K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth - Phyrexian Thug Life

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

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K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth - Phyrexian Thug Life

Additional life gain

Approximate Total Cost:

Giving your life to Phyrexia.Where life is your Resource

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Yes the most important aspect of this deck is your starting life total of 40 life. Which means that you have 19xb at your disposal. That's bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb. It's a very big Dark Ritual from your command zone, but given that you want to be casting lots of spells each turn, you are going to be tearing through this so gaining life is vital.

Let's say you are realistically casting K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth for 4 and {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life, leaving you on 34 life.

The neat thing is that there are a lot of "aristocrats" type effects that allow you to gain life off casting spells.
Extort is an ability that "Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {w/b}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain life equal to the total life lost this way."
If it's a 4 player game, you'll gain 3 life, meaning that you can pay {bp} 2 life instead of spending b, and actually gain a life in doing so.
Our extort cards are Thrull Parasite, Basilica Screecher, Crypt Ghast and Pontiff of Blight.
Pontiff of Blight allows us to stack all our creatures, so if you have say 4 creatures on the battlefield, you can make each opponent loses 4 life and you'll gain 12 life each time you cast a spell. Realistically paying for the black portion of spells that you cast for the rest of the game.
You can see that the concept of the deck scales even better when there are lots of opponents at the table. So if you know you are sitting down at a table with tons of players, make sure you sleeve this one up.

Aetherflux Reservoir is also another card that is going to realistically pay for the life you lose by casting spells in the turn.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Kokusho, the Evening Star are great ways of gaining lots of life and you can go infinite with Chainer, Dementia Master and sacrifice outlet, as you will recover the cost you pay for the 9 life when activating Chainer.

A spicy card with Chancellor of the Dross giving you a 9 life buffer if in your starting hand (4 player), and as another lifelink creature you can potential get precious life gain and remember it might only cost 4 to cast.

Exquisite Blood is the perfect card to gain life for being aggressive with Voltron and other life loss related cards on opponents. You can go infinite with both Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond in play.

Knowledge lies within the "Great Synthesis".Drawing cards

With so much "free" mana at your disposal, making sure that you draw into action cards is essential. The deck has a lot of draw and don't be afraid of getting a low life total to feed this hunger (drawing cards).

There are a lot of enchantments that allow you to draw cards; Arguel's Blood Fast, Phyrexian Arena, Underworld Connections, Necropotence, Phyrexian Etchings, Greed, Twilight Prophet, Erebos, God of the Dead.

With Arguel's Blood Fast and Erebos, God of the Dead you can spend life to ay for the mana portions. Greed with K'rrik can literally be "Pay 4 life: Draw a card".

The other great thing about these enchantments is that you can can get a lot of black devotion on the board for Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
These cards a super powerful in the deck because of K'rrik ability to let you play out tons of black cards onto the board, and he himself gives you 3 black devotions as well. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx will often be netting you a lot of mana during the course of the game.

Vilis, Broker of Blood is a super draw machine with K'rrik.

There are lots of once off draw cards with Sign in Blood, Night's Whisper, Tainted Pact, Infernal Contract, Promise of Power, Ad Nauseam.
You lose a chunk of life, but the deck is able to claw the life back through it's ability to search and draw into your powerful life gainers.

Phyrexian Etchings cumulative upkeep can be paid for in life loss, allowing you exponentially draw cards, plus of course be able to cast for {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life loss with K'rrik ability.

Behold, the Progress Engine.Searching library for key cards

One of the strongest elements of K'rrik as your commander is that tutoring and drawing cards can be done largely without spending mana.
Often the "downside" of cards that allow you to search your library is that the mana cost might mean you have to wait a turn before you get to cast them. With K'rrik Phyrexian mana {bp} ability some of the most powerful tutor effects can be cast for no mana or very little.
Beseech the Queen and Doomsday can be paid for with just life, along with Scheming Symmetry, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor.
Demonic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Praetor's Grasp merely costing you a 1 with life loss.
With numerous combos in the deck you can setup instant win piles with K'rrik being able to cast those spells with life instead.

How do you win?
There are three main combos you can assemble. The main way to win early is through Doomsday.
The go to Doomsday or Insidious Dreams pile is Bolas's Citadel, Aetherflux Reservoir, Haunted Crossroads, Blood Pet. There is a 5th flexible slot, but you can use Zuran Orb for example if you need the life to put the cards into play off Bolas's Citadel if your life total is too low.

You can just keep sacrificing the Blood Pet and putting it on top of library with Haunted Crossroads. The 1 life you pay to cycle this loop is more than made up with the infinite stack of life gain on the Aetherflux Reservoir, and then you death star your opponents with it.

