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The Lord of the Rings

Commander / EDH Amass Bracket 3 Goodstuff Reanimator UBR (Grixis) Wheels

ironwolf1

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Land (38)

Rocks and Accelerants (12)

Reanimator Spells (6)

Army Enablers (16)

Responses and Removal (14)

Card Draw (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Sauron, the Dark Lord

The Ring tempts you… (16)

Reanimator Targets (10)

Bullshit (3)

Maybeboard

Stuff I own (10)

Stuff I don't own (2)

The Big Idea

This deck is a fully Lord of the Rings UBR goodstuff deck. My only constraint in building around Sauron was to only add cards printed in the LTR or LTC sets, so everything is pure LOTR flavor. I probably spent way more than would be advisable for a deck with a pretty strong ceiling of being based on one set and a precon, but I ended up with a deck that is fun while not being too absurdly powerful with the ability to make some wicked plays in different stages of the game. The goal is to feel like Sauron as much as possible, doing big shit and inspiring fear and hatred in your foes.

It's not the best wheels deck, it's not the best reanimator deck, it's not the best Amass deck, but I don't need it to be. I just want it to be a powerful and flavorful Lord of the Rings deck centered around the Lord of the Rings himself. It may not win a lot, but part of being Sauron is creating a united front trying to stop you and losing to the combined forces of goodness. If possible, try to undermine the alliance and turn your enemies against each other, then stab them in the backs like the Numenoreans. Afterwards, just hope there's no Isildurs left to finish you off before you can claim your victory.

Gameplay Strategy

The most coherent central strategy of the deck is getting Ring tempt triggers, flavored with some reanimator effects and a lot of general goodstuff type cards that fit with the theme of Sauron. Ring tempts turn into wheels which turns into digging for value and reanimating the stuff I discard. There's a decent subtheme of helping get the Orc army in, but mostly because it's one of the most consistent ways to get Ring tempt triggers with Sauron out.

The Ring tempts you...

The Ring Tempts You token

With Sauron, the Dark Lord's final ability granting you the chance to do a 4 card wheel effect when you get a Ring tempt trigger, the best way to get value is to try to get as many Ring tempt triggers as you can. There are a few ways to go about this, but the best way is to just try to get the Orc Army to connect in combat and trigger Sauron's third ability, with help from his second ability generating a sizeable army every turn. For this, those Orcs will probably need help getting in, because a single token with no evasiveness doesn't do you much good once everyone has a few blockers. The Black Gate, Corsairs of Umbar, Warg Rider, Orcish Siegemaster, Rogue's Passage and Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress are my main methods for getting the army to get through for combat damage. The Army method serves a dual purpose of both getting Ring tempt triggers and allowing you to wheel, while also potentially dealing devastating damage as the army grows larger. Stuff like Saruman, the White Hand and Saruman's Trickery can also help to grow and defend the army at the same time.

Call of the Ring is my overall favorite Ring tempt card, for what should be obvious reasons. It just consistently ticks away, generating the triggers every upkeep and giving me the option to wheel every turn before going to my draw step. This thing gets the Ring to have all 4 abilities in short order, generating even more value when you send your Ring-bearer into combat.

Nazgul are just good, both creating Ring tempt triggers and getting value out of them, but I like having more variety in the gameplan, so I'm gonna hover between 5-8 Nazgul depending on how other creatures perform rather than going for all 9 for pure value. I may change my mind on exactly how many I want, but I am gonna max out at 8 because I'm already running the Witch King separately and he's my 9th Nazgul from a flavor perspective.

I place Bilbo, Retired Burglar in a similar category to the Nazgul, as he also has an ETB Ring tempt trigger, but with a little bit different in functionality once he is on the battlefield. He's a great Ring-bearer while ramping up for Sauron, as he takes great advantage of the first Ring ability and creates treasures when he gets in for damage. He also has a Ring tempt trigger upon leaving the battlefield, which makes him a good candidate for chump blocking or sacrificing to an ability like Lash of the Balrog once his usefulness as a Ring-bearer has ended.

One Ring to Rule Them All and In the Darkness Bind Them both provide Ring tempt triggers on a saga enchantment, alongside some other potential finisher abilities if they can stick around on the battlefield a few turns. The nonlegendary board wipe on One Ring to Rule Them All will knock out the Orc army, but it's worthwhile considering how many legendaries this deck plays compared to most other decks. In the Darkness Bind Them provides repeated Ring tempts while also synergizing wonderfully with all my Nazgul, and the final chapter of the saga should be a game ender 9 times out of 10.

Gollum, Patient Plotter is another Ring tempt engine that provides decent repeatability through the graveyard recursion ability. He's small enough to cast without much thought, and as long as you have something to sac and a solid way to get him dead, he will keep triggering temptations over and over again.

There are a few utility spells I keep around for the Ring tempt triggers they provide, even though they may be a little overcosted for their main effect. Claim the Precious as removal and Inherited Envelope as artifact ramp are both worth the cost for the extra Ring tempt trigger, also making them feel a lot better as topdecks even when you don't necessarily need their main effect. Sauron's Ransom is a fun opponent-choice draw spell that gives you a ring tempt trigger as well, though it can be a bit of a non-bo with the wheel effect when you want to keep the cards you got.

The card at the top of my maybeboard for this effect is Ringsight. It’s a bit of a non-bo with Sauron, because the Ring tempt trigger goes on the stack on top of the rest of the spell, so if you choose to wheel off the trigger you will have to discard the creature you just tutored up. This isn't the biggest deal because of the reanimator stuff, but because it involves wheeling, you have no guarantees that you'll wheel into a reanimator effect. It's still a good card to tutor a bomb even if it requires passing on the wheel effect, so it's solidly on my list.

