The One Ring is Better Than You Think 

As for the One Ring not equipping to a creature, I like it. In MtG you are a Planeswalker that’s casting spells and summoning creatures. Your creatures aren’t carrying the ring, you are as the player. It isn’t tempting your creatures, it’s tempting you. I like that a lot.

The One Ring tempts you to use it, and the corruption it causes effects you more, the more you've given in to the temptation. Perfect mechanic : flavour. It's not like it is "pay 2 life: draw 2 cards", it is "you drew 2 cards at some point, and your soul is tainted until you give it up, but you know you can draw 3 cards if you want"

Gandalf the Grey being blue red seems weird at first, but there's no better combination. He was actually a traveling, leaf smoking, trouble maker and adventurer who was known by the elves, went out of his way to help the Dwarves... He was reasonably Red through and through until being reborn as the White. In a way that red often doesn't get enough credit for.

I actually like the Gandalf they've spoiled (there are two more versions of Gandalf on the way). Gandalf doesn't do much on his own, but he amplifies the player's actions for a brief period of time before vanishing to do something else for a while. You ask me... that's a pretty perfect depiction of his role in Fellowship (and The Hobbit, while we're at it).

To go deep on the lore, Gandalf's color alignment does make sense. We've since seen Radagast as a simic legend so presumably wizards are going to be blue and x. As wielder of one of the three elven rings and in particular Narya, which gives the wearer powers related to fire, flame, light, the red makes sense too.

Gandalf is a wizard of fire so actually being both blue and RED for gandalf the grey is pretty spot on!

I thought Gandalf would read “As long as Gandalf is on the battlefield, you never lose priority.” In other words: You shall not pass.

I want to play with a set of those swamps, so when I get attacked by something with swamp walk I can say “one does not simply walk into Mordor” and cast a doom blade

The Island is mainly stuff that is West of the Shire. You can see Hobbiton marked on the map, as well as the Isen river, which if followed would eventually lead to the tower of Orthanc and Isengard. Basically, the Hobbits go the opposite direction away from the coast to get to Rivendell in the first part of the first movie. They then continue vaguely in that direction to get to all the other places you see. You do eventually see the Grey Havens at the end of the third movie when Frodo gets on the boat to go into the western lands. It is nowhere near the Argonath (those big statue thingies).

Friendly reminder that flicker does nothing with The One Ring besides resetting the burden counters. You must hard cast it to gain protection

I'd like the map lands if the Island and Swamp actually focused on the areas of the map where those things are.

Do remember that Bludgeon Brawl is a card that exists if you do want to find a way to go about equipping The One Ring to your creatures. May or may not be a flavor fail depending on who you're putting it on, but where there is a will, there is a way.

I think Gandalf makes more sense than at first glance. He's portrayed as the most compassionate and kind of the Maiar explaining the red, and still being quite knowledgeable in a very blue way. And his three non bounce effects reference other magic cards with goofy names: twiddle, sizzle, fork. So he does some minor party tricks and then just F*cks right off which imo is a pretty Gandalf the grey thing to do. I imagine the Gandalf the white version will probably be blue/white or jeskai, showing his accepting of the responsibly of being the new leader of the Maiar. Which is the version most people tend to associate with Gandalf as it's the one that gets the most screen time in the main trilogy movies.

~~General~~ Kenobi. The Island is where the Grey Havens are, the place where Elves set sail to the back home, to the undying lands. There is gonna be more than one version of Gandalf, confirmed today, yay. The One Ring not being an equipment is genius, it answers to Sauron alone, it has no other Master!

Shame they didn't do the lands in old border, that would've looked better than the weird little symbols in the corner (in my opinion)

The One Ring also doubles as the first turn of a Witchbane Orb; all Curses - and other Auras - attached to you fall off.

I actually miss 3 lines of text from the one ring: -You cannot sacrefice it -Your deck may only have 1 of it - The old legend rule applies for it (so you cannot cast one if anyone has one in play)

Keep in mind it's legendary - there will be a deck that untaps it three or four times, plays the next one, sacrificing the one with the counters, Shuffles the old one back into the deck, then repeats those steps.

