Sauron, the Necromancer
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Freeform Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Sauron, the Necromancer

Legendary Creature — Avatar Horror

Menace

Whenever Sauron, the Necromancer attacks, exile target creature card from your graveyard. Create a tapped and attacking token that's a copy of that card, except it's a 3/3 black Wraith with menace. At the beginning of the next end step, exile that token unless Sauron is your Ring-bearer.

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A_Strangled_Catfish on Empty Husks of a Blackened Throne

5 months ago

clayperce

Hello there. Thank you so much for your long list of suggestions, and no this is not spam. I deckcycled it for this exact purpose. Your knowledge of 5 being Ayara's second casting never even occurred to me which is crazy. Now that two people have suggested a Pitiless Plunderer, I'll probably put it on the next order. When I made the deck, this card was upwards of 20, and not all reprints I can keep up with.

Regarding 5-drops. Right now I'm thinking of cutting Banshee of the Dread Choir, Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief, Sauron, the Necromancer, Rescue from the Underworld, Syr Konrad, the Grim, and Open the Graves. Gray Merchant of Asphodel has won me too many games and I love him too much. Girder Goons is not 5 mana, because of blitz, and the double draw double ping has been really nice. Great Unclean One has also won me games (and for some reason is now the most expensive card in the deck tied with Lord Skitter, Sewer King?) Ogre Slumlord has been pretty good, especially since I can start pinging on opponent turns if any of their nontokens die. And I haven't seen Witch of the Moors in action enough to think about cutting it.

Open the Graves is the one I am most hesitant about but Ghoulish Procession looks like a good, cheaper alternative. Same with Syr Konrad, the Grim to Marionette Apprentice.

Decree of Pain is my only board wipe in this deck right now and I want at least one.

I like the addition of Ophiomancer especially since the price has plummeted, which i did not know.

Whenever I update decks, I always look at the cards I own, so I'm thinking a Xathrid Necromancer could fit in here pretty well, as well as Victimize as an alternative to Rescue from the Underworld. I also was thinking about cards like Josu Vess, Lich Knight, Grima Wormtongue, Beamsaw Prospector, Reassembling Skeleton, and maybe something like Starving Revenant or First-Sphere Gargantua as a replacement for Phyrexian Gargantua. Was also looking at Haunt of the Dead Marshes and Curse of Disturbance, though I'm not sure about the curse in a ping deck lol.

These are just my original thoughts. I'd love to hear what you think clayperce. I really enjoy this deck and want to keep working within it until I'm super happy with it.

P.S. Mortuary Mire has been really good but im down to switch out some other tap lands. I know I didn't touch on that much in this response.

clayperce on Empty Husks of a Blackened Throne

5 months ago

OK, here's some thoughts ...

Manabase

  • Are you familiar with Salubrious Snail's Manabaase Tool? If not, it's a GREAT tool for tweaking a deck. The basic idea is we plug our decklist in and it'll give us a report on our manabase (including mana rocks and mana dorks, where applicable), and then we can iterate until we find the cards and consistency we like. As I type this, it shows your current manabase as "inconsistent, playing your spells 0.61 turns late on average", with your 8-drops not coming down until Turn 12 ... which even in Bracket 2 is probably too late to matter. As you tweak the deck, I recommend aiming for "functional, playing your spells [~0.50] turns late on average" ... and if you can get it to "strong, playing your spells 0.40 turns late on average" I think you'll find the deck will feel amazing.
  • I honestly kind of hate Tapped Lands in Mono- and Two-Color decks .... the utility we get from them just never seems to be worth them slowing us down soooo much. I mean. we HAVE to use them in budget Three-or-more-Color decks, but if we've only got one or two colors, I really think we're almost always better off just using a Basic.

Thoughts on Cuts

  • When trying to cut cards, I really like asking myself "What would the Commander want me to do?"
  • For example, I recommend taking a VERY hard look at your 5-drops. They compete directly with Ayara's recast, so for every 5-drop we kind of have to ask ourselves, "Would Ayara rather I cast this or put her back on the battlefield?" With that in mind, shifting as many of our 5-drops as possible to "similar" 4-drops (or maybe even up to 6-drops) would be A Good Thing for Ayara (and so almost certainly a good thing for the deck).
  • We can also kind of do this with any card, asking "What does Ayara want in a card"? IMO, she wants Black Creatures to ETB and she wants to draw cards off them. So any card that does that is probably good for her (and by extension, for the deck).

Some specifics:

Budget cards I would consider adding:

Spendy Cards Maybe Worth Considering: I'd probably try to add one of these. Just one though.

  • Skullclamp: Every time I play this card I'm surprised all over again that it's not a Game Changer)
  • Pitiless Plunderer: I'm with NV_1980 on this one; it's a great card.
  • Gisa, the Hellraiser or Liliana, Dreadhorde General: Yeah, I know they're high mana value cards, which goes against a lot of what I wrote above. But I honestly think Ayara would absolutely LOVE to see one of these ladies in the deck with her!

Hope something in there was helpful; very sorry for the spam if not!
Cheers!

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