Notorious WUBRG: LotR: Tales of Middle-Earth Draft

I missed the first week of drafts, but got out on Friday (June 30) for my first LotR draft.  TL;DR: I went 1-2 and I love this set for WUBRG drafting.

Going in to this draft, I had played at the prerelease, so I knew about the landcycling cycle, Shire Terrace, and Wizard's Rockets.  I only managed to pull three land cyclers, one terrace, and two of the rockets, but I also grabbed two Wose Pathfinders, an Inherited Envelope, a Shire Scarecrow, and even a Delighted Halfling!  For everything else, I focused mostly on picking rares, legends, and removal.

Picks, first to last, first pack on left.

I actually found that I had too much additional color fixing, and didn't run the Delighted Halfling nor the Inherited Envelope.  Here was the final version of the deck:

My deck.  The curve was pretty low, but that was okay.

This was super fun.  I never wound up activating the ability on the Mines of Moria, but that didn't hold me back.  

I lost my first match 0-2 to a really well-focused Blue/Green Scrying Elves.  There were real good cards for that in our six-person pod, and my opponent kept dropping relevant legends over and over.  I managed to draw both games out longer than I had any right to, but still got overrun big time.

In the second round, I won 2-0 against White/Green Hobbits & Food.  My opponent was never able to get any big pieces together and I had real good answers to everything they played.  After the match they threw two more colors into their deck and we played another game.  That actually worked really well for them because they had drafted 4 Entish Restoration, which I had either ignored or not seen.  That card is real good!  (Not as good as Harrow, but better than Roiling Regrowth.)  

The third round, against Black-Red, was the closest.  I won game 1 handily, but (finally) had trouble with colors in games 2 and 3 and lost 1-2.  All three rounds were fun.

Tales of Middle-Earth in General

This set may be one of the best for 5-color drafting, because it isn't a core strategy.  For many recent sets (e.g. March of the Machines and Dominaria United) there are other people at the table drafting WUBRG, which makes it more difficult.  That was not the case here.  If you go for it, you're likely not competing for a bunch of fixing.  This is very similar to the problems I had drafting Ravnica Allegiance after Guilds of Ravnica.  I rarely ran into people drafting five colors in guilds, but they were all over the place in allegiance, even though there was only slightly more payoff in that second set. 

Additionally, this is a slower, grindier format than some drafts.  You are likely to have some time to build up your mana base and play the bombs you pulled.

Having said all that, there is actually a wealth of color-fixing in the set.  Here's a quick run-down of my favorites, from best to worst:

• Lórien Revealed: Big blue draw spells are one of the reasons to run a bunch of colors.  These cards often sit in packs way late and can resolving one can easily result in a win.  Combine that with the land cycling, and you've got a real winner.  Draft this card.
• Shire Scarecrow: A colorless creature that filters mana and can block pesky bears is awesome.  The one I had got me out of a bunch of jams, to the point where my opponent had to kill it with removal.
• The rest of the land-cyclers: Creatures are good.  If you need the land instead, then you can do that.   
• Shire Terrace: Yes, fetching colors is good in a land.
  
• Entish Restoration: I never played this in the draft, but Harrow was good.  

Those are all great cards for a non-WUBRG-enabling set, and that doesn't include the Wizard's Rockets and the Wose Pathfinders, both of which are also great.  This set is more WUBRGy than people realize.

Give it a try!  I'm not going to get to FNM again for a bunch of weeks, so you won't be competing with me.