Worth noting, when it comes to *you* having protection from everything: your opponent can absolutely still combo you out, in numerous possible ways (albeit, not necessarily "viable in the format" ways), they just can't be reliant on dealing damage to you (unless they have a way to override protection, via "damage cannot be prevented" clauses) or targeting you, for that to happen. If they have a way to mill your entire deck that doesn't involve effects with the words "target opponent", for instance, then you lose (Tasha's Hideous Laughter and Ruin Crab pointedly do not feature the words "target" anywhere on them (you'd be safe from Hedron Crab though)).

People are ignoring one thing, though: We don't know what burden counters might do. I suspect there will be plenty of cards that get far more powerful depending on how many burden counters your opponents have. Heck, there might even be a lot of cards that get weaker depending on how many burden counters you have. I hope the designers play with that.

The lava of Mt. Doom better appear as a card. I would love an "exile target artifact" effect in red but it will probably be remove indestructible before destroying things.

I just want to point out that Urza's Blueprints can get you two cards for the 6 mana, because you tap it once when you cast it, and then you can tap it again in response to its Echo trigger. Also, if I can grab one, I'll probably put the One Ring in my Kozilek Control EDH deck.

Remember when Frodo took the ring all the way to Mt Doom, but at the last minute changed his mind, kept the ring, and threw in Bilbo's Party Tree instead? Thanks devs for giving us this freedom.

I can even see tron using this, sometimes that one turn of guaranteed protection against a lot of decks and the draw can allow Tron to draw that next land they need or get to more of the big stuff, can be grabbed with KGC too if they dont want to mess with mainboard. Getting another turn to find something big is massive.

WHO can look at the one ring and think that thing is weak? I felt the need to add here that I don't play competitive magic anymore for like 3+ years, so I'm not really sure about speed, and the last legacy matches I've seen were so quick it was kinda scary, but still, I still keep my position that this think is pretty strong.

With the little we have seen I wish the ring scaled off of the tempt counters instead and had some way to steal it like coveted jewel also I think Gandalf the grey should have been colorless

I'm so excited to put the one ring in my liberator deck, i've been struggling with card draw if i don't draw a kozilek and with flash i can make the protection from everything more useful

I think they got the flavor of the one ring spot on. It really incentivizes you to keep using it to make the life loss to cards drawn ratio better.

You dont see the Island in the movies until the very end of the trilogy. This is where the Elves and Frodo launch ships to go to the Undying Lands

I think there's going to be a lot of people trying to figure out how to make this work in 60-card formats. It's only 4 mana, can be played in basically any deck since it's colorless, and it converts life to cards at a one-to-one exchange rate with no additional mana investment, which has historically been broken as shit (see Necropotence). You even get a whole turn cycle to use the latest batch of cards you draw *before* you have to pay for them. This card is absolutely insane...the only thing that this doesn't do better than something like Necropotence is that you can't just slam this and immediately draw 7+ cards with it, because if the game goes on for more than a few turns past when this hits the battlefield, I don't see how you lose. I mean, by just the fourth turn of this being in play, you have spent 4 mana and 6 life to draw TEN cards...how the hell do you even lose from there? This card is absolutely bonkers.

I feel that, given what the Ring actually *does* in the Lore, maybe it should mill you (or probably exile mill) instead of losing life. Making you die faster is literally the opposite of what it does.

we are one step closer to; "I tap my Gandalf to crew the Evangelion 01 and attack alongside my Iron Man and Perry the Platypus. Any blockers?"

Gandolf was clearly a fire mage just read this passage from the book “The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm. 'You cannot pass,' he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.'

I don't see the red in Gandalf's color identity. In my mind Gandalf the Grey is somewhere in Bant. We're talking about a character that is depicted as a generation spanning adviser who speaks with tree-herds, eagles, elves, horses, hobbits. I would even argue that Gandalf is centered in white, as his actions are driven by a love of the pure and beautiful (especially hobbits).

Great to have you back Vince. Congrats on your new human creature you have created. Did we talk about proliferate with the One Ring?? It might not be the most powerful thing in competitive formats but it definitely ramps it up.

i think the cool thing with the ring is that the more you use it the more it damages you

The one ring would also be interesting combined with Vorinclex and some of the stuff from all will be one

looking forward to trying the one ring alongside vampire hexmage/ dark depths combo

The ring will also be extremely powerful with other cards and decks that just allow u 2 infinite untap everything too, like paradox engine and isochron scepter combo for example

Yeah The One Ring seems wicked strong! Thankfully it should be fairly cheap since every bundle includes a borderless foil copy!

