relatively easy to have a permanent leave the battlefield on your turn, especially since this counts you sacrificing a Food token. You will need to build around it to some extent, since it gives you very little value up front, but if you do, the rewards are there.

Shower of Arrows

Rating: 2/10

You can tack on a scry 1, but it’s still just Broken Wings. It’s an exceptional sideboard card that I would probably try to fit into the main if I was playing sealed, but not in Draft.

This is because you tend to come across more rares in sealed than you do in Draft, and rares often have flying or are pesky artifacts/enchantments that this often deals with.

Stew the Coneys

Rating: 6/10

An instant speed bite spell is more than good enough for removal and getting a Food token out of the deal is a really nice upside.

Wose Pathfinder

Rating: 5/10

1-drop mana dorks are incredible and a 2-drop is still very passable. This will do a great job of accelerating any green deck into the midgame and its secondary ability is extremely weak but at least helps it to stay more relevant than a vanilla 1/1 would be.

Multicolored Cards

Aragorn, Company Leader

Rating: 8/10

Aragorn’s rare card looks like it packs a punch. The Ring tempting you doesn’t do a great deal, so having a payoff like this really helps it to shine. The flexibility behind the variety of counters you can pick up lets Aragorn play to a bunch of different scenarios and should help you win any race.

The second ability is incredible, not just letting you double up on the ability counters you’re making, but also on any +1/+1 counters you might give to Aragorn with other cards. The possibilities are enormous and this card should be excellent when you support it right.

Aragorn, the Uniter

Rating: 1/10

The mythic Aragorn looks surprisingly mediocre to me. Four colors is extremely hard to cast in the first place and even if you do manage to do it, he doesn’t do anything until you cast another spell. He looks like a sweet Commander card for sure, but in Limited he just doesn’t cut it.

Arwen, Mortal Queen

Rating: 9/10

Small, indestructible creatures are a lot worse than they look, since they can block all day long but can never really attack. Arwen is so much more than that though. Having her sat on board as an on-board combat trick and protection ability makes it extremely difficult for the opponent to actually play the game. It makes it much harder for them to attack you or block you.

It turns off most of their removal since you can just protect from it, and they can’t proactively use that removal to kill Arwen either. I like everything about this card and I expect it to be really nasty to play against.

Arwen Undómiel

Rating: 7/10

Given the elven theme of scrying, this is an excellent payoff for the archetype that becomes a decent enabler in the late game too. I am seriously excited to draft this deck.

The Balrog, Durin’s Bane

Rating: 9/10

Perhaps the most famous scene in all of the Lord of the Rings is the fight between Gandalf and The Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. I know a lot of fans who were hoping for an incredible Balrog card and I think this one delivers in many ways. I’m not sure how many permanents you’ll be able to sacrifice in the same turn while saving your mana for this, but it only needs to cost about five mana to be a really powerful play.

Even for the full seven, it swings into most boards very effectively, and much like it did by taking Gandalf with it into the chasm below, it should take at least a creature or two with it when it dies. It’s a really exceptional bomb rare.

Bilbo, Retired Burglar

Rating: 5/10

Bilbo Baggins is a nice card here, tempting you with the Ring and then giving you a nice payoff for doing so. By becoming your Ring-bearer, Bilbo will now be essentially unblockable, letting you attack and make Treasure with impunity. I can see this being a very strong card to start your curve.

Butterbur, Bree Innkeeper

Rating: 3/10

A 3/3 for four is really below rate and sometimes this won’t even give you any Food. I’m not sold on it to be honest. The Food tokens I think are likely to have a lot of Food in play, which is a board where this is completely unplayable.

Of course, if you are regularly sacrificing all of your Food for various rewards, then you might be able to get some free ones from this, but there’s enough of a downside to put me off it.

Denethor, Ruling Steward

Rating: 7/10

Brought to life in the movies by the brilliant John Noble, Denethor’s card here is just as brutal. He’s like a creature version of Oni-Cult Anvil, continually replacing your sacrificed creature just so you can sacrifice it again and again.

While more fragile, because he’s a creature, Denethor still has an incredible impact on the game and should be a powerful payoff in these white/black token decks.

