(Call of the Ring | Art by Anto Finnstark)

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From Mordor to Your Door

Hello, fine readers. I'm glad I can have you for my first foray into the wild world of set reviews. If you don't know me, my name is Nick, also known as Nicnax96 on the internet, and today we're talking about some of the darker forces set upon the world by Sauron. It's my pleasure to bring these cards straight from The Black Gate right to your screen. Now, let's look at some black cards from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth.

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Mythics

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Shadow of the Enemy

This card will either make you someone's enemy or be the best thing to use against your current in-game enemy. It might not be the most efficient graveyard hate (as it costs five mana and only exiles the creatures from a player's graveyard), but it does something specific enough to push it into its own realm of playability.

Playing against a self-mill deck? Steal all of those creatures for yourself! A wrath effect hits the board? Take the value back and rebuild even better than before. Allowing any color of mana to be used means you're not having any issues casting the exiled cards, and there are some commanders frothing at the mouth to get their hands on this.

Syr Konrad, the Grim benefits when these creatures hit the graveyard, the first time they get exiled out of the graveyard, and if they hit the grave any time after that. Triple is the new double, after all. That being said, the commander that really wants this card is the Prosper, Tome-Bound. Giving you mana every time you cast an exiled creature is right up this deck's alley, and five mana is the perfect curve right after casting Prosper.

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Witch-king of Angmar

While no mortal man will be able to kill him, your opponents are going to give it a try. A 5/3 flyer with an ability last seen on Seasoned Hallowblade, the Witch-king will be a card causing problems for your opponents. While you can prevent yourself from taking damage from decks that want to go tall, if your opponents come with an army you'll need backup.

There are a few routes to take with this card if you want it to head up your deck. My first thoughts: using it as a free discard outlet for reanimation, flying, and a way to prevent its destruction leads to the makings of a solid Voltron commander. Maybe you pair this with cards like Silent Arbiter to make sure that if you are attacked, you gain some retaliatory sacrifices for the life you'll be losing to combat damage. The Ring tempts you on this card is very dependent on your opponent, and I want to control the gameplay decisions if I'm playing this card.

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Rares

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Call of the Ring

If you head up the Call of the Ring, rewards are on the horizon. It's one of the better ways to move through the phases of The Ring tempting you, and a small reward of card draw every time that you designate a Ring-bearer. It's a bit unfortunate that you're only able to access the draw effect every time you choose a Ring-bearer, but if you care about The Ring tempts you, this is a great addition as it's guaranteed during your upkeep.

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Gollum, Scheming Guide

One of the most interesting cards in this color, if not in the entire set. All of Gollum's abilities are unique on their own, and putting them together is what gets my brewing-brain juices flowing. Top deck manipulation in black connected to an attack trigger leads to some interesting gameplay. The flavor of a character known for his penchant for riddles and a mechanic where you're incentivized to have a great poker face equals a win on every level.

I think the best thing to do with Gollum (outside of trying to get free value from your opponents guessing incorrectly) would be to use things like Scroll Rack or Sensei's Divining Top to set up the top deck and make Gollum unblockable. Hopefully, your intended target does not know "what is in your pocketses" and you can finish them off with a sneaky Hatred or Howl from Beyond.

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Isildur's Fateful Strike

Four mana to kill a creature looks much better when the formatting is similar to Deadly Rollick. Even without the benefit of being able to cast a card for free, the massive restriction of "only if you control a legendary creature or planeswalker" is harsher than one would think. With a cheaply costed commander, this card isn't too difficult to cast and exile cards from an opponent who just cast a massive draw spell and refused to discard courtesy of Reliquary Tower, making the sting of this card much more palpable.

This card is better than others in the ever-growing field of black kill spells when you're leaning into legends-matter cards. I would heavily consider this card in Jodah, the Unifier, Dihada, Binder of Wills for all different versions of value, and possibly my favorite deck for this card, Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge. You can turn a hard-to-cast instant into additional card draw, thanks to Shanid.