My problem with the lands is the art is confusing at best. Examples The Mountain second largest word is White The Plains has the word Green right in the center The Swamp most iconic location on the map is a mountain The Forest half of the art is comprised of mountains

Ah this reminds me of Middle Earth: The Wizards, it's a real shame that card game is so long out of print cause it was an absolute gem.

gandalf can be sort of immune to removal as you can put him on top of your library just my casting any instant in response

I am certainly not the first one commenting on this, but no, the Island showing the Bay of Belegaer is not connected to the scene when the fellowship is passing the large Gondorian statues by boat. The statues are called the Argonath and are located along the river Anduin, north of Gondor and far east from the Shire. The Bay of Belegaer is the body of sea that is accessible from the Grey Havens and leads to the Undying Lands in the West. This region is seen at the very end of the Return of King, when Frodo and Bilbo are boarding the Elven ship and saying good bye to their friends as this scene is set in the Grey Havens. If you look closely you can even spot the Grey Havens on the Island card as well as you can spot the Shire close to this harbour city.

2:07 No, its nowhere near the statues. On the contrary, its the sea on the complete opposite side of where they journeyed in the movies. The text is very tiny, but you can see the shire even on the island card.

Any lifegain deck loves the ring, going right into my cadira caller of the small deck since I'm already jamming every soul sister Also I love the design of gandalf and he might just be my first izzet commander. Really hyped for sauron and the witch king, can't wait to see how they work

its probably been pointed out but the shire(plains), is on the map for the island, made me chuckle a bit. also im fairly sure they journey through an actual swamp in the story

Glad you back grats on the baby. Enjoy this time. It only happens once.

If you saw the stream earlier today, you would know that the legends are depicted on different rarities and different versions based on where they are in the story. And while you're correct that Gandalf isn't generally known as a heavy spellcaster, this specific version of him is when he's fighting the Balrog, and he actually is casting a lot of spells at that moment. He pretty much puts a shield over himself using magic, and strikes at the Balrog with offensive magic as well, so it's some nice flavor. It's definitely influenced by Peter Jackson though, because the books don't really ever say "this character is casting a spell". Like you said, the magic in LOTR is subtle, but that's what made moments like the Balrog fight more spectacular

The One Ring isnt an equipment because when you cast it, YOU the planeswalker in charge of your deck are wearing it, and you would NEVER let one of your minions wear it. And the idea that you gain from it now, but suffer later is such a flavor win. And it eventually kills you; turns you into a wraith. It’s so damn good

But they were all of them deceived, for another combo piece was made. In the land of Hasbro, In the fires of Play Design The Dark Lord Cocks forged a bannable ring. One combo piece to piss them off. One ring to FOMO them. One ring to gather them all And in the infinite loop bind them.

I think the one ring works really well. It is providing temptation that will eventually destroy you. One damage a turn is not much so tap for the card, 2 is not much and it is 2 cards so obviously tap it and before you know it you must win this turn or your ring will kill you.

With all these poison counters and this ring counter, solemnity never looked so good

The blue-red alignment for Gandalf was a little odd to me at first, but on further reflection it makes some sense. He has a spark of creativity and mischief which is very red, and certainly the blue intellectualism. He's not blue-red in the same way that Niv-Mizzet is, but the alignment is still there. And I like the last ability of disappearing for a while and showing back up when he feels like it. That said the other spellslinger abilities don't feel particularly Gandlafy to me. The One Ring is great IMO, both flavor and powerwise. I love that once you start using it, you keep losing life whether you're tapping it or not. So there's a sunk cost which causes you to keep using it (if I'm going to lose life anyway, I might as well keep drawing cards), but each time you do it sinks you deeper into its grasp. It looks vintage playable to me, with all the fast mana you could easily put it out on turn one, and then not have to worry about being comboed out on the first turn, while you tap and untap it to draw 6+ cards in the first two turns of the game.

In my head Gandalf should have been a flip card, Gandalf the Grey side would be colourless and he flips into Gandalf the White, which would be white aligned but I suppose this kind of makes sense.

The One Ring has a kinda hilarious meme trap combo with Lethal Vapors. Play it, then Lethal Vapors, and activate the Vapors 1,000,000 times. The table is going to think that you don't know how that combo works, as you haven't played Grand Abolisher to stop them from just doing the same, and so each of them skips their next 999,999 turns. Then, when all of their triggers are off the stack, you play Discontinuity to end the turn and remove all of your skip turn triggers from the stack. Suddenly, the rest of the table realizes that you just tricked them into effectively giving you infinite extra turns.

