User blog comment:Oshbosh/Season 3 Pilot Battle: Sauron vs Voldemort/@comment-4484220-20130610171945

I'm going to break my streak here and vote for Sauron.

Who is more durable? Sauron is much stronger and more durable. Voldemort has a mere human body, which is fragile compared to that of Sauron. Sauron's body is literally made of armor (yes, that armor is an actual part of his body) that is very difficult to penetrate even with sharp weapons. Though I do not think this will be much of a factor seeing as how almost all of Voldemort's attacks are ranged ones, and the heat radiating from Sauron's body will keep him at a distance.

Who has better magical prowess? Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are both awesome, but one thing that kind of annoys me about LOTR and that I don't have a problem at all with as far as HP goes is not being provided with a library of the magical abilities of wizards from those franchises. We really don't receive a lot of information on exactly what feats Sauron and some other wizards of Middle-Earth have accomplished. I know we see some, but not as much as we do in Harry Potter. So when it comes to magic users of Middle-Earth, we sometimes have to do a bit of speculation. Sauron has a connection with the fires underneath the earth, and it was believed that he could make volcanoes erupt, and summon meteors from the sky. Such things are beyond the fiendish fire we've seen used by Voldemort, which, in all likelihood, wouldn't do much to Sauron seeing as how his body already emits heat, and you can't really roast metal very well. That's the closest I can come to directly proving that Sauron's power is greater than Voldemort's; by pointing to one aspect of it, showing that in that area Sauron's abilities surpass those of Voldemort's, and extrapolating the belief that the same applies in all other categories. Some might say it's not the strongest argument, but that's what I've got to do when we aren't given a lot of information on someone's magical abilities.

Who is more "experianced"? Sauron takes this edge by a landslide. Sauron has been active for thousands of years, as opposed to Voldemort who died at age 71. He started making his horcruxes when he was 16, so that's about 55 years of real experience. If you want to stretch it and count up from when he was 11 years old by which time his powers were much more developed than most wizards his age, then that would be 60 years. 60 is insignificant next to somewhere in the thousands.

For any potential Voldemort voters who try to claim that Sauron could easily be taken down like Isildur did with one swing of a sword, that was an extremely lucky swing in the midst of Sauron's cockiness. Voldemort had his own downfalls by something simple due to their victims getting lucky, or him being cocky, such as his killing curse rebounding upon him in his initial and final encounters with Harry Potter. In a fair fight between Sauron and Isildur, Sauron would effortlessly kill Isildur, in the same way that Voldemort would have been able to kill Harry any day had it not been for his mother's sacrifice and their wands' twin cores.

Voldemort's only hope of winning this battle is to hit the Mia with the killing curse. If the killing curse hits the body of any living being, it invariably dies. Sauron's armor is an actual part of his body, so if a killing curse hits Sauron, I have no doubt that it will reduce him to a form of insignificance if not kill him. Killing curses cannot be blocked by any form of magic, so he won't be able to block a killing curse with any magical spell. But Sauron needn't worry, as he still has a counter. While there is no spell or shield charm that can block a killing curse, some solid objects/barriers are capable of doing that. And I believe that Sauron's mace can do just that: parry any curse shot by Voldemort, even the killing one. I haven't mentioned Sauron's mace yet in this vote because I don't think it will be much of a factor offensively, as the Mace is a melee weapon, and this will mostly be a battle at ranged combat, so he probably won't use it to actually hit Voldemort. But I believe Sauron's mace will prove incredibly helpful in parrying any curse Voldemort throws at him.

If I were to at least try to think of an edge that Voldemort takes, I'd say it's agility. Sauron moves rather sluggishly compared to Voldemort who is fairly fit, and can apparate and fly, which may help him last longer and potentially avoid some attacks from Sauron, but it will only delay the inevitable. This agility edge is mostly going to help him defensively, rather than offensively. He probably won't try to get up close to Sauron, because as mentioned above, heat radiates from Sauron's body (enough to even burn a man to death). If Voldemort apparates, he probably won't apparate too far away, just away from what ever Sauron shot at him. At a certain point, Voldemort will have to stop flying and apparating, and let the battle be decided by magical prowess, which is where Sauron will show his superiority.

I'm voting for Sauron due to a combination of greater durability, magical prowess, and simply a more terrifying demeanor. Voldemort did send the wizarding world into a state of fear, and nearly every wizard who stood before him fell, but he never established a lasting stronghold. It wasn't until a few years after his second rise to power that he overthrew the Ministry of Magic and took control of Hogwarts, only for it all to come crashing down less than a year later. Unlike Sauron who established an empire and held it for thousands of years.

