This is obviously just scaffolding for the archive…
1. Create a file at content/blog/archive.md with the following front matter:
---
title: Archive
date: 2017-05-26
description: Whatever description you want, assuming you are using `.Desription` for SEO/metadata/whatever.
type: archive
layout: archive
---
Whatever content you may or may not want to add to the page....
2. Create a layout at layouts/type/archive.html
<ul>
{{ range where .Site.Pages "Type" "blog" }}
<li>{{.Title}}</li>
{{ end }}
</ul>
That should hopefully get you started. Note that .Site.Pages also includes _index.md, which I did intentionally because you said you want that index page to be a “special post.” If you want to remove _index.md pages from the list, use .Site.RegularPages.