As the game goes on, and you accumulate more land, you can play more powerful effects.Īt least that’s the theory. Once in play, a land can be “tapped” - used up for that turn - to generate a mana of that color, and mana is used to play the rest of the cards in your deck. Your deck consists of land cards in up to five colors, and you can play one each turn. But if you’re new to the game, here are the basics.

Given that it’s been steadily evolving since 1993 and now has high prize-money tournaments, the full rules of Magic have become extraordinarily complex. Foils, borderless and other special edition cards just add to the overall visual flair on offer. The game has a long history of good illustrations on the cards, but the bar across this set is very high, bringing Tolkien’s creations to life in your hands through a fresh, new, and highly diverse vision. However you go about easing into this set, it’s worth remarking on the quality of the art, which is generally excellent. There are several flavors of commander deck, each fronted by a well-known character from the books: Eowyn, Frodo, Galadriel and, of course, the dark lord Sauron. These feature one hundred distinct cards alongside a deck box and tokens and are used in commander, one of the game’s most popular formats. The other option, for moderately experienced players, are commander decks ( see at Amazon). One deck is based around Sauron mustering an orc army, while the other sees Aragorn and Arwen build a motley band of hobbits and heroes to oppose them. Complete neophytes or those lured in to returning by this popular theme are probably best off with the Starter Kit ( see at Amazon), which contains two pre-constructed 60-card decks to play with along with a rules summary, deck boxes, and a few punch-out counters. If you want to stick to Tolkien-themed cards only, you could go with a few jumpstart boosters to make a random deck.įor everyone else, there are various pre-made decks to enjoy. Veteran players might be happy just buying packs of the various kinds of boosters available to add to their existing collections ( see at Amazon). Since Magic is a collectible card game, what’s in the box depends on what you buy.

Lord of the rings gollum original