Haunted Crossroads can also be used to keep putting back a Gray Merchant of Asphodel/Kokusho, the Evening Star and if you have a on-board draw ability, with enough cost reduction you can keep casting out.
For example say if you have Jet Medallion and Heartless Summoning, then Gary only costs {bp}{bp} 4 life to cast with K'rrik.
You can also use this trick with Bolas's Citadel and a sacrifice outlet to keep recasting your life drainers for infinite.

Also Insidious Dreams is a sure fire way to setup a win. You can turn your hand into anything you want. With a number of cards allowing you draw the next lot with no mana, like Sign in Blood, Infernal Contract, you can stack the deck how you want.

The Eighth Sphere welds pure energy.Additional mana sources

The deck is designed to cast K'rrik as soon as possible, and honestly casting him on the second turn happens a lot.

To further help with mana costs you can use cards like Bubbling Muck, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Sacrifice to get the mana you need for more expensive cards.
The neat thing is that because you can pay life for them instead, they really do net you more mana than you'd be used to. Bubbling Muck being an example of normally you might have to tap a swamp to cast it, meaning you'd be two mana down, but here we can make sure every swamp gets us value.

With Blood Celebrant you can make 11 black mana immediately (b per 3 life). You could cast Exsanguinate for 9, gaining say 27 life in a 4 player, meaning it costs you nothing.

Leave them to me. I will deal with them myself.Attacking with K'rrik

Another element to the deck is that K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth has lifelink and gains +1/+1 counters each time you cast a black spell. So you can gain a bunch of life through combat.

Shade's Form allow you to get +1/+1 for each {bp} 2 life you pay and then gain at least half of the life back through combat immediately, while also giving you a reanimation effect for protection.

K'rrik if left unchecked will gain life exponentially, by accumulating counters via casting lots of spells and gain massive amounts of life, fueling for casting more spells the Phyrexian mana {bp} way.

It's not super important that your commander actually connects to the opponents face, just gaining the life through blocking is sufficient, but some evasion is nice and Aphotic Wisps and Nighthaze are free rolls by paying life to cast them.
There is also Shizo, Death's Storehouse and you can pay the b part with {bp} 2 life, meaning it doesn't tie up your mana much to potentially get a hit in.



What to expect as far as speed and success

I thought the best way to convey the idea of what happens during games is to do a chart of the likely speed or success of the deck compared to a sort of average tempo for a lot of commander decks, say those that are more casual to focused.
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Tempo of commander decks in general - (red line)
Most decks are designed to steadily progress their game plan, getting more and more traction each turn, even exponentially getting better as the game goes on. This is shown by the red line in the graph.
Sure any deck is capable of getting a first turn Sol Ring and Mana Crypt and doing absurd things, but on average most decks are trying to literally ramp their mana and resources a little bit more each turn. So turn 4 is a little bit more successful than turn 3 was. Then turn 5 is even more successful than turn 4 was as more resources are available to you. You might find that often this will happen through the mid to later game, that is turns 4-9.
If decks haven't won by that stage, then you often find them plateauing or even a drop off in "success" as opponents have been able to thwart and balance out each others plans. If that makes sense, if a player has been able to go fairly unimpeded by turn 10, then they are more likely to just win the game, rather than games stretching out for much longer.

Tempo of K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth - (blue line)
With K'rrik you are almost certain to exploded off the block. You can see this incredible speed through those first turns on this chart with the blue line. You often find that your maximum potential is within the first 5 turns, almost certainly more like turns 2-4.
Often you're casting him on turn 2, and then looking to setup a win between turns 3-6. Now two different things can happen during turns 3-6. Either you win...or your opponents have figured out a way to stop you.

This chart is also trying to show you how as the game goes longer, if you haven't won early then your success rate plummets compared to how other decks might flourish during the same period, especially through turns 6-9.
The main reason for this is actually your life total.
Often you're spending a lot of your life to progress early. The thing is that even if opponents have removal for K'rrik, you are actually able to cast him out again fairly quickly. Maybe even the next turn. But as your life total gets lower, his ability to cast things become a little less appealing, and you might find yourself not even really wanting to cast him out, as you can just cast your spells as normal and losing another 6 life to cast him, just doesn't line up with what else is going on.
If that makes sense his ability to give you incredible gains wanes the longer the game goes, as mana bases are usually already setup by most players during the mid to late game.
Now as I said your life total is really your greatest resource, so once the game progresses to a stage where opponents can actually threaten your life with creature attacks, etc, you'll probably find yourself on the back-foot.
But that's not to say that you can't have a successful game if you've been stopped early. The fact is that the deck actually functions without him in play. All he does is make spells cost cheaper.
But the reason you're on the back-foot through this mid game is that you often get down to dangerous low life, when you've previously "gone for it" and been stopped. Plus opponents are keen to have you dead as you've threatened to end the game before their cup of coffee has cooled enough to drink. Often you become the archenemy, even though they have already thwarted your early plans.

