Elenda of Two Tribes: Manifest Haakon (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Featured card: Haakon, Stromgald Scourge

Elenda of Two Tribes: Manifest Haakon

Commander / EDH*

Gwent

Creature (25)

Instant (8)

Land (33)

Sorcery (11)

Commander (1)

Artifact (15)

Enchantment (7)

Maybeboard

Creature (4)

Sorcery (2)

Enchantment (4)

Artifact (3)

Foreward

It's been a long time coming, but Haakon finally has his moment in this Knight Tribal build featuring Elenda and her slew of Paladin Vampires. This is my take on a fun, low power but high synergy build for casual games with friends and foes alike.

What's this all about?

The first thing we need to mention about building around Elenda is the fact that her second ability triggers when she dies. This means no command zoning for us; we're going to play from and with our graveyard and we are going to commit to it with everything we've got. Bear in mind, Elenda has spent literal centuries in a tomb and she looks better than ever - so we're not only playing for synergy but maximal flavor as well. To understand the direction we're heading in, let us first determine what we are trying to do with Elenda;

Play to our synergies and create value engines at relatively lower cmc's to gain card advantage, pressure life totals in the early to mid game with our recyclable creatures, then control threats and provide answers with the synergy / value engine we've created until we close out the game by a few possible means.

Having that in mind, Haakon, Stromgald Scourge seems like a natural auto-include to me even before considering other knight synergies. If you can get him into the yard, you can get him onto the battlefield and move him between the two zones by combat, sac outlets, and wraths. Thus, the same applies to Elenda who will all the while be benefiting from Haakon moving between zones this way via power and token generation.

What else do we get with Haakon? Well we have a few things going for us:

1) Knights

2) Knights that are also Vampires

3) Vampires that are not also Knight's, but synergize very well with a sac outlet engine and in some cases at instant speed (among other viable sac outlets to be mentioned)

4) Changelings

5) We're in Black and the recent set printings have been incredibly favorable to our desires.

I want to drive the point home here that it is not a productive idea to jam every decent Knight into the shell and call it a day. In the past a Haakon Hidden commander build would not have worked because of the thin running of viable Knight's we have to pick from; but here and now we have a plethora of seemingly great choices and the truth is we only need a small handful of them.

Champion of Dusk - If he hits the board after a decent Elenda reaping, you're in business. If he doesn't, you're probably still in business. This is simply because we're running a fair amount of vampires as is, and each one of them all pull their weight towards our overall strategy.

Hero of Bladehold - Token Generation and creature pump in a deck that asks our opponents if chump blocking, 'favorable' trading, or really just blocking in general will do them any good with Elenda in play. For 4 cmc this card shines here.

Knights of the Black Rose - 5 mana if hefty, but this is repeatable card advantage on a fine body with some life drain that is certainly welcome. If you lose monarch, sac'em and recast'em.

Oathsworn Vampire - This is an on tribal reassembling skeleton with draw backs (and typing advantages). Even without Haakon, you'll find that the incidental life gain you have can move this guy between zones easily.

Puresteel Paladin Considering Elenda is concerned with the strength of her power, Sword of X and Y happens to work really well with what we're doing. We get a sweet +2 boost which translates to 2 more tokens, and we get the evasion and protection that can be a threat when Elenda grows into the two / one hit range. What's more, we have not even talked about the plethora of other equipment and their synergies such as Skullclamp or Blade of the Bloodchief. Puresteel Paladin serves as a source of repeatable card advantage and pseudo mana acceleration that can come back from the graveyard as a presentable body when he needs to.

Crib Swap Haakon players of old, you know what the deal here is. Repeatable casts because they are in fact Knights. Great target for Entomb and similar tutors.

Nameless Inversion Similar to the above but with some added technology. Sure, we can use it to kill some of our opponent's threats, but we can also use it to bury our own Elenda while boosting her power for even more tokens! Very spicy when facing down a Path to Exile or similar and Elenda is in Nameless range for one or two casts.

I've included some other knights in the maybeboard, but for the most part I'm satisfied with our core selection. Let's talk about specifics and spicy technology in the panel below

Click for Knowledge!

Getting Haakon into the Grave Show

Buried Alive - Pretty straightforward, grab Haakon and two friends and go nuts.

Entomb - Get's Haakon, get's Knights, gets Vampires, and gets your changelings too!

Final Parting - 5 mana but two tutors for any card type. Can set up Haakon but is otherwise incredibly flexible.

Corpse Connoisseur - I'm actually iffy on this one but I won't say no to more redundancy.

Land Tax - If Haakon is in your opening hand, Land Tax can help you bin him at discard phase. I should mention here that because there is a reliance on discarding Haakon in some situations, I will not be running Necropotence. Feel free to run it if you want, it shouldn't make too much of a difference but I'm fully committing to Haakon and this is just another card that doesn't do it for me.

Scroll Rack - Again, if Haakon ends up in your hand, tuck him under with the Rack and bin him with an Entomb effect or just shuffle him away for another day with any tutor.

Orzhov Basilica Similar to the Land Tax line, a Haakon in your hand at the start of the game can be binned by a t2 Basilica with no other action.

Pull from Eternity This card serves as a backup incase Haakon gets exiled by Rest in Peace effects or cards similar to Swords to Plowshares, but if you happen to lose him in exile face up for any reason, this card will get him where he needs to be.

Slate of Ancestry Not only is this card absolutely bonkers post Elenda death trigger, but you can use it with just a fair amount of creatures on the board, too. This is especially relevant if Haakon is currently sitting in your hand, or even if he's already in the bin and you're sitting on some Knight's will do just as much good in the graveyard

Haunted Dead - I'm not running it, but it is something I considered and I think it's worth mentioning here in case it interests you. This makes the mention of zombies so far in this primer somewhere around 3. While I'm not suggesting that we're going Triple Tribal with Knights, Vampires, and Zombies - I will say that Gravecrawler is starting to look tempting...