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Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

Possibly one of the best cards if your goal is to win with Revel in Riches. Flash and menace are two keywords not shared on any card until this set. A very easy card to turn your opponent losing their creatures into some mana ramp for yourself. While the card does have to go from the battlefield to the grave for you to exile it, mono-black will not struggle with this tiny hurdle.

Using this card to lead a big mana strategy, ramping into something like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, and then gaining more mana with Lobelia is going to be a brutal play pattern. Classic enter-the-battlefield cards, like Panharmonicon, go in a deck with Lobelia, but Erratic Portal takes this card to another level.

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One Ring to Rule Them All

If you had asked me if this set would bring a functional reprint of Phyrexian Scriptures, I would have told you I did not remember what that card did. Don't get me wrong, there are notable differences (not turning your creature into an artifact versus making it a legend and exiling graveyards rather than causing loss of life), but the similarities exist. There is one major thing about this card that makes me worried if I see it across the table from me: the second chapter of this Saga is an earlier version of Invasion of Fiora, and with the increasing push for legends, any deck that focuses on that synergy and has black should look at this card.

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Orcish Bowmasters

THE BEST BLACK CARD IN THE SET (maybe the best card of any color in the set). This card slices, dices, builds an Army, and kills your opponents. At an absolute minimum, this card gives you a flash 1/1, gives you a second 1/1, and deals one damage to any target all for two mana. Every step above makes this card more and more insane. I would compare this card to the likes of Notion Thief and Hullbreacher. The only downside of this card (if you can even call it that) is that it does not stop the draw from your opponent, so if they cast a Wheel of Fortune they get to draw the cards, but they still take damage from Bowmaster's trigger.

This card should more than likely be in any deck running black. This card gets even better if you have a commander like Nekusar, the Mindrazer, and maybe even a Teferi's Puzzle Box on the board. Apparently it's going to have a huge impact in cEDH as well...

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Ringwraiths

Removal, a way to recur itself, and possible life loss. What more could you want? A bit expensive in the mana department, but a good addition to any deck that wants to run a heavy concentration of either Knights, Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir, or thanks to the set, Wraiths. Another flavor win for the set is using this card with Witch-king of Angmar to give it indestructible and potentially get returned to hand thanks to The Ring tempts you.

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Sauron, the Necromancer

Sauron's abilities tie a neat bow on black cards working together in this set. Making more Wraiths with your dead creatures, profiting from other cards tempting you, and benefiting from cards with evasion. Keeping a Ring-bearer around or losing all of your tokens is going to make it feel very bad if you are controlling Sauron, but ideally, you will vanquish your opponents before that happens.

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Witch-king, Bringer of Ruin

A big beat stick for sacrifice-focused strategies. A flying 5/3 that will either get rid of a potential aerial chump blocker or the weakest creature your opponent has. While the least power among creatures they control is not the most appealing text, there are many utility creatures worth getting rid of (looking at you Esper Sentinel). Almost certainly an inside-the-99 card for the likes of lower-powered Tergrid, God of Fright decks (I know lower-powered is hard to imagine with this commander), and a fine addition to Gisa, Glorious Resurrector so that all the utility becomes yours.

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Uncommons

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Bitter Downfall

Somehow this card is both more and less restricting than Isildur's Fateful Strike. This card wants to be paired with things like Pestilence effects or maybe in a Tor Wauki the Younger deck to finish off creatures that are a bit too big to ping down all the way.

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Gollum, Patient Plotter

Patiently doing their best impression of Tortured Existence, Gollum seems like a great way to utilize The Ring tempts you. Not a free sacrifice outlet, but with the right creatures, this card can do nasty things alongside Phyrexian Altar.

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Gollum's Bite

You heard it here first. We have a strictly better Disfigure on our hands. If you want to run Disfigure in a deck, but you want to have another way for the Ring to tempt you, run this card.

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Gorbag of Minas Morgul

This card is a potential sleeper pick for the set. Do you have to play a two-color (or maybe more) Goblins deck? Yes. Are there potentially enough Orcs to make the main focus of the deck instead? Maybe. Either way, this card can draw you so many cards or make you so many Treasures. Be ready to see this card in Commander games to come.