The deck is designed with life gaining strategies and as the game goes longer you are able to stabilize and start catching up to opponents just playing the deck without needing K'rrik cost reduction. The chart shows this as game-play tends to come back to a balance the longer the game goes on.

Who Dares Loses
Now trying to win as quickly as possible does often reward you with quick wins, but there is an element that sometimes going for a win quickly means that you'll be the first to encounter disruption. This is a heavy element of cEDH and why that format can work well, as patience can be reward if you have the means to stop opponents for winning, or hope that other opponents do.

So you can choose to pick the moment you want to explode. It doesn't have to be turn 2-5. You might have a slower hand and choose to go later. The thing is that it's your life total that is your greatest asset, so choosing to slide going for explosive turns can be done later in the game, if you feel it's not wise to be the first to meet every bodies disruption.









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Decklist optimized for a first turn win

Top of library tutors

Reanimaton

Protection

Approximate Total Cost:



After reading Demented Kirby - Doomsday K'rrik thread and then theory-crafting some ideas with him, I thought I'd go through the motions of optimizing a deck for one purpose and one purpose only.
The whole idea of this deck design is to maximize the chances of winning on Turn One...and literally nothing else.

It works by using potential minute edges to gaining mana, drawing cards and searching your library for key cards using only resources designed for winning as quickly as possible.
The idea being able to cast K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth and Doomsday on Turn One.

The key stipulations are:
  1. Cast K'rrik so needing at least 4.
  2. Have Doomsday to cast.
  3. Have a way to draw a card.
  4. Have enough life to "cast" your cards.
Casting K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth on Turn One

I believe I have maximized the ways to cast K'rrik on Turn One, using obvious cards that give you more mana than they cost, but also through other subtle interactions.

Voltaic Key and Manifold Key can untap Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith for a net gain of 1.

The "mana creatures" can all provide ways of potentially netting you mana.
Overeager Apprentice and Priest of Gix are mana neutral at first. But there are a myriad of ways to get additional mana out of them.
Using Culling the Weak and Phyrexian Tower on them will gain you mana.
Reanimate and Unearth can also be used to net you mana, For example you can cast out Overeager Apprentice and then sacrifice for the mana, then a Reanimate and Unearth will gain you mana.
You can directly cast Entomb for Priest of Gix and then Reanimate or Unearth it for a net gain.
You can even use a discard spell like Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy to target yourself to discard these creatures and then Reanimate or Unearth for a net gain.
These may seem like a lot of effort for marginal gains, but the difference between 3 mana and 4 mana is the ability to cast K'rrik to combo off.

Basal Sliver and Blood Vassal are a little trickier to gain mana from. But you can use cost reduction cards to potentially gain mana.
For example casting Heartless Summoning into Basal Sliver or Blood Vassal would be enough to cast K'rrik.
Casting Jet Medallion or Helm of Awakening would only make them mana neutral at first, but again you can use a Reanimate, Unearth, Culling the Weak, Phyrexian Tower to then gain mana.

Note that if you have the means to cast Entomb and Reanimate that you can go for Sidisi, Undead Vizier. This does come at a large cost to life, and I point out in later sections how this is important.

Gemstone Caverns, Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein are lands that can potentially give you two mana on Turn One. Giving you colorless is fine as it's 4 you are aiming for to cast K'rrik.

Lion's Eye Diamond is one of the trickier cards to use, and requires using in very particular ways to get the benefits. You need to have that Doomsday to cast as well, so you can't just use it to cast out K'rrik without some particular sequences.
Yawgmoth's Will is the most obvious one you could use it with, but it must be noted that you can't combo with your infinite graveyard strategy when you use it. So Yawgmoth's Will can only be used to set you up for the following turn.
You can use the Lion's Eye Diamond in response to tutors and draw. So an example of this might be that you've used a top of library tutor and then put a cantrip card on the stack. In response you can sacrifice the Lion's Eye Diamond to give you bbb.
An example opening hand of this might be, Lion's Eye Diamond, Swamp, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, Conjurer's Bauble, Scarab Feast, Chrome Mox, and say draw a black card.
If you were going to use the Swamp, Mana Crypt, Chrome Mox to cast K'rrik then you're going to be a 1 short of casting the Conjurer's Bauble which you are going to need.
Here you can cast the Imperial Seal getting Doomsday. Mana Crypt can cast the Conjurer's Bauble. You can use the Chrome Mox to Scarab Feast, but in response you can sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond. You discard your hand, but then you'll draw the Doomsday. Now you have enough to cast K'rrik and have Conjurer's Bauble on the board.

