Does K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth deserve a spot in this deck?

KylerStar he probably deserves a place in every black deck but I don’t think I have room for him since there’s already about 20-30 extra cards I want to play I. This deck.

Hi there! This deck is simply great, I’ve tried out the last couple of games and I love it! That said I would like to ask you who is the artist painting your altered card (the Haakon one) as I would like to make a gift for my brother and I think he would love that style. Thanks a lot and keep up the unique deck building

WhaleProfessor thanks very much and I'm glad you're enjoying it! The artist who painted my Haakon is Rocky Alters, but he just announced that he is retiring from altering magic cards. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

FenIsABasicSwamp first of all thank you for your answer. Awww, That's too bad for Rocky, his style really is something! Do you have some other artists you would recommend? I never really explored the card alteration market that much because is way out of my budget, so any info would be amazing! Thanks a lot again

Have you considered using new Feed the Swarm? Considering one of the biggest weaknesses of mono-black - enchantment removal, this card looks like a very serious offcolour spell for mono-black controll. Great deck by the way!

Matrixxx999 thanks for commenting and yes I have considered it but I have 8 monoblack decks and despise being”forced” to include staples or auto-includes because wotc only prints one card that can’t do something. It doesn’t improve the synergy of the deck at all and isn’t an instant so I’d rather not play it. Since this deck is so creature centric because of Haakon I have included Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger As my way to deal with artifacts and enchantments. And with Haakon and Ashes of the Fallen I’ve had games where I’ve cast Ulamog from the graveyard 5+ times to remove all the problem permanents.

I'm a simple man, I see Haakon, I upvote. Spicy list I must say!

Hello again FenIsABasicSwamp. Not sure if you remember me, but I was the one that was building a Haakon deck around the same time you were (a little after). I also had a GoT theme but went more discard. I've been out of the magic scene for a bit but I was coming back to check out your deck because I am trying to revamp my version. I am still amazed at this deck as it truly does everything that I love in Magic. If I could upvote this twice I definitely would. I have some questions for you if that's alright.

1) Why Wasteland over Strip Mine? Why not both?

2) How relevant has Emergence Zone been?

3) Why fetches in a mono-colored deck? I understand filtering, but you only play two and it seems you have a lot of draw.

4) Has K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth earned his place? Also, how do you supplement the lifeloss? I see some lifelink (and he has it as well) but have you ever needed to worry about the life lost from using him? Do you try to win before this is a problem?

5) Is Abhorrent Overlord's ETB make him more attractive than something like Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder or Ghoulcaller Gisa? How badly do you need tokens for fodder?

6) Is Bitterblossom not worthwhile for the Contamination combo? If not, how come? I see Winter Orb in the sideboard so it seems like you may want to lockdown in some cases to ensure the deck gets to the mid-to-late game.

7) I know that Sidisi, Undead Vizier can be a repeatable tutor, but how come you don't play more tutors like Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal or even Increasing Ambition? (Unless money is a factor)? Also, why no Razaketh, the Foulblooded? Especially with the token generation factor.

8) Has Ghirapur Orrery ever backfired and helped an opponent(s) more than it has helped you? Same question for Lifeline and Tombstone Stairwell.

9) Null Profusion is a card I've always meant to try, but the limit of two cards has always deterred me. How has it played for you? Staple? Needed? Just okay?

10) I'm SURE I'm missing something with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, but he seems "off" to me in your list. You have enough draw to not worry about losing life and sacking a creature that can be sacked to other things. What does he bring to this kind of build?

11) Is the dredge from Stinkweed Imp needed? Do you constantly dredge whenever you can or is there a time and place?

12) What are the cards you mainly go for when you transmute Fleshwrither? Is it not easier to replace this with Grim Tutor? Does the fact that he's a creature make him more appealing?

13) Have you ever named zombies with Conspiracy for Cryptbreaker? Do you just use his ability to get you zombies? Is his draw worthwhile even if it seems slow for a non-zombie dedicated deck?

14) Has Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger's cast trigger been enough non-creature removal? I saw the comment about Feed the Swarm so I won't suggest it, but what about Oblivion Stone, All Is Dust, and even Scour from Existence? If they're not needed, how come?

I read your Bio. I understand that your specifically chose not to use some of the cards and combos I've listed here. I hope that my questions come across as curiosity, not "you should do this and do that."

I know I've asked a lot of questions in this on comment, but if you could do me one more thing. Since you like underrated themes and/or commanders would you be willing to take a look at my Rakdos the Defiler deck? He is one I built early in my Magic career, purely for a theme, and without a template. He has become a powerful deck since and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Horror, Carnage, and Annihilation. All are Rakdos..

