Lord of the Ring Theme Set

Yes, you are totally right now that I think about it. Any idea to make the ability works? The problem is that the ability is different every time. It can be put as:

Fellowship
As long as you control another creature with fellowship, Frodo Baggins gains skulk (This creature can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power.)

Here Fellowship is intended as an ability like Flying but that does nothing but enabling other member of the fellowship. Doesn't seems good enough though

That's actually an interesting idea, although I don't like it completely. Must be one of the few way, though. 

At first glance (at mostly the name) Fellowship made me think of Soulbond, but Soulbond doesn't need the other to have Soulbond; what's similar is that it bonds creatures together, and they're giving (each other) traits based on activation of the ability.

Something that you might want to look at if you don't want this set to be entirely isolated is how limited the Fellowship mechanic is (though, there are plenty of similarly isolating mechanics in current magic like Arcanes or certain creature-type-support like Ally (which Daij_Djan kinda suggested with the creature type Fellow), so take this however you want)

Anyhow, be careful with alternative wincons (and making them too easy to get), as it can make the opponent feel very cheated. Alternative wincons are often very hard to attain and require a deck to be build entirely around it and still be not-very-viable. You'll have to playtest how easy it is to win with your alternative wincons, and in which formats your set will care about (because, for example, making Frodo a Commander could be pretty OP as you simply put it back into the command zone).

My three cents. I liked the Shelob-Vial interaction when against each other, but also when they are owned by the same person.

galva94: i think this idea is really great...i know it is difficult but as it is so overused i was well impressed with your work. Art, flavour, text...it is not an easy task 
What did you do of this?

Thanks for the feedback! To answer to uaiop's question, the final goal of the set is to print and draft the cards with friends, but for now I just want to create some design that mimic the characters and the story of the books/movies.

ameisenmeister: you're right, most of the cards are creature-centered and this is a limit of the set. I need some new ideas here. As you said, the Spear mechanic is not as good as I would like, expecially I find it confusing from the gameplay point of view (its kinda difficult to predict how a combat step will resolve if a couple of creature with spear are involved). Anyway, the mechanic was thought to be adopted for the Rohan faction (green white) while Reliance is for the Gondor one (white red).

Hey there. I like your idea and the designs you have so far. If I may make a few suggestions/asks a few question:

- Have you considered using Sagas, with or without the "historic" keyword, from Dominaria? It seems like that could work really well with The Lord of the Rings. Sagas could help you fit stuff from Middle-Earth that isn't in Lord of the Rings proper, for example.

- What are your factions and what colors are they? Red/White for Gondor might work, but I'd personally put them at W/G and Rohan at W/R. Or you could make the set somewhat more tribal than factional and have all humans as one three color faction (Naya, which I think fit)

- Are you going to put any Planeswalker in it? They aren't a thing in LotR, but they are a core part of modern Magic, so it would be weird to leave them out My personal opinion would be to make Gandalf and Saruman PW, since they are the closest LotR has to them. Gandalf could even be a sparker (The Grey is a legendary creature, The White is a planeswalker). Sauron could also be a PW. 

- A piece of advice as a fellow top-down designer: Don't try to match the flavor exactly for every possible card interaction. That way is a fool's errand. With the number of cards and concepts in Magic, wurms wearing boots are inevitable. For example, it's fine for Galadriel's Vial and Shellob to have synergy together and not just against each other. Trying to prevent that would probably means making one or both of the two cards worse. 

- Shellob really should be a sexy lady. 

That's all for now. And thanks for showing us your work. 

P.S.: That last one is a joke. 

Don't want to press myself onto you but if you're looking for fitting mechanics, maybe I can help you. Just tell me - here or via pm - what you are looking for and I might have something.