Now there are some cards that provide mana once K'rrik is play, and this can help with the colorless portion of spells.
Blood Celebrant can gain you a b for each 3 life you pay.
Blood Pet can gain you a mana by casting it for {bp} 2 life.
Bubbling Muck and Rain of Filth can also gain you a mana by casting for {bp} 2 life.

Tutoring for Doomsday
The Doomsday pile
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Your Doomsday is Infernal Contract, Sacrifice, Oathsworn Vampire, Bontu's Monument, Phyrexian Altar.
You get 7 mana from the Sacrifice on K'rrik, then cast Bontu's Monument and Phyrexian Altar. You have one black left over to cast the Oathsworn Vampire with the cost reduction of Bontu's Monument, which will gain you a life to turn on the Vampire's recast ability. Now you can sacrifice for b with Phyrexian Altar and keep recasting for infinite life loss on opponents.
Alright so obviously if you just naturally have Doomsday in your opener then great, but most of the time you'll need a way to search for it.
Again we have a lot of ways to do this.
Once K'rrik is in play we can use life payment to cast some for free or at most for 1.
There are 3 different types of tutors.
  1. To hand.
  2. Top of library.
  3. Reveal from top of library.
They are quite different in requirements when it comes to using them for first turn kills.

To hand.
Obviously the best are the ones that go directly to hand, Demonic Tutor, Infernal Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Mausoleum Secrets, Grim Tutor, Beseech the Queen.

They all require that you have 1 to cast the colorless portion of the cards, except Beseech the Queen.
So often you'll need to generate 5 in your first turn to cast K'rrik and a tutor effect.

Beseech the Queen can be paid for with {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life, but you'll only have 1 land in play, so you can only go for a 1 cmc spell.
Mausoleum Secrets has a graveyard number stipulation of creatures, so realistically only probably 1 cmc.
I'll explain a few things first before I give you some 1 cmc options you can get with these.

Infernal Tutor requires that you have no cards in hand, but using all the cards in your opener to cast K'rrik and other things, will often lead to an empty hand.

Diabolic Intent requires a creature, and this is where Priest of Gix shines as mana neutral, but can be used for this tutor.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier is not in the deck for hard casting. It's more used for the ability to Reanimate from graveyard.
You can use Entomb and Reanimate which you can cast for {bp}{bp}, meaning no mana needed.
Also if you have them in hand then a discard card will also allow you to Reanimate them, for example Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy or even Overeager Apprentice.

Increasing Ambition is mainly in the deck so that you can use Entomb as a way to get access to another tutor. I've often had a few games where I had access to a lot of mana, had Entomb in hand, but no real targets for it.

Dark Petition can be lined up so that it's a neterual card to cast as you can get bbb back from it while also just paying {bp}{bp} 4 life, meaning it will cost you only life if you have spell mastery. However you do need to get 3 so it's not always the best for an actual Turn One win.

Top of library.
The top of library tutors, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Scheming Symmetry, Cruel Tutor, Doomsday will mean that you need a way to draw that card if wanting to go off on Turn One.
Now there are a lot of ways to draw a card in the deck, as this is part of the stipulation of needing to draw into your Doomsday pile. But given that you'd need to have probably 2 draw cards to go off if looking for that Turn One win.

Reveal from top of library.
There is also a suite of cards that allow you to reveal cards from the top of your library, but they have very risky stipulations; Demonic Consultation, Spoils of the Vault, Plunge into Darkness, Tainted Pact, Ad Nauseam.

They run the risk of exiling some of your win conditions if you are unlucky, plus some of them have life loss as well.

Tainted Pact will fizzle if you exile two Swamps.

Ad Nauseam is unique in that you get to keep all the cards.

The safest way of using these is with the top of library tutors, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Scheming Symmetry, Doomsday meaning that you have perfect information and can use them as "draw" cards.

But this whole deck is not for the faint of heart, and fortune favors the brave, so sometimes you'll use these as "all in" gamble attempts at getting say Doomsday or another card that you might need!

I mentioned earlier that Mausoleum Secrets and Beseech the Queen might only be able to get you a 1 cmc card, and here is an example of getting Demonic Consultation or Spoils of the Vault for an attempt at a Doomsday or whatever.

Drawing into your Doomsday pile

Alright so we have stacked our library with Doomsday. However to win on Turn One we need to draw the Infernal Contract to draw the rest of our combo cards.

The deck has a lot of ways to do this. There are a number of cards that require {bp} to draw, meaning you just use your life to draw; Aphotic Wisps, Nighthaze, Cremate, Dredge, Fade from Memory, Scarab Feast, Razaketh's Rite, Sign in Blood. Barren Moor.