Equipments, Staples and weird picks: Show

Possible Wrath Includes Show

Card Draw Show

Spot Removal Show

Tutor Package: Show

Misc: Sac outlets, repeatable non-knights, and high-value / synergy cards Show

Sac Outlets

Viscera Seer - At 1 cmc, its a no mana instant speed sac outlet thats Vampire Tribal for Champion of Dusk card draw.

Indulgent Aristocrat - Instant Speed, 2 mana, but nets your Elenda 2 power per use. Not bad for 1 cmc.

Ashnod's Altar - Instant speed, accelerates our mana

Phyrexian Altar - Not running it but still a worthy mention and possible inclusion for some of you.

Phyrexian Tower

Ayli, The Eternal

Bontu the Glorified

Attrition Can be bad synergy if Grave Pact is also on the board.

Sadistic Hypnotist Even though this sac outlet is sorcery speed, this card will mainly serve to close out the game when we've hit a critical mass of creatures on the board.

Repeatable Non Knights

I think having a handful of these reliable and notorious graveyard inhabitants serves any sacrifice strategy well. So I've included some picks I think should serve well as all stars in terms of repeatable creature sources and bodies for Swords of X and Y.

Bloodghast

Reassembling Skeleton

Nether Traitor

Gravecrawler

Bloodsoaked Champion

Value / Utility Cards

Sun Titan

Sigarda's Aid We're running enough equipments and some choice aura's to make this 1 drop an viable option

Sadistic Glee is functionally a weaker Blade of the Bloodchief, but still serves its role well for only 1 cmc.

Gift of Immortality Self Explanatory

Grave Pact I'm only running one Grave Pact effect because I don't feel like I need more than just the one. Also, our other 3 options of Dictate of Erebos, Martyr's Bond, and Butcher of Malakir are way tooexpensive and don't do enough in this build to justify their higher costs.

Tombstone Stairwell I have yet to see this card in any Elenda builds. Why not!? This enchantment is so powerful with Elenda - tokens to use on each upkeep? They self destruct on each endstep? Based on the creature's in our yard alone Elenda would grow to enormous proportions! The cumulative cost is negligible consider we don't need it around for more than a few turns to get the most out of it, and we can get it back again if we really want using...

Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed This guy was a house in my Athreos build, and he's still crazy good here. Connects with Swords of X and Y, gets back any black card from spot removal to board wipes to Tombstone Stairwell; the list is vast. You get a counter on Elenda for added effect and you can get him back via Sword of Light and Shadow or Nim Deathmantle.

Closing and Deck Philosophy

Click for conclusion!

I'm very excited to finally be playing Haakon in a sweet and synergistic Knight build, but did not really see the deck come together until I considered running both the Knights and Vampires as one 'unified' tribe. The deck plays very smoothly and the consistency of playable hands is pretty good in most draws (even sometimes when Haakon is in your starting hand). The goal for this build was not foremost to utterly crush your opponents, but more so to play out some sweet tribal synergies between two clans that you would typically not expect. That being said, you have three typical options to close out a game

1) Control the board with wraths, build up with Haakon and go for beats, rinse and repeat as needed.

2) Get a critical mass of creatures, Sadistically Hypnotize your opponents' hands into nothing and go for beats.

3) Get a critical mass of creatures, turn those creatures into mana with Ashnod's Altar, and Debt to the Deathless your opponents for enough. You could try substituting for Torment of Hailfire, but then you'd have to worry about other token decks (Slimefoot seems to be popular as of this writing for example). This is yet another reason to go slim on Grave Pact effects.

Updates

Testing and Revisions

More stuff!

I have a few other fun casual orzhov builds

Ivory Doom: Ayli and the Clerics of Dominaria

Commander / EDH* Gwent

SCORE: 40 | 31 COMMENTS | 4452 VIEWS | IN 30 FOLDERS

Divergent Athreos: The Bouncer at Club Erebos

Commander / EDH* Gwent

SCORE: 85 | 44 COMMENTS | 9857 VIEWS | IN 34 FOLDERS

I enjoy Pauper EDH as well;

Marine Biology & The Benthic Zone

Pauper EDH* Gwent

SCORE: 1 | 1 COMMENT | 55 VIEWS

Future Guides

As I said in the start of the guide, there were A LOT of knights that in general I like as cards, but I feel just didn't fit in this build. That's okay, because many of them will be making an appearance in my (hopefully) next upcoming guide for Aryel, Knight of Windgrace, so if you enjoyed this write up and want more Orzhov goodness, consider keeping an eye out for that.

I'm also working on another Ayli, The Eternal build focused mainly around Martyr of Sands and several Pauper EDH builds such as Tatyova, Benthic Druid Peregrine Drake Combo, Garna, the Bloodflame Rakdos Songs Combo, Obelisk Spikder Gond combo, Tiana, Ship's Caretaker Boros Card Advantage, Disciple of Deceit Retraction Helix combo, and Hallar, the Firefletcher, Gond and Kicker Control.

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Revision 6 See all

(6 years ago)

+1	Bitterblossom	maybe
+1	Necrotic Sliver	main
+1	Sigarda's Aid	maybe

Top Ranked	Achieved #5 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.69
Tokens	City's Blessing, Shapeshifter 1/1 C, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 C, The Monarch, Vampire 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Haste
Folders	Deck Research, Interest, Interesting Commander Decks, Funny
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