Haakon the impossible

Commander / EDH

cybishop

Creature (34)

• 1x Basal Sliver
• 1x Black Knight
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Bog Initiate
• 1x Brass Herald
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Cairn Wanderer
• 1x Corpse Connoisseur
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Cunning Lethemancer
• 1x Dakmor Lancer
• 1x Dauthi Mercenary
• 1x Eastern Paladin
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Erebos's Emissary
• 1x Falkenrath Noble
• 1x Ghostly Changeling
• 1x Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Ihsan's Shade
• 1x Initiates of the Ebon Hand
• 1x Knight of Infamy
• 1x Knight of Stromgald
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Mortician Beetle
• 1x Nirkana Revenant
• 1x Order of the Ebon Hand
• 1x Order of Yawgmoth
• 1x Phyrexian Crusader
• 1x Skeletal Changeling
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Stromgald Cabal
• 1x Stromgald Crusader
• 1x Western Paladin

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana of the Dark Realms

Land (35)

• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Lake of the Dead
• 1x Scrying Sheets
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 30x Snow-Covered Swamp

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Conspiracy
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Nihilistic Glee
• 1x Null Profusion
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Underworld Connections

Artifact (6)

• 1x Ashes of the Fallen
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Extraplanar Lens
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Instant (6)

• 1x Entomb
• 1x Go for the Throat
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Nameless Inversion
• 1x Terror
• 1x Tragic Slip

Sorcery (11)

• 1x All is Dust
• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Delirium Skeins
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Dimir Machinations
• 1x Ill-Gotten Gains
• 1x Increasing Ambition
• 1x Shared Trauma
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Tendrils of Agony

Commander (1)

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Everyone knows that Haakon is a bad commander. It's right there on the card - can't be cast from the command zone. No way to play him.

But... what if? If he could be cast, he would be great. Low cost. Never becomes too expensive to recast, because he can be cast from the graveyard. Then there's the ability. "You may play Knight cards from your graveyard." That's unique. There aren't too many black knights, but there are a few good ones. A few with color-hating abilities like Eastern Paladin , a few weenies with pump effects. Who cares, though? Any creature gets good if you can recur it arbitrarily. Possible combos: Haakon + Basal Sliver + Skeletal Changeling = arbitrarily large storm count and number of triggers for Door of Destinies, Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble, and similar effects. You can also sacrifice creatures to Ashnod's Altar and turn the colorless mana into black with the two Initiates, which make the pumpable Knights arbitrarily large - not infinite, but fairly big.

And remember, black is the color of Conspiracy , and Ashes of the Fallen works here too, so we shouldn't hesitate to include non-Knights if they're good otherwise.

But wait, what are we going to do about Haakon's drawback? We've built a whole deck around him, what's the point if he never leaves the command zone? That depends. If it's a casual group, you can probably come up with a fair and mutually acceptable house rule that makes him usable. Maybe revise rule 903.6: "903.6. At the start of the game, each player puts his or her commander from his or her deck face up into the command zone or the graveyard." Or maybe add a new rule: "Players may discard from their command zone as if it was their hand." Be careful, your friends may find their own ways to abuse those rules. But if you're playing with strangers or your friends don't like the idea of house rules, call Ihsan's Shade your commander. The deck has plenty of ways to tutor up Haakon and put him in the graveyard.

Once access to Haakon is taken care of one way or another, there's tons of potential.

Date added	10 years
Last updated	10 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 27 - 0 Rares 24 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	101
Avg. CMC	3.38
Tokens	Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms