Dear reader, today we have a story about unspeakably scary things. It’s a tale about a neighborhood and its residents. A tale of unexpected horror. A family’s normal life is about to intersect with something alien and dangerous.
As promised, so delivered. We’ve spent quite a while looking over the best LOTR cards for Historic Brawl, and now we’re back at it for another round. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with these cards, trying them out in different contexts, and I’ve found the ten off my original list I believe to be best in the entire set for Historic Brawl.
I had to wait a long time to get Family Business in hardcover—and I was a little disappointed when I did. Though it still contains some of the stronger elements that drew me to The Magnus Archives, including much-appreciated diversity in its characters, very creepy monsters, and a strong human understanding of its subject matter, Family Business never achieved the same level of scares as even the previous book, Thirteen Storeys.
Nowadays, you can order most fandoms’ merchandise through a website. But back when Unspeakably Scary Things was being printed, it wasn’t uncommon to cut out a coupon in the back of a comic to get novelty items.
The LOTR set has been out for a while, and millions of Historic Brawl games have likely been played. Personally, I’ve easily played more than a hundred. And LOTR has been an utter joy the whole time, with most mechanics turning out to be a slam dunk.
And here we are, back again. Almost through the list, and in this part, things get even more powerful. In the time it’s taken to write/edit this article, one card on this list has been such a source of contention it might be banned in Commander by the time you read this.
The ‘70s are far enough back in history that we don’t have as many recordings. Media can get lost. It’s not unfeasible for a niche horror comic to rise to enough prominence to sustain a brief but impactful run and then fade into the annals of history.
Welcome back! We took a brief break for a topical movie review, but we still have tons of LOTR cards to explore. This multi-part article series has two more entries after this one, and we’ve not even gotten to some of the most powerful cards the set offers.
The thing about watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is there was no question of if the movie would be good. The first Spider-Verse movie was a revelation, an epoch for animation, and I barely mean that as hyperbole.
Allegedly, a magazine called Unspeakably Scary Things went into circulation back in the ’70s. It was a horror magazine with a lot of pulp-style writing, but no authors you’ve ever heard of.
I literally don’t have the time to build every Historic Brawl deck I would love to try. These new LOTR cards are a brewer’s paradise.
Hello, all my fellow nerds! For some people, two of their favorite fantasy properties just met. And, even for people like me who don’t understand all the LOTR references sprinkled throughout, this new set is still a ton of fun. Because these cards are so strong. Without Standard to worry about, the designers went wild with the power level. Historic, Commander, and Modern are already changing as people brew and find busted LOTR interactions. But, for this article, I’m bringing things to Historic Brawl.
