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Want to play as the Dark Lord themselves, Sauron? Of course, you do, but you don’t want the precon deck; you want to build around creating armies and controlling rings. That means you’ll want to go with Sauron, the Dark Lord, and because we’re here for you, we’re going to help you learn everything you need to know about this mighty card.
That means we’ll not only talk about its strengths and weaknesses but tap into the lore. If you want to read the lore, then you should check out the excellent The Lord of the Ring films, Rings of Power television show, or even read the books. Alas, both are better written than any short summary we can muster within this admittedly wonderful series.
Lore Intro
Sauron, the Dark Lord
Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Mythic
Sauron, as we know them, is a powerful dark lord and leader of the armies of Mordor. Not only are they the master of The One Ring, but they’re also the mastermind behind the corrupting influence that stole the royals of many species and turned them into Ring Wraiths (or the Nazgûl). In Magic though, they’re still that, but you can pay mana to cast them instead and put them in a sleeve.
Strengths
Market Price: $34.04
Sauron, the Dark Lord is a six-mana blue, black, and red 7/6 with ward – sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature. That’s a decent amount of protection straight away. It also lets you Amass Orcs whenever an opponent casts a spell, so you’re constantly getting a token or buffing that token, and the Ring tempts you if an Army you control deals damage to a player. Then, whenever the Ring tempts you, you can discard your hand and draw four cards.
Basically, it’s not amazing in a fight, but it is hard to kill, gives you stuff for free, and lets you benefit from dealing damage with card draw. This is very useful to have, and as long as you don’t mind being a little bit aggressive and building around the Army token mechanic, you’ll have a good time of things.
Weaknesses
The biggest weakness here is really that Sauron isn’t especially good in combat. It doesn’t need to attack to utilize any of the abilities on it, which is good, but it does mean it’ll just sit there looking threatening instead of actually taking part in the fights. While you could argue that’s thematic, we’d argue it’s a weakness in a format where six toughness simple isn’t impressive.
Recommended Archetypes
Sauron, the Dark Lord is very much the lord of its own archetype, and that’s one where you play cards that create Army tokens or buff them. It’s a very specialized kind of token deck where you’ll benefit from not having a lot of tokens but from a handful of them that are incredibly strong. It is, in essence, a creature deck with a few really heavy hitters, but your other cards should all support those creatures in both their creation and combat.
Key Cards
If you’re looking to brew your own Sauron, the Dark Lord deck and want some starting points, these are the cards we recommend:
- Corsairs of Umbar
- Orcish Bowmasters
- Saruman, the White Hand
- Mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain
- Trailblazer’s Boots
Strategy
Our strategy here really is to make a massive old Army token. That means we need good enablers like Orcish Bowmasters, which lets you Amass when an opponent draws any card beyond the first one on their turn and also lets you deal one damage to any target at the same time, and Saruman, the White Hand, which enables you to Amass whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Saruman also gives your goblins and orcs Ward 2, which is fantastic.
Mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain is an excellent fit because it lets you add an extra +1/+1 counter to any army, goblin, or orc whenever you do so. It just helps you buff your creatures as you go, and because a lot of Amass triggers are singular anyway, it can massively speed things up. Then we’ve got Corsairs of Umbar, which lets you Amass when it hits someone and also allows you to make a goblin, orc, or pirate unblockable, and Trailblazer’s Boots, which also makes it harder to stop things thanks to nonbasic landwalk.
All of these cards come together with the rest of the deck to allow you to overrun your friends and foes alike with an army so big that it could never be stopped, especially because you’ve made it unblockable..
Commander
Sauron, the Dark Lord
Market Price:$892.84
Maindeck, 99 cards
Sortsort deckCommander (1)
- 1Sauron, the Dark Lord
Creature (23)
- 1Corsairs of Umbar
- 1Grishnákh, Brash Instigator
- 1Mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain
- 9Nazgûl
- 1Orcish Bowmasters
- 1Orcish Siegemaster
- 1Saruman, the White Hand
- 1Witch-king of Angmar
- 1Wonder
- 1Sauron, Lord of the Rings
- 1Anger
- 1The Mouth of Sauron
- 1Warg Rider
- 1Saruman the White
- 1Gríma, Saruman’s Footman
Sorcery (5)
- 1Blasphemous Act
- 1Feed the Swarm
- 1Reanimate
- 1Toxic Deluge
- 1Ringsight
Instant (12)
- 1Arcane Denial
- 1Chaos Warp
- 1Dark Ritual
- 1Fierce Guardianship
- 1Go for the Throat
- 1Lazotep Plating
- 1Malakir Rebirth
- 1Mana Drain
- 1Orcish Medicine
- 1Saruman’s Trickery
- 1Sauron’s Ransom
- 1Slip Out the Back
Artifact (17)
- 1Arcane Signet
- 1Brotherhood Regalia
- 1Dimir Signet
- 1Lightning Greaves
- 1Mana Vault
- 1Mask of Griselbrand
- 1Mask of Riddles
- 1Nim Deathmantle
- 1Phial of Galadriel
- 1Rakdos Signet
- 1Relic of Sauron
- 1Sol Ring
- 1The One Ring
- 1The Reaver Cleaver
- 1Trailblazer’s Boots
- 1Whispersilk Cloak
- 1Worn Powerstone
Enchantment (6)
- 1All Will Be One
- 1Black Market Connections
- 1Call of the Ring
- 1Mindless Conscription
- 1Teferi’s Ageless Insight
- 1In the Darkness Bind Them
Land (36)
- 1Badlands
- 1Barad-dûr
- 1Blood Crypt
- 1Bojuka Bog
- 1Command Tower
- 1Crumbling Necropolis
- 1Dragonskull Summit
- 1Drowned Catacomb
- 1Exotic Orchard
- 4Island
- 1Luxury Suite
- 1Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress
- 1Mount Doom
- 4Mountain
- 1Polluted Delta
- 1Rivendell
- 1Rogue’s Passage
- 1Scalding Tarn
- 1Smoldering Marsh
- 1Sulfur Falls
- 1Sulfurous Springs
- 3Swamp
- 1The Black Gate
- 1Underground River
- 1Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 1Urza’s Saga
- 1Watery Grave
- 1Xander’s Lounge
If you like the idea of this and now you’ve got a taste for power that scares you slightly, maybe you should satiate that by having a look at our other Commander Bestiary options. You can also sign up to our newsletter and receive the latest Commander Bestiary content straight to your inbox!