K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is a mono-Black Turbo commander that serves as a ritual in the command zone, allowing the pilot to use life to pay black mana costs. As mono-Black is largely unable to defend its win attempts, this deck instead prioritizes attempting early and often. This forces opponents to choose between investing in developing their own board states and holding resources for interaction.

While turbo decks with access to Blue can defend their win attempts on the stack, K'rrik instead focuses on creature-based win conditions that are difficult for decks running efficient countermagic suites to interact with in the first place. Access to one card win conditions that win through action denial stax pieces like Rule of Law provide additional resilience, as does the flexibility of running midrange board control pieces like Pestilence that double as outlets.

The density of interchangeable, interlocking combo pieces in this deck rewards pilot skill. Rather than simple A+B combos, there are a wide variety of pieces that can be mixed and matched to assemble game winning board states. While this makes the deck hard to pilot, it also makes it difficult for opponents to combat.

## Strengths

* Multiple one card win conditions.
* Can win through most stax.
* Respectable midrange resilience for a turbo deck.
* Considerable redundancy and pivot flexibility.
* Tremendous card selection through the ability to reduce the cost of high mana value tutors.
* Creature-based win conditions that are difficult to interact with.

## Weaknesses

* Functionally no way to protect win attempts.
* Limited access to card advantage, none in the command zone.
* Heavily commander-reliant.
* Best win conditions are vulnerable to grave hate, forcing sub-optimal pivots or card inclusions.
* Limited ability to remove non-creature stax pieces, costing tempo for pivots or tutoring for removal.

## Strategy

Approaches to the deck shift slightly based on deck construction adjustments for the meta, as well as playstyle adjustments on the fly due to pod composition and turn order. Typically, the pilot wants to keep hands with two features: ramp to cast an early K'rrik and an outlet for the explosive mana K'rrik provides. That outlet can be a one card win condition like Final Parting, Peer into the Abyss, Fleshwrither, or Sidisi, Undead Vizier. It can also be a tutor that provides an efficient path to a win condition. In pods where control or stax is heavily represented and where the pilot is disadvantaged by turn order, it may make more sense to prioritize opening hands with access to midrange value pieces like Necropotence, Pestilence, or Braids, Arisen Nightmare.

Mulligans are absolutely critical. When selecting an opening hand, it's important to look at not only the presence of key elements, but also the tempo at which they can be played out. The pilot should be able to sequence out play patterns of each opening hand for turns 1-2 or 1-3 before determining if a hand is keepable, preferably with contingency plans for incidental life loss due to lost Mana Crypt flips or combat damage. Similarly, it is important to prioritize hands that can recover by presenting multiple win attempts a turn into interaction, or that can recover through card advantage or pivots.

The deck rewards pilots that can be flexible, improvising on the fly. The tools in the deck allow the skilled pilot to pivot on the fly and use tools in unconventional ways to improvise wins from unexpected angles.

## Decklists

K'rriko K'rrik

A Faster K'rrik Storm

RazaK'rrik

Oni's Self-Inflicted Storm

Party in the Front, Murder in the Back

K'rrik cEDH Midrange