Should You Buy the Lord of the Rings Bundle?

Is The One Ring and more worth it?

This week we’re having a blow-out sale on The Lord of the Rings Bundle here on TCGplayer.com. Although MSRP is normally around $65, you can pick one up starting at $54.99, including shipping, while supplies last.  

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Bundle comes with eight Set Boosters, accessories and a selection of guaranteed, highly-useful singles, including a copy of The One Ring. Today I’ll tell you why you might be interested in this product. Readers not looking to buy might still find this useful as a strategic dive into the applications of the LOTR cards across a variety of formats.

Contents

In this bundle you can expect the following:

• Eight Set Boosters from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
• 40 Lands – 20 foil, 20 non-foil
• A stylized spin-down D20
• Four Mount Doom scene cards. Foil, alternate-art versions of The One Ring; Gollum, Patient Plotter; Frodo, Sauron’s Bane and Samwise the Stouthearted.
• One card storage box

I’m a Customer

I was asked to write this promotional piece in large part to advertise our sale. That said, I didn’t exactly have to strain myself to do so. The truth is that I happily bought two of these bundles for my personal collection way back in July!

Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth – Bundle

Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth

At the time, I was getting ready to travel to Pro Tour: The Lord of the Rings in Barcelona, Spain. I hadn’t yet picked out my Modern deck, but I thought it was extremely likely that I’d wind up playing with The One Ring (I did play three copies in my main deck).

At the time, the price of the entire bundle was lower than what I would’ve paid to buy my One Rings as single cards!

The One Ring

Unique and Miscellaneous Promos, Mythic

While my two copies of The One Ring would’ve been well worth my investment, I also got to bolster my collection with booster packs and pick up a sweet box that I still use for storage today. As a lover of Middle-earth and green mana both, I even pinned the insert with Treebeard, Merry, and Pippin onto my refrigerator.

As for the stylized spin-down dice, I set those aside as a gift for a friend. He doesn’t maintain an MTG collection, but he is a fan of LOTR and plays lots of Dungeons & Dragons, so I believe he’ll find them cool and useful.

LTR Cards

The Lord of the Rings set has made a huge impact across a variety of formats. As a fan of older formats like Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, it’s important for me to pick up my playset of useful commons like Lorien Revealed, Troll of Khazad-dum, Generous Ent and Oliphaunt.

Lórien Revealed

Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Common

Ent and Oliphaunt are staples of Modern Living End. Troll of Khazad-Dum makes for a quick Reanimation threat in Legacy. Lorien Revealed has been awesome in all three formats to bolster blue card counts for Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Subtlety. Plus, alongside colorless value-lands like Urza’s Saga and Wasteland, the landcyclers help you access colored mana and keep a wider range of opening hands.

Orcish Bowmasters

Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Rare

The other card I’d like to highlight is Orcish Bowmasters. Like The One Ring, Bowmasters is a ubiquitous and highly-desirable card from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (unlike The One Ring, it doesn’t have a guaranteed slot in the bundle, but you could still open it in a booster pack with a bit of luck).

Vintage and Legacy are defined by drawing cards, so it’s no surprise that Bowmasters is powerful there. You haven’t lived until you’ve flashed it in as a response to an opposing Brainstorm!

However, Bowmasters is also one of the strongest creatures in Modern. It punishes one-toughness creatures like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and creates multiple bodies for the purposes of cards like Chord of Calling and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. Bowmasters also plays the role of policeman for folks building their decks around The One Ring (more on this to come).

All of the cards mentioned here are highly-useful in Commander. Bowmasters triggers off any opponent drawing extra cards in a multiplayer game. The One Ring is a near-staple, as it can do great work in decks of any color and play-style.

Finally, if you own a Cube, you should think about adding Bowmasters and The One Ring. They’re doing amazing work in the Magic Online Vintage Cube, with many top players considering them the best cards printed since Alpha! They’re nearly on par with power cards like Black Lotus and Time Walk!

The One Ring

The One Ring

Unique and Miscellaneous Promos, Mythic

I’ll close by discussing the competitive applications of The One Ring in Modern, as this was the largest appeal of the Bundle for me personally.

The Ring is one of the best card drawing engines ever printed. In the first three turns it’s on the battlefield, it gives you six cards for the price of four mana, and it only gets wilder from there!

It’s true that the burden counters cause you to lose life. However, in a format as powerful as Modern, you can close the game out awfully quickly with six or 10 extra cards. The one turn of protection from everything gives you breathing room, and free spells like Solitude and Force of Negation work like a dream with the huge influx of resources.

When you do get overburdened, what’s the best way to get rid of The Ring? The legend rule of course! Yes, no matter how counterintuitive it might be, The One Ring is actually better in multiples, as you can chain them to extend your protection, and use them to reset one another. This means owning multiples will be a good thing for your Modern collection.

Finally, we just saw Up the Beanstalk and Fury banned in Modern. This leaves The One Ring uncontested as the format’s best card-drawing engine, and Orcish Bowmasters uncontested as the best way to punish small creatures. Somehow these cards (which were already great) are winners from the bannings and will do even more work in the coming weeks and months!

This is a great opportunity to pick up a useful bundle at a great price. Consider whether or not it’s a good fit for you!