Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Halfdane!

Halfdane is a four mana 3/3 that at the beginning of your upkeep you change the power and toughness to the power and toughness of a creature other than Halfdane until the end of your next upkeep.

This is an interesting look at a pseudo Clone effect on a legendary creature that is pretty interesting, and while playing Clones is an idea in where to take the deck, I think that playing more into a group hug/pillow fort strategy would be much more interesting.

The game plan is to get our opponents creatures stronger so that when Halfdane takes their power and toughness they become massive, all the while slowly build Halfdane up to be a difficult to interact with threat and making it difficult for our opponents to deal with us via combat and some control elements.

The first thing we need are our group hug pieces to help our opponents get big creatures into play.

Endbringer’s Revel is a solid way for us to not only bring our creatures back from the graveyard into our hand for four mana, but we can also offer it up to our opponents as an incentive for them to keep us in the game, especially if they are a mill or reanimator player.

We can use something like Secret Rendezvous to help a player that’s behind while also helping us draw three cards, Dakra Mystic to have each player reveal the top card of their library and either mill that card or put it into their owner’s hand, and Keen Duelist to have us and another player reveal the top card of their libraries at the beginning of our upkeep and have the other player take damage equal to the mana value of the revealed card to the opposite player and put that card in our hand.

Clackbridge Troll helps us play on the aggressive side of things as well because it is a five mana 8/8 with trample and haste where when it enters we give a player three 0/1 Goat tokens, and at the beginning of combat on our turn, any of our opponents can sacrifice a creature to tap Clackbridge Troll, have us gain 3 life, and draw a card.

What can also help that play is by using Tempt with Reflections which let’s us create a token copy of say our Clackbridge Troll then have each opponent create a token copy of that creature where when it comes back to us we make a token copy of that creature again for each opponent that did, which helps make blockers for everyone as well as a massive threatening creature that can provide some advantage.

The next thing we need are ways to make sure that we survive for Halfdane to deal the damage we need.

War Tax is a great way for us to play a combat tax effect and be selective about it, because we can pay X and a blue to have creatures unable to attack unless their controller pays X for each attacking creature, while also keeping mana up for any removal spells or counter spells.

Ghostly Prison and Propaganda are also great cards for us to include because they both apply a two mana tax to each creature that attempts to attack us, and having one can be detrimental, but having both in play can be backbreaking for some decks.

When a creature attacks us while Hissing Miasma is in play that creature’s controller loses 1 life, Orim’s Prayer gains us 1 life for each creature that attacks us, and for each creature attacking us when Riddlekeeper is in play that creature’s controller mills two cards.

Norn’s Decree presents an interesting alternative to having an opponent attacking us in having an opponent that attacks us gain a poison counter whenever one or more creatures deal combat damage to us and whenever a player attacks, of one or more players being attacked are poisoned then the attacking player draws a card.

If we happen to be dealing with an opponent that is going to attempt to cast a bunch of spells, we can use Render Silent, which counters a spell and then prevents it’s controller from casting more spells for the rest of the turn, which may buy us a turn or two, especially if we hit at a crucial point for that spell slinger player.

We can also leverage any big spells with something like Split Decision, which targets an instant or sorcery and presents a vote of denial or duplication, which if denial gets more votes then the spell is counterd, but if duplication gets more votes or ties the votes then we can copy the spell, choosing new targets for the copy, which for a massive instant or sorcery can definitely mean winning or losing a game.

Now comes the part where we do what we can to pack Halfdane up with ways to get bigger and harder to interact with to win us the game.

Timely Ward is a great start in making sure that Halfdane stays alive since it gives the enchanted creature indestructible and we can cast it as if it had flash if it target a Commander, which will be often in response to a board wipe or removal that comes our way.

Gift of Doom can be a neat surprise since it has Morph with a Morph cost of sacrificing a creature and when it’s turned face up we can attack it to a creature and it gives the enchanted creature deathtouch and indestructible, which for us dealing a massive amount of damage is quite huge.

Steel of the Godhead is great because if the enchanted creature is white then it gets +1/+1 and lifelink while if the enchanted creature was blue then the creature gets +1/+1 and is unblockable, which helps us potentially get a ton of damage through when Halfdane is massive.

We can be a bit sneaky as well by using Arcanum Wings, which normally gives the enchanted creature flying, but has the unique ability of Aura Swap, which for three mana can switch Arcanum Wings to another Aura in our hand, which can be something as simple as All That Glitters to give the enchanted creature +1/+1 for each artifact and/or enchantment we control or Eldrazi Conscription which gives the enchanted creature +10/+10, trample and annihilator 2 to secure us a win.

While our opponents will likely be making big creatures, we can also have some big creatures of our own, like say a Hunted Horror which is a two mana 7/7 that gives an opponent two 3/3 Centaur tokens with protection from black or The Watcher in the Water which is a five mana 9/9 that enters with nine stun counters, makes a 1/1 Tentacle token whenever we draw a card on an opponents turn, and if a Tentacle we control dies we untap up to one Kraken and put a stun counter on one target nonland permanent.

Halfdane provides an interesting avenue of play of wanting to get big creatures in play in order to copy, but can also pivot to a group hug/pillow fort sort of strategy to help our opponents gain resources and attack each other while we protect ourselves and boost Halfdane to win us the game.

Now the issue that often comes with group hug decks is that we may give our opponents enough ammunition to take us out of the game because we either gave them a really good creature or helped them draw the right cards to break our board or prevent us from establishing our defenses.

We can default Halfdane to copy our own big creatures in order for them to have a way to become a threat, which also leads them to be targets for removal which we can only prevent so much of because our priority is keeping Halfdane around to swing for lethal.

It is an interesting version of a group hug/pillow fort deck that could use some more exploration in my opinion because I think that there is some potential here that I’ve only scratched the surface of.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual