The Hosts of Mordor is one of 4 preconstructed Commander decks in the Lord of the Rings set. It’s a Grixis (Red/Blue/Black) color identity deck with a theme of “expensive cards” and a sub-theme of amass. The deck also contains 20 new cards, and we’ll break down and evaluate the ones that are worth remembering.
So this dude, Avatar, Wizard, Demon, Morgothian, whatever, costs a lot of mana. 8. And 3 different colors. So mill 5 and return a creature card from your yard to the battlefield is a powerful ability. But for 8 mana, and yes, you get to amass orcs 5. Getting tempted when you blow up enemy commanders is great, but people don’t usually want their commanders to die. Which also sort of paints a target on Sauron’s back. There’s also the reality that a lot of best creature control in commander exiles, not kills, like Deadly Rollick and Swords to Plowshares. Really this Sauron is just too expensive as a commander. Especially because it’s a cast trigger, you can’t really abuse him in reanimator either.
Saruman is a solid amass commander. Creating a creature every time you cast a non-creature spell is really solid. And once you have one of these you can Fling it or Goblin Bombardment it. More on this later. It’s too bad Saruman doesn’t give himself ward, but he’s a really solid commander for a fun control shell.
I’ve included this card because I think it’s neat, not hugely strong, but I like this new concept of big fatties with cycling to get them into your yard. 4/6 and when it ETB’s you stun all your opponents creatures. Potentially dangerous with proliferate to keep them tapped down, and also just slots nicely into reanimators.
A decent stax effect with the ability to profit off of it stapled on, if this didn’t include the clause about opponent’s this would be another way to loop Dockside Extortionist, but thankfully it’s just a stax/value card, a little pricy at 4 but if the table is locked down this should let you either draw when you need to or else grab utility creatures of your opponents that die.
Versus opponents that run a lot of rocks this is quite a dangerous Dragon, and way more pushed than Dragons have been traditionally. 7 artifacts isn’t that many, though realistically it’s more like you’re getting a nice discount, but thankfully comes out with haste and evasion and trample, so just pretty solid for a midrange-ish creature.
Cycling a big fatty and then cheating it back out is just a really solid play pattern. It’s also uncounterable, effectively, since it’s a cycling ability, which is an added bonus.
This is just another solid cycle value fatty, nets you some treasure, then you reanimate it. When it dies getting to exile a creature is really powerful, probably going to lead to hilarious situations where people just let you slam this 8/8 into them.
Unblockable is just solid, and getting a free instant or sorcery is really nice. 4 for a 1/4 is a bit pricy, but the fact it’s only 1 power in some ways is more likely to let iffy opponents just let him through. This will combo decently with Saruman since it will net you a free amass, or even Sauron, since you’re decently likely to get some creature control, depending on your meta, and get to blow up a commander.
There’s a lot more cast from exile triggers now, which makes impulse draw better and better. Flashback is super icing on the cake, especially since the card has such obvious synergy with cards that care about casting not from the hand, the built in ability to cast from your yard is great. Potentially netting you 8 from exile triggers and one not from the hand trigger, amazing for something like Prosper, Tome-Bound.
Make a Wraith deck. Do it. Make big ass Wraiths and kill your opponents with 9/9 Wraiths. Do it. You know you want to.
This is just a solid card, a bit tricky to use, but particularly with things with suspend (more of which probably to come in the Doctor Who set) this is a way to cast them without suspending them. You’d need to arrange them on top of your library, so it’s a fairly niche case, but I think it’s worth remembering.
Kind of a funny way to board clear. Probably too expensive but I really like that line from the movie so here it is.
FromTheShire: Note that the creature deals the damage, so make sure to grab something with lifelink for maximum fun.
Just a solid land, and I think it’s a much better version of cards that show up all the time in precons like Rogue’s Passage. Colored mana, it’s a Gate, it’s not unconditionally unblockable but generally if you just want a trigger this is fine.
The Hosts of Mordor is a frustratingly messy, over costed, slow mess really out of the box. There’s some ways to generate Orcs and amass Orcs and have some Orc buffs, but there’s not a ton of payoffs or buffs for your army. And armies are frankly just not that great in Commander, other than as a source of aristocrats and fling fodder, for which they are amazing. The inherent limitation of armies is you can only have one, so it can get quite big, but it’s just one creature, and as a token creature it’s relatively vulnerable to just being killed. So far there’s only one real “if you have an army” card and it’s from this set, Grond, the Gatebreaker which I think is an awesome card and a really cool idea. It’s a design space I hope they develop more fully, but if the plan with an army is to get it to be big enough to deal 120 damage, that’s a really big army. And 3 turns. I’m actually a bit resentful that Sauron, the Dark Lord isn’t in this precon, because that version is perfect for an army focused Commander deck. But instead it’s just the army cards.