Doors of Durin

Rating: 5/10

This is a difficult one to evaluate. On one hand, you might only get to scry 2 on attacking and nothing else. This is clearly not worth it on any metric. However, if you get to put a creature or two onto the battlefield over the next couple of attacks, it’s well worth the cost you paid for it.

I’d like to think that this is good enough and I’d like to try it at first, but it’s possible that it’s too situational to be good.

Elrond, Master of Healing

Rating: 9/10

While Liv Tyler’s uncommon Arwen was a great payoff in this archetype, Hugo Weaving’s rare Elrond looks to be even better. He won’t turn into an enabler like Arwen did, but he pays you off with tons more +1/+1 counters and some annoying protection for your creatures too.

Between the two of the, your elf army will just keep getting bigger until they overwhelm your opponent.

Éowyn, Fearless Knight

Rating: 10/10

While it’s a little situational to only be able to exile big creatures, that’s still most of what you wanted to exile in the first place. Then, not only is this a 3/4 haste creature, but giving your team protection for the turn will often mean you can attack and not have any blockers to contend with.

Faramir, Prince of Ithilien

Rating: 7/10

Faramir really makes it so your opponent has some awkward decisions to make. Attacking you will give you three 1/1 soldiers, but not attacking you still gives you an extra card. You like both of those options, assuming that you can survive the attack you might take.

If left unchecked, Faramir just gives you more advantage turn after turn, eventually overwhelming the board.

Flame of Anor

Rating: 9/10

Three mana for five damage is great. Three mana for your choice of five damage or draw two cards is incredible. Only needing a wizard in play to choose both is absolutely ridiculous. There are sadly not many wizards in the set, but blue has both a Gandalf and a Saruman at uncommon which I would really want to prioritize as soon as I had this.

Oh, I didn’t even mention that it can also destroy an artifact. We’ll take minor bonuses if we’re given them, but the rest of the card is absolutely amazing, whether you have a wizard or not.

Friendly Rivalry

Rating: 7/10

An instant-speed bite spell is already pretty good, but allowing you to have two creatures team up and take down something bigger gives this card a lot of extra flexibility.

Frodo Baggins

Rating: 5/10

The first ability of the Ring says that your Ring-bearer can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power. Hence, Frodo’s ability that says he must be blocked if able is a little weird, but it essentially means that your opponent will be forced to block him with 1/1s and the like if they have them.

This is a nice dynamic, which you can control by buffing Frodo with other cards and forcing your opponent into blocks that they don’t want to make.

Galadriel of Lothlórien

Rating: 9/10

Yet another amazing card for the scry deck. Galadriel’s scry 3 ability might be a little bit hard to enable, but her ability to ramp you more than makes up for it.

You often end up scrying lands to the bottom of your deck and she instead lets you keep them on top and put them straight into play, which is a huge upside. The longer she stays in play, the more cards you’ll have drawn from her and she keys perfectly off of all of the other great cards for this archetype.

Gandalf the Grey

Rating: 5/10

Considering that our fourth spell will force us to put Gandalf on top of our library, I really hope the first three give this card some cool abilities! Instead, we have “tap or untap target permanent” and dealing three damage to our opponent.

The copy ability is very nice, but not enough to make up for these other weak modes. Gandalf himself is not even big enough to be a strong threat on the board. He isn’t that bad, but he similarly isn’t really that strong.

Gandalf’s Sanction

Rating: 6/10

I really expect a little more than just a burn spell for a blue/red payoff card. It’s cool that if you get a ton of instants and sorceries in your graveyard that this will kill anything, but the fact that it will do nothing in the early game does hold it back a little bit. This is no Beacon Bolt, but it should still be fine.

Gimli, Mournful Avenger

Rating: 8/10

Gimli wants you to have a lot of creatures die in order to make use of his abilities. It’s not that easy to accommodate in red/green, but the upside is there for you to want to make it work. You could attack or chump block with a bunch of cheap creatures and each one dying nets you a +1/+1 counter.

On top of that, three dying in the same turn turns Gimli into a 6/5 indestructible creature that will fight and easily kill an opposing creature. Given that the +1/+1 buffs are permanent, Gimli gets out of hand very quickly and is worth building around to some extent.

Gwaihir the Windlord

Rating: 5/10

Costing four mana sounds enticing, but for you to have drawn a second card this turn, it’s very likely that you had to spend some mana to do it, meaning you’re only cheating on mana that you still needed to use. Gwaihir is still big and powerful, and not too bad if you pay the full six mana for it, so I’d be pretty happy to use it at the tops of my curves.

