Haldan and Pako: Man's Best Friend

[OCPunisher]

This is going to be a tough debate, and I respect the opinions of well-versed people like @pokken. Ultimately, I think it's going to come down to play style, preference, or whatever you want to call it, as both arguments have some merit. But, I'm going to lean towards the side of ramp spells like Farseek over cantrips like Ponder because they're better early and still just fine late, and this deck doesn't have a problem with the late game.

I'm also going to leave Green Sun's Zenith and Deyad Arbor out because the latter is not great except in the ideal case and the former will always have a very limited selection. @ZenN is probably also right about Rampant Growth, just because it doesn't fetch up duals.

That being said, there are now a few extra spots in the deck for more "teeth". Unfortunately, the current state of society means that Bribery probably can't happen right now, but there's more than enough mana for Rite of Replication, and Mythos of Illuna should also be solid. Hmm...

[ZenN]

@OCPunisher Oh, don't fret, @pokken and I are no strangers to disagreeing with each other.

Treachery should be top of the list, if you're looking at ways to steal things.

[Peli]

Not sure if you guys are aware of the Seasons Past kit that is gaining traction for CEDH for Pako.

I originally thought Pako was going to be this unfocused chaos commander, but I was very wrong about that.

I was early to jump on the extra turns cards for Pako, it turns out that with Mystic/Personal Tutor, Time warp/Capture of Jingzhuo/Temporal Manipulation/Time Stretch/Walk the Aeons and Seasons Past that you can take infinite turns. (You can also take infinite turns with Helm of the Host and Timestream Navigator. And both of these cards are inherently solid for the deck.)

I originally didn't think Pako would be immediately seen as a threat at the table. But with him soon to be known as a CEDH commander, he will definitely be looked upon as a threat. You guys should definitely keep that in mind when building him, even if you continue to build him with a highly varied build. People are going to be afraid of him and want to remove him immediately once he reaches CEDH renown.

With a clear concise win condition to work towards, you can really cut some fat and focus down the deck. So as I started cutting things I no longer needed I started tossing in generically good things that protect your strategy- counter spells. I also kept several ways to get extra pako triggers (helm of the host, spark double, sakashima, Strionic) in case I go up against heavy graveyard hate that shuts off the Seasons past loop. With extra triggers I can hit extra turn spells (plus everything else I could need) consistently without use of the graveyard long enough to kill the problematic player turning off my graveyard combo.

My goal is still not to have a CEDH deck. I honestly think I've already pushed this deck too far for casual play. The deck is locking out games consistently on your opponent's turn 5 or 6.

I've put in my deck list. Again, this isn't optimized- because I don't want a CEDH deck, there are things that are fun in here because I am intentionally avoiding powering up the deck further. But Pako is proving to be a competitive CEDH commander with a fairly similar deck list.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/05-05-2 ... 1588879796

[ZenN]

Seasons Past turn loops have been well known for quite some time now, and have in fact been mentioned in this very thread already, and have been in my list from the beginning.

As for cutting other things for counter spells... Huh, it's almost like running efficient interaction to prevent your opponents from shutting you down is a good thing... Who'd have thought?

[Peli]

Seasons Past turn loops have been well known for quite some time now, and have in fact been mentioned in this very thread already, and have been in my list from the beginning.

As for cutting other things for counter spells... Huh, it's almost like running efficient interaction to prevent your opponents from shutting you down is a good thing... Who'd have thought?

Firstly, having interaction so that you don't lose is less important than having the tools you need in the deck to win. Which your deck list utterly lacks.

Your deck list is something like $2000 which is ridiculously expensive while simultaneously being very underwhelming in power or consistency. You have the ultra expensive blue counter spells and no where near enough blue cards to free cast them. The few blue cards that you do have, you can't exile because they are your win condition pieces.

Your likelihood to find ways to win off your opponents decks is much lower than the likelihood of finding interaction. That's been my point from the beginning and it is good advice for building this deck.

Having a clear win condition cleans up the deck list and clears way for interaction slots that you couldn't afford prior.

Also running season's past without running both tutors and at least 3 extra turn spells that go to the graveyard is a waste. Seasons past ONLY matters if you have something in your graveyard that you are willing to pay for at a cost of 7 over its normal cost.

Do don't talk like you are some kind of expert deck builder because your deck list clearly says otherwise.

Warning for flaming - cryo

[pokken]

Do don't talk like you are some kind of expert deck builder because your deck list clearly says otherwise.

I would argue that it's tougher to build a deck that is limited in the right ways to create good games for your playgroup than it is to build an optimized deck

[Peli]

Running a pile of removal and no ways to win, and stalling out the game for 3 hours isn't to most player's preference either.

