Sauron, the Dark Lord Commander Deck: A Bracket 3 Build That Pays You to Discard

Sauron, the Dark Lord is a six-mana 7/6 that most people build as a Nazgûl deck with a card-draw trigger stapled on. This Sauron, the Dark Lord commander deck reads his last line the other way round. "Discard your hand, draw four" is a wheel (you throw away your hand and draw a fresh one), and Grixis (blue, black and red) has cards that pay you for every single card you throw away. Build around those and the wheel is how you win, with the refill as a bonus.

The list started as an average bracket 3 list and we changed ten cards, each for a reason you can argue with. It was built in our deck builder and run through our bracket calculator, and the number it gets is bracket 3. Sauron comes from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, and so does most of the support.

Sauron, the Dark Lord costs and has four lines of text. All four matter.

The deck lives at Sauron, the Dark Lord Bracket 3, and its bracket audit comes back at bracket 3 with two Game Changers, Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring, out of the three that bracket 3 allows. No extra turns, no mass land denial, no two-card infinite combo. If brackets are new to you, Commander Brackets Explained is the short version. The decklist block above has a copy button if you want the list in your own builder.

Sauron is an Avatar Horror, and the trigger reads "whenever an Army you control deals combat damage to a player", so his own hits never tempt you. The Army is the carrier. It grows off opponents' spells for free, and the deck's job is to get it through once a turn.

Corsairs of Umbar is the cleanest route: makes a target Orc unblockable, and an amassed Army is an Orc. Key to the City does the same for and a discard, and in this deck a discard is a trigger. Rogue's Passage is the land version, The Black Gate stops blocks from whichever player has the most life (so point the Army at that player), and Warg Rider gives every other Orc you control menace (it can't be blocked except by two or more creatures) while adding two counters to the Army at the start of each of your combats.

The pairing that beats a real board is Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant with Orcish Siegemaster. Gothmog gives your creature tokens deathtouch, Siegemaster gives your other Orcs trample, and a deathtouch trampler only has to assign one damage to each blocker before the rest goes through to the player. A 12/12 Army blocked by three creatures kills all three and still hits for nine.

Mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain adds one extra counter whenever counters would go on the Army, so Sauron's amass 1 becomes two counters. The Great Goblin deals 2 damage to an opponent whenever you put counters on an Army, which with Sauron out means every spell an opponent casts costs them 2 life. We covered The Great Goblin as a commander already; here he is a tax on the table. March from the Black Gate and Dreadhorde Invasion keep the counters coming on turns where nobody casts anything, and Invasion gives the Army lifelink when it attacks with power six or more, because amassing Zombies makes it a Zombie as well as an Orc. Orcish Bowmasters has flash (you can cast it at instant speed), comes in at the end of someone's turn and pings for every extra card an opponent draws, with an amass attached to each ping.

Four cards are the reason the build exists, and all four are our additions.

Archfiend of Ifnir puts a -1/-1 counter on each creature your opponents control whenever you discard another card. Sauron's discard is one trigger per card, so pitching a five-card hand is five counters on each creature they control and none on yours. Against a token board it is a board wipe (every one of their creatures dies). Against anything else it kills the small stuff and permanently shrinks the rest. It is also a 5/4 flyer that cycles for when you would rather have the card than the body.

Glint-Horn Buccaneer deals 1 damage to each opponent per card discarded, so the same five-card discard is 5 to each of them, and while it is attacking it can pay and discard a card to draw one, which is another trigger. Bone Miser pays by card type: a discarded creature makes a 2/2 Zombie token (the card itself stays in the graveyard for Reanimate), a discarded land adds , and a discarded noncreature, nonland card draws a card. Containment Construct lets you play any card you discard that same turn, so a tempt in your upkeep off Call of the Ring turns "discard your hand, draw four" into "draw four and keep this turn's plays".

The discards also feed the graveyard half of the deck. Reanimate, Animate Dead and Living Death bring back any creature you pitched, and the ones worth pitching are The Balrog of Moria (an 8/8 with trample and haste that, when it dies, you can exile to exile a creature from each opponent) and Cavern-Hoard Dragon (costs less where X is the most artifacts any one opponent controls, which in a normal pod is three to five). Sauron, Lord of the Rings is the one you cast rather than pitch: the value is his cast trigger, which amasses 5, mills five (puts the top five cards of your library into your graveyard) and then returns a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Reanimating him instead gets you only the 9/9 trampler. Anger in the graveyard gives your creatures haste as long as you control a Mountain, and the deck is happy to discard it on purpose. Bitter Triumph, Moria Scavenger and Faithless Looting are the extra discard outlets for turns when the Ring does not tempt you.