King of the Oathbreakers

Rating: 8/10

A 4-mana 3/3 flier that dodged all targeted removal would be annoying on its own. But extend that ability to all spirits and have it generate more spirits whenever it does get targeted and you have one nasty card.

Your opponent should never actually be triggering this since it’s so bad for them if they do, but you can also trigger it with your own spells if you'd like. This is really not much different from a 3/3 hexproof flier, but that would be really strong anyway.

Legolas, Counter of Kills

Rating: 6/10

I like this version of Legolas a bit more than his Gimli counterpart that we saw earlier. Getting a +1/+1 counter is a much bigger bonus than hitting your opponent for one, even if Legolas starts out as a much smaller creature at first.

When he’s big enough, untapping Legolas by scrying will make him an excellent blocker too, especially if you can do so at instant speed.

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff

Rating: 6/10

It’s funny that since this triggers from your opponent casting two spells too, they could potentially use that to finish you off. When played early, this is likely to generate enough Treasure to be useful, especially in the tokens matter archetype.

Later on, it loses a lot of its potential, but hopefully you can just trade it off and be done with the ability.

Mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain

Rating: 7/10

Two mana for a 2/2 menace is already very strong. In addition, making your amass numbers one bigger is something that is likely to get silly. I’m thinking of March from the Black Gate, which now amasses for 2 every time your army attacks.

There are likely several more combos you can come up with which will make this a worthy payoff in your black/red decks.

Merry, Esquire of Rohan

Rating: 7/10

Given the sheer number of legendary creatures in the set, it’s not hard to imagine that you will be able to draw a card with Merry on most of his attacks. Having built-in first strike will also make sure that you can attack with him without fear of reprisal, so ideally you’ll be drawing a few cards and be very happy with that deal.

The Mouth of Sauron

Rating: 7/10

For five mana, I’d better be getting a good amass with this ability. Thankfully, it looks quite easy to enable and you can pick whichever player has the most spells in the graveyard. All this really needs to do is to amass 2 to be worth the mana you spent, and that doesn’t seem too hard to do.

Old Man Willow

Rating: 8/10

For an uncommon, this card is just obscene. When you play it on curve, it’s already a 4/4 for four mana, which is fine. Every land drop you hit makes it bigger and in the late game you’ll just be jamming it as a 4-mana 8/8 or something.

Then, every attack lets you trade a random token you have lying around for one of their small creatures? Or just shrink something to make your attack connect easier? Yeah, this card is the real deal.

Pippin, Guard of the Citadel

Rating: 9/10

Pippin is basically a beefed up Giver of Runes, which you’d expect for the extra mana and color that you need to cast him. Protection from sorceries or instants will guard against spot removal, protection from creatures will let you eat a creature in combat or make your creature unblockable.

Pippin even has a cheeky ward 1 to help keep him alive a bit longer, since this ability makes him a must-kill if your opponent wants to have any chance of winning.

Prince Imrahil the Fair

Rating: 7/10

Drawing more cards might be a reward in its own right, but if we want to be in this “draw a second card each turn” archetype, we want ways to convert that into extra resources. Imrahil is perfect for that, giving us extra board presence every turn that we can accomplish drawing an extra card, which actually makes a lot of the cheap cantrip spells we’ve seen already a lot more desirable.

Ringsight

Rating: 0/10

Three mana for a Demonic Tutor would already be quite weak. If you put an extra condition on that then you’ve completely lost me, and being tempted by the Ring is not a big enough upside to change that.

Rise of the Witch-king

Rating: 6/10

I’m a big fan of this card. I’ve said many times that Cruel Edict effects are just not good enough, but I think the benefit here for you is too sweet to ignore. Assuming you will have a disposable 1/1 to sacrifice to it, swapping that out for literally any permanent in your graveyard is a very nice swing.

The first thing that comes to mind is the landcyclers, which will naturally end up in your graveyard early. Of course you would prefer to get something bigger, but if getting one of those is the floor on this card, then I’m very happy with that.

