Summary
It’s been a pretty big year forMagic: The Gatheringoverall, with a bunch of huge and popular sets thatWizards of the Coastcan boast about. One of its most successful over the past year was the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth full Universes Beyond set, which proved to be a popular franchise to crossover with and drummed up plenty of attention (both positive and negative)with the hunt for The One Ring.
Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewatermade a lot of comments in his yearly columnabout what lessons he learned from the release of the set, and from the game’s last year as a whole. In the section dedicated to Tales of Middle-earth, Rosewater admits that one of the biggest complaints he received about the set was that two of the cards included in it were too good - The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters.
Rosewater explains that these two cards are so powerful that they make many feel like they are “warping the environments they’re legal in,” and that plenty of MTG fans wish they’d be banned entirely. While he doesn’t mention whether they will be banned or not - though it seems unlikely given so much time has passed - he does confirm that there may be more opportunities to grab them in the future.
Universes Beyond sets get reprints every now and again,though some of them have been left untouchedever since they were first released. Before today, we had no confirmation on whether reprints of Tales of Middle-earth would be allowed, and the fact that The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters are so powerful, yet limited, was enough to concern quite a few fans.
Thankfully, Rosewater has revealed that reprints of both of these cards are not only possible, but that there’s a possibility that Wizards of the Coast could “even make them in-universe equivalents” to potentially sidestep any sticky licensing issues. Rosewater doesn’t mention whether there are any plans to do so right now, but it’s comforting to know that these particular cards won’t be locked into the Tales of Middle-earth set forever.
