Norin, the Wary Norin, the Wary alone? Terrible.

Candlekeep Sage Candlekeep Sage alone? Terrible.

Together? Terror!

For the uninitiated, Norin Norin flickers himself until end step when players do... Almost anything. And Candlekeep Sage Candlekeep Sage on the battlefield draws two cards whenever that happens.

And it's not a fragile engine either. Norin is very difficult to remove Norin is very difficult to remove . This makes Candlekeep Sage Candlekeep Sage the weakpoint, but enchantments are pretty hard to remove, and everything is being protected by an Izzet deck drawing eight cards every turn cycle.

The deck was held beck somewhat by the lack of good win conditions in Izzet colors, but even then, it won about 50% of the games it played. And all of those games were 3v1s against a first-draft version of the deck. It was so good that on multiple occasions, LED LED was used to get the commanders out on turn one, and went completely unpunished.

It's fortunate that Norin/Candlekeep was the first banworthy pairing, since the commanders are individually so innocuous that the "banned as pairing" classification came naturally.

Norin/Candlekeep was first discovered by JaydonAdams on Moxfield, and was in the very first pod of SDH ever played. When it was discovered, the format's creator briefly panicked and worried that SDH really was just "too busted". Ironically, the long, fruitless search for an equally busted deck has been the ultimate reassurance that SDH is more than just a meme. This HoF entry is written a whole nine months after Norin/Candlekeep was found, and to this day, no other deck compares.