There’s nothing quite like in-person card games, and that’s exactly why Wizards of the Coast SEA had organized another of their great launch events, this time for the upcoming Lord of The Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth expansion for Magic: The Gathering.

This time though, there was a unique tension in the air- like many, I’d heard of the bounty on a serialized card of The One Ring- and we were all eager to see if we’d luck out and somehow pull it today.

As is always with these events, we were treated to a full spread of the Lord of the Rings- themed goodies available- including a look at the various commander decks and Starter Deck for new players. Want to literally run Sauron in your deck? You can do that now.

After that, we had a presentation by none other than Kenneth Ong, Regional Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast SEA talking about the unification of Tolkien’s masterpiece and Magic: The Gathering. Considering everyone was ring-blinded, it was a great chance to highlight the other unique features of the set, such as alternate art showing key characters at their lowest- including Sauron himself, when he was suddenly robbed of an illustrious career in piano after his fingers were severed.

The next step, of course, was the ice breaking game. This event’s game had us pretending to be Orcs, trying to spot a Hobbit in our midst. Since Orcs aren’t the type to play Werewolf, it was instead a game of asking each other yes or no questions about locations we were assigned.

Like many types of big group discussions, though, we’d realized we had no leads to spot the ringbearer in our midst. Performing an act of Orc democracy, we elected one person to be the decider, who unfortunately failed to catch us our Hobbit. Saruman will not be pleased.

Now that we were comrades in incompetence, the next step was opening our cards! In the interest of avoiding an anticlimax, no one got the Ring. We did, however, get plenty of cards from the Lord of the Rings set to check out, assembling draft decks to fight each other.

Now, reader, I must share with you a quick way to assemble a Draft deck when time is of the essence and you’re not very good at Magic: The Gathering. Step one is have a color that you always stick to- in my case, a Jund combination (Red, Green, Black). Step two is to find a mechanic and stick to it. In this case, I was quite a fan of the Amass Orcs ability, which allows you to just pile counters on an Army Token,  potentially creating a force to be reckoned with. Sure, it has no win con per se, but the gods of synergy would hopefully smile upon me and we could, on some level, cook.

Unfortunately this time around I did less cooking and more being cooked. There’s some scary artifacts in the Lord of The Rings MTG set, such as one that causes creatures that die to exile instead of going to the graveyard, negating a good chunk of my own plays. I also didn’t manage to pull Moria Marauder, breaking my streak of getting our preview cards at these events.

There’s also at least one player at the event who pulled The One Ring (the unserialized version). It’s surprisingly in-flavor with its counterpart, offering great draw power at the cost of eating away at your own life every turn.

There’s also the case of the new set mechanic, The Ring Tempts You. This is an emblem that has one of your creatures taking the Ring, gaining new abilities such as being upgraded to Legendary status and more. It’s not a mechanic for half-measures, that’s for sure since you’ll want to rack up the temptation fast, since you want to get to its fourth level ability ASAP.

If you like The Lord of the Rings, Magic: The Gathering or even just social dueling, there’s a lot to love in the upcoming Tales From Middle-Earth set. Wizards of the Coast SEA is even organizing a Launch Party at Paradigm Mall on July 1st and 2nd, where you’ll be able to play mini games as well as pick up exclusive merch like a counter system for keeping track of your own Ring-temptation.

The cards themselves will be on sale from June 24th at your friendly local game stores and online, so don’t forget to pick some up for your own exciting adventure in Middle Earth! Thanks to our friends at Wizards of the Coast SEA for putting together this opportunity to try out the new set.