Lightly Upgrading The Hosts of Mordor LOTR Deck - Magic the Gathering Commander 

Thank you for your support of the channel. I find it's much more challenging to rein yourself in when doing upgrades rather than grab the 10-15 most powerful spells in a color and jam them into a deck. I also love Lord of the Rings and didn't want to chop the decks into just generic power piles. I will do some content for those that want to go wild, but that'll be in a bit. For now I just want to enjoy these, mostly, as they are.

The only I changed in mine was all dragons some goblins I’m running 9 Nazgûl w/ the Witch King of Angmar they get beefy quick

I've been waiting for this too lol

I’m so agree that people do that too well i really want to play lord of the ring deck without adding samurai and transformers in my setup

​@@twilightscallmtgme who decked the shit out to be a 3500$ renimator cancer deck 😅

Ah. So I was wrong. Thanks for the correction. I do feel that one random giant is out of place but it's good to know they didn't go left field like they did with Colossal Whale in the Elf precon.

Glad this was some help.

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

Glad you liked it.

You're welcome and I'm glad you liked it. I wanted to keep as much LOTR in as I could without taking a wrecking ball to the base of the precons when I did these videos (though I did goof a little on the Rohan one and put some off-world legends into the original build).

@@twilightscallmtg I will be checking that video as I plan to get a Riders of Rohan precon deck too. I've seen it can pack a punch out of the box without upgrades. Can't imagine how stronger it could get with them. I also loved what you did with the Lord of the Nazgul deck. But getting all those cards might come out of budget in a blink of an eye lol. Someday...

Awesome. I did a lot of LOTR content over the summer and fall and didn't even get to everything I wanted to.

I hope the suggestions help in your build and thanks for the kind words.

I could see that, which is why I did the editors note. I think I was a bit jaded by the other landcyclers in the set and how meh they are overall as spells and I don't want to run them just for that cycling ability.

I'm trying to figure how to make the ring work in the colors. I had it at prerelease and ended the game with 5 counters on it, burning through food tokens to keep ahead of it.

Ill put it only in the Frodo and Sam deck. It is frodo who has the ring in his possession 😉. I was thinking of putting it in the Sauron deck and saccing it to Mount Doom, but I was like: “Sauron will never do that!” Also, the loss of life can be negated with the life gain from the food

Glad you liked it. It might look better, but I think it's all about relevance in the game. Top line cast trigger that only matters on the stack so it will come before everything else. The same template is on Hydroid Krasis, with Flying, Trample coming in under the cast trigger.

It's close. I did use a few regular cards but tried to keep it very on theme.

I like it for a solid reanimator strategy. Going with straight LOTR changes makes that a little harder to do. If I'm not restricting myself, I'd do the deck without the Amass and go big reanimator with things like the troll.

@@twilightscallmtg I think you should mention (unless this hasn't been brought to your attention already) that troll of Kazadum swampcycling for 1 is really good manafixing and slowly more and more utility "swamps" are being printed. Witches' Cottage, Kharlov Manor Surveil-Duals and really just Xander's Lounge (grixis triome) can all be fetches with this. And of course, if you just want the untapped manafixing, get a shock-land (blood crypt or watery grave). Like, the modality of Trolls and the other 1-mana land cyclers is ridiculous. They're a land or a relevant spell > They're basically MDFCs and those are considered strong additions for most decks. There's a reason these commons are amongst the most expensive commons from the set.

Since they are lightly changed, I'd say they are pretty close. The Elf deck gets more focused and likely benefits the most from just dropping out some of the random elements like the vote cards. Mordor started out kind of split on the reanimator vs. amass strategy but is still a strong deck and the changes bring it slightly more focused on the reanimator strategy. The food deck can do some silly things and lines up nice against just about any of the decks even with the changes. Riders is a little different in the final decklist vs the video. In the video, I rushed that one out first and added some strong cards but neglected some of the theme I wanted, then decided to twist down on the themes after it posted, so I went back and altered the list and pinned a comment to reflect that one. That updated list, is more on par with the Elf/Food deck on power level, where as several of the cards in first version likely would have pushed the deck above the other 3. Overall, even with the changes, Mordor is likely the strongest, but not miles ahead like some of the precon decks can end up.