Samwise Gamgee

Rating: 8/10

The rare version of Sam is a great payoff and enabler for the white/green hobbits and Food archetype. Not only does he give us a nice amount of Food by himself, but getting to bring back historic cards, such as other legendary hobbits, is a great payoff for when we have a lot of Food.

This is exactly the kind of payoff I hoped Butterbur would be, but I suppose this will do.

Saruman of Many Colors

Rating: 1/10

This is a classic example of “designed for Commander and therefore unplayable in Limited”. Casting two spells in a turn is not a trivially easy thing to do, but on top of that the extremely wordy ‘payoff’ that you get just amounts to nothing.

Your opponent might not even have something for you to copy. Stretching into a third color for this is also bad to do, so I would just avoid it and move on.

Sauron, the Dark Lord

Rating: 10/10

Now this is what I expect a Sauron card to look like. From the devastating ward cost to a series of triggers that each key into the next, rounding out with one of the most absurd payoffs for having the Ring tempt you.

Sauron is an absolute beast of a card which you should take early and draft around as much as possible.

Sauron’s Ransom

Rating: 7/10

I am an absolute sucker for cards that let you play mind games with your opponent. While this basically lets your opponent dish it back at you a bit, I still love this card. You want at least two cards when you spend three mana and you should always get that when you play this. After all, the most likely split your opponent will make is to give you two piles of two.

The blue/black deck in this format should be slow and controlling and this card plays perfectly into that, so I’ll be really happy to pick it up.

Shadow Summoning

Rating: 6/10

Two mana for two 1/1s is pretty good. Two mana for two 1/1s with flying is just excellent. Sure, they enter tapped, so that does neuter the power level somewhat, but imagine casting this on turn 2. It’s just awesome.

Shadowfax, Lord of Horses

Rating: 5/10

There are very few horses in this set (hi Bill the Pony), so Shadowfax is really only giving haste to itself. The triggered ability is okay, especially if you can do it on curve, but a 4/4 haste is a little bit undersized for a 5-mana creature.

There will be some turns where this is a huge tempo swing in your favor, but others where it feels weak and a tad overcosted.

Shagrat, Loot Bearer

Rating: 7/10

You do need to attack for Shagrat to even do anything, but a 4-mana 4/4 is good enough to play regardless of what else it does. When you do get to trigger it though, the payoff you get nets you free mana (because you aren’t paying the equip cost) and some extra board presence.

Stealing your opponent’s equipment is pretty funny, especially if they can’t afford to pay the equip costs again to take them back.

Sharkey, Tyrant of the Shire

Rating: 1/10

Sharkey is simply not designed with Limited in mind. There is a cycle of rare lands with strong abilities, so I’m not discounting him entirely, but the vast majority of the time he’s just worthless.

Shelob, Child of Ungoliant

Rating: 4/10

With only one other spider in the set, Shelob is little more than a 6-mana 8/8 with deathtouch and ward. That creature even has deathtouch already. This is already turning some heads as a Commander, but in Limited it is severely lacking.

Sméagol, Helpful Guide

Rating: 8/10

All of what Sméagol is doing here is great. Stealing lands from your opponent, having the Ring tempt you nearly for free, it’s all pretty good. There’s one extra line of text that I missed at first which intrigues me: the fact that the last ability also mills your opponent until they find their land.

Given how many lands a player has in their deck and is likely to draw over the course of a game, this amount of mill could really add up over time, and when combined with the blue/black mill cards we’ve already seen, might turn into a legitimate win condition. Even without that caveat, this whole card is just doing good things at a really good rate.

Strider, Ranger of the North

Rating: 7/10

I really like 4/4s for four mana, so I’m already sold. Landfall can make Strider attack as a 5/5 first strike, and depending on when you play him, you can give that buff to something else on the turn you play him, essentially getting a bit of haste damage in.

Strider is just a nice, solid creature, especially in aggressive decks.

Théoden, King of Rohan

Rating: 7/10

Getting to repeatedly give something double strike makes for some nasty attacks. Playing Théoden early might mean that you get to send a sizable double striker at your opponent in every combat, which makes matters very difficult for them.

Tom Bombadil

Rating: 0/10

While the prospect of an all-saga deck is enticing, it just won’t come together. A lot of the sagas we’ve seen are really below par and casting Tom Bombadil in the first place is too much to ask. This makes for a really cool Commander, but not something we can support in Limited.

