Live Play Data

Sauron, the Dark Lord

· Legendary Creature — Avatar Horror · The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

299

Decks Running

162

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

88%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=45

64%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 13

On curve 47% (14 / 45 cast on T6)

The "good card" funnel

301 brought · 145 players

Brought to game

301

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

137

Once cast, 60% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ -10.8pp

Players who cast this card win 22% of the time (n=42) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=147).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 33% (n=15).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +2.1pp; 95% confidence interval -10.8pp to +15.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

262 instances

1.1%

Library

52.3%

Battlefield

5.3%

Graveyard

0.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 132 decks
2 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 9 decks
3 Jodah, the Unifier 7 decks
4 Saruman, the White Hand 7 decks
5 Child of Alara 1 decks
6 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 1 decks
7 Kess, Dissident Mage 1 decks
8 Morophon, the Boundless 1 decks
9 Sisay, Weatherlight Captain 1 decks
10 Thanos, the Mad Titan 1 decks

Card text

Sauron, the Dark Lord

Legendary Creature — Avatar Horror

Ward—Sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature. Whenever an opponent casts a spell, amass Orcs 1. Whenever an Army you control deals combat damage to a player, the Ring tempts you. Whenever the Ring tempts you, you may discard your hand. If you do, draw four cards.

7 / 6

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR) · Mythic · Illustrated by Kieran Yanner

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 670,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.