The Balrog of Moria
Start Commander Deck

Combos Browse all Suggest

Tokens

Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Vintage Legal

The Balrog of Moria

Legendary Creature — Avatar Demon

Trample, haste

When The Balrog of Moria dies, you may exile it. When you do, for each opponent, exile up to one target creature that player controls.

Cycling (, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

When you cycle The Balrog of Moria, create two Treasure tokens. (It's a colourless artifact with ", Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any colour.")

Recommendations View more recommendations

Rocketman988 on Demon Till Your Dreams Come True

2 months ago

MightyPox, I did indeed miss your initial comment somehow! I was traveling and replied on mobile, so I blame the small screen. I also really love my demons and it hurts to take any out, so I'm constantly shifting the mix between demons and enablers depending on what I feel is strongest at the moment. We just got some AWESOME new demons though, so I'm tweaking the list towards the creature side again.

Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Rakdos, Patron of Chaos absolutely need to be in the deck. Infernal Sovereign is tricky, and I'm still on the fence, but I'm going to try it out and see. It can fuel some absolutely insane turns, adds bonus value to our cheap spells like rituals and loots, but it's a real feels bad to have if trying to use Sire Of Insanity. High risk high reward, which I want to love.

Bringer of the Last Gift and Scourge of the Skyclaves are both reanimation nonbos, so I don't like them for that reason. I hate paying full cost for my demons since I've worked in so much synergy with cheating creatures. If you like them, run them! They are fun demons for sure. :)

The Balrog of Moria keeps popping in and out of my list, and he's so close to worth it. We'll see if the heavier creature focus I'm shifting back towards gets him a spot.

MightyPox on Demon Till Your Dreams Come True

4 months ago

Hi Rocketman! How is it going?

Nice to see your Rakdos primer is still active and updated!
I appreciate the new section about Rakdos Game Theory!
Haven't played Magic for some time now but my buddy and I will be getting back at it soon. In preparation for that I went through the Rakdos-coloured demons on Gatherer and saw that there are new demons to consider for the deck.

Bloodletter of Aclazotz
We can always use effects like Archfiend of Despair/Fiery Emancipation, so this one's really good.
My deck does most of it's damage during my turn anyhow. Definitely adding it to the deck.

Infernal Sovereign
An effect in the vein of Recycle/Null Profusion on a 6/6 flying, trampling demon may help us in a pseudo combo turn.
I'm usually always playing a land and/or spell each turn or drawing/filtering cards in other ways so skipping the draw step is not a great set back. Not sure about this one but will be testing it.

Bringer of the Last Gift
Living Death is one of my favourite cards in this deck and here it is stacked on a 6/6 flying demon.
The only draw back is that it has to be cast for which is a steep price as most of the expensive demons are reanimated. Only Hellcarver Demon may cheat it into play.
Nevertheless I will try this one out, maybe in place of Patriarch's Bidding.

Scourge of the Skyclaves
This one has been around for a while now and most of the time it will be : everybody loses half of his or her life.
In an earlier iteration of the deck I ran Havoc Festival which was nice because it speeds up things and my opponents would lose the life before me and not simultaneously.
Still for this deck I'm always looking for demons that do "crazy things" and maybe one day I will test this guy.

Concerning The Balrog of Moria: I read that you had this one on and off your deck and I think I like it.
All of it's abilities are relevant to us. If I find space for him I will test him for sure!


I read through your change log/Rakdos Game Theory/user comments and I understand that you emphasize playing the commander and therefore divert slightly away from the demon-theme.
While I think that your success proves you right, I just can't bring myself to cut a lot of demons from this deck - I'm a flavour freak on this one. :D
I'm really light on Rakdos protection (Tibalt's Trickery, Lightning Greaves and Not of this World are the only ones right now). Maybe if I could find room for Bolt Bend and Deflecting Swat I could see myself casting Rakdos more often.
On the other hand: since I've been playing this deck 1vs1 most of the time, connecting with Rakdos is devastating for my opponent and almost always leads to victory.
I also had situations when I had the mana to cast Rakdos very early in the game but had also options to do crazy stuff that could potentially win me the game.
Albeit risky I mostly tried the crazy things because this is my only deck that can do this kind of thing - the Rakdos thing. :D

I'm looking forward on reading what you think about the demon suggestions I made in this post!