Hi galva,
I'm quite new on Magic Set Editor, I've just discovered it.
Me and my brother have been working on such a Tolkien project for couple months.  We obviously included the Silmarillion, Appendix and The hobbit to the Lotr univers. We also have about a hundred card to show for, however they have been made on MTG cardsmith until now...
About the races/factions , what we came up with is :

-WG : Hobbits 
-WU : Sindar (Elves from first age, Elrond-Galadriel, sons of Fëanor excluded)
-WB : Numerorian (Gondor white, Black Numenor Black)
-WR : Rohirim
-GU : Noldor (Elves from first age, sons of Fëanor)
-GB : Mirkwood Elves (Third Age Elf, Legolas etc)
-GR : Haradrim, Oliphant, Evil men
-UB : Angmar (witch king, barrow wright)
-UR : Dwarves
-BR : Mordor, Sauron, Orcs Black, Goblin Red

We established the istari as tricolor creatures, the maïars as planeswalker (altought theoretically, istari ARE maïar).
Tell we what you think ! 
Liked your cards

celebrimbor I would be glad to see your ideas, if possible, although in my set I excluded the Silmarillion and focused only on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. 

kefke The battle of the five army as a saga is a great idea, but in my mind I want that card to cost WUBRG. Seems like a flavour waste not doing so on an event that seems to consider al five color of magic at once

Hello pratix! It's been a long time since I posted something new under this thread, but I'm happy to say that my lotr set is being tested and almost finished (at least on the first version). (At the moment I'm willing to setup a decent limited experience so I'm just testing commons/uncommons).

Let me say my opinion on the mechanics you and your friends are developing:

(1) Ringbearer: This is certainly the more interesting, because is potentially very game-warping and unique. I like it a lot! But the big problem I see is: for this to work you need to put the ability  ringbearer on some commons and uncommons card, or it loses the purpose of giving unique drawt experience. But as we know, flavourfully there are not many ringbearer: bilbo, frodo, gollum and maybe sam on some extend but not really. Curious to know how you menage to handle this mechanic. It remind me a bit of "the monarch" mechanic, but as you see, in this case there was a lot of commons/uncommons to get the crown

(2) Fellowship: Of course I like this as well, since it's very similar to the one I was thinking about while ago. I have to say that this suffers of the same problem of "ringbearer", altough I guess you can make some random cards to have fellowship in this case, and the shall work like Allies from zendikar or something. In my set I decided to write down the ability explicitly (I mean, with no keyword) and just on three or four rare/uncommons member of the fellowship. I think this gives a touch of flavour without forcing too much on cards that do not deserve it.

(3) Glimpse: This I don't like much, because It seems to me a bit redundant to have on multiple cards. I mean, let's say you have an elf cc3 and another on cc4 in your hand: you cannot play them one after the other to curve out, because the second trigger will shuffle away the first. Maybe some reiteration of an ability as Explore from ixalan would work better (e.g. reveal the first card and you can draw it if it's a creature or something on those lines). This can be enabled with some other library manipulations cards, like creatures that scry when enters or something similar.

Then there is the idea of "Black vs Raindow". I think this is cool as well but need to be supported very well, in order to give a good limited experience: Think for example if four people out of eight tries to force mono black. This could turn to be miserable for them, fight over a handful of cards.



Just for let you know and maybe get some inspioration, I attach a few of my cards which features my mechanics:


UG Elves


UB Isengard 


WR Gondor


BR Mordor


GW Rohan

Wow really like Eternal Binding, very flavourful! Boromir is fairly strong, maybe even underpowered for a mythic. By the way I've chosen to design many the main characters as uncommon: in this way they appear much more frequently in a regular draft event, and the players feels more like they are actually playing a lord of the ring set. I reserved the rare and mythic slots to other secondary important characters, like Elrond, Smaug or Galadriel 

This, by the way, is my current iteration of Boromir. Quite similar to yours to be fair!

I might work on these sagas over the next day or two. Thanks for turning me on to that artist you used, by the way. His (or her) stuff is a real treat! I could design dozens of sagas just based on this killer artwork for some of my favourite movies, games, and books.