B/W Haakon Tribal

[lostgenius]

While I am not new to running either tribal knights, or legacy, I am new to building a competitive legacy deck. So, with that being said, here is my first "attempt", after a good bit of research, at a semi-competitive knight deck:

UPDATED 7/16:


Creatures x17
3x Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
3x Knight of Meadowgrain
3x Knight of the White Orchid
3x Mirran Crusader
4x Knight Exemplar
1x Phyrexian Metamorph

Instant/Sorcery x17
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Wrath of God
1x Damnation
3x Nameless Inversion
4x Entomb
4x Cabal Therapy

Artifacts x2
2x Aether Vial
1x Umezawa's Jitte

Planeswalker x2
2x Liliana of the Veil

Lands x21
4x Marsh Flats
4x Isolated Chapel
4x Godless Shrine
5x Plains
4x Swamp

Sideboard
3x Order of the Sacred Torch
3x Stromgald Cabal


I really would like to stick with B/W, especially for Haakon. Yes, my knights are white, except for him and Stromgald Cabal. I have thought about adding Black Knight, and Stillmoon Cavalier, but I have found that Stillmoon becomes to cost heavy as you want to pump him up, but the fact that he is Black and White makes him a great card to play as he won't be susceptible to mana color screw.

One choice that I have noticed in others' decks is a lack of Lion's Eye. Why is this? I would imagine it to be a great card, yes you lose a land or 2, and your instant/sorcery, but with Nameless Inversion, you don't completely lose removals either. And yes, you are technically top-decking after you cast it, but, unless there is graveyard hate, you still have a good bit of a hand. I imagine playing it on say turn two or three, after I have a mana base established, then going to town:

Turn 3:
Cast: Lion's Eye Diamond
Pop Lion's ability
Cast: Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Cast: Random 3CMC knight

Another card I think would have a lot of synergy with the deck is Liliana of the Veil. I don't mind discarding since my hand size remains intact, but I ruin my opponent's. Also, it's another way to get Haakon out.

My meta does not really play Wasteland, or other non-basic land removal, so I'm not worried about what lands I play, but suggestions of better lands is appreciated.

Aether Vial is for ramp and to cheat Haakon into play.

All suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Thank you for the help.

PS - I'm new here, so hi all! I read the rules, but if I did anything incorrect, please correct me! Thanks!

[Birkardo]

Check out:

Mercenary Knight
Crib Swap
Aether Vial

[lostgenius]

Mercenary Knight - Great card, I am going to have to find a spot for him. Suggestions on what to change? I'm thinking a 2-of?

Crib Swap - Good card, but I'm not going to play it due to it being 3CMC, and gives them a baby. Nameless Inversion is just so much better and cheaper. Also, I'm already running 4 Swords to Plowshare.

Aether Vial - I'm currently running it as a 2-of.

[Barook]

You need duals. And your curve is way too high.

Your deck lack disruption. Add some discard. Cabal Therapy along with Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek would be a good start.

Considering the amount of first strike your creatures have, some equipment like Jitte would be good, especially with your Crusaders. And while we're at it, why not throw in a single Batterskull and some Stoneforge Mystics?

[lostgenius]

You need duals. And your curve is way too high.

Your deck lack disruption. Add some discard. Cabal Therapy along with Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek would be a good start.

Considering the amount of first strike your creatures have, some equipment like Jitte would be good, especially with your Crusaders. And while we're at it, why not throw in a single Batterskull and some Stoneforge Mystics?

What would you consider removing? A Wrath of God is what I'm looking at. What else? Maybe the Kinsbaile Cavalier? Any preference on the dual lands? While I like Cavern of Souls, I can't bring myself to use more than two, due to running a fair amount of non-creature cards.

[Cero]

The duals Barook is takling about are Scrublands which you can fetch with your Marsh Flats and a budget alternative would be Godless Shrine.
I second the addition of disruption. Without it you'll be shred to pieces by any combo deck, and all suggested cards give you informaton about the opponents hand.
Buried Alive looks rather slow and I'm not sold on Lions Eye Diamond. If you replace the LEDs with Cabal Therapy you still have a way to get a Haakon from your hand into your graveyard by targeting yourself and the benefit of disruption.

[rufus]

At one point I tried to put together a deck list that used Cairn Wanderer in combination with Haakon and graveyard fillers.

Gravecrawler actually works with Hakaon since Haakon is a zombie

[lostgenius]

The duals Barook is takling about are Scrublands which you can fetch with your Marsh Flats and a budget alternative would be Godless Shrine.
I second the addition of disruption. Without it you'll be shred to pieces by any combo deck, and all suggested cards give you informaton about the opponents hand.
Buried Alive looks rather slow and I'm not sold on Lions Eye Diamond. If you replace the LEDs with Cabal Therapy you still have a way to get a Haakon from your hand into your graveyard by targeting yourself and the benefit of disruption.

