When Worlds Collide

Tom Bombadil; never saw him in the LOTR movies!

I interrupt this month's "land" theme to reflect on the just-released Magic expansion, Tales of Middle Earth. This set brings the characters and events of the Lord of the Rings into the rules and mechanics of Magic: the Gathering. And when worlds collide, weird things are bound to happen.

The big challenge here is making this set feel authentically Lord of the Rings and authentically Magic: the Gathering. Magic's previous forays into licensed territory started with Dungeons & Dragons. That worked (I really enjoyed Adventures in the Forgotten Realms). They then released Warhammer commander decks, but I didn't collect those, so I cannot speak to them. For some reason, Lord of the Rings feels different. I think it's because this is the first widely-popular licensed property they are putting into Magic. D&D and Warhammer certainly have their niche audiences, but Lord of the Rings enjoys a popular appeal in the wider culture. It is important to get it right . . . but what does that look like? We'll look at three elements: characters, story, and the ring.

Characters

The Lord of the Rings characters are well-known and beloved by many. How do they 'map' to a Magic card? Each Magic color has strengths and an 'identity' associated with it, as I discuss here. Can characters from other 'worlds' map to this easily? Let's look at Gandalf the wizard as an example, who has several iterations in this set:

Since Gandalf is literally nicknamed 'the White' at one stage in the books, it makes sense to have his mono-white versions above. But then he has a mono-blue and a blue/red version, too. I could see those happening, though I'm surprised there isn't a white/blue version. I could make a case for green, too, based on his relationship with the creatures of Middle Earth. 

Other characters/creatures are similar. Some appear obvious (elves are green, dwarves are red), but even those can vary (several elves have blue in this set, due to their strengths in magic. I get it, but it seems a touch off). Goblins? Red, too. Makes sense, but does that mean they are allied with the dwarves? Of course not. 

At first glance, I don't think Wizards did a bad job there, but my point is that it is hard or impossible to map LOTR characters to Magic colors.

After color comes abilities. Same challenge here; how does one map LOTR characters to existing Magic keywords? Some will be intuitive; others impossible.

Story

They have been producing Lord of the Rings games for decades. A consistent challenge is capturing the 'feel' of the books, by which I mean the essence of the story.

While there are many battles in Lord of the Rings, the books are not focused on them. It is rather a hero's journey—a story about growth, friendship, and doing what must be done in the face of impossible odds. And a physical journey, too, visiting tons of locations. How do you capture that sort of thing in a game? It is difficult.

Previous games based on this franchise have varied in approach, but have some common elements.

Lord of the Rings TCG, Journey to Mordor, Journeys in Middle Earth, and Lord of the Rings: the Card Game all incorporate the idea of a journey into them by including different locations (or quests) as key game elements. That makes sense; locations in the books play a huge part in what's going on, and moving from one to the next brings a unique set of challenges for the fellowship. Magic doesn't have locations, per se, but lands that can highlight the locations. The lands in Tales of Middle Earth look great, but aren't locations to be visited, which detracts from the experience. Other locations (or parts of them) can show up as artifacts, like the Argonath:

Cool, but it doesn't capture the spirit of the story, in my opinion. 

As I reflect on this aspect, I think Magic should have incorporated a variant of Planechase elements into this release. Perhaps have a series of planes aligned to the books' progressions, with advancement triggered by conditions stated on them. That would have been cool.

The Ring

Finally, we'll look at the ring. Magic handles this in two ways. The first is with the ring itself:

As a mythic rare, this is a cool card, but not expected to feature in every deck. The loss of life for each burden does tie in nicely to the spirit of the novels. 

The second way is with the ring tempting you. Many cards say "the ring tempts you" as part of their effects. What does that mean? The rules inserts explain:

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It is hard to discern, without playing, how it would feel in gameplay. It looks odd from the outside, but once this is released in Arena, I will play with it and update this post as necessary. 

Conclusion

Incorporating a popular universe into Magic is a tough task. At first glance, Wizards did a good job mapping LOTR characters into Magic's mechanics, but didn't capture the essence of the story as well as they could have. The verdict on the ring is still out. Though this set promises to sell well, and initial reviews indicates it plays well (as a Magic release), I don't know if they really captured the spirit of LOTR.