Necromancy

With all the wheeling and discarding going on, as well as a few sac abilities like on Merciless Executioner and Lash of the Balrog, it's good to have some graveyard nonsense to do with this deck. Flashback draw spells like Deep Analysis and Faithless Looting are very nice, but getting to pull creatures out of the yard is even better. Got the old classic Reanimate, as well as some higher cost fun stuff. Too Greedily, Too Deep is one of my favorite spells in the deck, because it turns your reanimated bomb into a board wipe as well, making it a strong endgame finisher. One of my ultimate flavor win goals is to cast it targeting The Balrog of Moria. Sauron, the Necromancer is a graveyard recursion engine by himself, pulling in copies of stuff from the yard every turn.

The Balrog, as well as Cavern-Hoard Dragon, are my main chonky reanimator targets. I also categorize Merciless Executioner as a reanimator target, because 99% of the time, when I cast him from my hand, I sacrifice him to his own ability, treating him as basically a 3 mana "each opponent sacrifices a creature" spell. And since it's on a creature body, I can use my graveyard recursion to make my opponents sacrifice again and again.

Sauron, Lord of the Rings has the body of a reanimator target, but the casting trigger of a reanimator spell. He's another late game bomb/finisher with the massive body and all the value effects when I can cast him from my hand. He doesn't do quite as much as you might want for an 8 mana creature considering he needs to live through a turn cycle in order to actually attack with his 9/9 trample body, but hitting a Balrog or a Cavern Hoard Dragon with the reanimate ability makes that feel a lot better.

Treason of Isengard is a semi-reanimator safety valve in case one of my high value instants or sorceries ends up in the graveyard due to the wheeling or a counterspell. Being able to recur your graveyard recursion is also a very nice bonus.

Goodstuff

Another sizeable component in the deck is generic LOTR themed goodstuff to support the deck. The One Ring is one of Commander's greatest generic card draw value engines, but in a Sauron deck it's also very flavorful. Same with my Shadowspear, it's a pretty generic value engine for removing protection in most decks, but in Sauron it's the Morgul-Knife. Ancient Tomb becomes Balin's Tomb in the Mines of Moria. The Ozolith becomes Argonath. Mithril Coat isn't quite a Sauron card, but it's a Lord of the Rings value piece that saves me from board wipes so I play it anyways.

Palantir of Orthanc is an odd card at times, but it's a lot of fun to use. The first turn or two after I cast it, it's usually a self-mill card that can hopefully deal a bit of damage if I can hit a big mana spell. Once it gets to 3-4 influence counters, it's pretty reliably a "scry 2, draw 1" on end step, because my opponents are terrified of getting hit for big damage from the mill trigger. One of the few times having a high curve pays off in this deck. The only reservation I have about it is that it makes my turns take way longer to finish up, because it's a complicated trigger that involves both myself and one of my opponents making decisions.

Nazgul Battle-Mace is a maybeboard card in case anything in here is underperforming or overperforming (The One Ring might be a little too busted)

In the creature base, Orcish Bowmasters and Witch-king of Angmar both provide some amount of contribution to the amass/Ring tempt gameplans, but they're also just really good value pieces that give your opponents pause and draw removal away from other threats. Bowmasters also provides a much-needed early curve body, since this deck skews heavily towards CMC 3+ creatures.

Blasphemous Act, Arcane Denial, Toxic Deluge, and Feed the Swarm fall into the more generic, less flavorful "goodstuff" category in the spell list, providing the deck with some solid wipes and versatile targeted removal. I'd rather play most of the more "on theme" LOTR spells, but keeping versatility and the ability to wipe when things are going poorly is an important way to avoid bad games.

Manabase

The manabase was one of the toughest and easiest parts of building the deck simultaneously, because the set restriction gave me a very limited pool of dual lands and utility lands to choose from, as a result I had to stick a bunch of mana rocks into the deck to improve my color fixing.

Lands

There’s only a small handful of possible dual lands in the LTR set that aren’t in this deck. I added a few of the really crazy classic lands that got reskinned into LOTR cards, as mentioned above with Ancient Tomb as well as the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in the form of The Dead Marshes. These do good work for improving the consistency of the mana base, because the one thing I hate the most is losing to mana screw. Also, it’s funny running $80 lands in the same mana base as Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. Titans of competitive EDH meet titans of casual EDH, because it’s all I have access to in LTR.

This deck has really shown me the value of Wayfairer’s Bauble. I often scorned it in prior decks, but in a high-curve deck, using turns 1 and 2 to ramp into a 4 mana turn 3 with color fixing is pretty damn nice.

For utility lands, most have been previously mentioned as part of the Orc army strategy. I do have a little bit of card draw on Desolate Lighthouse, and Mines of Moria can make me treasures for ramping if I have a dead turn, but I am mostly combat focused with my utility lands.

Rocks

Because the curve is relatively high, with a 6CMC commander and no access to a lot of common ramp, I ended up with a hodgepodge of mana rocks. Got some stuff that’s been out of the usual casual meta for years in Worn Powerstone and Commander's Sphere alongside classics like Chromatic Lantern and Sol Ring.

Relic of Sauron is a very nice rock even at 4 mana, because it fixes colors really well and provides card draw if I have spare mana as well. Mind Stone is also in the list for the card draw potential when I don’t need the mana.

Treasure Nabber is a mana rocks adjacent ramp-ish card. I’ve heard it sometimes doesn’t play well, and I haven’t gotten to use it myself yet, but I have high hopes for the funniness factor with that card. It is a cut candidate if people play around it too easily, or if I’m just not seeing enough rocks across the table for it to be useful.

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91% Casual

Competitive

Revision 6 See all

(4 months ago)

-1 Consider main
+1 Phial of Galadriel main