How are you building Sauron, the Dark Lord?

[yeti1069]

I've been trying to build Sauron, the Dark Lord, starting with the Hosts of Mordor precon, but the card feels like it's trying to do too many different things.

The self-wheeling effect, which seems very strong, is kind of awkward. There aren't many good Tempt cards, and two of them Sauron's Ransom and Ringsight, which feel like they SHOULD be here, are nonbos with Sauron's ability (you get the cards, then Tempt trigger, which discards them). You can play into that by tutoring for/selecting things you want in the yard, but it's still not great. This lends itself to a reanimator strategy, but without anyway to reanimate or otherwise use cards in the yard from the command zone, along with the self-wheel requiring a number of deck slots to function anyway, I'm not sure you get much there vs a commander that does some of these things on its own then runs wheels in the deck (Kess, Dissident Mage).

Amass on opponent cast looks very strong, but on its own you get something between a decent blocker and a huge vanilla beatstick that gets chumped for days without support. The support cards look to be either other amass cards that also provide keywords (ie., Gleaming Overseer), equipment (ie., The Reaver Cleaver), or ways to use the freely recurring body as fodder (Goblin Bombardment, Grave Pact, Kindred Discovery). I don't really want to go heavily into aristocrats here, but it seems like the best use of this ability.

Right now, I have some reanimation effects (Altar of Bhaal has been good), some targets (mostly stuff the precon came with), a handful of support cards for Amass, a smattering of Tempt effects, and some Grixis interaction (removal, wipes, counterspells), along with a bunch of ramp. It feels like it needs more card draw. It comes out strong, but runs out of gas swiftly, and the parts don't feel like they fit.

[pokken]

Given that he costs 6, I think the deck has to start with a hard commitment to control or ramping to make sure you can survive to generate much value off him. It's a really awkward mana cost in grixis. That said, ritualing him out seems potentially reasonable given you're likely to want to take advantage of discarding (e.g. Past in Flames / Underworld Breach stuff)

I'd be somewhat inclined to try playing a bunch of things that trigger multiple casts by opponents, and break the symmetry of that by casting stuff from the graveyard that you discard, but that's a hard design to pull off. But smashing face with 30/30 army is pretty gross. (e.g. Possibility Storm, Knowledge Pool, etc.)

Another natural build might be something that storms out with his tempt ability, and stuff like Skirge Familiar, but again kinda awkward and boring.

He seems like a really solid all around grixis control general where the commander is the win condition though too.

Personally I think I'm going to keep him on the shelf mentally until we get more types of armies, because creating as many different kinds of armies as possible and generating crazy value off of multiple tempts feels fun as hell to me. Grixis tokens ftw

[yeti1069]

Given that he costs 6, I think the deck has to start with a hard commitment to control or ramping to make sure you can survive to generate much value off him. It's a really awkward mana cost in grixis. That said, ritualing him out seems potentially reasonable given you're likely to want to take advantage of discarding (e.g. Past in Flames / Underworld Breach stuff)

I'd be somewhat inclined to try playing a bunch of things that trigger multiple casts by opponents, and break the symmetry of that by casting stuff from the graveyard that you discard, but that's a hard design to pull off. But smashing face with 30/30 army is pretty gross. (e.g. Possibility Storm, Knowledge Pool, etc.)

Another natural build might be something that storms out with his tempt ability, and stuff like Skirge Familiar, but again kinda awkward and boring.

He seems like a really solid all around grixis control general where the commander is the win condition though too.

Personally I think I'm going to keep him on the shelf mentally until we get more types of armies, because creating as many different kinds of armies as possible and generating crazy value off of multiple tempts feels fun as hell to me. Grixis tokens ftw

Definitely needs a lot of ramp, and rituals can be a bit awkward. Dark Ritual is in, but something like Seething Song doesn't actually get you Sauron any earlier, since you need after casting. A lot of the rituals look the same, or only put you up one mana. Open the Omenpaths looks ok for getting out Sauron (also, still only +1 mana, but also color fixes if needed), but then doesn't do much for a big chunk of the deck.

I was also thinking about a sort of Kaervek the Merciless strategy that punishes people for playing spells, but I don't know what else goes into that deck (nor if I really want to build and play that). It would certainly run a number of sac outlets to turn each Amassed army into some other piece of value: Goblin Bombardment, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Impact Tremors, etc...

