Commander Boxing League 5 – Week 2

Hi everyone and welcome to the second week of the fifth Commander Boxing League of our group!

After the end of the previous week (click here to read how it went), each of us has chosen another set to get six additional booster packs from and added the cards we found inside them to our pool of cards.

I decided to go with Guilds of Ravnica to find some good Golgari cards that could be useful for my Meren deck.

The most notable cards from the booster is a really good piece of ramp like Golgari Locket and one of the best removals of the game: Assassin’s Trophy!

You can click here to check out the updated list.

While Giovanni kept his The Ur-Dragon deck, Gianluca changed his commander to K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth.

We started playing, each of us trying to get two games to win this week and take two points home.  

GAME 1
I keep a hand full of ramp that let me cast Meren on turn 2! I start putting pressure on Ur Dragon thanks to Mazirek, that with Sling-Gang Lieutenant quickly makes my creature really big. K’rrik tries to attack me but I’m ready with Great Oak Guardian: I flash it out and protect himself by blocking and killing his attackers.
I continue dominating the game with my creatures until both my opponents decide to concede, not seeing a way out from this.

GAME 2
Ur-Dragon mulligans down to 3! I have a slower start than the first game but I’m still able to drop Meren down a turn 3 but K’rrik makes me sacrifice her immediately. This puts me behind as I was pointing my strategy on her to get ahead in the game right from the start.
This gives enough time to Ur-Dragon to recover from the horrible starting hand and he starting playing his dragons and attacking me with them; at the same time K’rrik exile my graveyard with Hedonist’s Trove.
I get hit really hard but I’m able to resist. I play Butcher of Malakir and this makes it harder for my opponents to remove my creatures. Fearing the late game of Ur-Dragon, K’rrik and I focus on him and knock him out.
In 1vs1 I started going down really soon as, after the focus I got on me at the beginning of the game, I’m not well set and so, after a small battle of attrition, K’rrik wins.

GAME 3
I mulligan down to six and I keep a nice hand but still not really fast. K’rrik starts quickly setting up his board while Ur-Dragon is left a bit behind.
K’rrik tries to get ahead with a dangerous Rakshasa Debaser but Ur-Dragon quickly deals with it by exiling it with a Fractured Identity. This gives me a nice blocker to protect me while I build my board but, when we are starting to go wide, Ur-Dragon plays a wrath effect.
I have to restart rebuilding while Ur-Dragon drops a Nihil Spellbomb (and the target of it is quite obvious); I replay Meren and when her effect is on the stack I get my graveyard cleaned. Ur-Dragon enters the battlefield and with a few attacks removes K’rrik from the game. I reanimate Tyrant’s Familiar from Ur-Dragon’s graveyard and I use it to remove two of his pieces… but he does too much advantage with his Commander and quickly takes over the game.

GAME 4
I mulligan down to six before I find a hand that would let me ramp properly.
I cast Meren at turn 3 but K’rrik immediately equips a Bloodthirsty Blade to her. Ur-Dragon has already down a dangerous Sunscorch Regent, that I remove with Assassin’s Trophy, and a Crosis that blocks and kills my Commander when I have to attack him.
Ur-Dragon then casts Bladewing the Risen, reanimating the Regent. The Bloodthirsty Blade gets equipped to Crosis and so I start getting his for some serious damage. Ur-Dragon is developing a really dangerous board and from my position it seems I’m not able to find a way out so, thinking to the league ranking, I attack him with everything, hoping to deal enough damage to give the win to K’rrik… however it’s not enough and in a few turns Ur-Dragon kills both of us with his army of flying lizards.

Ur-Dragon confirms himself again as a menace that needs to be stopped before the late game where he really dominates the board.

By winning the week, Giovanni got 2 points in the ranking while Gianluca and I got 1 for winning a game.

This is the ranking after the second week:
Giovanni: 4 points
Raven: 2 points.
Gianluca: 1 point.