So prof that's what he used to be called would say you are spot on

The protection from The One Ring isn't all-encompassing, since it doesn't say "you and permanents you control" so your opponent could still royally mess up your board state during that one turn of invulnerability, but otherwise they're only winning during that turn if they literally have an effect that states "you win the game" like Darksteel Reactor, Azor's Elocutors, Biovisionary, Felidar Sovereign, etc.

You'd hope so, because we got like 6 movies about it. Oh, you mean the card. Always nice to see your uploads, Mr. Kenobi!

Regarding mentioning drawbacks of The One Ring, imhu I would think that a more balanced ability (even though it is the one ring), would be instead of just proc from everything until your next turn (which can be abused), maybe it could have had "You and permanents you control phase out until your next turn". So you gain the protection, but the price is that you can't just start popping off. I do love the burden counters though, very flavourful and a neat mechanic.

If you have a way to bounde this every turn, it basically says sacrifice four lands to cast it, then you have protection from everything and draw an additional card each turn. if you can protect this, you aren't losing.

gandalf is actually pretty good for commander, you can get around commander tax by just casting any instant and putting him on top of your library, think a Serum Visions to imidiatly draw him to hand again as way to protect him. and if he is not in danger, you can use the copy instead, or cast bigger spells to copy. plus he can untap a large mana rock to help you pay for stuff.

Can't wait to hear Vinces' thoughts on the 001/001 serialized One Ring

Extremely amused by how you can Bludgeon Brawl this, and it hits harder than an axe (or most weapons, for that matter). You aren't using it for incredibly powerful spells, or to rain death upon your foes or w/e. You're just punching them in the face really hard, and DAMN does the ring hurt.

we NEED a Sauron that uses that ring and F BREAK the game.

With the lands, because they dont marry up to make a picture, they could have changed the hues slightly for mountain and plains to make the type more distinctive. The ring look gd for modern and 1v1 formats its legal in, not sure in commander, I guess you can return it to hand? Gd in a lifegain deck where the life lost isnt as much of a problem.

I wouldn't mind other historic locations for the map lands, Numenor for example would be an excellent island and Lothllorien or Rivendell would be good for forests.

Thought tiny Kenobi would have been born with a beard, but seems like its not hereditary

I miss read that as Orc weeks old. Was very confused.

My issue with the the plains showing the Shire in the center is that there is a Shire card that was spoiled today, and it produces green... So yeah, that's kinda annoying and confusing.

I don't play MTG, but The One Ring is really cool. It does seem kinda strong but not overpowered. If you're using the first effect of protecting yourself to delay an enemy combo, you're not really gonna be able to use the second effect. And when you use the second effect, it's something like 4 Mana and 6 life for a Draw 3. To my knowledge, in mtg, paying 4 Mana to Draw 3 is a good effect. But this is a delayed effect that only works over 3 turns. So you probably want to draw 4 to have good value. That's a significant amount of damage. If your opponent can just survive long enough, or if he has enough burn spells, or if he's aggressive enough, you're not gonna be able to utilize The One Ring that well. Also, it's 4 Mana for basically no tempo.

I wish gandalf rewarded you for casting as few spells as possible, would feel really unique and thematic. Something like: "When you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if it is the first one you cast this turn, copy it twice. You may choose new targets for the copy. This ability only triggers on your turn. If you would cast an instant or sorcery spell on another players turn, or this is the second instant or sorcery cast during your turn, {Card name} deals damage to you equal to the CMC of each instant and sorcery in your graveyard." Obviously not perfect, but that feels much more gandalf. Do something game changing, do the plot, and then don't do anything else until your next untap.

That's a pretty accurate Gandalf the Grey. Edit: If there's not a legendary Sauron card that makes it to where you don't take damage from burden counters, WE RIOT.

Yeah, anyone who's saying the one ring isn't powerful should just imagine it's an artifact that says "tap: draw a card for each time you've tapped this artifact this game.". It's bonkers!