If anything, that's the reason why many play groups run light on removal. Aggression is fun. 20 minute games then shuffle up and play again.

[OCPunisher]

I've also had Seasons Past in my list since the beginning, although I've said my piece on extra turn loops. I suppose it wouldn't be the worst to try one out in the interest of having another win-condition.

Ideally, I'd love to explore other such loops with something besides a Time Warp, preferably something that has other applications outside of combo. Maybe something like Rude Awakening plus a burn spell? Treacherous Terrain is at least somewhat useful when you aren't going off. Banefire is simple and straight-forward, but not the most efficient or flexible outside of a combo. Expansion // Explosion has some different modes.

Any other ideas, or are they all basically just the same result?

[Ertai Planeswalker]

I'd say that if you're not going to loop infinite and just run Seasons Past for the good card it is, why bother about whether it loops at all? It's a good card on it's own and keeping the deck flexible in how it wins is what draws me to these commanders in the first place. YMMV of course, but if you're going for some form of combo (eg. for the power) aren't there better commanders for that?

[OCPunisher]

Played two more games with this deck today, and the results weren't great. Both games I kept hands with no ramp in them (one had no green sources, probably should have been a mulligan), so I didn't get off to the greatest start. Both games also ended rather abruptly, one by way of a Nim Deathmantle combo, the other by way of Omnath, Locus of Rage playing Warstorm Surge and Scapeshift in the same turn.

I was able to make a couple of observations based on how the games played out:
- Starting the game with at least one piece of acceleration is almost mandatory. This deck's strength is about getting the ball rolling, so not being able to do that is an auto-loss.
- There aren't enough shuffle effects for all of the top-deck manipulation (Scroll Rack, Brainstorm, etc). I've noticed many times where I would play any one of these effects and not be able to shuffle away the garbage cards that I couldn't use, which mostly defeats the purpose of those effects. Scroll Rack is particularly annoying because it locks up the most cards. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is fine enough because of his other modes, but he's very hard to protect.
- Spells that make extra bodies have really been pulling their weight. I stole someone's Stolen Identity today, and aside from a huge flavor win, the effect was just what the doctor ordered. I'll be taking another hard look at Rite of Replication, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and my own copy of Stolen Identity.
- Unfortunately, Sphinx-Bone Wand was not very good today, as it sat in hand rotting the whole time. Perhaps it was the lack of ramp spells, or maybe 7 mana is too much of a startup cost, though I've had great success with Aria of Flame in my Kykar list (sig below).

Now that Ikoria and C20 are finally available in stores, I'm really looking forward to ordering many copies of Shark Typhoon as possible. It's easily my new favorite card, and a textbook example of what this format is all about.

[Slipperygecko]

Thanks for putting this together! I'm working on a non-optimal pile for Haldanko with whatever is in my binder and it looks like potential for fun games so far.

What are your thoughts on Hadana's Climb? Seems like it would be easy to trigger (given Pako gets counters easily) and can add the backup plan of commander damage / evasion. Treasure Nabber can be a fun flavour card, and depending on meta can get you a decent amount of mana rocks.

My experience with Sphinx-Bone Wand has been that it's just too high CMC to get going, unless there's a degenerate amount of ramp backing it, but then with that much mana available may as well look at game-ending threats vs ones that take a while to get going.

Oh also with Spark Double does that add to the existing pile of "fetches", or create a separate one? Seems like a good way to get a bunch of Pakos. Drop Rite of Replication on the double and then we have 5 non-legendary Pakos and one legendary. Wonderfully ridonkulous plays.

[OCPunisher]

You're probably right about the Wand. Oddly enough, I've had great success with Aria of Flame in other decks, but that's probably due to your point about the difference in casting cost.

I think that multiple non-legendary copies of Pako work together, as Haldan just requires the card to be exiled "with a fetch counter", so it probably doesn't matter which copy of Pako fetched it, just like it wouldn't matter if Pako fetched, then died, then got recast and fetched again.

Hadana's Climb would probably trigger after just one turn, but I'm not sure I would really want the payoff. Pako doesn't need help getting any bigger, and there are already plenty of cheap, efficient ways to push damage through, and there aren't exactly a lot of other targets for the Climb to pump up.

[OCPunisher]

Update: did a bit of a fun-ectomy on this deck, removing bad cards like the aforementioned Wand (which played just as badly as we thought it would), the flash enablers, and my pet card Sunbird's Invocation.

But, now that I can afford to buy things like Heroic Intervention, and thanks to a great batch of new Core Set cards, there are more fun things to play with!