There are also a number of cards, but they will require 1 to get the draw; Sensei's Divining Top, Conjurer's Bauble, Nihil Spellbomb, Night's Whisper.

Losing life

Even though you can setup lots of ways to win, your starting life total of 40 does matter, as there is a limit to how many cards you can cast with K'rrik Phyrexian mana costs, especially because you will be casting Doomsday and Infernal Contract which both will be halving your life total.

Let's see what limits there are;
Casting K'rrik for 6 life is going to put you on 34 life.
Then you might need to cast a damage tutor like Grim Tutor. This will cost you {bp}{bp} 7 life total.
So we are down to 27 life total.
Then we need to cast the Doomsday for {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life. That will reduce it 21 life, that is then halved to 10 life total.
Now we might need to cycle a draw card like Cremate for {bp} 2 life to draw the Infernal Contract taking your life total down to 8 life.
Casting Infernal Contract for {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life will take your life total down to 2 life, that is then halved to 1 life.
The problem here is that you don't have enough life total to then cast Sacrifice for {bp} 2 life as you are on 1 life.

So as you can see figuring out your life total has to come into the equation. Some guidelines here are that you know your life total gets halved twice. You want to be on at least 3 life total after Infernal Contract to cast the Sacrifice.
If you work backwards then you need at least 12 life when you cast the Infernal Contract.
Doomsday is a little trickier as you probably using life payments to draw a card to get the Infernal Contract. But as the main way of drawing it is via a {bp} 2 life payment, another good guidelines is that you want to be on probably at least 30 life at the time of casting Doomsday.

So as most of your decisions will be around the pre Doomsday cast you can work out details there. Remember we are going down to 34 life with casting K'rrik so that only leaves you with a {bp}{bp} 4 life total to work with, which isn't really a lot.
Especially as there are a lot of dealing damage cards to you with things like; Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Grim Tutor, Spoils of the Vault, Plunge into Darkness, Ancient Tomb, Sign in Blood, Reanimate, Thoughtseize.

You can see that Imperial Seal and Vampiric Tutor really cost 4 life with K'rrik leaving you without further Phyrexian mana if wanting to use on the same turn. Then as I've mentioned you want to draw that card which is probably going to cost you 2 life with a cantrip type card.
This is when you might have to go for a Turn 2 win instead because your life total matters, and you end up having to use regular old normal mana to pay for cards..I know booooooo!

In these types of situations that's where additional mana from regular mana sources can help, as you don't need to spend the life payment for some costs.



Blood Celebrant seems at first like it would be hard to use given that your life total matters a lot.
But due to "halving" life totals, this is where the most life is lost. Half of 24 life is going to be a 12 life hit in one chunk. So if you can gain mana but lose life before you half your life total you can look to make edges.
It depends on what you are going to need to spend mana on post Doomsday. But normally it's on a draw card, and of course the Infernal Contract and then Sacrifice.
So we can hallmark bbbbb for these with Blood Celebrant first at a cost of 15 life. So let's say we are on 28 life and use the 15 life to make the bbbbb, taking us down to 13 life. Casting the Doomsday takes us down to 3 life. However now we can cast everything with our floating mana. The Infernal Contract will take us down to 1 life, but this is fine.
Let's do an example hand of this, Blood Celebrant, Culling the Weak, Swamp, Reanimate, Lotus Petal, Diabolic Intent, Nihil Spellbomb.
We can cast the Blood Celebrant and sacrifice it to Culling the Weak via Lotus Petal and Swamp, giving us enough to cast K'rrik. You can pay {bp} 2 life to cast the Reanimate on taking you down to 31 life total. Now we want 2 to pay for casting the colorless portions of Diabolic Intent and Nihil Spellbomb and we also are going to want the 5 black mana floating post Doomsday. So that's 21 life to get 7 black. That would take us from 31 down to 10 life total. Casting Doomsday will take you down to 2 life, and then casting Infernal Contract will take you to 1 life...no problems.



Chancellor of the Dross can be a great card to have in your opening hand as the life gain can be turned into a resource as I've shown. In a 4 player game you will gain 9 life, giving you a starting life total of 49. This is a huge difference if you are looking to use some of the more life intensive cards for your win.
An example hand might be Chancellor of the Dross, Swamp, Beseech the Queen, Imperial Seal, Mana Vault, Manifold Key, Nighthaze.
You can cast K'rrik off the Mana Vault and Manifold Key untapping the Mana Vault. This will bring you life total 43 instead. You can then cast Beseech the Queen for {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life getting a 1 cmc card, which we need an additional draw card so Aphotic Wisps would be fine. This takes life total down to 37. Now you can cast Imperial Seal for {bp} 4 life and cast Aphotic Wisps for {bp} 2 life to draw the Doomsday you put on top, taking your life total to 31, which is plenty.