Gotta love how people said it was bad and now it's selling for 50 dollars (for a card guaranteed in a 40 dollar bundle) and people are now saying it is so broken that it's Oko 2.0

The One Ring being legendary probably means that Emry Decks will play 2 and be able to Loop them mitigating the lifeloss to 1 while drawing 3 extra cards each turn cycle. + Protection from everything every turn. Truly Bonkers

Gandalf the Grey makes sense as Izzet. But after he becomes a white wizard, he'll probably be mono white or maybe white with a 5 color ability or something

It's well established that a card is worth way more than 1 life. A card is honestly probably worth more than 2 life. This card is fucking nuts.

Gandalf could have been colorless or 5C and it probably would have made more sense than just an Izzet king.

I love the flavor of Gandalf the grey! He is known for being kind of fickle in the book, leaving the group in multiple occasions only to return later. The subtle spell casting is the first 2 abilities that he does and he’s got one really powerful spell that results in a bunch of different combos. I think the one ring establishing the player as something that game pieces interact with kind of implies that Gandalf isn’t casting the spells he gets effects on

The One Ring + Paradox Engine = Aetherflux Reservoir go brrrrrrrrrr.

I'm putting The One Ring in my Mono White Angels deck. That deck can gain life with ease, but it has no card draw, so this is perfect.

the basic lands infuriate me to no end because for some fucking reason they decided that some lands should be zoomed in on the map while others are really far out. hobbiton is marked on 2 of them with very different perspectives. if they kept them at the same perspective it would have been amazing. also some of them are just weird, why focus on mordor for swamp when the swamp from 2 towers exists. also island could have used an island instead of the entirety of the northern coast.

Does this new card introduce a new fun commander "challenge"? 'Kill an opponent by casting fateful handoff to give them the ring'

As a big fan of Tolkien these land choices are really weird. The universe includes literal plains, swamps and islands which were available to the creators.

Honestly I'd have gone for Rohan for plains, Numenor or Tol Eressea for island, the lonely mountain or the misty mountains for mountain and although Mordor is the obvious swamp there's the Dead Marshes right there.

The ring being legendary actually makes it a lot safer to use, since if the rings killing you you can just replace it. And while that does reduce your card draw, the protection it gives you when cast is great in itself.

Since The One Ring is legendary, you could run up a number of counters on it and cast a second copy, choosing to keep the second copy instead of the first. Now you have all of the benefits from the gained cards and not the penalty of getting bled out each turn.

All I want to do is kill the Gandalf player by giving them the one ring with lots of counters on it

I would say that if The One Ring was lower cost, that would be near ban worthy in modern. At 6 it would be too costly to play for most formats outside of niche decks. I don't think anyone who regularly watches your channel would need a lesson on how you can untap artifacts, bounce or flicker. If anything, bouncing would be a good way to reset the counter to make the upkeep stipulation laughable. Granted, after using it so many times, upkeep wouldn't matter with what it can give you. I will not be surprised how many commander decks will start brewing combos around it.

Bro slow down damn

I wish the gandalf shown had white in it. Full Jeskai and 2 so same mana value, but adding the white would make sense story wise and I think a better commander for the 99. I think It would be fun if the One Ring added a clause similar to the monarch. Maybe if the owner of the One Ring Were to die make a copy of it given to the player who killed him. As a token the thing would be more vulnerable and I could see driving the game of multi player

The thing is Gandalf the Grey only rewards you for 3 cheap tricks, as he's not a conjurer of them.

Might want to build the burden counters on the One Ring only to gift it to your opponent later down the line, where the burden is just unwieldy.

Gandalf the Grey is extremely powerful. Free copy effect for playing an instant or sorcery? Free? You can easily build around him.

I wonder if the “tempt” mechanic has something to do with equipping it temporarily?

So it probably automatically has a place in any deck running Sheoldred the Apocalypse, just completely negating the Life Loss cost. It probably goes very easily into Paradox Engine, untapping and drawing many cards repeatedly all in one turn so you don't have to worry about the life loss because you just win before you get there. I will probably experiment with it in my Cadric, Soul Kindler EDH deck, where I can copy it as it enters and get an extra card from the token copy which I then don't have to pay the life for because the token is gone by then. Actually some EDH Boros decks in general will probably like this because that colour identity still traditionally gets less card draw than some of the other identities (though that has thankfully been improving over the last few years).

being legendary isnt a huge downside, gives you an out if you lose too much life (if you don't win somehow) and still get the protection. seems pretty bonkers overall

I like that gandalf is an Avatar**

Esperzoa + Ring of Power = recast ring every turn, protection from everything, +draw 3 for 1 life and resets counters