The official The Hosts of Mordor preconstructed deck from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth expansion brings the terrifying, suffocating shadow of Grixis (Blue-Black-Red) villainy to the table. Out of the box, the deck is stacked with high-flavor mechanics. While the alternative commander, Saruman, the White Hand, pushes a spell-heavy Amass sub-theme, centering the deck squarely on Sauron, Lord of the Rings unlocks a catastrophic Grixis Reanimator and Midrange Powerhouse.
Sauron demands an enormous mana investment, but once he hits the board, he commands the game entirely:
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The Lord of the Rings: When you cast him, he creates a massive Orc Army by utilizing Amass Orcs 5, then completely refills your strategic horizons by tempting you with the Ring.
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The Eye is Fixed: Whenever a legendary creature an opponent controls dies, you get to force that player to sacrifice an additional creature.
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Master of the Graveyard: Whenever your Ring-bearer attacks, you discard your hand and draw four fresh cards, filling your graveyard with potential targets.
In this PreconForge Guide, we will step directly through the official decklist, remove the low-impact spells that slow down your curve, and show you how to turn Sauron’s discarding trigger into an oppressive reanimation engine.
The Strategy: Discard, Draw, and Reanimate
Out of the box, The Hosts of Mordor includes premiere high-cost cards like Cavern-Hoard Dragon, Living Death, and Reanimate. However, because it is a preconstructed deck, it splits its focus between Saruman’s spellslinger-Amass strategy and Sauron’s high-mana battlecruiser plan.
When optimizing specifically for Sauron, Lord of the Rings, your goal is to leverage his 8-mana casting cost. To survive long enough to cast him, you need an exceptionally strong early game. Because Sauron’s Ring-bearer combat trigger forces you to discard your hand to draw four cards, you want to turn that discard into an advantage. By loading up on high-value reanimation spells and massive, game-ending threats, you can use early looting or Sauron’s combat step to throw massive monsters into the graveyard, only to pull them right back onto the battlefield for pennies.
Top 5 Cards to Cut from the Official Precon
To streamline your deck’s strategy and maximize reanimation potential, remove these low-synergy or clunky pieces from the official box:
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Saruman, the White Hand: While amazing as an alternative head of the deck, inside the 99 he requires you to cast an abundance of instant and sorcery spells to build a single non-evasive Amass army. In a creature-heavy reanimator build, he loses his impact.
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Guttersnipe: Another holdover from the spellslinger archetype. Since we are removing low-impact spells to focus on reanimation targets and mana ramp, Guttersnipe will rarely find enough triggers to justify a card slot.
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Revenge of Ravens: A passive, defensive enchantment meant to deter wide token attacks. It is incredibly slow, low-impact for an aggressive Grixis build, and doesn’t contribute to your graveyard or ramp strategies.
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Subjugate the Hobbits: A 7-mana sorcery that lets you gain control of small creatures. While incredibly fun and flavorful, it is highly situational and far too expensive for a spell that might hit nothing of value against a big-mana deck.
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Frostboil Snarl (and Choked Estuary): These reveal-lands frequently enter the battlefield tapped in the middle stages of a game, disrupting your mana curve when you desperately need to hit your land drops to reach Sauron’s high mana requirement.
Budget Upgrades (Under $3 per card)
These budget-friendly additions provide faster graveyard setup, explosive token interaction, and more ways to bring your monsters back.
The Reanimation Core
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Victimize: A sensational budget inclusion for any Grixis reanimator deck. For just 3 mana, you can sacrifice a small token creature (like an Orc Army or a Goblin token generated by the precon) to bring two massive creature threats straight from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
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Animate Dead: A staple 2-mana enchantment that lets you pull any creature out of your graveyard early on. It perfectly complements the precon’s built-in copies of Reanimate and Extract from Darkness.
Graveyard Inverters & Synergies
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Archfiend of Ifnir: This card is absolutely malicious under Sauron. Because your commander’s Ring-bearer ability forces you to discard your entire hand when attacking, Archfiend of Ifnir triggers for every single card dropped, placing a massive wave of -1/-1 counters across your opponents‘ entire boards.
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Windfall: A fantastic 3-mana sorcery that forces everyone to discard their hands and draw cards. It sets up your graveyard instantly while disrupting opponents who are hoarding their combo pieces.
Premium Upgrades (The Fires of Mount Doom)
If you are ready to invest extra coin at the forge to make your Grixis engine truly unstoppable, look out for these elite premier assets:
The Ultimate Graveyard Packages
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Sauron, the Dark Lord: Introducing the main-set version of the Dark Lord into the 99 is a total game-changer. He generates massive armies whenever an opponent casts a spell, possesses ward, and lets you discard your hand to draw four fresh cards whenever an army deals combat damage.
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Orcish Bowmasters: Easily one of the strongest black cards printed in the modern era. It flashes onto the board, pings targets, and builds an Orc Army instantly whenever your opponents try to draw extra cards.
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Sheoldred, the Apocalypse: Since Sauron’s attacking ability forces you to draw four cards at once, Sheoldred turns that combat step into an immediate 8-life swing in your favor, while simultaneously punishing opponents for the extra cards they draw.
Game-Ending Targets
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Sire of Insanity: If you manage to reanimate this demon early using Reanimate, it forces all players to discard their hands at the beginning of every end step. Since your deck is built to play entirely out of the graveyard, this completely locks your opponents out of the match while you cruise to victory.
PreconForge Verdict: Is it worth it?
The official The Hosts of Mordor precon contains an incredible array of expensive, high-quality reanimation spells and creatures right out of the box. By trimming away the split focus of the spellslinger package and leaning fully into discard-to-draw reanimation, you transition this list from a slow, grinding casual deck into an oppressive, unstoppable march of doom led by Sauron, Lord of the Rings.
Stoke the fires of the forge, march your armies out of the Black Gate, and let us know in the comments below how many titans you managed to pull from the grave!
Are you keeping your build purely locked into the flavor of Middle-earth, or are you introducing traditional Magic mechanical horrors to optimize your graveyard loops? Let’s keep the strategy discussion moving forward!
