Legends Legends - Halfdane

Hello again, and welcome to Legends Legends, our weekly delve into a land before time, a world where Greed and Underworld Dreams were new and most creatures were unplayable. This week, we've built a Commander deck around one of the more playable legends of the time, Halfdane.

General Thoughts

Halfdane features in two of the Legends novels, where he worked with Ramses Overdark, fought, killed and impersonated Barktooth Warbeard, and eventually fell to Tor Wauki and Ayesha Tanaka.

Halfdane is an Esper-aligned four-mana 3/3 with a unique ability: at the beginning of your upkeep, Halfdane's power and toughness can become equal to the power and toughness of another target creature. The simplest way to benefit from this ability involves playing a ton of our own huge creatures and effectively doubling the total power we put down on the board with a single spell.

Making Halfdane feel like WholeDane is easy as pie in this Esper Commander deck that's sure to appeal to the Timmys out there!

Halfdane's Other Halves

Halfdane got his name from "the people who found him," who he killed immediately because he did not want to be known as "half" of anything. In order to make Halfdane whole, he just needs another creature's power and toughness. We've stocked this deck full of creatures with big stats that our measly little four-mana commander can take advantage of. Since Dane only cares about the creature's stats, we're focusing entirely on big damage-dealers.

Since Dane's ability triggers during our upkeep, we need a copyable creature on the field along with Halfdane before our turn starts. If we can stick our Leyline of Anticipation to the field, we can save our creatures until the previous players' end step, casting them with flash so that 'Dane can target them at the beginning of our turn.

One of our best early plays is The Ancient One, which puts an 8/8 onto the field for Halfdane to copy as soon as the turn comes back around to us. 'Dane can also take on the form of Phyrexian Soulgorger. Since its cumulative upkeep effect is optional, we can place the effects on the stack in such an order that Halfdane can become an 8/8 before we lose our Soulgorger since we typically won't be sacrificing creatures to keep it around. 

One of my favorite ways to run the 'Dane is alongside a traditionally garbage creature, like Crumbling Colossus. Without the sacrificial triggered effect, Halfdane can swing in each turn with the Colossus's 7 power. 

A few of our large creatures generate "some" value alongside their huge bodies. I say "some" because cards like Ancient Silver Dragon and Clackbridge Troll are hardly invaluable.

The newest and most exciting creature for Halfdane to copy is Duskmourn's The Mindskinner. Besides its huge power, The Mindskinner turns all those big hits into milled cards. Rather than doubling down on the mill theme, we're mostly using this milling effect as an alternate win condition versus life gain decks.

Finally, our largest selection of large creatures are our Eldrazi. These titans of the void are known for their powerful bodies, if not their powerful effects as well. The only named Eldrazi we're running is Kozilek, the Great Distortion. Its 12/12 statline is perfect for Halfdane to copy, and its activated ability can protect our commander (and itself) from removal.

Other classics, like Artisan of Kozilek, Desolation Twin and Breaker of Armies, are also here to give 'Dane more targets for his effect, and Flayer of Loyalties can both remove a creature from an opponent's board and create another 10/10 for 'Dane to copy. 

Halfdane's Other Other Halves

Halfdane's halfway to being a Clone, but we can close the gap with some actual cloning cards. These extra clones let us copy the best statlines from our opponents' battlefields before we remove them. This keeps your opponent's juicy Razaketh, the Foulblooded and its 8/8 power/toughness on the field under your control, allowing 'Dane to continuously trigger and become an 8/8 every turn.

We're running six total cloners in this Halfdane Commander deck. Each serves a slightly different situation: Evil Twin is great for copying and removing an opponent's commander over and over, while Dimir Doppelganger makes for our best graveyard hate. Clever Impersonator is great for swiping those Court of Bountys and Sneak Attacks from your opponents, and Gigantoplasm's activated ability lets us make Halfdane as big as possible.

As far as noncreature cloning go, we're running the classic Rite of Replication plus Elminster's Simulacrum. If we just need to copy a creature's power, perhaps at instant speed after blockers have been declared, we'll use Shadowmoor's Mirrorweave. 

Halfing All The Fun

Your opponents will only have "half" the fun they should while you're "halfing" the most fun! (Sorry) Protecting Halfdane is paramount to our victory since we plan to make him as big as possible every turn and swing in for a commander damage kill. With six counterspells, Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves, and Whispersilk Cloak, we're hoping to make it nearly impossible to interact with the great 'Dane.

Once we feel our 'Dane is secure, we can start shooting for the commander damage victory. Making 'Dane huge is one thing, but making him unblockable is what really seals the deal. Distortion Strike and Ghostform are useful for sneaking 'Dane past his foes. 

Aqueous Form and Steel of the Godhead are also excellent ways to keep Halfdane too slippery to block.

Format staple Rogue's Passage takes up a slot in our mana base, but we're also running Access Tunnel: since Halfdane is still a 3/3 at the beginning of our upkeep, we can target him with the Tunnel's effect and then copy another creature's qualities for an unblockable monster. Don't forget that these unblockable effects go great on our big Eldrazi, too!

Finally, we're running just about the worst Jace planeswalker they've ever printed, the War of the Spark Starter deck-only Jace, Arcane Strategist, whose +1 ability will almost certainly put a +1/+1 counter on Halfdane each turn. This Jace's ult isn't bad, either; it's just so loudly broadcast it'll be a miracle if we pull it off and get to swing with a full board of unblockable Eldrazi.

Mana Base

Despite his cheap mana cost and the handful of cheap creatures, like The Ancient One, this Halfdane Commander deck is hungry for mana. We'll need to ramp hard and early if we ever want to land our Kozilek, the Great Distortion. To that end, we're running 37 lands and a mighty 12 mana rocks, plus Solemn Simulacrum for good measure. In a pinch, we can always cast a clone as a copy of the Simulacrum to fetch a land, as well.

Strategy

Broadly, our gameplan with this Halfdane Commander deck is to stick Halfdane to the field, copy one of our large creatures (or an opponent's, if they're foolish enough to play them), and then swing in for massive amounts of commander damage. 

With so much ramp, you'll be hard-pressed to find an opening hand without any. Instead, we'll try to keep hands where we can see a line of plays that'll set Halfdane up for success when he arrives. This can either be protection for him in the form of Counterspells and Negates, a great target for copying, like The Ancient One, or something to make him unblockable, like Whispersilk Cloak or Steel of the Godhead.

The first few turns with 'Dane should be spent ramping. Even if we can cast The Ancient One or Yargle, Glutton of Urborg, we should wait until 'Dane's on the field and we've baited out some removal. This is typically when we'll drop a few clones in response to our opponents' early threats.

By the midgame, 'Dane should hit the field and have a moderately sized body to copy. Preferably this is one of our own creatures, but in a pinch, 'Dane's ability makes any relatively huge threat think twice about swinging at you, lest they're forced to trade their Gigantosaurus with a copy of itself.

Halfdane ends games by simply overwhelming our foes with copies upon copies of the biggest creatures to hit the field. In addition to running our own big threats, our clones can take the worst of our opponents' creatures and turn them into power for Halfdane. All it takes is a little Distortion Strike or Rogue's Passage-ing and Halfdane will be in their face. 

Halfdane Decklist

Budget

This Halfdane Commander deck comes out to about $325. That's got to be on the steeper end of our Legends Legends decks, so let's take a look at some budget replacements we can make.

Quite a bit of our budget is spent on Smothering Tithe and Rhystic Study. Lucky for us, there are two strictly worse options that cost a fraction of the price in the form of Monologue Tax and Mystic Remora, respectively! This is a sweet way to shave $50 off this deck's price easily.

In addition to those two, Ancient Silver Dragon and Flayer of Loyalties are our two most expensive creatures, and it's no surprise as to why. While these two generate a ton of value by themselves before we even bring 'Dane into the picture, we can always just bet on our opponents running something similarly valuable and replace our copies with more Clones.

Wrap Up

Of the 20 three-color rare Legends Legends, Halfdane's been one I've looked forward to the most. It's hard to make an argument for him, considering there are so many other four-mana clones that steal their target's entire text box instead of just their stats, but he holds a special and sinister place in my heart nonetheless.

How would you build around Halfdane? What are the best creatures to run for him to copy? Let me know in the comments, or come harass me on Twitter.

As always, thanks for reading!