Magic: The Gathering’s fancy Lord of the Rings art sets make great stocking stuffers
It’s been a year of improvisation for the team at Wizards of the Coast. Flush with the success of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth— its blockbuster Universes Beyond collaboration with the Tolkien estate — the Seattle-based publisher has decided to try something entirely new with Scene Boxes, each containing six cards designed for display, in addition to six playable cards and three Set Boosters. Thankfully, this new endeavor is a novel innovation that pays off, thanks in part to a relatively low price point and perfect clarity as to what comes inside the box.
Often when you purchase Magic cards, you’re buying booster packs — blind packs of random cards. That changed with the introduction of the Secret Lair drops in 2020; print-to-demand bundles where consumers know exactly what they are getting. Scene Boxes leverage that same certainty, offering up cards alongside a simple cardboard easel. They offer an elegant unboxing, and arrive at roughly the same price point that Secret Lair drops did.
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They also make excellent use of senior art director Ovidio Cartagena’s re-imagining of iconic scenes from Tolkien’s original books.
“The Lord of the Rings is like the Odyssey, like the War of Troy,” he told Polygon’s Ana Diaz earlier this year. “There are several characters and several key moments. But there are now, and there will continue to be, people who add to it because the work is that massive and that important. We’re just very lucky we were born close to when the [The Lord of the Rings] was written.”
Four different Scene Boxes are available, including the one shown at the top of the page: Aragorn at Helm’s Deep, a singular image by Jason Rainville spread across six cards. The only limitation I can see is
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