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Lord of the Nazgûl

Legendary Creature — Wraith Noble

Flying
Wraiths you control have protection from Ring-bearers.
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, create a 3/3 black Wraith creature token with menace. Then if you control nine or more Wraiths, Wraiths you control have base power and toughness 9/9 until end of turn.

CMC
5
Mana cost
{3}{U}{B}
Color identity
BU
Rarity
rare
Set
Tales of Middle-earth Commander
Price
$13.39
EDHREC rank
#3669
Buy on TCGplayer
Lord of the Nazgûl card art
Lord of the Nazgûl enters the battlefield and immediately creates a Wraith token, then makes another every time you cast a spell that costs less than its mana value — in the right shell, that's a token factory stapled to a finisher. Cost reduction engines like Mindsplice Apparatus turn it into an absurd value engine, and Sauron, Lord of the Rings decks run it in over half their lists for exactly that reason.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Sauron, Lord of the Rings

Sauron, Lord of the Rings

50.5% of decks · synergy 0.45

Sauron, Lord of the Rings triggers Lord of the Nazgûl constantly — the commander's amass ability and Ring-tempting spells are cheap enough to fire the Wraith-generation clause repeatedly, flooding the board while Sauron grows each token with amass counters.

02
Sauron, the Dark Lord

Sauron, the Dark Lord

48.0% of decks · synergy 0.43

Sauron, the Dark Lord is the most popular home for Lord of the Nazgûl by raw volume, appearing in nearly half of all those lists: the deck casts a high density of spells each turn cycle, and every cheap instant or sorcery translates directly into a Wraith entering the battlefield.

03
Saruman, the White Hand

Saruman, the White Hand

28.8% of decks · synergy 0.23

Saruman, the White Hand copies spells, and each copy can retrigger Lord of the Nazgûl's ability — casting one cheap spell can cascade into multiple tokens when Saruman's amass-on-copy clause and the Nazgûl's ETB math interact.

04
Gale, Waterdeep ProdigyScion of Halaster

Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster

23.7% of decks · synergy 0.23

Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy // Scion of Halaster recurs instants and sorceries from the graveyard, giving Lord of the Nazgûl repeated triggers off the same cheap spells and turning the graveyard into a persistent token engine.

05
Saruman of Many Colors

Saruman of Many Colors

13.5% of decks · synergy 0.13

Saruman of Many Colors copies the first spell cast each turn, which means Lord of the Nazgûl sees a consistent baseline trigger every round even in slower games — a modest but reliable floor in a deck that already wants to be casting things across multiple colors.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Lord of the Nazgûl lives — the 99-card singleton format gives it exactly the high spell volume and cost-reduction engines it needs to generate Wraiths at scale, and the longer game means the token army actually closes things out. Legacy and Vintage legality is technically present, but a seven-mana creature with no immediate protection has no realistic path into those formats' threat hierarchies. Lord of the Nazgûl is a Commander card through and through, best evaluated exclusively in that lens.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

If Lord of the Nazgûl is out of reach, Ogre Slumlord and Hordeling Outburst both generate token bodies on a budget, though neither ties token production to your spell-casting rate the way Lord of the Nazgûl does. The honest trade-off is that no cheap card replicates the self-scaling engine — budget replacements give you a one-time flood rather than a repeating trigger.

Price Context

Current price

$13.39 mid tier

At $13.39, Lord of the Nazgûl sits in the mid tier — meaningful enough to feel in a budget build, but reasonable for a card that carries a dedicated archetype. Given its concentrated demand in Sauron and Saruman decks rather than broad cross-archetype appeal, the price reflects a real ceiling rather than speculative markup.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.