Hey Pheardemons yeah of course I remember you. I've been wondering how your deck ended up being for you. This is by far one of my favorite decks and the deck I've invested the most time into in the last 3 years. I'm glad you came back to the game.

1) Why Wasteland? You may have noticed that all of the cards in this are German foil for the most part. I has been nearly impossible to get either Wasteland or Strip Mine in German, or foil for that matter. I like the art on EMA Wasteland more than any of the stripmines and it felt appropriately thematic for a character like Haakon, who's epithet being "Stromgald Scourge" suggests he would leave a Wasteland behind his army. Also, rarely does an occasion arise in EDH where I want to destroy a basic over a non-basic anyways, and I recently found an opportunity to get a foil borderless German Wasteland from the new Zendikar set.

2) Emergence Zone is amazing and should be played in all monocolor decks that can sustain one more colorless nonbasic. Also, there's a minor subtheme of lands being playable from the graveyard with Crucible of Worlds in this deck to support the overall discard theme. So the Zone is not necessarily a one-off use.

3) Fetches for the same reason as emergence zone: playing lands from the graveyard and if I get it going with Crucible and Ghirapur Orrery, I can really get some deck thinning going on by pulling lots of swamps out of the library. Why the two that I have and not the others? I don't have German foils of Prismatic Vista, Bloodstained Mire, and Marsh Flats is the easy answer; also theres a point where I worry about reducing the number of overall Swamps in the deck, but maybe that's erroneous since each fetch doubles as a swamp. The other real reason is that I have all the German foil snow-covered swamps and wouldn't have any other use for them if I took them out of this deck for the other fetches.

4) I haven't really gotten to use K'rrik since I put him in the deck. Took a while to source a German one and then get it altered and Corona has severely impacted how much I actually play EDH nowadays. We'll see how impactful the life loss is, but as with all such things you have to strike a balance between your greed to play stuff out with him and putting yourself in a dangerous situation. Lifelink is generally not the way I plan to recover from things like K'rrik, rather cards like Disciple of Bolas and Disciple of Griselbrand are usually more useful for gaining relevant amounts of life back. I rarely find myself attacking unless it's to get a sword trigger.

5)Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder has been in earlier iterations of this deck but his sac trigger from making too many thrulls makes him less attractive unless you can play something like Conspiracy so that he doesn't make thrulls anymore. Abhorrent Overlord is a key piece to generating a massive number of dudes to be sac fodder to an altar to make infinite mana. Since the point is to get to a play where I can just keep sacing and replaying cards from my graveyard with Haakon and Ashes of the Fallen, Overlord does that better than any other card in monoblack.

6)Bitterblossom would serve no valuable purpose other than the Contamination lock and I prefer not to play really "mean" magic like that. Contamination is not usually in the deck but I wanted to try it out because its art seems really fitting for Haakon once again as the Scource of a place. Also, it's a good card for helping a black deck catch up that is playing from way behind "better" decks.

7) Being that this deck hovers between $2-3k, I think it's safe to say that money is not a factor. I generally don't like playing tutors and already play way more in this deck than in a normal one of my decks because it's inherently so handicapped. Razaketh has been in it before and I may put him back in, it's just very easy to win outright with him on the battlefield.

8) Ghirapur Orrery has maybe backfired once on me, it's a careful balancing act. It backfired spectacularly on Justin Parnell in SCG's CMDRVS show. His opponent got a Bojuka Bog on the extra land drop and nuked his graveyard. I never play Lifeline until I'm ready to take advantage of it, and preferably when I have Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet out so that it doesn't work for opponents. Haven't really gotten to use Tombstone Stairwell because of the pandemic.

9) Null Profusion is amazing and underplayed. Play Reliquary Tower or Anvil of Bogardan afterwards and the time stamp of the last card replaces the reduced hand size with infinite hand size and now you just draw cards for every card you play. Works great with Haakon playing cards from your graveyard and Crucible of Worlds doing the same.

10) Yawgmoth is a great extra free sac outlets. Sac outlets are always the most important thing to have in a monoblack deck, especially one's that draw you a card and can potentially be removal too. His proliferate ability lets me immediately ultimate Liliana, Defiant Necromancer often too. He's generally my favorite black creature of all time.

11) Always always dredge Stinkweed Imp. More cards in your graveyard is always the goal for Haakon. The best is dredging him, discarding him to Skirge Familiar, and then drawing again from something else to dredge him again.

12) Creature tutors like Fleshwrither are always more appealing to me in Haakon because I can replay them from the graveyard. Fleshwrither isn't a good card per se, but it is a pet card and also just fantastic and frequently reusable. I can get graveyard hate (Kalitas), ramp (Crypt Ghast), or card draw (Disciple of Bolas) with him so he's very flexible depending on what point in the game I'm at.