There’s also some Wraith stuff, but not a critical mass of it or any consistent way to get it going. There’s real synergy between Sauron and his lieutenants, other than the Sauron, the Necromancer version, which is okay.
There’s some Ring stuff but it’s not a Ring focused deck.
There’s a lot of enters tapped lands, and not really enough mana rocks to get to the big spells that the deck relies on with any consistency. There’s a solid 10 sorceries that cost 4 or more mana, and 19 creatures at 4 or more mana. Thematically big sweeping gestures sort of makes sense from Sauron, the lidless eye guy, but to enable them you’d want a bunch of 2 cost tap for 1 mana rocks and some 4 cost tap for 2 mana rocks to try to be ready to do something on turn 4-5 consistently that upends the board state. Turn 6 Boon of the Wish-Giver ain’t it.
To rebuild the deck into an amass engine required virtually gutting it, cutting a solid 50 cards out of the deck. That’s a lot for a precon, and certainly not required to improve it out out the gate. But as you can you’d want to cut over costed haymakers (or really more like over costed whiffs) in favor of cheaper, more effective spells and value generation off your amass triggers.
The play pattern you are looking for is to create triggers off amassing Orcs. If you don’t have an army, then your amass will create a creature, which you can then use, for… something.
Triggers include: The Meathook Massacre, Agent of the Iron Throne, Bastion of Remembrance, Mirkwood Bats, and Nadier’s Nightblade. The deck could easily include Impact Tremors and Witty Roastmaster and those other enters field triggers. Goblin Bombardment is going to be the most consistent way to get rid of your troublesome armies, but Village Rites and its analogs work really well with Saruman, the White Hand. Cast Village Rites, you sacrifice your army and get to draw 2 cards, and create a trigger that creates an army, so you can lather, rinse, and repeat.
There’s also a decent selection of cycling and rummage, with reanimation cards.
The full cut list is here:
1 Voracious Fell Beast
1 Field of Ruin
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Troll of Khazad-dûm
1 The Mouth of Sauron
1 Saruman, the White Hand
1 Corsairs of Umbar
1 Monstrosity of the Lake
1 Shelob, Dread Weaver
1 Cavern-Hoard Dragon
1 Orcish Siegemaster
1 Gríma, Saruman’s Footman
1 Lord of the Nazgûl
1 Lidless Gaze
1 Subjugate the Hobbits
1 Too Greedily, Too Deep
1 Wake the Dragon
1 Boon of the Wish-Giver
1 Consider
1 Deep Analysis
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 Notion Thief
1 Hostage Taker
1 Anger
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Shiny Impetus
1 Merciless Executioner
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Decree of Pain
1 Languish
1 Living Death
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Rogue’s Passage
1 Knollspine Dragon
1 Scourge of the Throne
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Foreboding Ruins
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Frostboil Snarl
1 Choked Estuary
1 Revenge of Ravens
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Treasure Nabber
1 Guttersnipe
And the add list is here:
1 Village Rites
1 Animate Dead
1 City of Brass
1 Priest of Forgotten Gods
1 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
1 Dreadhorde Invasion
1 Talisman of Creativity
1 Unearth
1 Mana Confluence
1 Dance of the Dead
1 Blasting Station
1 Bastion of Remembrance
1 Grave Titan
1 Costly Plunder
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Soul Exchange
1 Agadeem’s Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt
1 Necromancy
1 Nadier’s Nightblade
1 Plumb the Forbidden
1 Watery Grave
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Persist
1 Archon of Cruelty
1 Talisman of Indulgence
1 Victimize
1 Infernal Grasp
1 Cathartic Pyre
1 Go for the Throat
1 The Meathook Massacre
1 Abrade
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Agent of the Iron Throne
1 Deadly Dispute
1 Wayfarer’s Bauble
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Dread Return
1 Mirkwood Bats
1 Orcish Bowmasters
1 Sauron, the Dark Lord
1 Barad-dûr
1 Saruman the White
1 March from the Black Gate
1 Call of the Ring
1 Spiteful Banditry
1 Fall of Cair Andros
1 Inherited Envelope
1 Sauron’s Ransom
Here is the full deck at moxfield:
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