Let's look at Reanimate as this can entails some heavy life loss.
Maybe you have a starting hand of; Reanimate, Cabal Therapy, Priest of Gix, Dark Ritual, Swamp, Vamperic Tutor, Swamp, Scarab Feast.
You Dark Ritual then Cabal Therapy yourself naming Priest of Gix to put it into your graveyard. Reanimate it will cost you 3 life, putting you down to 37 life total. But now you have 4 to cast K'rrik putting your life down to 31 life total.
Casting Vamperic Tutor and Barren Moor for the K'rrik Phyrexian mana costs isn't going to work out as they take you down to 25 life total which isn't enough, so this hand does not work out for a Turn One win.
But you can use it to setup a Turn 2 win. You can go down to 27 life by doing the sequence up to casting the Vamperic Tutor to put the Doomsday on top of library, but then you pass the turn and wait to draw it in your next turn. But you said 30 life pre-casting Doomsday is the sweet spot!! Well now you actually have two Swamps to pay for most of the Doomsday.
The math now means that you will be on 12 life for the Infernal Contract which is perfect.

To get a Turn One win with a similar setup you want to really want to have the Doomsday in hand, so Reanimate, Cabal Therapy, Priest of Gix, Dark Ritual, Swamp, Doomsday, Scarab Feast, would allow you to win.
Even if instead of Reanimate you had Unearth that would allow you to win as it was the life total management that prevented you. So Unearth, Cabal Therapy, Priest of Gix, Dark Ritual, Swamp, Vamperic Tutor, Scarab Feast, would allow you to win on Turn One



The story doesn't finish there however. You might have some of the combo pieces in your starting hand. Let's say you have Bontu's Monument in your opening hand, along with say Swamp, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Grim Tutor, Aphotic Wisps.
Not having to put Bontu's Monument into your Doomsday pile is going to mean that the Doomsday pile can contain life gain or maybe mana.
Let's do the math, you go down to 27 life casting the Grim Tutor (to get Doomsday), which is less than the 30 life we'd normally want. We cast Doomsday going down to 10 life. Then we pay {bp} 2 life for the Aphotic Wisps to draw Infernal Contract putting us down to 8 life. We now pay {bp}{bp}{bp} 6 life to cast Infernal Contract putting us to 2 life and then 1 life total when it is halved.
However this time we can put Zuran Orb into the Doomsday pile, allowing to go back up to 3 life which is enough to cast the Sacrifice.

Testing starting hands and average Turn win rate

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At this stage there are lots of more complicated sequences that could get you there in the end, and as I think of them I'll add example hands to the thread.
In the mean time I'm going to gold fish starting hands and see how many turn it takes on average to win, given no interaction from opponents.

I've done 9 gold fish games, and so far I have an average win on Turn 3.375, but no Turn 1 win yet, early days. The results are below, and I have recorded and explained the hands in the spoiler section as it's a good exercise to demonstrate just how technical figuring out keeps and sequences are.
Game #Result
1Turn 5
2Turn 3
3Turn 2
4Turn 4
5Turn 2
6Turn 3
7Turn 4
8Loss
9Turn 4






Avg3.375

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I was using the mtgsalvation.com "hand simulator" which has the cards ordered from left to right, so the starting hand are the first 7 cards on the left. The 8th card will be what you draw for the turn, 9th card what is drawn for next turn, etc.
It's not perfect as you can't do things like Sensei's Divining Top activation's and a bunch of other things, but it's "good enough".



Game #1: Turn 5 win.
It was my first attempt, and wasn't really sure if to mulligan or not. Ended up being a bit slow.
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T1: Swamp, Lotus Petal, Jet Medallion
T2: Cycle Razaketh's Rite, Swamp, Oathsworn Vampire
T3: Helm of Awakening
T4: K'rrik, Grim Tutor, Doomsday
T5: Win

I had to wait a full turn when casting the Doomsday as I didn't have a draw card.



Game #2: Turn 3 win.
I took a single mulligan to get this hand. It was missing fast mana, but I had the Doomsday already, so figured I could tutor for mana.

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T1: Swamp, Conjurer's Bauble
T2: Swamp, Demonic Tutor = Mana Vault
T3: K'rrik, Doomsday = Win



Game #3: Turn 3 win.
Took me a while to figure out if I had enough mana due to Sidisi, Undead Vizier cost.