[Dunharrow]

I wouldn't play cards that tempt
The army tempts
You can play Goad cards to remove blockers
I also love this as a Possibility Storm deck, but makes it hard to play control since you don't know what your toxic deluge or counterspell will turn into.

I think Sauron is strong but not broken. The strength here is that nobody is going to want to point removal at him, and prefer to deal with the Army if it attacks them. So you can kind of just ramp him out, sit back, draw a lot of cards, make your big army, and play interaction as needed. You can also make deals with people - let me hit you with my army so I can draw some cards, and I will help you.

Also going to mention Retribution of the Ancients

[yeti1069]

I wouldn't play cards that tempt
The army tempts
You can play Goad cards to remove blockers
I also love this as a Possibility Storm deck, but makes it hard to play control since you don't know what your toxic deluge or counterspell will turn into.

I think Sauron is strong but not broken. The strength here is that nobody is going to want to point removal at him, and prefer to deal with the Army if it attacks them. So you can kind of just ramp him out, sit back, draw a lot of cards, make your big army, and play interaction as needed. You can also make deals with people - let me hit you with my army so I can draw some cards, and I will help you.

Also going to mention Retribution of the Ancients

Retribution I have in there. It's a great fit!

My experience so far is that you need to do some work to get the army in for damage, and it becomes a primer removal target in combat. Also, it becomes very difficult to make deals when the army is 10+ power. It's not like, "Hey, can I hit you for 1/10th your life for a benefit?" When it's 1/4, 1/2, or 2/3 of someone's life, they aren't making deals. Also, Sauron isn't the making deals type, ya know?

I do think I could lean more into control, scrap the reanimation package, and include a little more protection for the army to cut down on interaction ruining my muster (although, control itself will cover some of that).

[pokken]

Could you potentially get copies of the army somehow? Wonder if there are any reliable ways to do that.

[yeti1069]

Could you potentially get copies of the army somehow? Wonder if there are any reliable ways to do that.

Changelings.

[pokken]

Hey, amass slivers!

[yeti1069]

Hey, amass slivers!

Yeah. I thought it was funny that you mentioned wanting more amass types, a little while later, WHAM! There's another.

Now you can have an orc sliver zombie army.

[pokken]

it'd be sweet if every precon had a different army

[darrenhabib]

The thing with Sauron, the Dark Lord is that there is a lot going on, but if you don't find the right balance he can end up doing almost nothing.

To me the obvious thing is that you want to maximize what you do with the triggers you get from amass. Creating one big Orc is counterproductive to using the ability of the ring tempting you and successfully hitting your opponents to get the draw 4 because of ..
1.) Your Ring-bearer is legendary and can't be blocked by creatures with greater power.
2.) Whenever an Army you control deals combat damage to a player, the Ring tempts you.
3.) Whenever the Ring tempts you, you may discard your hand. If you do, draw four cards.
What you want is a 1/1 Orc that can attack an opponent who can't block because they have bigger creatures.

So sacrificing Orcs for value is the best way to achieve all these things imo. There are the usual suspects Viscera Seer, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Phyrexian Altar.

Because of the "discard your hand. If you do, draw four cards." you'll want to really gear the mana costs to the deck to be super low so that you get to cast your cards.
You can do a reanimation theme because of the "discard hand" and also "Whenever your Ring-bearer attacks, draw a card, then discard a card." if you wanted to play some fatties and are wondering what your win conditions are going to be.

As the others have pointed out you want a lot of mana to actually cast Sauron, the Dark Lord and the advantage to this deck is that your draw components can be gotten directly from the commander, so you can afford to pack the deck with mana. Literally Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Cabal Ritual all go nicely at any stage of the game because they will never be dead cards.

Normally I'm not big on one-for-one creature removal, but with "Ward—Sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature." if you focus on removing opponents Legendary creatures then you can cut them off the ability to actually target him. I personally would pack the deck with 1-2 mana creature removal.

Unblockable creatures is good with the game plan and Filth + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is nice with the "discard" elements of the deck. Sauron being a 7/6 is a three turn clock so having him connect is a game plan.
Shizo, Death's Storehouse and The Black Gate are lands for this as well.

[toctheyounger]

Personally I've been mulling it as an attrition control shell. A single big army doesn't do a ton for you, whereas for sac fodder they can be real nice. Stack the deck with altars, Bombardment, death trigger stuff like Blood Artist and Pitiless Plunderer and use that to fuel your control plan. He keeps your hand relatively stacked, so you should have a ready stream of things to keep the boardstate well in control.

