Hey guys it’s Jordan again. Today I wanted to talk about Dakkon Blackblade.
I have been playing Dakkon for about a year now and I love the deck. Dakkon’s effect is pure trash. An Esper creature that gets power and toughness equal to the number of lands you control…. And that's it! No First Strike, or Trample. For six mana this card is awful, and I love it. I managed to get a Beckett 8.5 Dakkon from Legends and his origin comic and got really into him as a character. I originally built Dakkon as a lore deck, progressively making it stronger as new cards came out, but still keeping the story intact.
To start with the above three were auto-includes. Years ago, I had a friend who had a legacy Korlash deck which was my first introduction to the Blackblade legacy. When dominaria came out with the Blackblade as an actual card, I was pumped. In any deck this card is great, But in here it doubles Dakkon’s power. Then War for the Spark came out and we got Gideon Blackblade, Which other than the name has no call backs to any other Blackblade card, but as my goal was story he had to be in the deck.
Next we have the lovers Chromium and Piru. In lore, Dakkon battles this pair, killing Piru and banishing Chromium from the plane. I would love to include both of them but Piru did not exist until Modern Horizons 2 and is, unfortunately, Mardu colors. However Chromium is in the perfect colors for the deck. And having a flash uncounterable 7/7 is great.
As for now thats all of the lore pieces the deck contains. Now let us move on to how we make the deck function. I consider this a Voltron deck that requires no equipment. We are lands matter so we need to ramp and hard. However, without green we have to get creative. So to quote Mitch,
“First up there’s Wayfarer’s Bauble.”
It is slow but good ramp, and we have ways to recur it. We can also use it as a combat trick to give Dakkon a boost, a neat trick to keep in mind with this deck that most players don't see coming.
Sad Robot and Kor Cartographer enter the battlefield and get us a land. Solemn also has that card draw ability. Dreamscape Artist, Myriad Landscape, Burnished Hart get 2 lands off each activation and we can reuse each of them in this deck. Dreamscape Artist is good because it can fuel the graveyard for recursion. Next we have card draw cards Landtax, Tithe, Expedition Map, and Weathered Wayfarer all allow us to get extra lands from our deck to hand so we don’t run out of power-ups for Dakkon. I did alot of digging to find these cards, white ramp has been lacking up till now so I got the best of what I had to work with. And on that note, I'd like to talk about Path to Exile. It is more than just a removal spell in this deck, it is also a combat trick we can use to give Dakkon or Korlash a buff by using it on one of our own creatures.
My recursion package is lighter than I'd like, but I feel like it runs well. Academy Ruins allows us to get the Blackblade back from our graveyard. Crucible of Worlds lets us play our fetch lands from our graveyard every turn. So even if we don't draw lands we still get our drop per turn. Brought Back, Second Sunrise, and Sevinne’s Reclamation allow us to crack our fetch lands and get them back on board letting us ramp. Second Sunrise also allows us to survive board wipes. Finally Sun Titan allows us to get a land back every time he swings. It is bad ramp, but still ramp.
Finally for land ramp we have three of the flip lands. Search for Azcanta, Legion’s Landing, Thaumatic Compass. They are permanents thats effects don't really matter, the whole reason we run them is to flip into lands.
To increase my fun I run two clones, Spark Double and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces. So we can have more wielders of the Blackblade on board. In the dream board state we have six Blackblade wielders on board. Which should be game in any stance.
The last thing I want to talk about is four lands. Shizo, Witch’s Clinic, Westvale Abbey, and Urborg. Shizo gives Dakkon Fear, which makes him hard to block allowing us to get that commander damage in. Witch’s Clinic gives him lifelink, Westvale Abbey is a mana sink that becomes an alternate win condition super late in the game. And finally Urborg. The sole purpose of this card is to bring Korlash up to the same power as Dakkon by making everything swamps.
The rest of the deck is just Esper good stuff. I consider this deck tuned - optimized. I'm thinking about a 7-8 power level. I have had a lot of fun playing it. Dakkon has such a great design that I hope they go back to in the future.
But the real reason I'm writing this article is to talk about the new Dakkon cards. So far we have three new cards featuring Dakkon. All three of which will be added to the deck once they come out. The tutor isn't anything amazing. A Demonic Tutor with suspend is not the best. But I love the inclusion of Dakkon flavor text only on the Retro-frame. Blacksmith’s skill is pretty good for protection. Something that could be an include to Feather decks. I'm hoping that because it gives +2/+2 to an artifact creature we get a construct that continues the story of Dakkon. Dakkon, Shadow Slayer has the call back to his creature effect getting loyalty equal to lands. His +2 can help fuel the recursion I already play for lands. The -3 is good removal. And His ultimate lets you get the Blackblade onto board so someone can grab it and smash face with it.
Overall i'm really happy with the new Modern Horizons 2 cards. THey still have about 100 cards to spoil as of this article's writing and I am looking forward to the first in person prerelease we can run since the pandemic.
June 11 and 12 we will be running them,I look forward to seeing everyone there. Until next time.
