K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth – Commander 2019
Date Reviewed: June 6, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 4.0
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
K’rrik has one of the longest gaps between appearing in Magic lore and appearing in card form – obviously not on the same scale as someone like Yawgmoth, but long enough for people to ask and then forget that they had once asked. When he finally made that card appearance, he had one of the most broken effects possible in the abstract, balanced out by his cost and his stats. Because of that cost, he hasn’t made the biggest splash in Legacy, though he has some pedigree in Commander (including competitive EDH) because the kinds of spell chains you can pull off with him are absolutely obscene in the abstract. Dark Ritual is broken enough when it costs one mana; I don’t know how to describe it when it costs zero. And if somehow those pseudo-free spells don’t finish off your opponent, they all make K’rrik himself strong enough to get the job done. Modern, and Modern Horizons 3 draft, are formats with tools to hinder or punish his effects, but much like a lot of cards we’ve been talking about of late, those effects are so tempting that somebody is likely going to try them anyway.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
If Phyrexian mana was a Mistake, then making all of your black mana Phyrexian mana should be an even bigger mistake, right? Maybe not as big as it could be, but we’ll get there.
K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is a creature that feels scary because of how he lets you cheat on colored mana. Black tends to have pretty heavy color demands in particular, and so being able to use a resource you have a lot of can swing a game hard. On average, he’s coming into play on turn 4 (by paying 6 life), and turn 4 is often when things start going crazy.
That said, the main weakness K’rrik has is his paltry body. It dos get bigger as you cast spells, and lifelink helps you recoup the costs of spells you cast, but his baseline is very killable all the same. His Modern debut may be quite interesting, since Modern is a format infamous for hemorrhaging life at various points in the game; I definitely can see his potential in shells built around making full use of things like Death’s Shadow, but Modern is definitely the kind of format where this can backfire if you don’t tread carefully.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4 (no idea how this does in Limited, but the body can definitely put in work)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
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