Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis!

Hogaak is a seven mana 8/8 who can’t be cast by using mana and must be cast by using Convoke or Delve and Hogaak can be cast from our graveyard and it has trample.

Hogaak, once the scourge of the Modern format, has now become a neat bulk rare for us to use as a Commander. Having a self mill strategy is the straightforward way to go with Hogaak, but since we can cast Hogaak from our graveyard, we can also make use of sacrifice strategies to great effect.

Our goal is to have ways to get Hogaak into play quickly and relatively cheaply and then sacrifice Hogaak in order to make use of a powerful and recursive creature.

The first thing we need to do is to get both a ton of cards into the graveyard for Delve as well as some cheap creatures in play for Convoke.

Stinkweed Imp is a way to get a ton of cards into the graveyard since it has Dredge 5, which puts a decent number of cards into the graveyard. Golgari Grave-Troll is another great way to get a ton of cards into the graveyard since it has Dredge 6, though Stinkweed Imp has utility being in play since it can block a decent sized creature to kill it.

Stitcher’s Supplier is also a consistent way to get a decent number of cards into the graveyard since when it enters or dies we mill three cards while also being a cheap creature we can use to Convoke Hogaak into play.

Satyr Wayfinder puts a land in our hand while three other cards into the graveyard, Grisly Salvage looks at the top five and puts a creature or land into our hand and the rest into the graveyard, and Aftermath Analyst mills three cards and we can sacrifice it to get any milled lands onto the battlefield.

If we want a way to make use of some of the milled cards in our graveyard, Six can be an effective way to do so since it mills three cards and we can put a land milled among them into our hand and as long as it’s our turn we can cast permanent spells in our graveyard via Retrace.

Now that we have some ways to get Hogaak into play, we need to find ways to make use of Hogaak’s recursive ability.

Greater Good is such an example, since we can sacrifice Hogaak to draw eight cards and discard three, which we can use to Delve away if we are short on creatures, or if we have already Convoked our creatures.

If we want a way to get nearly any creature into play from our library then we can use Birthing Ritual to look at the top seven cards of our library and sacrifice Hogaak to get any creature with mana value of eight or less into play at the beginning of our end step.

We can make use of the fact that Hogaak is seven mana, we can use Illuminor Szeras to sacrifice Hogaak to get seven black mana or even being able to cast Sacrifice to be a massive ritual to get seven black mana for sacrificing Hogaak.

There is also a way to get a ton of creatures into play to help Convoke Hogaak by using Carrion which requires us to sacrifice a creature to cast and makes X number of 0/1 black Insect (formerly Maggot) tokens into play with X being the sacrificed creature’s power, which means we can get at least one additional casting of Hogaak from our graveyard.

If we want larger creatures in play we can use Ghoulcaller Gisa to sacrifice Hogaak to make X 2/2 black Zombie tokens, also with X being the sacrificed creatures power.

Danse Macabre is also a way to make use of the fact that Hogaak is a creature with high power and toughness since it is an edict that has every player sacrifice a creature and we can add the toughness of the creature we sacrificed to a d20 roll to bring either one creature that died this way if we rolled a 1-14 or bring back two creatures sacrificed this way if we rolled a 15 or higher. With Hogaak’s 8 toughness, we can guarantee a double reanimate with a roll of 7 or higher, which if my math is right is a 70 percent chance in our favor.

Now that we can have a fairly consistent way to get Hogaak into play and some ways to make use of sacrificing Hogaak, we need some payoffs.

Insidious Roots can be an engine that allows us to get a ton of Plant tokens into play whenever Hogakk leaves the graveyard or we have a creature card leave the graveyard to get Hogaak into play from the Command Zone so we can have bodies that get bigger and more to Convoke Hogaak into play.

Desecrated Tomb makes 1/1 Bat tokens with flying whenever one or more creature cards leave the graveyard, Skeleton Crew makes a Skeleton Pirate token while also being an anthem for them, and Chalk Outline makes a Detective token and also investigates for us.

If we want some ways to get damage going then we can use Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to sacrifice Hogaak in order to have each of our opponents lose life equal to Hogaak’s power, Syr Konrad, the Grim to deal 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature dies or a creature card enters the graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield or leaves the graveyard, and Soul Enervation to have each opponent lose 1 life and us gain 1 life whenever a creature leaves the battlefield.

If we have a lot of ways to get Hogaak into play, then we can use Altar of Dementia to mill an opponent by sacrificing Hogaak, which we can combine with Syr Konrad in order to also deal a massive amount of damage since it looks at all creatures dying or going/leaving a graveyard.

Hogaak is an Commander that serves as the engine piece in order to get a ton of value off of it. The trouble can come from having no creatures in play or no cards in the graveyard due to board wipes and graveyard removal, which does make Hogaak a lot more difficult to get working.

It also doesn’t help that Hogaak also needs a lot of pieces to get going, which means that you can fall behind very easily if you are consistently being interacted with. While it can be difficult to work effectively, I still think Hogaak is worth a shot trying out.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow on the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual