Magic: The Gathering’s ‘The Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth’ Senior Art Director Defends The Race Swapping

John F. Trent |

Jun 21, 2023

Aragorn, Company Leader Card #191 from Magic: The Gathering - The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Set (2023), Wizards of the Coast

Magic: The Gathering’s The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Senior Art Director Ovidio Cartagena defended the game’s race swapping of numerous characters.

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Speaking with NPR’s James Perkins Mastromarino, Cartagena said, “”At any given time we are surrounded by diversity, and it is our hope in this world to someday get along and come together despite our differences.”

He added, “It is also a message from us to fans of all walks of life: you are welcome here, you have a place here, you belong.”

Magic: The Gathering’s Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Commander Deck

YouTuber European Lore reacted to these comments from Cartagena saying, “So this is the same nonsense that all the huge companies have been talking about for the last couple of years. … This is just a publicity stunt. This is just attention grabbing. This is just virtue signaling.”

He continued, “I don’t believe they are so stupid that they don’t know. That you don’t need to make us unite. You don’t need to unite fans. Fans had already been united before you came. Fans had already been united before The Rings of Power came.”

He later noted, “If you are a fan of something you will naturally unite and bond with people that like the same thing as you do. And it is the most important for you, in this particular context, that the other person shares your hobby, shares your passion, shares the things that you like, and you are bonding over the things that you enjoy.”

European Lore later reiterated, “It is just a publicity stunt to get more attention.”

Éowyn, Lady of Rohan Card #10 from Magic: The Gathering – The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Set (2023), Wizards of the Coast

He would go on to address the race swapping, “As a literature aficionado I am all about staying faithful to the source material. And there is another thing. All this changing characters into something that they are not. Those groups of people that they are changing the characters to, that the characters resemble those groups, you are actually insulting them by this.”

“By this you are saying, the group we are trying to pander to, you are not good enough to have your own main characters, to have your own original characters,” he opined. “We have to change our superior characters and lend them to you. We have to make cheap knockoffs of the original thing that people have loved for decades. We have to change it to something inferior just to please you, peasant. This is exactly what these companies are doing. They are insulting those groups.”

“And normal people all around the world, they realize it and they reject it. I will always go for originality over some sort of knockoff,” he declared.

Borne Upon a Wind Card #44 from Magic: The Gathering – The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Set (2023), Wizards of the Coast

Magic: The Gathering previously justified the race-swaps with the company’s Content Manager Adam Styborski writing in a blog post, “The look and the feel for the world, the characters, the weapons, the locations, and the story moments are going to be intimately familiar yet fresh and relevant for a wider audience.”

He added, “The folks at Middle-earth Enterprises take their roles as stewards very seriously, and every decision about characters has been made with deep reverence to the original.”

Stern Scolding Card #71 from Magic: The Gathering – The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Set (2023), Wizards of the Coast

Styborski then noted the card set followed two guiding principles: diversity and originality.

He wrote, “Diversity: The Lord of the Rings is about the different peoples of Middle-earth coming together to fight Sauron, finding strength in their diversity. We want to make this appealing story fresh and relevant to an even wider audience.”

He then added, “Originality: The goal of this set is to express the story and setting of The Lord of the Rings in cards for Magic: The Gathering. Countless prior efforts have painted vivid pictures of this world, but our goal is a modern take on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, lovingly crafted for a new generation of players and fans.”

Aragorn gets race-swapped via Card #394, Magic: The Gathering – The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Set (2023), Wizards of the Coast, Art by Magali Villeneuve.

One of the card set’s designers Justice Geddes, a self-proclaimed “queer-trans writer” noted, “My main contribution to this contemporary re-imagining of the Lord of the Rings was to consistently push for a diverse Middle-Earth setting that stayed true to the Tolkien text. I guided continuity and lore checks, focused on character and society details, and applied primary source material to our work.”