Nazgûl says a deck can have up to nine copies, and we run seven. Each one tempts you when it enters (a wheel, with Sauron out) and has "whenever the Ring tempts you, put a +1/+1 counter on each Wraith you control". Those triggers stack per copy: with four of them on the battlefield, one tempt is four triggers, and every Wraith you control gets four counters. Lord of the Nazgûl makes a 3/3 Wraith token with menace every time you cast an instant or sorcery, and each time, if you control nine or more Wraiths, your Wraiths have base power and toughness 9/9 until end of turn, with their counters on top. Witch-king of Angmar makes each opponent sacrifice one of the creatures that hit you and tempts you when it happens, and he can discard a card to become indestructible (it taps him too), which is a trigger for every payoff above.

In the Darkness Bind Them is three Wraith tokens and four tempts over four turns, and its last chapter takes one creature from each opponent for the turn. Call of the Ring is a tempt every upkeep, so a wheel every upkeep, plus a card for 2 life each time you pick a Ring-bearer. Claim the Precious, Ringsight and Sauron's Ransom are removal, a tutor (search your library for a card) and card selection that tempt as a bonus.

Where you put the Ring matters more in this deck than in most. The Ring's four abilities, in the order it gains them: your Ring-bearer is legendary and can't be blocked by creatures with greater power; whenever it attacks you draw a card and then discard one (another discard trigger); a creature that blocks it is sacrificed at end of combat; and it makes each opponent lose 3 life when it deals combat damage to a player. Put the Ring on the Army early, while the Army is a 2/2 or 3/3, and the first ability makes it close to unblockable against a board of real creatures. By the third tempt, blocking it costs the blocker. The legendary line has a second use: One Ring to Rule Them All's second chapter destroys all nonlegendary creatures, and a Ring-bearing Army is legendary, so it survives your own wipe. The Nazgûl do not, and chapter II resolves on your next turn, so hold the Nazgûl until it has. Do not put the Ring on Sauron: almost nothing has greater power than seven, so the first ability does nothing for him, and he is not an Army, so his hits never tempt you.

The discard is a "may". The reflex is to wheel every time. Do not. With two counterspells and a reanimation spell in hand, keep it; the Ring still tempts you and the Nazgûl still grow. Wheel when the hand is lands, rocks and the fatty you were going to pitch anyway.

Bone Miser's mana has a clock on it. Mana empties at the end of every step. The from lands discarded to a Call of the Ring tempt arrives in your upkeep, and the mana from a tempt off the Army arrives in the combat damage step, so neither can pay for a sorcery or a creature without flash. Spend it on Orcish Bowmasters, Infernal Grasp or Bitter Triumph. One more trick: if Key to the City untapped this turn, put its draw trigger on the stack under the Call of the Ring trigger and pay its with the .

Containment Construct is a choice per card. A card you exile with it and do not play is gone. Exile the cheap spells and the land you have not played yet, and leave the Balrog in the graveyard where Reanimate can find it.

Living Death is symmetrical, and it kills the Army for good. Tokens that leave the battlefield do not come back, and Sauron is sacrificed too, which sends him to the command zone and adds to his next cast. Cast Living Death when the Army is small or already dead, and after One Ring to Rule Them All's first chapter has milled every player, read their graveyards before you read yours.

Count before you wipe. Toxic Deluge lets you pay exactly enough life to clear their board and leave an Army with more toughness than that. Blasphemous Act is a flat 13, so it kills every Nazgûl you have grown and spares an Army only if it has at least fourteen counters; cast it before you have committed the Wraiths. Witch-king of Angmar lives through it by discarding a card in response, and that discard fires every payoff in the deck. Mount Doom is the wipe people forget: , tap it, sacrifice it and a legendary artifact (Palantír of Orthanc once it has done its job, or The One Ring once the burden counters hurt) to keep up to two creatures and destroy the rest.

Mulligan the hand that does nothing before turn three. Sauron costs six, and the deck wants him on turn four with Sol Ring or two rocks, or on turn three with Dark Ritual plus a rock. Seven cards with no rock and no two- or three-drop is a mulligan; a rock, a Nazgûl, four lands and anything else is a keep every time.

Slow pods starve the Army. Sauron's amass depends on opponents casting spells. Against a table that holds up mana and passes, the Army crawls, and that is when The Mouth of Sauron matters: target yourself and he amasses X, where X is the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard, often several by the midgame. Foray of Orcs adds two counters and shoots a creature for the Army's power.

Two Game Changers leaves room for one more without changing the number; a fourth pushes the deck to bracket 4 on its own, and so does a mass land denial card. If you change the list, run your version through the Commander Bracket Calculator before you tell your pod what it is.

Once it is sleeved, register it to your league and record the games. A deck gets its own ELO, separate from yours, which is the only honest way to find out whether a Sauron that discards its hand on purpose wins more than the one that does not.