MTG Best LOTR Commander Cards: Building With Middle-earth

Gains hexproof and indestructible once you control four or more lore counters among your Sagas, and puts a free Saga onto the battlefield every time one of yours resolves its final chapter. Five colors is a real cost, but a dedicated Saga shell turns him into a value engine that’s nearly impossible to remove once it gets going.

Flying, and any creature that connects with you gets sacrificed by its controller — brutal one-sided removal that punishes multiplayer aggression. Discard a card to make him indestructible and tap him on demand, dodging both blocks and removal. A mono-black-plus-splash aggro shell wants this as its finisher.

Ward by sacrificing a legendary permanent, amass Orcs whenever an opponent casts a spell, and refills your hand whenever an Army connects. A grindy Grixis value shell that punishes a table for playing spells at all, with a resilient body backing it up.

Flash, and lets you cast legendary and artifact spells as though they had flash too. Whenever a legendary permanent or an artifact enters or leaves the battlefield and triggers one of your other permanents, that ability triggers an additional time — a build-around payoff for any legendary-and-artifact-heavy shell, which is most Commander decks by default.

A 5/5 that rewards casting spells of each color: white makes a 1/1 Human Soldier, blue scries 2, red pings an opponent for 3, and green pumps a creature +4/+4 until end of turn. A four-color spellslinger shell wants cheap, colored one- and two-mana spells to trigger every mode in a single turn.

Ward {2} keeps him safe, and every second spell cast in a turn amasses an Orc army for two +1/+1 counters. Mono-blue keeps the manabase simple, and a spells-matter shell that doubles up on cheap cantrips turns the Orc token into the real threat while Saruman sits back protected.

Indestructible, and grants protection from everything until your next turn on cast — a full turn of total safety. Tap for a burden counter and draw a card per counter, at the cost of 1 life per counter each upkeep. Colorless means it fits literally any Commander deck, LOTR-themed or not.

Flash, and pings for 1 (plus amasses an Orc) whenever an opponent draws beyond their first card each turn. One of the best two-drops printed in years for any black deck — not a LOTR-flavor pick, just a genuinely great card that happens to be from this set.

+3/+1, and creates two tapped-and-attacking 1/1 flying Spirits whenever the equipped creature attacks, if it’s legendary. Any Commander deck is legendary-creature-heavy by definition — this doubles as a go-wide finisher in most of them.

Scries 2 and adds a counter each end step, then forces a target opponent to either let you draw or take a mill-and-damage hit that scales with your counters. A political engine that gets more dangerous the longer a multiplayer pod lets it sit.

A 3/1 for two that tempts the Ring the moment he leaves the battlefield, then comes right back — sacrifice any creature and pay {B} to return him from the graveyard to hand, as often as a deck can feed him bodies. A cheap, recurring engine for any black sacrifice or aristocrats shell.