Ash Nasg-a durn-tul ûk 3.0 (Breakdown Inc.) (EDH / Commander)

As a Die hard Lord Of The Rings fan, it was inescapable that I would make my favourite character into a deck. Considering how powerful they made ALL of the Sauron variants. T'was not hard :)

• Overview
  • I came at this deck trying to exemplify what I felt was Sauron's general personality in the Books and the Pop Culture worlds combined, personally I think the middle ground of burning out people and amassing monstrous armies of horrifying power legions of Zombies, Orcs, War beasts. As much as some of his very shrouded mentality by way of punishing people for looking ahead. Felt some of the big players themselves needed to make it too.
    At bare bones this was super well done with JUST Lotr Cards. It woulda ran. But if you've seen my Grist, or any of the few other decklists of things that made it out of base bones ideas. It would not have been worthy.

After careful tweaks and changes, largely ignoring lore and character hoping to still retain the major theme. I came to this... And I give you:

Sauron, The Dark Lord- and Ash Nasg-a durn-tul ûk (Black Speech)

• 3.0

  • This version of Sauron has come with a tiny bit more Interaction directly targeted at just making your enemies groan in typical Grixis fashion. Nicol Bolas, The Arisen, Master of Cruelties, and Mogis, God of Slaughter all here to follow in the Dark Lord's footsteps and bring pain to those around.

• Interaction

  • As a nonstarter in blue we obviously came with counters like Counterspell and Mana Drain to make your day a tiny bit easier. Removal from black Like Deadly Rollick, bedevil, Isuldur's Fateful Strike all of these and more can target those pesky threats and take them off the board. Not to mention Jeska's Will making it's first appearance in a deck I own, giving you the leg up yo uneed to make things work. We brought god's and wannabe gods to Sauron's allegiance as well! Mogis makes his appearance burning into opponents or eating away at the board slowly but surely making people feel the sting of his axe, master of Cruelties follows him with direct player interaction making your foes drop to there knees quite literally. Finally the wannabe god himself here to make opponents bow with that disgusting -12 ult ability, let alone the gas from the +2 or the Interaction from his other two not so shabby abilities! All of this and more with cards like Blasphemous Act and One Ring to Rule Them All!

• Armies

  • You are gonna be attempting to Amass a large army and obliterate your friends with this monstrosity. It can get real dicey really quick. But not to fear. Easier than it seems.
    Start by Amassing however you can, But if you read the rules breakdown. If you have an Army. No matter what, you don't add a second one of a different type, you make the first Army and only Army bigger.
    As an example lets say you Amass Orc 2 -> You now have a 2/2 Orc Army. Then you Amass 3, Now this card wants a zombie army, but in it's specific breakdown, you would add 3 +1/+1 counters to your Orc Army and it would become a Zombie Orc Army 5/5. Meaning you can get Anthems of BOTH types to work in your deck. For Zombie armies from things like Gleaming Overseer to protect your army and help it get in, or things like orcish armies Orcish Siegemaster to help you get in and over. Making the combos here quite disgusting. My personal favouriite I have found so far is Fall of Cain Andor and Widespread Brutality you can add Saruman's Storm for additional fuckery. But it's simple you amass an army for whatever, lets say 2, but it was already 5 so now it's 7. You use the second trigger on Widespread Brutality to ping something, something small. It will take 7 Non-Combat damage. That Pings Fall of Cain Andor giving you the excess as amass before you hit the next thing and amass more and then the next and amass more.... Cards like mauhúr, Uruk-hai Captain make Sauron's constant upwards ping even more powerful, as much as Dreadhorde Invasion get's a nice little buff of power to go along with it! There is many more neat tricks in here. But I'll let you find those yourself!

• Baby Wheel

  • Sauron, The Dark Lord himself gives you super easy access to a baby wheel effect since your army is always going to be hitting and likely your ring bearer. This wheel helps you always stay gassed up and ready to role as you don't need cards in hand or mana to get 4 cards for free. But this can be better with cards like Bone Miser or Archfiend of Ifnir if you have it!
    Not to mention I have played for far too long, Timetwister made it in as an obviously broken wheel choice for the deck! Maybe more wheels to come, Maybe not!

• The Ring

  • Tempting by the ring is something that's gonna happen a lot and you can use quite often to help you have a fun and gassed up hand at pretty much any moment
    Also giving whatever you decide quite a few nasty attacker buffs! Things like Call of the Ring and Sauron, The Dark Lord himself really play this to full power! Be careful though as your ring bearer becomes legendary (oh no that totally doesn't combo into One Ring to Rule Them All or Isildur's Fateful Strike)

This Deck is mean.