I updated the deck list to include Godless Shrine, while I'm not too concerned about price, 4x Scrublands is a bit out of my price range. And I know someone that I can trade for the Shrines.

I understand your concern for the LED, but it really does have great early game ramp. I do like Cabal Therapy, but my question lies in the fact is it really that good? I don't have any experience with it, so my question is genuine. I play it on turn 1 after naming a nonland out of my opponent's hand, get it wrong, then if I want to disrupt him/her I have to replay it by sac'ing a creature. Yes, I can get rid of Haakon that way, and do it again, but it seems like a lot of work. At least with LED I can cast him, and possibly another card if I play it right. Don't get me wrong, I agree that I do need disruption, but is Cabal Therapy the way to go?

Gravecrawler -A good card, but since Haakon is my only zombie knight, at the moment, I'm afraid that he will be sitting in the graveyard. On the flip side of things, he does combo well with Cabal Therapy.

[Esper3k]

Fetid Heath feels like you could really use it as a 4-of in this deck since most knights tend to be WW or BB cost.

Cavern of Souls is probably good here too.

[frogger42]

Hi LG, welcome to Legacy!

I'll give you the quick breakdown of the main contenders in the format. There are a ton of 'competitive' decks out there, but really these are the main strategies you'll see in every tournament. Every now and then you'll see another Tier 1.5 deck like Dredge or maybe Life from the Loam place really high, but instead of listing like 10 different strong decks, here's roughly what the top 3 decks boil down to (with a couple examples):

Fast aggro - Zoo (Wild Nacatl and Tarmogoyf), Goblins (Goblin Lackey, Aether Vial and Warren Instigator). Just a lot of dudes who muck up the board and end the game in 3-4 turns. Generally every Legacy deck has to deal with a turn-1 Nacatl or Lackey. Super cheap removal (Swords to Plowshares) is the most common way to zap these. Expect 1 of the top 8 decks to be one of these.

Storm Combo - some decklists include Goblin Charbelcher and High Tide. They derp for a turn or two, then play 10+ spells and win in one turn. Counterspells and Duress effects punish them pretty hard, though they run their own ways to get around these. 1-2 of the top 16 will probably be one of these, and you'll probably have a good chance facing one in any sized tournament - there's always that one Storm guy in a cardshop.

Tempo/ Aggro-control: Almost always Blue (for Force of Will, Daze, other cheap counters) plus another color for their finishers. Typical finishers are Stoneforge Mystic (to get Batterskull), Tarmogoyf, Delver of Secrets, and oddballs like Phyrexian Dreadnaught (with Stifle) and other obscenely low-cost, high-power dudes. Basically they lay a big threat and counter your answers for 2-3 turns, in which case you die without resolving a spell to stop them. It's generally the toughest matchup for most decks, and one of the most brutal decks in a very skilled player's hands. RUG Delver, UR Delver and Merfolk are typical lists. It's the most popular strategy right now, and it's the most consistent winner for who knows how many years - expect at least half of the top 8 decks in any tournament to be these.


It takes a while to call out which strategy your opponent is going for, but right now about 90+% of the top decks go for one of these three. It's probably really frustrating building a deck if you're not familiar with every little interaction in the format, and about 80% of the game is knowing roughly what cards to expect from each strategy/ archetype - that takes years tbh. The format's totally zonkers in terms of what's playable, so don't beat yourself up over crazy losses and go have fun with it!

[lostgenius]

You know, after play testing it on

http://playtest.tappedout.net/bw-haakon-1/

I think you are correct about the Lion's Eye Diamond. Feel free to play test it and tell me what you think, in fact, if you did I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, I'm thinking of more card disruption/discard. How good is Inquisition of Kozelik? Any mid-priced cards you would recommend instead? As great as Thoughtseize is, it's going to be a pain trying to get a hold of it, so what would be a good replacement for the time being?

@frogger42:

Hello! And thank you for the post! That helps out tremendously, especially as to how to build my deck to counter theirs'. I mean, isn't that really how you win? Either create a new deck no one is prepared for, or, one that counters the top tiered decks?

By playing knights, I don't expect to win very much/often. I figure this would be a nice introduction into tournament play, and the cards that I am purchasing can be used/sold/traded fairly easily. I do appreciate the encouragement, and will heed the "have fun" advice! Thanks!

[frogger42]

Yeah, no problem. As long as you enjoy playing your deck, you won't want to sell off/ give away/ rip up your cards, which is tempting given how difficult it is to be any good with the Legacy format.


