Gamer’s Asylum, a local game store in Ogden, held a prerelease event on June 16 and 17 for “Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth,” the second Magic The Gathering Universes Beyond set.

Universes Beyond, or UB, aims to translate other beloved series onto the tabletop and cardboard. These decks were first announced in 2021, with Warhammer 40K Commander decks slated to release as the first entry into this series in 2022.

“We hope fans of these worlds and characters will find our game through Universes Beyond—and we hope they’ll stay a while and become part of our amazing community,” Magic the Gathering said in a 2021 press announcement.

Prerelease events are held a week before the set is officially released and are a first peek for players to open and play a few games with the new set.

“Whenever you genre mix, you’ll get a larger crowd. You have the Tolkien fans, and the Magic fans,” Nick Davis, the event coordinator, said.

Many players were cautiously optimistic about being the lucky player to pull the serialized version of the One Ring card.

This is a special one-of-a-kind printing of the One Ring, an artifact with text written in Tolkien Elvish. This card has a current estimated value of $2 million.

“I’m hoping for the serialized ring,” Logan Stickney, an attendee said. “I mean, it’s possible.”

With an hour to wait between registration and the event, a few games of Commander broke out among the crowd.

A couple of the pods were of the preconstructed Commander decks that went on sale earlier on June 16

Each attendant received a prerelease pack containing six draft boosters, a promo card, a countdown D20, a special art card and a guaranteed “The Ring” card. Each attendant also got a Terastodon card from 2010.

After the rules were explained and all packs were opened, the players had 50 minutes to construct a deck. They were then placed at a table to begin playing.

The rules for constructing a deck were as follows: Each deck is a minimum of 40 cards.
These cards had to come from their six booster packs, and using that as the pool, create a deck.

Between matches, each player has the opportunity to adjust their deck as needed.
Each round lasted for 50 minutes and was the best of three games against a single opponent.
Players could win up to nine booster packs if they won all four matches they were part of.

Many of the cards contain quotes from “The Lord of the Rings.” The inside of the prerelease packaging quotes, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

This was said by Bilbo Baggins to Frodo at the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring and sets the tone for the rest of the series, and now, The Magic the Gathering Beyond Universes set.