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T1: Mox Diamond (discarding Crystal Vein), Swamp, Mana Crypt, K'rrik
T2: Sidisi, Undead Vizier = Doomsday, Spoils of the Vault = Infernal Contract = Win



Game #4: Turn 4 win.
This game was super super complicated, it literally took me about 30 minutes to figure stuff out.

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My starting hand was Chancellor of the Dross, Vault of Whispers. Swamp, Duress, Infernal Contract, Dark Ritual, Yawgmoth's Will, Swamp.

I wasn't too sure to keep this hand as it doesn't have any tutor effects. But I figured it had good mana and that I could use the Infernal Contract as a way to draw into action, and that the Chancellor of the Dross could offset the life loss a bit.
On Turn 2 I ended up drawing Lion's Eye Diamond and with Yawgmoth's Will and Dark Ritual I knew I could get tons of mana. But the thing is that I'd have to put all this mana into my mana pool before I could cast the Infernal Contract, meaning I could whiff and all the mana would be lost, effectively losing me the game. Plus it wasn't the clearest how I should sequence using all these spells together.
I ended up drawing Nighthaze, Ad Nauseam, Scarab Feast, Swamp.
At this stage I'm on 18 life, so I don't have tons of life for the Ad Nauseam, but I have to go for it.
I used {bp} to cycle the Nighthaze to see if I get anything useful, I don't
Essentially I draw 11 cards (2-3-0-1-0-3-0-1-0-1-2) and go down to 3 life, and I have to stop there.
To make a long story short I drew Bontu's Monument and Phyrexian Altar but no way to get Oathsworn Vampire. I cycled some draw cards but still nothing.
Because I was only on 3 life, I couldn't use K'rrik to help pay for anything.
I drew Demonic Consultation on Turn 4 and because I already had Bontu's Monument and Phyrexian Altar, I knew if I faded exiling Oathsworn Vampire in top six then I'd have all the pieces.

T1: Gain 9 life from Chancellor of the Dross, Swamp
T2: Vault of Whispers, Dark Ritual, Yawgmoth's Will, Lion's Eye Diamond, Lion's Eye Diamond, K'rrik, Nighthaze, Ad Nauseam
Post Ad Nauseam
Zuran Orb, Mox Opal, Nihil Spellbomb, Scarab Feast, Blood Pet, Bontu's Monument.
3 life total
T3: Swamp, Helm of Awakening, Phyrexian Altar
T4: Swamp, Demonic Consultation = Oathsworn Vampire = Win



Game #5: Turn 2 win.
I nice and simply Turn 2 win.

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T1: Swamp, Conjurer's Bauble
T2: Swamp, Dark Ritual, K'rrik, Lotus Petal, Demonic Tutor = Doomsday = Win



Game #6: Turn 3 win.
This one was actually really hard to figure out the speed at which you could win, life total being the problem. I was trying to figure out if I could get a Turn 2 win.

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It's a fantastic example actually of how you need to run the numbers. This was the type of sequencing I was trying for..
T1: Vault of Whispers, Sensei's Divining Top
T2: Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, K'rrik, Mox Amber
Now at this stage I was looking to see if I could cast Beseech the Queen {bp}{bp}{bp} for 6 life getting Scheming Symmetry.
However that would take you down to 24 life casting all these things, which is not enough pre Doomsday given that I only had a Mox Amber for additional mana.
Plus trying to use Sign in Blood to draw say the Doomsday or Infernal Contract was always going to be too much loss of life.

I was also thinking about using the Demonic Consultation to just go for Doomsday, which I could have tried to win on Turn 2.

However I figured out that my safest path was to go for Turn 3 instead, so it ended up looking like this;
T1: Vault of Whispers, Sensei's Divining Top
T2: Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, K'rrik, Mox Amber
T3: Swamp, Beseech the Queen (actually using normal mana) = Doomsday = Win.

I figured that I could just get three lands into play so I could use Beseech the Queen to search for 3 cmc Doomsday and by not using life loss to cast it I could keep my life total at 32 pre-casting the Doomsday.



Game #7: Turn 4 win.
I had already mulligan, so I decided to keep a very speculative second hand. It had lots of potential mana but no certain ways to get Doomsday.
Once again a super tricky way to navigate, there were quite a few different strategies and some of them were doing this in the dark.
I cast Tainted Pact and revealed, Demonic Consultation, Spoils of the Vault, Swamp, Cabal Therapy, Conjurer's Bauble, Scheming Symmetry. I decided the Scheming Symmetry would be enough to work with, as I had already exiled a Swamp so risky revealing more cards.