13) Conspiracy isn't actually in this deck and Cryptbreaker is here as a discard outlet to help me get Haakon in the graveyard as well as be a infinitely castable creature from the graveyard with Haakon/Ashes out and Phyrexian Altar. That gives me all the draws I could need or infinite Gravestorm for Bitter Ordeal when it's in the deck.

14) I have recast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger probably 5 times in a turn from the graveyard with this deck before. He's amazing and all I've needed. I prefer not to use stuff like Oblivion Stone or All is Dust that a lot of my deck wouldn't dodge as well, and since my wincon is a black enchantment Decaying Soil, I would have few options to recover from it if I was forced to use those. Scour from Existence isn't here because I don't like using over-costed one-off spells. I can tutor for Ulamog and use him repeatedly.

These were good questions and I appreciate you reading my bio and asking questions respectfully. Your manner of asking demonstrates thoughtful consideration of the deck instead of pushy insistence of a different viewpoint. Ultimately there's no "right" way to build an EDH deck, although there are objectively more optimal ways to design them. I have a passing interest in optimization, but am mostly making choices to balance synergy with flavor and a fun play experience.

My Haakon list was fairly slow, but when it worked it was hard to interrupt. My playgroup learned very quickly how to stop it and he became a target. I had him for a little bit before selling 12 EDH decks (including Haakon) because I was in college at the time and keeping up with 15+ decks was too time consuming and too much money. I always meant to come back to him and now is the time.

Because I have been out of the Magic scene, I have been trying to research new cards and potential combos. When I found Netherborn Altar I knew I wanted to get back to Haakon since there is more than one way to get him out now. I remembered your deck so I came back to check it out. Still love it. Thanks for answering all of my questions. I've been debating on starting from scratch which is why I asked so many. A couple more for you before I start rebuilding or tweaking.

Is Blood Artist (or similar Zulaport Cutthroat and Bastion of Remembrance) too easy?

Because you play Thespian's Stage and Crucible of Worlds, why no Dark Depths? I think you played it in one of the first iterations if I remember correctly.

Why did you choose not to play cards like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire? You play a lot of mana ramp in the deck and these could be an alternate win condition against gravehate.

Viscera Seer? Do you have enough sac outlets?

Playstyle questions. Since you took out Conspiracy, is it difficult to get the loop with Haakon and Ashes of the Fallen? Does the deck stall out if you don't get it?

What do you do in the event of early gravehate?

Thanks for answering these again, man. Great to talk to someone who plays one of my favorite commanders/cards in all of Magic.

I definitely understand trying to find non-english version of cards. One of my pioneer decks I have been trying to get Japanese foils but Covid makes that so damn difficult.

Thoughts on the new Campfire for a third way to put Haakon into your hand?

Hate it. Putting my graveyard into my library sounds like undoing a ton of work. The deck should be more or less fine without Haakon. He’s just a fun twist to get out.

Thoughts on Tomb Fortress in the new Warhammer 40k Set?

Almost forgot about Living Death and The Golden Throne

TanglyTree Living Death is in the deck, the land you mentioned is too slow and I really want mostly swamps in the deck. There’s already almost too many nonbasics. And the artifact is cute but I’m not losing the game intentionally and phyrexian altar is just way more flexible and useful. Thanks for the suggestions! I’m also not really looking to add too many new cards to this deck. Too many cards coming out to keep up with and I have 8+ monoblack EDH decks.

Hey sir, I thought you would be interested in an update (not sure how long ago) but Ashes of the Fallen apparently does NOT work with Haakon. Link Here for rulings.

I'm not the greatest with formatting here, so in case that hyperlink doesn't work, here's the link you can copy and paste. Good news though, simply replace it with Maskwood Nexus.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/xy3yr8/psa_ashes_of_the_fallen_does_not_work_with_haakon/

Thanks for the pointer Pheardemons. TBC Ashes has always worked with Haakon until a recent rules update that changed his oracle text from “play knight cards” to “cast knight spells”. This is a semantical shitty change for WotC to have made but is a minor annoyance since Maskwood Nexus can easily replace Ashes. Bummer for my altered Ashes but not the end of the world.

One with Nothing I see it in your maybe board. If you want to run it for flavor I respect that but what immediately comes to mind in a mono colored graveyard strategy is... Null Brooch. Sure it's more than 1 mana but it's a repeatable Negate in mono black.

Dark Deal is a black Windfall. Another Ill-Gotten Gains type effect.