The Necromancer. The Lidless Eye. The Lord of the Rings. These are some of the myriad titles held by Sauron, the Dark Lord. This dark power looms over Middle-earth throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings saga, pulling the strings of kings and hobbits alike like a sinister puppeteer. Although 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering has always found inspiration in The Lord of the Ri🐬ngs, it wasn't until the much anticipated The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Universes Beyond set that any of the characters made it into the game. And ꦺSauron came with all the might of the Hosts of Mordor.

No less than four versions of Sauron are available, but the most precious is Sauron, the Dark Lord. If you want to try your hand at conquering Middle-earth (or at least your local ga꧅me shop), this guide is for you.

The Commander

Sauron, the Dark Lord is a 7/6 legendary Avatar Horror. At six mana (three colorless, one each blue, black, and red), he's a little more expensive than other Commanders you're likely to encounter, but he brings excellent value and staying power to your battlefield.

His ward ability prevents opponents f☂rom targeting ꦉhim unless they sacrifice a legendary artifact or creature, which is a hefty price to pay for a targeted removal spell which you'll likely have an answer for anyways.

Not only does ward protect Sauron, the Dark Lord, but his second ability will punish your opponents for trying to remove him. Or do anything else, for that matter. Every time an opponent cas🌟ts a spell, they'l🙈l trigger his amass Orcs 1 ability, creating or growing your Orc Army. This feeds his third ability, where every time your Army deals combat to a player, the Ring tempts you.

The final effect gives you the option to discard your hand and draw four cards every time the Ring tempts you, allowing you to draw a fresh set of cards if y🧔ou're short, or to throw lots⭕ of creatures into your graveyard if you're leaning into Sauron's role as the Necromancer.

All four of these abilities are good by themselves, but together they synergize beautifully to keep Sauron on the field, your Army growing, and your hand fresh. While these abilities will allow Sauron to reliably lead a Grixis 🌺(blue/black/red) Goodstuff decꦡk, for this build we'll try to maximize the benefits of his abilities to grow a massive army and to pull victory out of the graveyard.

Building the Deck

Sauron, the Dark Lord is good at building armies, drawing cards, and dumping cards into your graveyard, so we're going to build around doing all three. Considering how well he protects himself from removal, you shouldn't need to worry about much other car🦩d draw.

You should, however, worry about mana. Sauron is expensive for a commander, and without the land ramp affoꦬrded by gree🦩n, you'll need to run a lot to mana rocks to play him early enough to matter.

Mana Sources

Sauron costs six mana to cast out of the gate, and that only increases if he's removed. In order to get him onto the battlefield, you'll want a full compliment of multicolor-producing mana rocks. All signets and talismans that match his color identity should b▨e in there, along with the stand🍨ard Arcane Signet, Commander's Sphere, and Sol Ring.

A thematic addition is Relic of Sauron, which costs four generic mana but produces two in any combination of Sauron, the Dark Lord's colors, and adds a little more draw to the deck if you've got enough mana. It's a big deal to get Relic of Sauron in play on turn two, becasue it means you can have your commander already out on turn three.

In addition to the standard mana-fixing and fetch lands, include both Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth will make all of your lands Swamps, powering up Cabal Coffers. ꦕLacking a way to search for a specific nonbasic land, though, make sure you have room for dual lands like Blood Crypt and Sunken Hollow, and the Grixis triome, Xander's Lounge.

Amass Orcs

You shouldn't put all your eggs in one baskꦫet, but you can put a lot of counters on your Orc Army. Since it will ღget a +1/+1 counter every time an opponent plays a spell, you can expect it to grow by at least 3/3 each turn. And if an opponent destroys it without removing Sauron, it'll just come back again.

Orcish Bowmasters is a great card for this deck (or any deck with black in the color identity), and can potentially double your army's growth rate while whittling down your opponents. And players may jump the gun to remove the Orcish Bowmaster early in𒁃stead of focusing on the Army. Later in the game you can use Grishnákh, Brash Instigator as an Act of Treason that also groes 🔜your Orc Army.