@@twilightscallmtg Hey I appreciate you coming back and taking the time to answer a question on an older video! Feel like it's appropriate for the Mordor deck to be slightly stronger anyhow since that lines up with LOTR lore. Great stuff!

@@jroq1235 No problem. It was a good question and I try to catch them from older videos (when RU-vid plays nice and alerts me!).

It does. I was avoiding it due to being put through the screams of 'BAN IT', but it's come down from that level of discourse and would be a great addition, especially if you're sticking with LOTR cards since there's no 'Wheels' in the set that hit your opponents and leave them to the mercy of the Bowmasters.

I may be. My playgroup is higher powered and I don't give them much credit because they aren't worth playing outside of a dedicated reanimator deck within my group. Hard casting them isn't worth the mana for me, personally, and running them just for the land cycling seems wasteful when I could have just run mana rocks to accelerate. But your mileage may vary as I don't know what your personal group's power level is.

Agreed. Fortunately we can slot some older cards in, like the ones you mentioned and I don't think the flavor takes too hard of a hit.

Precons *can* go down over time, but it's usually several months down the road unless they are unpopular (and generally aren't that great to begin with). For this particular precon, I would wait because the price is very inflated at the moment, going for about $30 more than when I did the video. This one is the most popular of the precons from this set and hard to find restocks right now. Once restocks hit the shelves in about 30-60 days, it should come back down more towards the $60-$65 range where it should be. Keep an eye out for Target, Walmart and the like. They don't use TCGplayer to adjust pricing, so if you see it there, it should be closer to real pricing (I wouldn't pay more than $65 for any of these). I prefer using LGSs to buy my stuff, but many are gouging the price because they can't get their hands on it and go with what the tracking sites show when they do get some. If you find a deal at a big box store, grab it while you can if it's reasonable.

Better is subjective. Saruman is easier and quicker to cast, but isn't as splashy. Constant reanimation isn't as consistent with just the LOTR cards, but splashing in some more from older sets (and maybe more reanimation targets) makes it better. The deck at base tries pulling between the two themes and focusing it down to one or the other would play better overall.

All in context. If I were to push this deck to be all about reanimator, I'd slot it back in. With the light precon upgrades, the deck is just a bit too watered down on which direction it wants to push (Reanimator vs. Amass) to get consistent reanimation going without using more out of universe cards, which I was trying to avoid mostly. I'm loathe to run the land cyclers simply as a land fetch but most of them are far too expensive to hardcast over many things that could be in their place save for Lorien Revealed. That one is on regular curve with the 5-mana, Draw 3 with a perk kind of thing.

The Nazgul are pretty nasty. I had 3 of them beating me down in Historic Brawl yesterday, so I fully endorse this plan!

Yup, it's a messed up card. Like, it's not as good as Hullbreacher, but it's on that axis of messing with your opponent's draw and you can be absolutely cutthroat if you pair it with things like Windfall or Dark Deal.

One of the things I love about Commander is that there isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to build a deck unless you're angling into cEDH. Outside of that, you can get a creative as you want, flavorful as you want, or just straight wacky as you want.

I'm not a fan of locking out player draws. That means unless they have an answer right then, they are slowed to a crawl trying to answer it. Grima at least only affects lifegain but allows normal play to continue and the Food deck has more uses for the food than just lifegain if you have it updated as well.

Someone else pointed out my mistake. I either missed it or didn't remember. Either way a one off giant in the deck seems odd to me.

@@twilightscallmtg if it was a stone giant but I agree with your choice good video buddy

Definitely a bad hard cast unless you're overwhelming an opponent. Might be better if you use Reanimate to get it out cheaper and be able to pay the trigger earlier, but you're going to need some beef out there to take advantage.

Sorry, took a couple days to circle back. Decklists are now on all 4 videos.

A very viable option and cheaper to cast. 9 is a lot to pay for the front facing Commander of this one, but very powerful if you can cast it.

@@twilightscallmtg thanks for the replay buddy i also brought i cards on your list for the deck so which ones do i cut just the ones you mentioned ?

Those are the ones I'd cut if you're going with light touches. You could go further depending how you wanted to build the deck.

I would definitely wait to try that. A lot of people are trying to build decks around the Nazgul and it's inflating the prices of the cards to well above what they should be as uncommons.