The Lord of The Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Scene Boxes - All 4 for Magic: The Gathering

Yes, the scene cards are pringled however all you have to do is put them in a penny sleeve and inside a book then add some weight on top. I had amazing luck in the set boosters and pulled The one ring foil mythic 246. It's my second pull of that card so it pretty much paid for this set on its own. Also pulled some great list cards. I love this scene set it's a great value!

I impulsively bought these for the art cards and the packs. While the art cards look great on display and are currently occupying space on my bookshelf, I wish the display was a bit sturdier and held the cards more securely than just a paper tab. I thought they were a great value given the included cards and packs though.

These were an absolute steal when I got them for $100. No matter how you feel about Universes Beyond continuing to water down the MTG IP, you can't deny that LOTR was a great set with insane pulls. This is the gold standard that all UB sets should aim for.

Getting this out of the way first - you'll often see people say not to buy packs, and to buy singles instead with the reasoning being that you're going to "waste" money looking for specific cards that you could've just bought as a single. This is *not* my reasoning when I say not to purchase this product.tl;dr if you already have quite a few LotR cards, these boxes aren't worth it at all, even if you like opening packs instead of buying singles. The only time I'd say these boxes *may* be *kind of* worth it is if you don't have any LotR cards, you won't mind getting quite a few duplicate cards across your packs, and you also really want the scene cards.Story time:I saw this bundle, saw some of the scene card spoilers, and decided that the bundle might be a good buy - get some cool new cards, and get some set boosters to open for some fun as well. Many people will say "don't buy packs, buy singles". I often enjoy opening packs, so even though it's not an efficient way to get cards I want, I still buy packs anyway. Well, I was disappointed on both fronts when I opened these boxes.Pringling/scene card issues:First source of disappointment was the amount of "pringling" on the brand new scene cards I was excited for. For anyone not aware, pringling refers to the curling effect that happens on foil cards printed on certain materials. What I call moderately pringled cards usually come flat in the pack, and will curl over time. Severely pringled cards will come slightly curled straight out of the pack, and then will continue to curl over time. These were the most curled cards straight out of the pack that I've ever seen. I also noticed that on some of the cards that were the most curled such as my Nazgul Battle-Mace and Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress, there's some slight misprinting as well with mana symbols in the card text not being centered inside of their "bubble". I'm not sure if this is directly related to the pringling or not.Speaking of scene card disappointments, in addition to the pringling, the printing of some of the artwork (like Arboreal Alliance and Galadriel, Light of Valinor) combined with the colors present in the art, and the amount of foil allowed to show through make the finished product look washed out to the point of almost not being able to see the art.Non-random packs:The second source of disappointment was with the "set boosters" included with the boxes. I put quotes around set booster because it didn't appear that the boosters had the amount of randomness that they are marketed to have. If this is how set boosters are going to be made from now on, Wizards has officially made me lose interest in opening packs.Each box comes with three packs, meaning in the bundle, there's a total of 12 boosters. On the back of the foil wrappers for boosters, there's fine print that details the chances of getting various different rarity cards. These set boosters say the following:May contain these cards: LTR 1-286, 302-345, 405-447; LTC 1-8. Includes a combination of 1-4 card(s) of rarity Rare or higher (2: 27%; 3: 3%; 4: <1%) and 1 Art Card. Also includes 3-7 Uncommon, 3-7 Common, and 1 Land Cards. 1 non-Art Card and non-Land card of any rarity is Traditional Foil. Foil-Stamped Signature Art Card replaces Art Card in 10% of Set Boosters. List card included in 25% of Set Boosters. Traditional Foil Borderless Mythic in <1% of boosters. This product does not contain The 1 of 1 Ring card (available in EN Collector Boosters only).This may lead consumers to believe that, although there's some bias toward specific rarity for a set number of cards in the pack, they should be fairly randomly put together to give a good sampling of cards from the set. This was not at all my experience. As seen in the photos, I had multiple packs that not only had repeats of a specific card, but had entire duplicate sequences of cards (the same cards in the same order found in multiple packs). The worst offending sections of the packs seem to be the commons and uncommons, although that's based on simply looking through the cards since I haven't done any math of what I got from the packs.Although I don't have a picture to share, I can also anecdotally add that a friend of mine also bought this bundle, and I had at least one sequence of cards that was the same as a sequence I remember them having. Unfortunately, they got their bundle before me, so their cards were no longer in the order that they opened them in by the time I was opening mine.All of this to say, in a 12 card booster, if 3-4 of the cards are seemingly predetermined (not talking about only the rarity - the actual specific cards selected), then that makes 25-33% of the pack essentially decided with little to no randomness involved. I'm onboard with opening packs for the sense of novelty as I go through them. This is not a desirable experience at all. I'd even go so far as to call it false advertising, and am considering reporting them for violating the Amazon ToS as a seller on the platform.

The poster cards were very curled but the packs that are included were fine and not damaged at all. I would be mindful about that if you are interested in showcasing the scenes.

Perfect condition

Llegaron en perfecto estado. Un pack ideal para agregar a la colección.

Super excited to have all four LOR scenes. Unfortunately, I received a duplicate of Gandalf in lieu of Flight of the witch-king (interestedly the right box, but not content). Poor WOTC quality control.