I don't know exactly how you win if I'm honest, but the other side of things to look at is discard synergies. Reanimation is nice, so are things like Archfiend of Ifnir, Bone Miser and Surly Badgersaur.

If you're going for optimal builds, honestly you probably end up with just a grixis Underworld Breach shell, but that sounds fairly boring to me. I haven't settled on exactly what I'd build, but the above areas are what I'd be looking at.

[yeti1069]

The thing with Sauron, the Dark Lord is that there is a lot going on, but if you don't find the right balance he can end up doing almost nothing.

To me the obvious thing is that you want to maximize what you do with the triggers you get from amass. Creating one big Orc is counterproductive to using the ability of the ring tempting you and successfully hitting your opponents to get the draw 4 because of ..
1.) Your Ring-bearer is legendary and can't be blocked by creatures with greater power.
2.) Whenever an Army you control deals combat damage to a player, the Ring tempts you.
3.) Whenever the Ring tempts you, you may discard your hand. If you do, draw four cards.
What you want is a 1/1 Orc that can attack an opponent who can't block because they have bigger creatures.

So sacrificing Orcs for value is the best way to achieve all these things imo. There are the usual suspects Viscera Seer, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Phyrexian Altar.

Because of the "discard your hand. If you do, draw four cards." you'll want to really gear the mana costs to the deck to be super low so that you get to cast your cards.
You can do a reanimation theme because of the "discard hand" and also "Whenever your Ring-bearer attacks, draw a card, then discard a card." if you wanted to play some fatties and are wondering what your win conditions are going to be.

As the others have pointed out you want a lot of mana to actually cast Sauron, the Dark Lord and the advantage to this deck is that your draw components can be gotten directly from the commander, so you can afford to pack the deck with mana. Literally Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Cabal Ritual all go nicely at any stage of the game because they will never be dead cards.

Normally I'm not big on one-for-one creature removal, but with "Ward—Sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature." if you focus on removing opponents Legendary creatures then you can cut them off the ability to actually target him. I personally would pack the deck with 1-2 mana creature removal.

Unblockable creatures is good with the game plan and Filth + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is nice with the "discard" elements of the deck. Sauron being a 7/6 is a three turn clock so having him connect is a game plan.
Shizo, Death's Storehouse and The Black Gate are lands for this as well.

I'd been thinking the sacrifice the army every time game plan was probably the best use of Sauron. Trying to keep it as a 1/1 to get through with skulk is a good point, although it's very easy for an opponent to disrupt.

The Black Gate has been very good so far. Filth and Shizo should probably go in.

If I were to go heavy on this plan, some other cards I'd look at including would be:
Kaervek the Merciless
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
Butcher of Malakir
Ayara, First of Locthwain
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Mayhem Devil
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Blasting Station
Attrition
All Will Be One

Most of the other amass stuff becomes kind of bad. Notably Dreadhorde Invasion is detrimental for always making your orc a 2/2, and never granting life link.

[yeti1069]

Personally I've been mulling it as an attrition control shell. A single big army doesn't do a ton for you, whereas for sac fodder they can be real nice. Stack the deck with altars, Bombardment, death trigger stuff like Blood Artist and Pitiless Plunderer and use that to fuel your control plan. He keeps your hand relatively stacked, so you should have a ready stream of things to keep the boardstate well in control.

I don't know exactly how you win if I'm honest, but the other side of things to look at is discard synergies. Reanimation is nice, so are things like Archfiend of Ifnir, Bone Miser and Surly Badgersaur.

If you're going for optimal builds, honestly you probably end up with just a grixis Underworld Breach shell, but that sounds fairly boring to me. I haven't settled on exactly what I'd build, but the above areas are what I'd be looking at.

I have Archfiend and Bone Miser in right now, though in the last game, I never had a chance to get Bone Miser out, and only got to wheel once with Ifnir in play.

I haven't played with Badgersaur. How is it in practice? The treasures look good, but the other two modes always seemed kind of bleh to me.

