It’s no secret that Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth has been taking over multiple competitive formats. The set has caused a total reshaping of the Modern format and has taken a strong hold of Legacy as well. Even Pauper is getting a ton of new staples in the form of cards like
Lembas
Lembas
When this artifact enters, scry 1, then draw a card.
{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.
When this artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, its owner shuffles it into their library.
,
Cast into the Fire
Cast into the Fire
Choose one —
• Cast into the Fire deals 1 damage to each of up to two target creatures.
• Exile target artifact.
, and the various Landcyclers.
The Landcyclers, in particular, are definitely impacting formats much more than expected. Besides taking
Living End
Living End
Suspend 3—{2}{B}{B}
Each player exiles all creature cards from their graveyard, then sacrifices all creatures they control, then puts all cards they exiled this way onto the battlefield.
to the next level, Landcyclers are upping the consistency of decks across Modern, Pauper, and Legacy while also enabling various payoffs. Lorien Revealed seems to be the biggest contributor here outside of the Living End deck, and its market price as a result is the strangest thing we’ve seen in quite some time.
Lorien Revealed
Asking where Lorien Revealed isn’t seeing play may be an easier question than where it is at this point. This card has very little downside, capable of being an overpriced draw three while turning itself into a land if needed. The card, therefore, can enable a ton of powerful strategies.
On the surface, Lorien Revealed is essentially a land colored blue. This may not seem like a big deal, but a lot of free effects in Modern and Legacy care about you having blue cards in hand to pitch.
Force of Will
Force of Will
You may pay 1 life and exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Counter target spell.
,
Force of Negation
Force of Negation
If it's not your turn, you may exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Counter target noncreature spell. If that spell is countered this way, exile it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard.
and
Subtlety
Subtlety
Flash
Flying
When this creature enters, choose up to one target creature spell or planeswalker spell. Its owner puts it on their choice of the top or bottom of their library.
Evoke—Exile a blue card from your hand.
are the biggest examples of this. With almost every archetype using
The One Ring
The One Ring
Indestructible
When The One Ring enters, if you cast it, you gain protection from everything until your next turn.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life for each burden counter on The One Ring.
{T}: Put a burden counter on The One Ring, then draw a card for each burden counter on The One Ring.
as an engine, pitching an extra card for a free effect is not nearly as costly as it was just a few months ago.
Otherwise, Lorien Revealed is also a great tool to fuel graveyard-based synergies. Your land can suddenly also Delve towards a
Murktide Regent
Murktide Regent
Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for {1}.)
Flying
This creature enters with a +1/+1 counter on it for each instant and sorcery card exiled with it.
Whenever an instant or sorcery card leaves your graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.
, putting a +1/+1 counter on it when it hits the board. The card mostly functions as normal in Pauper, since the ability to both be a land and an overpriced spell is strong enough for that format. The story doesn’t end there with Lorien Revealed, though. It’s actually just beginning.
A Price Limited by Continent
Players in the States may actually have a bit of an opportunity here. There’s no guarantee that Lorien Revealed in the States will follow the same trends it is in other continents but the price difference is so massive that it’s a tough one to pass up mentioning.
The normal version of Lorien Revealed has spiked a tad bit, but not to the point where you’d want to value Draft it. At the end of the day, the card is a common that you can open in Draft packs, so there are too many copies of the card for it to see a major price spike.
This hasn’t stopped the card from spiking from about 6 cents to 25 cents, with players buying a large number of them for even more. Foils, however, are a very different story.
Once again, in the TCGplayer marketplace, things don’t look too odd. Copies are selling for between 50 cents and a couple of bucks, which is a lot for a common foil, but things are a bit different over in Europe.
For reference, Cardmarket is very similar to TCGplayer, but its instead intended for the European market. Much like TCGplayer, the store is an open market for sellers to sign up on. By unifying a bunch of different sources for cards, you can make sure you’re paying what a card is truly worth.
Foil Lorien Revealed on Cardmarket are going for a LOT more than they are in the U.S. At the time of writing, the market price for foil Lorien Revealed is up to about 3.20 Euros, which translates to $3.60 USD! To make things even crazier, the cheapest card for sale on the market is at 5.75 Euros, or $6.43! This suggests that the market average may rise even further for this card.
Other Landcyclers like
Generous Ent
Generous Ent
Reach
When this creature enters, create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.")
Forestcycling {1} ({1}, Discard this card: Search your library for a Forest card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
and
Oliphaunt
Oliphaunt
Trample
Whenever this creature attacks, another target creature you control gets +2/+0 and gains trample until end of turn.
Mountaincycling {1} ({1}, Discard this card: Search your library for a Mountain card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
are not seeing the same price increases.
Read More: New Commander Masters Deck is Missing Tons of Sliver Staples!
Sauron’s Ransom
The other card seeing a massive increase from the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set is Sauron’s Ransom. Thanks to increasing amounts of play in Legacy and Modern, this card is getting popular, and expensive.
For three mana, you get a
Fact or Fiction
Fact or Fiction
Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.
-esque effect that looks at four cards and demands your opponent to make a face-up and face-down pile. You then choose one pile to go to your hand and one to go to your grave.
Different sources state different things in terms of how you should play the mind game for this one, but most of what I personally have read states that the face-up pile is usually a little worse than the face-down one.
As an added bonus, Sauron’s Ransom will cause the Ring to Tempt you. In multiples, this can be surprisingly relevant, allowing your
Orcish Bowmasters
Orcish Bowmasters
Flash
When this creature enters and whenever an opponent draws a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, this creature deals 1 damage to any target. Then amass Orcs 1.
to start looting.
Thanks to the breakout Dimir Control deck in Modern, as well as continued play in Legacy thanks to the ban of
Expressive Iteration
Expressive Iteration
Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand, put one of them on the bottom of your library, and exile one of them. You may play the exiled card this turn.
, Sauron’s Ransom has exploded in price. Normal variants have risen from 50 cents to $6, while foils are selling for closer to $7. The cheapest you can currently find a foil extended art Sauron’s Ransom on TCGplayer is currently $75 thanks to Collector Sample packs.
What’s the Variable?
The price points for Foil Lorien Revealed have a huge discrepancy between countries. You can still find them in the U.S. for less than a dollar, but over in Europe, they seem to be worth more than $6. We don’t know why the difference is currently so massive for the card, but the biggest variable to likely have an impact is supply.
At the end of the day, Magic: the Gathering originates from the U.S., which generally means that they will have the best supply of cards, and that may affect Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth more than other sets. Language of the card can also have an impact here, if, for example, there is a larger pool of English foil Lorien Revealed than German or Italian ones.
In Canada, I’ve been having a rather difficult time finding Lord of the Rings drafts in person, as my LGS simply hasn’t been able to get ahold of any boxes for the last few weeks. Set Boosters are still widely available, but Draft Boosters aren’t. This isn’t necessarily speaking for the entire situation in Canada, either. This is just my own experience of how supply has affected my engagement with the Lord of the Rings set.
Supply being a large driver of price differences in this instance is purely speculation, and we don’t really know why prices are currently differing so much. It could, however, simply mean that European markets are a bit further ahead of the trend. If that’s the case, players who want a playset of Foil Lorien Revealed in North America may want to get in for cheap while they still can.
Read More: Multiple Missing MTG Reprints Surge to $50!