If you get Fall of Cair Andros on the battlefield, any excess noncombat damage you deal to an opponent's creatures will turn into a bigger Army. While Fall of Cair Andros does have a built-in way to deal noncombat damage, Blasphemous Act will clear most of the board, power up your Orc Army enough for it to survive, and leave your opponents with no blockers to stop the rampaging hordes of Mordor.

Sauron will die, true, bu✱t you'll likely wipe out at least one opponent, and the rest may not be 🎐able to recover.

Sauron, the Dark Lord is protected by perhaps the s꧑trongest ve📖rsion of ward in print, but he isn't invincible.

If your opponent is willing to sacrifice their legendary creature or artifact to target him with a spot removal spell, don't hesitate to ruin their day by making him hexproof via Lazotep Plating or indestructible with Orcish Medicine. Both of these will also make your Orc Army grow just a little🍸 bigger.

Fill Your Graveyard, Then Empty It

Every time your Orc Army (or any other Army you control) deals combat damage to an opponent, Sauron, the Dark Lord, gives you the option to discard you hand and draw four more cards. This is an optio🐈nal wheel effect, but one you can take advantage of by including plenty of spells with madness, flashback, and reanimation effects.

With your Orc Army on the battlefield, the easiest way to keep discarding and drawing cards is to give it some kind of evasion. Rogue's Passage and Whispersilk Cloak are commander staples for a reason: They'll make sure your Orꦓc Army keeps getting through and giving you those draws.

More traditional forms of evasion come in the form of flying and trample. If you discard Wonder into your graveyard and control and 💟Island, all of your creatures including y▨our Orc Army will have flying. The Reaver Cleaver will give your Orc Army trample, and more mana in the form of Treasure tokens.

While the discard and recursion mechanics will ensure that you have access to lots of large, expensive cr💯eatures in your graveyard, d🎃on't neglect smaller ones which will synergize with Sauron.

You'll be discarding and drawing cards almost every turn with Sauron, so include creatures like Chasm Skuler, which grows when you draw cards, and Archfiend of Ifnir, which will punish your opponents when you discard. Cards like 🥂Wheel of Fortune and Windfall will ram𒁃p them up even more.

Don't forget that your commander is a 7/6 right out of the gate, and only needs to hit an opponent🌠 three times to knock them out with commander damage.

After dumping a huge stack of cards into your graveyard, pull all of the creatures back onto the battlefield using a broad-spectrum reanimation spell such as Living Death or Rise of the Dark Realms. If you have a sac engine avail🌼able, such as Phyrexian Altar, make sur💯e you send all of your nontoken creatures, including your commander, to the graveyard before casting them.

Deck Tech

It can be tough to get a second Army into play, since Amass checks for your existing Army and adds +1/+1 counters to it instead of 💟creati🥂ng a new Army. But there are ways to make other creatures into Armies, especially in Grixis.

Conspiracy allows you to choose a type for all of your creatures, while Maskwood Nexus turns all of your creatures into every creature type. Suddenly your Orcish Bowmaster and even Sauron, the Dark Lord himself are Armies, which can grow thanks to Sauron's second ability and trigger his fourth ability.

Eventually, your opponents will wise up to the threat of your growing Orc Army and tar🌳get it, but The Ozolith (disguised as Argonath, Pillars of the Kings in Middle-earth) will let you keep all of the +1/+1 counters when it dies and drop them on another creature during your next combat phase.

When Chasm Skulker dies, you'll not only retain those counters on Tꦑhe Ozolith, but also gain the same number of 1/1 Squid tokens.

Angrath, Captain of Chaos is a great fit because he passively give😼s all of your creatures menace, making them more difficult to block, and can actively grow your Army wit𒀰h his loyalty ability.

An Army's purpose is to fight battles, but we haven't seen the fight mechanic yet. Besides, a whole Army fighting one creature would be unfair, so instead we'll have our Army fight everything else on the battlefield. Widespread Brutality is a perfect card for the Orcs, with amass 2 growing the Army before it turns around and attacks every non-Army creature on the battlefield. This can be as big of a rout as Blasphemous Act🍎 with Fall of Cair ✱Andros.