My two cents on how I'd build this, if you want to go this way:
Your discard effects should be able to hit your own Haakon, just in case Liliana gets countered or something. Inquisition would be perfect for your deck, and Cabal Therapy's even better than that - you'll need to be pretty pro to guess what your card you should name turn 1, though. I'd still run the full 8x of both, they're useful vs almost every deck.

If I were to make this somewhat competitive, I'd probably just go mono-black - I'm not really seeing any strong reason to keep in the white knights. Innocent Blood doesn't really hurt you, and is basically a Swords to Plowshares in this deck. I think that weird black legend with the Grandeur ability is a knight (the pic looks like it) and seems pretty tough to deal with. I forget his name, but it should be easy to search for it - there's only 5 cards with Grandeur. And Gravecrawler still seems pretty good, as long as you run enough Zombie Knights that you don't need Haakon for it to be good. I don't think this deck will beat everything, but you should be able to beat a couple of the top decks with your serious recursion.

[lostgenius]

Ok, I play tested the deck tremendously this evening on Cockatrice. I am pleased with the results, and have to say that you all were absolutely correct about hand disruption. In ALL of the games I played Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, and Liliana of the Veil were the key components that won me games, not to mention Aether Vial was right there with the rest of them, except late game, it tended to be a dead draw. I think as a 2-of, that is the right number for it. As for the discard cards, both Thought and Cabal need to be a 4-of, you all were right. I am not completely convinced on Nameless Inversion, yes it recurred, but I found myself not bothering to recur it until late game most times due to the situation of needed to cast knights or other spells. I am a bit tired to post the results and what decks I went up against, but one type I did not go up against, and I wish I did, was U/X control. No one seemed to be playing any major control this evening, not sure why.

Another thing I tended to notice was that Knight of Meadowgrain kept me alive due to my deck not really popping out until turn 3-6.
Mirran Crusader and Umezawa's Jitte were a powerhouse. Especially with all the green and black that I was going up against.

One last thing before I get to the going, Godless Shrine, while a good card, could easily kill me. On a number of games I ended up losing 5 life to myself on my first turn:

Marsh Flats into Godless Shrine into Thoughtseize

Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how did you adjust so that you don't make you losing easier for your opponent? And yes, after this, I will be investing in Scrubland :laugh:

@frogger:

I have been playing with the idea of going mono-black, I will give it more thought tomorrow. I like the idea, especially since I can get my creatures out quicker. The only problem I have is that Mirran Crusader rapes goyf, Knight of Meadowgrain keeps me alive (but if I am able to come out swinging more aggressively, then this argument becomes void), and Knight of the White Orchid does so much for the ramp department, and is easily recurs due to interaction with Haakon. Especially late game when I am trying to thin out my deck from lands and play the speed game with Green/X decks.

PS - Innocent Blood looks like it's just what I need for this deck. I will try to find a spot for it.

[jhhdk]

Been trying something similar my list included 2 x Anvil of Bogardan + 2 x Chains of Mephistopheles + 4 x Enlightened Tutor.

[Asthereal]

The grandeur black guy is a Zombie Warrior. No luck there...

Taking all into account that was mentioned, perhaps you could try this:

4 Haakon
4 Stromgald Crusader (better than Stillmoon Cavelier, and still a Zombie)
4 Black Knight
3 Mercenary Knight
4 Grave Crawler

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Innocent Blood
3 Nameless Inversion
2 Liliana of the Veil
3 AEther Vial
2 Umezawa's Jitte

19 Swamp (or a few Wastelands, if you can afford them)

This should be a pretty big improvement to the list you started out with.
Only thing I am really missing is a way to gain card advantage without Haakon in the grave. Haakon will get Swords to Plowshared often, and Surgical Extractioned slightly less, but still often enough. If that happens, the deck is in quite a bit of trouble, I'm affraid. Only real option I can come up with is Dark Confidant, but that dude is EXPENSIVE, and he really doesn't fit in with the other creatures at all...

[rufus]

...
Gravecrawler -A good card, but since Haakon is my only zombie knight, at the moment, I'm afraid that he will be sitting in the graveyard. On the flip side of things, he does combo well with Cabal Therapy.

Haakon, Stromgald Scourge seems to be the only recursion engine you've got, so Gravecrawler is no worse than the non-Haakon knights. I tend to think that gravecrawler also helps your curve.

Buried Alive could be an interesting card for you since it's another way to get Haakon into the graveyard, and it's not so harsh on the pocket book.

Stuff like Lingering Souls and Rotting Rats might fit your plan OK, despite not being knights.

[Seraph2k]

Hi! Nice to see my idea still alive ;)
If you need more inspiration for some cardchoices look at my knightsprimer:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20615-PRIMER-Der-Kreuzzug-%28The-Crusade%29-Knights-in-Legacy
Liliana is a nice addition. When I wrote it she was not printed.

Mercenery knight is a house!