[3drinks]

This is why I prefer Sauron, Lord of the Rings to this. It seems dark lord is better but in reality both are super high and this gives you a strong finisher that is also hard to remove (no one wants to remove this and let you re-cast because, if you can hit 8, you can hit 10) and that cast trigger is backbreaking....while you can't just leave a 9/9 trample on the board cause, y'know, it'll punch you in the face. Both require strong ramp and control to get to, while big Sauron is fewer slots overall - landcycle big things like Monstrosity of the Lake and Troll of Khazad-dûm and evoke your Mulldrifter|tsr and Night Incarnate/Spitebellows to get to the point you can cast and take solace in knowing eventually your 8mv will net a minimum of 14 power to shift the board in overwhelming favour.

[3drinks]

Could you potentially get copies of the army somehow? Wonder if there are any reliable ways to do that.

To amass {type} X, put X +1/+1 counters on an Army you control. It's also an {type}. If you don't control an Army, create a 0/0 [colour, type] Army creature token first.

Nope. If you have an army, you're just going to put counters on the existing army. Well, I suppose you could populate the army with, say, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice or Sundering Growth.

[pokken]

Man, maybe you should throw the army at people. Are there enough effects in grixis to support that?:P

[yeti1069]

Could you potentially get copies of the army somehow? Wonder if there are any reliable ways to do that.

To amass {type} X, put X +1/+1 counters on an Army you control. It's also an {type}. If you don't control an Army, create a 0/0 [colour, type] Army creature token first.

Nope. If you have an army, you're just going to put counters on the existing army. Well, I suppose you could populate the army with, say, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice or Sundering Growth.

Copying won't work, since that makes a 0/0 army. The best options are probably Changeling Outcast and Black Market Connections.

[yeti1069]

Man, maybe you should throw the army at people. Are there enough effects in grixis to support that?:Pimage.png

This was some of my initial thinking, with a few cards dedicated to the idea of using the big army (rather than each small army) as a resource:
Ruthless Technomancer - turn big army into mana + reanimation
Ayara, Widow of the Realm // Ayara, Furnace Queen - Fling big army + life gain
Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar - turn big army into a lot of cards
Widespread Brutality - turn big army into board wipe that leaves big creature behind (if combined with Maskwood Nexus none of your stuff dies)
The Reaver Cleaver - big army gets trample and makes big mana

[pokken]

Man, maybe you should throw the army at people. Are there enough effects in grixis to support that?:Pimage.png

This was some of my initial thinking, with a few cards dedicated to the idea of using the big army (rather than each small army) as a resource:
Ruthless Technomancer - turn big army into mana + reanimation
Ayara, Widow of the Realm // Ayara, Furnace Queen - Fling big army + life gain
Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar - turn big army into a lot of cards
Widespread Brutality - turn big army into board wipe that leaves big creature behind (if combined with Maskwood Nexus none of your stuff dies)
The Reaver Cleaver - big army gets trample and makes big mana

This feels a lot more enjoyable to me than grixis control version 13.0.

The thing is like, unless you have an instant sac outlet, the army is extremely likely to be a 3/3+ by the time it gets back to you so it's gonna grow super fast. My experience with Sunscorch Regent is it averages closer to 5-6 a cycle since people tend to multispell at that stage in the game.

It's too bad there's no Greater Good in these colors, but there's probably a lot of stuff we're missing.

[yeti1069]

Man, maybe you should throw the army at people. Are there enough effects in grixis to support that?:Pimage.png

This was some of my initial thinking, with a few cards dedicated to the idea of using the big army (rather than each small army) as a resource:
Ruthless Technomancer - turn big army into mana + reanimation
Ayara, Widow of the Realm // Ayara, Furnace Queen - Fling big army + life gain
Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar - turn big army into a lot of cards
Widespread Brutality - turn big army into board wipe that leaves big creature behind (if combined with Maskwood Nexus none of your stuff dies)
The Reaver Cleaver - big army gets trample and makes big mana

This feels a lot more enjoyable to me than grixis control version 13.0.

The thing is like, unless you have an instant sac outlet, the army is extremely likely to be a 3/3+ by the time it gets back to you so it's gonna grow super fast. My experience with Sunscorch Regent is it averages closer to 5-6 a cycle since people tend to multispell at that stage in the game.

It's too bad there's no Greater Good in these colors, but there's probably a lot of stuff we're missing.

Phyrexian Altar basically means every spell your opponents cast gives you 1 mana of any color. Ashnod's is similar. Makes it easy/easier to play control when you have mana up all the time. That said, I do agree that it doesn't sound very interesting...or rather, it doesn't sound like something that I would keep playing for long.

