A new duel commander meta tyrant in the Lord of the Rings set?

It's been about a week since the prerelease of magic's newest set - Lord of the Rings: Tales of the Middle-Earth and players are already experimenting with new commanders and cards. One of these stands out though, Aragorn, King on Gondor has already taken down a few tournaments and is probably the best commander from this set. Could he be the next tier 1 meta deck?

Tournament success

There have only been a few tournaments that featured the cards from the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth set. Among the winners are the usual suspects like Raffine and Yoshimaru but some players have already been having success with Aragorn, King of Gondor.

At least 4 different players were able to finish in top 8's with different versions of the deck. Aragorn already has as many top 8's as other popular decks like Sythis, Harvest's Hand or Juri, Master of the Revue. Keep in mind that the deck is unrefined and will only become stronger as time goes.

Why is Aragorn, King of Gondor so good?

One of the many reasons why Aragorn is good is he gives you access to some of the best colors in the format, being blue/red/white. Yet another great thing is that he introduces "The Monarchy" in the command zone, getting extra resources on top of a solid body is really powerful.

Thanks to his great keywords and abilities he is both a great attacker and blocker. He can easily take back the monarch and gain you a ton of life in the process. All of this combined makes Aragorn a real beater and a pretty good commander.

Control or midrange?

There has been a debate in the community about which version of the deck is better. So far we have seen two versions: a control version with removal spells, and a more midrange version using creatures to win. Both versions have won tournaments so it is still not clear which version will come at the top.

Altough we still can't say for sure which version is better, the duel commander community on discord has already decided that midrange is the way. Most of the successful decks are the control version of Aragorn so this debate may not be as clear tho. Only time will tell which version is better, we need more data and tournament reports to be fully sure.

Closing words...

It's still probably too early to predict truly how good Aragorn, King of Gondor will be as a commander but with the results we have right now he can certainly become a real contender in the meta. Some even compare the deck to Raffine with a bit of a different combination of colors. In my opinion, Aragorn could be a pretty solid choice for a tournament in the future, whether the control or the midrange variant comes out on top. I guess we just have to wait and see...

Author: Tomas Solovic

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