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T1: Swamp, Aphotic Wisps
T2: Swamp, Tainted Pact = Scheming Symmetry
T3: Swamp, Overeager Apprentice
T4: Sacrifice Overeager Apprentice (discarding Yawgmoth's Will), K'rrik, Scheming Symmetry = Doomsday, Doomsday, Cycle Unearth, Sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond, Infernal Contract = Win



Game #8: Turn 4 loss.
This game went terrible. I had mulligan twice and I ended up having to keep a 6 card hand, that was pretty bad. The problem with further mulls is that you do need a threshold of cards to do what you want.

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The idea of this hand is to use Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Consultation to get me key cards. I needed mana and I needed Doomsday.

T1: Barren Moor (tapped)
T2: Vampiric Tutor = Mana Vault
T3: Mana Vault
T4: K'rrik, Demonic Consultation = Doomsday = Loss

I had to risk it for the biscuit and try to get the Doomsday and hopefully not exile it or any of the combo pieces, this game was always going to be bad.
Unfortunately Doomsday was part of the top 6 cards, so ended up exiling my library for the loss.

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Game #9: Turn 4 win.
The opening hand was fine, it had an expensive tutor with Razaketh's Rite or Ad Nauseam if I felt like fueling more action cards. Plus Grim Monolith is fine for casting K'rrik.

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T1: Swamp
T2: Swamp, Grim Monolith, Mox Diamond (discarding Swamp), K'rrik
T3: Razaketh's Rite = Doomsday
T4: Infernal Contract = Win

The biggest letdown of this game was not having a draw card when casting Doomsday, otherwise would have a Turn 3 win.
It is possible that rather than use Razaketh's Rite as a tutor, that I could have cast Ad Nauseam and hope to draw into something. So it was either do the safe bet and go for the guaranteed win on next turn or risk it.
I'll just keep doing gold fish runs and add them to the thread until I get a good amount..or maybe until I get that Turn One win :P

Last edited by darrenhabib 4 years ago, edited 86 times in total.

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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

Much appreciation for this list. I'm not sure why WOTC felt that making a card that turns all mana into Phyrexian mana was a good idea, but they did. Mono-Black storm is definitely the way to build K'rrik and I'm interested to see where this list goes.

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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

Also, Voltaic Key should be in here because it helps untap the Monoliths and Vault so that you can use your colorless mana even more efficiently.

Theoric
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Post by Theoric » 4 years ago

Any love for this guy? -- Vilis, Broker of blood

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

benjameenbear wrote:
4 years ago
Also, Voltaic Key should be in here because it helps untap the Monoliths and Vault so that you can use your colorless mana even more efficiently.
OK, I've actually theory crafted another deck list which focuses on true speed. It is designed to combo off on Turn One as best as possible, and it touches upon stuff like Voltaic Key and the such like.

You can check it out in the second part of the original post.

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Theoric wrote:
4 years ago
Any love for this guy? -- Vilis, Broker of blood
I did have him in the list at the start, but I figured he is just too expensive, even if he is an "end boss" if you get him on the board :P

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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

You people... Crafting Combo lists has caused K'rrik to jump from $10 to $20!

How reliable is it to legitimately combo out in the first 3 turns of a game with K'rrik?

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

benjameenbear wrote:
4 years ago
You people... Crafting Combo lists has caused K'rrik to jump from $10 to $20!

How reliable is it to legitimately combo out in the first 3 turns of a game with K'rrik?
If you check out the second part of the thread, I've got a "First Turn Kill" deck list and I've been gold fishing some games and posting the results.
Check out the section "Testing starting hands and average Turn win rate".
So far it's around 3.375 turn win rate, but that's with me playing mistakes (mainly whether to mull or not) and "pre" figuring out some deck changes.
But I'll emphasis that is completely glass-canon stuff.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Alright spent a couple of days now playing K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth online. Probably around 30 games so far.
So first of all, he is actually more busted than I even first planned for or envisioned with the decks.

Now I have encountered some problems with Magic Online having bugs with him. You can't use the extort creatures, as they haven't programmed in a way to select life loss payment for the effect. Yep so that whole combo I can't use. But even despite this I still manage to do well, very well thank you.

The other thing is that you can't actually get Sacrifice the card online, it's simply not available. So it had to get me rethinking a Doomsday pile. In the end I've just gone with Bolas's Citadel, Zuran Orb, Aetherflux Reservoir, Viscera Seer, Haunted Crossroads.

So I've cut the whole Oathsworn Vampire combo and the deck is a lot better for it.

The main thing that was obvious when I first started playing is that I didn't nearly have enough draw cards. I had all the mana in the world, but often found myself top decking for gas cards.
So I've done major changes and changed the original thread to reflect this, but this version of the deck is turning out really really good.

A lot of the cards I cut were around infinite combos, as I've just streamlined it down to essentials and then the bulk is further draw.
I also cut cards that just didn't work out that well.


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