Haldan & Pako Mostly Izzet Pupper Artifacts

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

https://deckbox.org/sets/3035352


So this is a new one I threw together because it seemed like a maybe fun way to use my pile of artifact crap (Transmute Artifact, Memory Jar, Grim Monolith, etc.).

Most of the builds of Haldan/Pako I have seen are mostly green and lands focused, but I elected to take advantage of Haldan's ability to use any mana to cast opponents' spells to potentially use infinite colorless mana to go off with other people's decks in a triumphant turn. Taking extra combat steps seems kinda easy mode but I may grab some of those cards if I feel the need, or maybe just Strionic Resonator. I've got a few goodstuff extra turn spells to serve a similar role, allowing me to chain a couple attacks together if needed, but also serving as just ramp spells.

The deck has a few infinite combos but they're pretty er, silly? things like drawing your deck, casting Tezzeret the Seeker, ticking up, taking an extra turn, and then killing them with artifact 5/5s. Not any real simple 3 piece infinite mana combo + outlet combos, instead we're trying to make to make craploads of colorless to fuel Haldan.

The gameplan I hope is to leverage tons of artifact ramp to cast a turn 3 Pako, Arcane Retriever and start fetching and seeing what we get, then hopefully either just keep recasting Pako or protecting him with a very minimum interaction suite (I may add Spell Swindle as another ramping counterspell at some point).

Deck's fairly simple to play and linear and intended to be somewhat limited in power by what my opponents are running, without being an obnoxious threat deck.

Ideally I'll have a pretty sweet collection of nonsense with fetch counters and cast Haldan, Avid Arcanist and go off. Best case scenario one of the fetch things is the missing combo piece for some stupid artifact engine.

There is a very small theme of "cast all my mana rocks and then cast Timetwister" which is maybe questionable but seems like it might be fun :P

I'd be very interested in any ideas as long as they keep it kinda in the same vein.

One thing I am enjoying conceptually so far is that I can probably even fit Grafdigger's Cage in there (although it does shut off Mystic Forge, meh) -- the deck is really, really resilient to the artifact hate cards like Cursed Totem and Torpor Orb as well. All it really does is attack and cast crap from exile.

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weltkrieg
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Post by weltkrieg » 2 years ago

Deck looks fun to play, but a little weak to drannith magistrate. It's all over my meta, so any deck looking to cast cards from places other than hands probably needs 4 or 5 possible ways to deal with him and his ilk. Do you have a way to stop these?

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

weltkrieg wrote:
2 years ago
Deck looks fun to play, but a little weak to drannith magistrate. It's all over my meta, so any deck looking to cast cards from places other than hands probably needs 4 or 5 possible ways to deal with him and his ilk. Do you have a way to stop these?
Oblivion Stone Nevinyrral's Disk Devastation Tide Cyclonic Rift, and counterspells potentially.

I haven't seen a magistrate in like 9 months so not super afraid of it, but I could always add a few kill options. It is definitely a weakness.

That said, I can go over the top of it by Rings of Brighthearth Sensei's Divining Top + infinite mana if needed.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

This deck was very fun. I played two games, won one, lost one.

Game 1 was vs. Kalamax / Beledros / Gitrog. Kalamax went bananas and killed us on turn 6 with remand/omniscience/swarm intelligence combo. The deck did what it did, made turn 3 pako and got some stuf going, but my turn 4 Timetwister got countered and that was the game.

Right after my twister flubbed, Beledros Culling Ritual'd my entire board leaving Kalamax free to do as he pleased, which they admitted afterward was a mistake, since it killed their own Skullclamp. Threat assessment ladies and gentlemen :)

Game 2 was vs. Kalamax, krark/sakashima / Gitrog. I had the absolute nuts of land, 5 mana rocks (crypt) and jeska's will, so cast turn 1 Pako with 4 mana rocks, and basically murdered Kalamax in 3 turns with 18/18 pako.

Critical turn was when Krark/Sakashima mistakenly did not Fierce Guardianship my Demonic Tutor from Gitrog, which I got Nyxbloom Ancient and then cast it that they couldn't counter. When I untapped, I went full bananas.

I was able to kill the table through Krark+sakashima with Fierce Guardianship by casting Gitrog's Autumn's Veil to protect my Grim Monolith which made infinite mana. Then I cast Gitrog's Diabolic Intent, got Timetwister, cast Krark's Twinning Staff, Copy Artifact copied staff, then I twistered into Time Warp which made 4-7 time warps (I counted 7, but 1 was enough:P), cast Tezzeret the Seeker, plussed him, then untapped and murdered everyone with 5/5 artifacts.

--

Deck design wise, I actually think I need about 5-6 more mana rocks and a couple more interactive spells. I'm thinking about Deflecting Swat and Fierce Guardianship both as being likely includes there.

I am thinking I might like Exploration because of how it's basically free with Haldan, Avid Arcanist as people are always exiling lands. I can see why people play this as Lands.dec because being able to just play everyone else's lands is insanely good.

Playing their mana rocks was damn near as good, and it makes me think I might like a cost reducer or two as well - e.g. Etherium Sculptor or similar.

I was thinking that Strionic Resonator might be good, but it feels almost winmore at this point. If you're playing against decent decks, Pako really loads up your "hand."

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Made a few tweaks to this deck recently, adding some tall draw and preemptively prepping my brain for adding Spell Swindle once that shows up. "countermagic that makes mana" is now an official theme :P

The tall draw I added was Prime Speaker Zegana and Return of the Wildspeaker. These seem very good for when I stall out with a huge Pako and he's clunking against chump blockers or similar.

I also need to make room for a couple Chain of Vapor type effects to beat various artifact hate. Might be the best thing to do is add Beast Within and Chaos Warp but I like how Chain of Vapor and Into the Roil interact with protecting Pako so will probably try to slot those in.

I wound up cutting Cyclonic Rift more as a philsophical statement than anything; I don't think this deck much wants to be interacting with stuff outside the bare minimum, and ideally very cheaply. I kept Devastation Tide as my main out for a Collector Ouphe effect but I'm not sure I care that much. Hopefully Pako and Haldan can beat those effects by finding other people's answers at least some of the time :P

I ran out of copies of Fierce Guardianship so I'm just gonna not play it for now and let the deck be kinda fragile and see how that shakes out. I think it's probably fine for the deck to have a bad removal/counter suite as a weakness.

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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

Got to play this deck once today and it was its usual obnoxious self, turn two Pako into turn four table kill off seize the day, prime speaker draw 20 into temporal manipulation.

I wish I could like this deck more. The artifact ramp is just nonsense. It's so swingy and vulnerable to everything. But Pako having haste just fixes so much. This commander pair is just really stupid for how little support they need.

Still I kinda like how mindless it is sometimes. Might merge it with my wanderer deck and maybe just have a big dumb koolaid dog deck?

Exploration in particular is nonsense.

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