Magic: The Gathering players love top-down sets like The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, where flavor and fun come first, but even sets like this one can pack serious power with cards that any competitive deck can use. A notable example is Orcish Bowmasters, a cheap black Orc creature card that's quickly becoming a breakout star.
Orcish Bowmasters does fit nicely with Tales of Middle-earth's Amass Orcs theme, but that's not why MTG fans love this card. Orcish Bowmasters is efficient, clever, generates serious value, and punishes one of the game's very best and most common effects - drawing extra cards. This punishing ability makes Orcish Bowmasters one of the best new black creature cards in years.
Orcish Bowmasters Is an Excellent Punisher Card
Orcish Bowmasters is a powerful, low-cost black creature from Tales of Middle-earth that generates astonishing value for its low mana cost. It's a 1/1 Orc Archer with flash, and anytime an opponent draws a card other than their first card in the draw step, Orcish Bowmasters deals 1 damage to any target then Amasses Orcs 1. This is a "punisher" effect in MTG, an ability that triggers when an opponent uses a particular effect or strategy. Most importantly, drawing extra cards is common and powerful in many formats, so Orcish Bowmasters is well-positioned to do a lot of punishing.
Orcish Bowmasters is deceptively powerful, as its triggered ability generates serious value by picking off X/1 creatures with ease, or by finishing off Planeswalkers with just one loyalty counter left. In some cases, an opponent might draw several extra cards at once, like with Brainstorm or Faithless Looting-style effects, so Orcish Bowmasters can even take out X/2 or X/3 creatures at no cost, which is huge. On top of this, Orcish Bowmasters has flash, so it can ambush an opponent when they think they're safe using a Brainstorm-style effect. Even if the opponent kills Orcish Bowmasters afterwards, Orcish Bowmasters will still resolve at least a few triggers and leave behind an Orc Army creature token.
Orcish Bowmasters embodies the Tolkien flavor and flair of LotR, but most of all, it's a pushed, competitive card that proves Tales of Middle-earth is a serious product and not just Tolkien for the fun of it. Orcish Bowmasters is worthy of any competitive deck, even in Modern, meaning Tales of Middle-earth is more than Modern-legal -- it's Modern-worthy.
How to Use Orcish Bowmasters in Commander & Modern
Orcish Bowmasters is poised to become a new meta staple for the competitive Commander format, or cEDH. Plenty of cEDH decks aim to quickly draw lots of cards to perform combos or create a game-winning threat in the first few turns, and as a two-drop punisher, Orcish Bowmasters is the perfect response to these strategies.
Commander players running black can get two mana on Turn 1 and flash in Orcish Bowmasters when an opponent uses a Wheel of Fortune effect on their own first turn, for example. In a typical game, there will be three opponents who all discarding their hands and drawing seven cards from a Wheel effect, so Orcish Bowmasters will create a 21/21 Orc Army token and deal an incredible 21 damage divided among any number of targets.
Competitive and casual Commander decks alike can also get incremental value with Orcish Bowmasters when facing decks that often draw extra cards from certain effects, such as Enchantress decks that draw cards when they put enchantments onto the battlefield, or graveyard-focused decks that often use "loot" effects. Meanwhile, Orcish Bowmasters is also powerful in Modern, where it may see play against decks such as Izzet Murktide, Living End, Rakdos Undying, and Jeskai Breach, according to cardsrealm.com. Tubro Xerox decks in particular run a lot of cantrips and will struggle against Orcish Bowmasters' punisher effect.
Modern decks like Rakdos Midrange can make great use of Orcish Bowmasters, though players should note that it has stiff competition like Dauthi Voidwalker, Bloodtithe Harvester, and Ragavan for early-game threats, so decks should be built accordingly. Orcish Bowmasters might be best off as sideboard tech against cantrip-heavy and loot-heavy decks, keeping more conventional threats in the mainboard and swapping for Orcish Bowmasters as needed in certain matchups.