A Secret Commander
Welcome to Mono Black Combo on a budget! The main thrust of this deck is going to be centered around utilizing an strange card from Cold Snap, Haakon, Stromgald Scourge. This is primarily a graveyard-based combo, seeking to create infinite numbers of things and therefore winning the game. Without Haakon and a few other key cards, we’ll likely be fairly toast and be forced to play a fairly poor aggro game until we fizzle out. We do have some protection against disruption, but our main goal will be to play possum politically speaking by having Haakon be our secret commander.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier was specifically chosen as our commander feint though. The ability to tutor from the command zone plays an important role in grabbing combo pieces when we’re stuck. Sidisi also allows us to bypass the necessity of running Command Beacon, since that would be the only way to get Haakon out of the command zone were we to run him as the commander. The primary reason for this is budgetary concerns—we’re trying to duck under the $50.00 mark with this build, and Command Beacon is mighty expensive. The deck could still be built for $50 with Command Beacon, but we wouldn’t be able to have as much liberty to include what we want building in that direction.
The Combo
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Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
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Ashes of the Fallen or Conspiracy
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Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker, or Memnite
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Sac Outlet.
The combo is simple: Haakon allows you to play Knight cards from your graveyard. Ashes of the Fallen and Conspiracy make all your creature cards in your graveyard into Knights. Ornithopter and co. cost {0} to cast. In conclusion, infinite casting things; infinite CIP triggers; infinite LP triggers; infinite sac effects; infinite mana; infinite draw; INFINITE INFINITE. Our hinge pin is Haakon—without Haakon, nothing works, so he needs to be protected at all costs. We have lots of repeatable sac outlets (and could always add in more, if we wanted). We have multiple 0-CMC artifact creatures (the only one missing is Shield Sphere, but apparently we can’t have nice things). We even have two Knight-shifting cards. There’s only one Haakon.
Ideally, you only need four cards and an opening in somebody’s defenses. Six of the eight listed sac outlets go infinite power/toughness, killing an opponent in one strike. But you’ll notice I don’t consider these win conditions. To be absolutely certain of your victory, you’ll likely need one more card.
One More Card
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Blasting Station is a OHKO. It counts as a sac outlet and a win condition wrapped up in a nice bow. It’s everything we want in this deck, so I made space for it. Hopefully it won’t become priced out by the market.
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Infinite mana: Pawn of Ulamog, Pitiless Plunderer, and Sifter of Skulls all create infinite mana. With infinite mana, there should be a pretty good chance you can finish out the game through a deck search card. Pawn and Sifter only create colorless mana though, so it’ll be important to keep track of what colored mana you’ll need to close out the game.
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Infinite damage: Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble, and Marionette Master all interact with our 0-CMC creatures dying for infinite damage. By not requiring combat, this is the best actual way to win outside of Blasting Station. If you get one of these out, it’s goodbye sayonara see you later.
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Infinite creatures: Desecrated Tomb and Open the Graves are weaker win conditions, due to requiring combat, but possibly necessary. We want our opponents to believe we are innocuous or weak right up until we win. If you think you are in trouble of being found out before that point, consider shifting over to utilizing these cards. They can help craft an image that you’re just trying to build synergy with Sidisi. Don’t be fooled though, they’re still capable of making the final touchdown.
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Infinite card draw: why isn’t Smothering Abomination more expensive? I feel like it can fit into a ton of different decks, and for us it’ll allow us the opportunity to draw our whole deck until we can win.
Further Deck Options
We have some additional deck searching options, particularly Behold the Beyond which can pretty much grab our whole combo in one swoop. Shred Memory here can play double duty by either grabbing Ashes of the Fallen or disrupting somebody else’s graveyard plans. There are a handful of regular card draw options in case deck search is too much of a tell at the table.
Graveyard protection and other support will be important at the crux of the game to stop somebody from stopping you. Most of these cards seek to return cards in your graveyard back to your hand or straight into your library where we can search them up again via Sidisi. Take care in having one available. Shimmer Myr is probably the most important card, since it’ll allow you to hold priority and do infinite things. Too bad Vedalken Orrery is a $20 card.
And finally, in order to fully cover your tracks, there are three creatures included as “sac targets” which can return from the graveyard on their own for a small amount of mana. They are there to play around with Sidisi until GG.
There are tons of other available options for this build, and it really just depends on your preference. For example, it’s possible Tendrils of Agony is a better include than some other win condition, but the budget was close enough that I settled on Marionette Master instead. The removal suite is up to the player—these are just some of the fairly good ones I generally use in mono-Black (Nameless Inversion plays very well with Haakon though!). Colorless destroy/exile effects might be good to use in case you’re up against a lot of enchantment-based decks. If you have any suggestions, I’m happy to discuss.