Uglúk of the White Hand

Rating: 7/10

When you’re all about sacrificing creatures and this ability is not Limited to once per turn, it will get out of hand extremely quickly. We actively want to sacrifice our army tokens so that amass can create new ones, which grows Uglúk even faster. It won’t be long until this is a 6/6, 7/7 or even bigger and for four mana that’s a great deal.

Colorless Cards

Andúril, Flame of the West

Rating: 10/10

This card is absolutely disgusting. +3/+1 for just two mana to equip is already decent, but creating two (count them) tapped spirit tokens every time you attack? That’s just way over the top.

It’s so easy to trigger, and is even better than some of the protection swords we’ve seen in the past. Not only that, but it’s colorless and can go in literally any deck. Just incredible.

Barrow-Blade

Rating: 4/10

Short Sword / Leonin Scimitar is already somewhat playable, though a bit below the rate we’d like to see on an equipment. While the extra ability on this sounds weird, the best thing it does is remove combat-related keywords like deathtouch and first strike.

That is often going to be enough to swing combats in your favor and that’s a big advantage to make you want to play it.

Ent-Draught Basin

Rating: 5/10

This is a weird one and it’s hard to see how it will play out. In the hobbit/halfling decks, where everything has about one or two power, this is likely cheap enough to do a lot of work. In any deck that goes bigger, you just won’t have many turns where you can spare five or six mana to use it.

I think you have to put it in the right deck, but if you do then it should be decent.

Glamdring

Rating: 8/10

You have to support it to some extent, but this is pretty good. You only need a couple of spells in the graveyard for this to be a solid card, giving +2/+0 and first strike. In the blue/red spells deck it goes really hard, as it quickly turns any creature, even a measly 1/1, into a must-kill threat.

Horn of Gondor

Rating: 8/10

You have to understand that there are going to be times where this does nothing. However, it spots you a token up front and then successive activations give you exponentially more creatures each turn. It won’t take many turns before your board is too much for an opponent to deal with, just so long as you are sparing with getting your creatures into combat.

Horn of the Mark

Rating: 7/10

This is another card where the delta between you supporting it or not supporting it is absolutely massive. In some decks this is the most unplayable garbage out there, but in others this will be a steady stream of card advantage that can snowball out of control in no time.

We have a few nice ways of going wide, especially in white, and if you can reliably have multiple creatures out then this looks solid, but anything short of that I wouldn’t touch it.

Inherited Envelope

Rating: 2/10

Mana rocks are very unexciting in Limited and they need to do quite a bit more to shine in this format. I don’t think being tempted by the Ring is enough of a bonus to make me want it, though I’m sure it will make its way into at least one of my decks by the end of the format.

Lembas

Rating: 5/10

I love this. A cheap and innocuous common that slots right into multiple decks. It enables the draw two, scry and Food archetypes while also being a fine card to play in just about anything else.

Mirror of Galadriel

Rating: 2/10

We’ve never seen a set with this many legendary creatures in it, so it’s hard to know just how many will be in your deck. Even then, with five legends in play, this will cost zero but you won’t need it as much and when you most need it it costs four or five. I don’t think a deck that is likely to want this will also be able to reduce its cost by enough to make it playable.

Mithril Coat

Rating: 3/10

If you have a ton of legends in your deck, then I can see this being a fine combat trick, but indestructible is not a good enough ability to make this usable anywhere else.

The One Ring

Rating: 8/10

The One Ring is a really complicated card. Giving yourself protection from everything for a turn is similar to a Fog, so it’s fine but not something we’re too interested in. What we do care about is the ability to draw a lot of cards. We can tap this immediately to draw a card, but then we’ll be losing 1 life each turn.

I think this is reasonable and we will be reasonably happy to draw the first few cards off of this. We can offset the life loss with Food tokens and other sources of lifegain and we could eventually sacrifice or exile the Ring. Given all of this, I think this card is very powerful, though you need to be careful

Palantír of Orthanc

Rating: 9/10

This has a lot of text, but what it really comes down to is a 3-mana artifact that lets you scry 2 and draw a card every turn. The twist is that your opponent can choose to not have you draw that card, and you instead mill some cards and your opponent loses a bunch of life.