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Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant

This card is very simple but effective in its own right. It's certainly better in the 99 of token decks that use black. Giving tokens deathtouch means the 1/1 Gothmog makes more worthy of attacking, or turns it into a profitable blocker. This card goes well with commanders like Chatterfang, Squirrel General and Thalisse, Reverent Medium, where tokens give you more tokens, and Commissar Severina Raine, where more tokens equals more damage, and blocking them becomes even more perilous.

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Gríma Wormtongue

Cards that don't allow your opponents to gain life is a bit of a niche effect in terms of when they see play. Conveniently, Gríma is a niche card. It's not the best card for an aristocratic strategy, but it is a sacrifice effect for just the cost of tapping Gríma. Hard to get the added benefit of Amass Orcs 2 with this card, but not impossible. The best home for this is most likely Slimefoot and Squee, but it might be dependent on whether your playgroup has a lifegain player(s).

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Grond, the Gatebreaker

Vehicle decks with black are not prevalent, and this card is just a 5/5 with trample. But, I don't think I personally saw a card that got more instant hype when it was spoiled. So GROND! Play it in Sydri, Galvanic Genius.

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March from the Black Gate

I like this card. I like this card almost certainly more than this card deserves. I loved the card Dreadhorde Invasion, and I died to my own Dreadhorde more times than I ever won with it. While this does not lose your life like other cards similar to it from the "before times", you do have to attack with the token or blink this card to get an Army. Either way, I want to march to and from the Black Gate.

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Nazgûl

The fourth black card to join the family of Rat Colony, Relentless Rats, and Shadowborn Apostle as subverting the singleton rule of Commander. Being allowed to have up to nine is one of the most flavorful things in the banquet that is The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Deathtouch and the ability for every Nazgûl after the first to continually tempt you and put counters on any other Wraiths makes this an all-around sweet card.

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Oath of the Grey Host

Giving your opponent Food and the Spirits made from this card once tapped is disappointing, but in total, you get five tokens and nine life lost across the table out of this card, which makes me look the other way. This card goes in many of the same decks mentioned above with Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant, but I like it best paired with everyone's favorite forest friend, Chatterfang, Squirrel General.

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Voracious Fell Beast

The effect on this card is quite good. Forcing everyone to sacrifice a creature and netting three Food tokens out of it is nothing to dismiss. Sadly, at six mana and only being a 4/4 flyer makes me think if you play this it's because wanting to play this card outweighs the fact there might be something better, which is just fine by me... as long as I have something, I won't be mad about sacrificing.

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Commons

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Mirkwood Bats

The best bat in Magic outside of Unsanctioned. Here's looking at you, Surgeon General Commander.

Creature types aside for this card, I have rarely seen a common that will win you the game more than this card has the potential to. "Whenever you make or sacrifice a token, each opponent loses one life" is some of the most insane card text I've ever read. A weird mix of Zulaport Cutthroat and Mayhem Devil, the number of decks this card can go in breaks the scales. It's restricted to tokens, but some of the best and most recent unique token types we received, Food, Clues, Blood, and Treasure, being artifacts, makes sacrificing those trivial in a Commander game. Aristocrat strategies have been sacrificing creatures since the dawn of time, and tokens are never going away. The more token-matters cards that can afford one black pip in their deck, the better this card gets.

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This is one of the coolest sets I've ever had the pleasure of looking at since I started playing years ago. The flavor of all the cards and how well the designs match up with the characters, objects, or places from Lord of the Rings is Chef's Kiss level. I don't think I have to tell anyone that the strongest card in black (and maybe the set) is Orcish Bowmasters, and right above this is my ravings on Mirkwood Bats. These cards aside, the Nazgûl are the coolest card in black for me due to the homerun flavor of being able to have nine. Gollum, Scheming Guide is the most intriguing because, unlike the Bowmasters and the Bats, I have no idea how you should best use that card.

I can't wait to get my hands on these cards, and if you would like to read more articles by myself, check out the Myth Realized series, where I break down what would happen if planeswalkers were legal as commanders. If you want more tempting Rings, hop over to Commander's Herald on 6/13 for the cEDH set review by Jake Fitzsimons. I bet he'll mention Orcish Bowmasters.