Magic's The One Ring could've been designed differently if the set wasn't for Modern

Magic: The Gathering’s latest Modern legal set, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, was released to much fanfare on 23 June, as fans of The Lord of the Rings can finally draft both Frodo and Sam together in a limited deck.

Collectors can also potentially open the ultra-rare The 1 of 1 Ring card, although to the best of my knowledge, no one has opened it yet.

Amidst the lottery potential of the set as well as the general fanfare towards J. R. R. Tolkien’s characters, Yahoo Southeast Asia talked to Mike Turian, Game Architect from Wizards of the Coast, to find out more about the processes behind designing The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, as well as the new card The One Ring.

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth is the first Universe Beyond collaboration to be released in a full set that is legal in the Modern format. What were some of the biggest considerations Wizards of the Coast had when designing this set for the Modern format?

Mike Turian: We wanted to create a set that captured the essence of The Lord of the Rings in all ways. As there are many powerful characters, locations and items in the books, we took a look at how to best partner that with Magic: The Gathering. One of those ways was to bring the set into the Modern format so that we could create appropriately powerful and relevant cards

Our first straight-to-Modern sets, Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2 were designed to shape the Modern format. With The Lord of the Ring: Tales of Middle-earth, we knew we wanted to make cards that were relevant but didn’t intend to shape Modern the way that the Horizons sets have.

Another advantage of making The Lord of the Ring: Tales of Middle-earth come right to the Modern format is that it gave us greater freedom to make powerful, appealing Commander cards.

Commander is a huge format and we knew players would want to build The Lord of the Rings themed Commander decks, so being able to create awesome, resonant designs for those players was a priority for us as well.

It is really cool that Wizards of the Coast has brought in so many famous characters from Tolkien’s stories into Magic: The Gathering. Obviously, when it comes to visual references for The Lord of the Rings, we have the movies and TV shows. How was it like to reinterpret these famous characters into the world of Magic: The Gathering when fans, for better or for worse, are already entrenched with these characters that were already on the big screen?

Mike Turian: One amazing opportunity we had was to partner with the original text of Tolkien and bring it to life through the lens of Magic: The Gathering. This was both an opportunity and a responsibility we took seriously.

For each character, location, and item we considered both what the original text of the novels brought and how that character would best be turned into Magic: The Gathering cards.

The team did a lot of research to dig into the characters and get to their core essence, and then once we started seeing visuals, there were many rounds of revisions and updates there.

We weren’t alone in this effort as Middle-earth Enterprises was an amazing partner in helping guide the effort as well.

Anytime you bring a product as epic as Tales of Middle-earth to life, it represents a new chance to create expressions of the original work.

The Lord of the Rings has been brought to life in plenty of ways and to bring our own, uniquely Magic: The Gathering version to life was a pleasure.

The One Ring, which is the most powerful artifact in Tolkien’s stories, does not seem to be as game-changing when compared to some of the most powerful artifacts in Magic: The Gathering, and it is understandable considering that powerful artifacts should not be breaking the Modern format. If The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth was not legal in the Modern format, would The One Ring have been designed differently?

Mike Turian: Every card we design is customised and built towards both the environment that it will be played in, with respect to the other cards in the set, and with the desire to bring the most resonant expression of the card to Magic: The Gathering.

So, I do think that if we had made the set legal in Standard that would have seen a change to The One Ring. Likewise, if the set wasn’t legal in Modern and was only Legacy/Commander legal, there would have been changes as well.

Overall, every card we create goes through rounds of inspiration and iteration, and that was especially so for The One Ring.

There was an entire design exercise around this single card where designers tried to capture the essence of The One Ring. Based on fans’ reactions, I’m proud of what was created.

Jay is a content creator who likes to hoard vintage photographic lenses, and loses too often in Dota 2 and Magic: The Gathering after work.

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