The key to me is that this costs no additional mana beyond its mana cost. It just sits there and you keep getting an advantage. Your opponent might think that milling you is the better choice, but once it starts to mill you for three or four cards at a time, there’s every chance that your opponent will start to lose large chunks of life, perhaps five, six or seven at a time. They really won’t be able to afford it and it should finish your opponent long before you deck out.

On top of all of that, it’s colorless and every deck can play it. It just sounds incredible.

Phial of Galadriel

Rating: 5/10

A mana rock for three mana is fine and can definitely have its uses. The upsides of doubling your draws and life gain in the late game can really push this over the top of a usual mana rock.

Shire Scarecrow

Rating: 1/10

This is a format which lends itself to two color decks and I don’t think you need to be splashing all that much. Even if you did want to, this is extremely weak mana fixing and not something I want to have to resort to.

Sting, the Glinting Dagger

Rating: 6/10

I expected a little more from Frodo’s signature blade to be perfectly honest. +1/+1 and haste for just two mana to equip is definitely good, but it doesn’t do all that much. The other abilities are nice bonuses, but this does very little to advance your board state or apply more pressure.

I'd definitely play it in an aggressive deck, but I’m not sure if it will work elsewhere.

Stone of Erech

Rating: 1/10

This is a really cool card that could theoretically make it into Karn, the Great Creator wishboards for some matchups, but here in Limited it’s terrible. Not worth spending a whole card on, unless you happen to come across some deck with a ton of death triggers that you want to shut down.

Wizard’s Rockets

Rating: 4/10

This is basically just a Terrarion, but one that is very well positioned in this set. It’s a historic card that’s easy to sacrifice, which means it fits nicely into a few of the decks in the format. It’s not particularly strong, but should be a nice roleplayer.

Lands

The Legendary Land Cycle

• Barad-dûr
• Minas Tirith
• Mines of Moria
• Rivendell
• The Shire

Rating: 8/10

I’ve grouped these cards for one simple reason: they’re all fantastic. If you're in their respective colors, you should take them highly in your Draft.

Your objective in any given Draft is to pick up 23 playable nonland cards to go with your usual 17 lands. Since these have spell-like abilities, they each essentially function as a 24th card for your deck. Picking up one of these lets you upgrade a basic land to a land with a strong ability, whereas your 24th nonland card will simply upgrade a playable card to one that’s slightly more playable.

This is all because they don’t have any real downsides compared to basic lands. At that point, it honestly doesn’t matter what they do, though it certainly helps that each of them has a very good ability.

Great Hall of the Citadel

Rating: 5/10

Given how many legends are in this set, this should be an excellent mana fixer. Unlike other lands such as Unknown Shores, this doesn’t have the annoying downside of putting you down on mana when filtering it. It also enables splashes and there are quite a few powerful legends that would be worth it.

The Grey Havens

Rating: 3/10

Here’s the thing. This doesn’t actually provide colored mana in any meaningful way. By the time you have a legend in your graveyard, you probably have enough colored mana for whatever you want to play. It doesn’t fix colors in the early turns and doesn’t enable splashes.

I think this card is a massive trap and you shouldn’t play it. However, as purely a Zhalfirin Void, I would actively play one or two of these in the blue/green elves deck to enable scrying shenanigans.

Mount Doom

Rating: 7/10

Given that this always loses you life if you tap it for mana, much like Horizon Canopy, you can’t necessarily rely on it to be a dual land. But Mount Doom is far more than just your average dual land. If you are already in red/black, look at this as an extra spell that lets you close out long games without actually casting a spell.

Shire Terrace

Rating: 5/10

Every Limited deck could do with better mana fixing. If you can afford to pick up a Shire Terrace or two, then you should do it. Just don’t take it over high quality playables for your deck.

And Done…

Éowyn, Fearless Knight | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

This is a very interesting set. It’s absolutely bursting with flavor, and there’s something here for every kind of Magic player and I’m not just saying that to sell you on it. The Limited format looks kind of weak, but the themes look very fun and enjoyable to play, so the lower power level might actually help those themes to really perform. Low power level is definitely not a bad thing in Limited, so we’ll see how it plays out.

What do you think of this set's Limited format? Are you looking forward to cracking any card in particular? Let me know in the comments down below, or join the discussion over in Draftsim's official Discord.

Until next time, take care of yourselves and have fun at your prereleases!