[pokken]

Phyrexian Altar basically means every spell your opponents cast gives you 1 mana of any color. Ashnod's is similar. Makes it easy/easier to play control when you have mana up all the time. That said, I do agree that it doesn't sound very interesting...or rather, it doesn't sound like something that I would keep playing for long.

Yea altar.dec is not particularly interesting.

[toctheyounger]

I haven't played with Badgersaur. How is it in practice? The treasures look good, but the other two modes always seemed kind of bleh to me.

The fight is kinda bad since it isn't big to begin with, but it is an up to, so you can just choose not to. The counters help I guess, but it's obviously the worst iteration of this effect. Oh, there is also Feast of Sanity, which is delightfully on brand for Sauron, but I don't know much about this one, haven't playtested it at all.

Phyrexian Altar basically means every spell your opponents cast gives you 1 mana of any color. Ashnod's is similar. Makes it easy/easier to play control when you have mana up all the time. That said, I do agree that it doesn't sound very interesting...or rather, it doesn't sound like something that I would keep playing for long.

Altar of Dementia and Goblin Bombardment are more interesting sac outlets. And the latter, as far armies go is literally the best rate you'll get for creature sac to damage dealt. I like that Altar is quite versatile too, for either self or other mill, while not being quite as busted as the aforementioned altars.

I was actually wondering if the deck would do cool things with Dream Halls. If you can trigger tempt enough being hellbent isn't going to matter, and you're in colors to make better use of Halls than most. It's a pet RL card of mine that I have a couple copies of so I'm always looking for places it could fit lol

[yeti1069]

I haven't played with Badgersaur. How is it in practice? The treasures look good, but the other two modes always seemed kind of bleh to me.

The fight is kinda bad since it isn't big to begin with, but it is an up to, so you can just choose not to. The counters help I guess, but it's obviously the worst iteration of this effect.

Phyrexian Altar basically means every spell your opponents cast gives you 1 mana of any color. Ashnod's is similar. Makes it easy/easier to play control when you have mana up all the time. That said, I do agree that it doesn't sound very interesting...or rather, it doesn't sound like something that I would keep playing for long.

Altar of Dementia and Goblin Bombardment are more interesting sac outlets. And the latter, as far armies go is literally the best rate you'll get for creature sac to damage dealt. I like that Altar is quite versatile too, for either self or other mill, while not being quite as busted as the aforementioned altars.

I was actually wondering if the deck would do cool things with Dream Halls. If you can trigger tempt enough being hellbent isn't going to matter, and you're in colors to make better use of Halls than most. It's a pet RL card of mine that I have a couple copies of so I'm always looking for places it could fit lol

So just had a game against some much better tuned decks, I think (Esika/Bridge, Old Gnawbones, Shorokai), where I mulled to 4 to get a keepable hand. Won that game!

Observations:
Yeah, we all know Goblin Bombardment is ridiculous here. I used that in conjunction with Orcish Bowmasters to finish off Shorokai by sacrificing the army in between draw triggers. I had used it in another game earlier that got disconnected to pick off x/1s at instant speed, which did a TON of work.

Not playing tempt cards would be a mistake, I think. I'm running several, and had some big plays. #1 was opponent dropping Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite while I had Gollum, Patient Plotter, Ruthless Technomancer, and Archfiend of Ifnir in play. Gollum died, and trigger Sauron, so I discarded 4 and drew a new 4, putting 4x -1/-1 counters on everything. Then I activated Ruthless, sacrificing 3 mana rocks to bring back Bilbo, Retired Burglar to get tempted again, which mini-wheeled me again, and finished off the board with another round of -1/-1 counters.

Removal helped get the army through a few times, but it can be a challenge to find an opening.

The reanimation package feels decent with all the wheeling. I've tried to focus on stuff that is recastable from the yard, From the Catacombs, Dread Return, or on permanents like the aforementioned Techno and Altar of Bhaal // Bone Offering. FtC got me Esika's Gisella for a big swing that took out two players.

I'll put the list up tomorrow in decklists if anyone wants to look it over and make suggestions.

[Chromaticus]

Ion Storm gives you a nice mana sink, and very strong threat of activation. Ramp to the moon, and scare opponents away from playing spells.

If you go with more of a sacrifice theme The Ozolith can start stacking up an absurd amount of counterts.