EDH Boxing League is a Commander variant that has become the surprise hit of the summer, generating a great deal of interest from friends and fans alike.  I wrote a few weeks back about the setup.  Today, I’ll take you through the process of the past six weeks.  We’ll discuss decks I built, the packs I opened, and changes I made to it before shifting to a different deck a few weeks ago.  Then I’ll talk about some of the lessons learned for the league and how I might change things for future iterations. 

The Pool and Deck

The first legendary creature I saw was from the very first pack: Illuna, Apex of Wishes.  It immediately set my mind at ease, since I knew I’d have a playable commander.  It wasn’t necessarily the one I was hoping for (that would be Nethroi, Apex of Death), but since I’m pretty familiar with Temur, Illuna would be a fine choice. 

I eventually opened Nethroi, a second copy of Illuna, two copies of Gyruda, Doom of Depths, and Obosh, the Preypiercer, as potential commanders.  As you’ll see in my pool (although I won’t be listing all 540 cards), support for Nethroi was unfortunately weak (despite a few very attractive choices).  Here’s the list of my rares.

White:

Blue:

Black:

Red:

Green:

Multicolor:

Artifact:

Land:

Obviously, getting the appropriate (and somewhat busted) Ultimatum to go with Nethroi got my motor running, but other than a few saucy ones, like Death’s Oasis, Drannith Magistrate, Extinction Event, and Luminous Broodmoth, there wasn’t much to go on in Orzhov as opposed to Izzet.  That said, there are a few more solid cards in the Orzhov-colored uncommons and commons that led me to believe I might be able to shift gears down the road.

White:

Black:

Golgari:

Orzhov:

The only Selesnya card is Alert Heedbonder, which doesn’t really seem playable. 

The draw to Abzan was a great temptation, it just seemed like the density of cards left quite something to be desired.  There are good bones and recursion in a limited league is really powerful, but my assessment was that the deck just needed something more to go that direction.  As it was, I’d need to stretch the playable cards in Temur to come up with something viable.  In the end, here’s what I built:

The primary theme of the deck is clearly mutate creatures, focusing on the commander.  In addition to Illuna, there are eight:

Mutate is clearly stronger in this limited environment where targeted removal is at a premium and sweepers are the rarest of commodities. 

The problem with the strategy is that it can be a one-trick pony.  While all the mutate creatures do a thing when they mutate, Illuna is certainly going to be on the top most of the time; Archipelagore might be the exception, since it’s a 7/7.  It feels like I won’t be getting too many kills that don’t involve either commander damage or being in the right place at the right time.  There’s not much of a go-wide plan or any other secondary strategy, which is a cause for concern for the deck in the long term. 

I’m fond a few of the bomby rares, like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy (which might be the sole card that keeps me from running Keruga, the Macrosage as a companion).  Kinnan only has one thing right now to buff on mana production in Ketria Crystal.  The strength of the card, however, is using the activated ability.  Perhaps down the road, things might be different, but I suspect I’ll need some pretty lucky pulls from packs to make it otherwise.  I wouldn’t call it great, but Colossification is fun and funny.  It’ll lead to some silly situations, but I also suspect that it will eventually go out somewhere down the road.

The deck’s secondary strategy is cycling.  There are seventeen cards with cycling on them:

There’s an additional card, Rielle, the Everwise, which plays very nicely with the mechanic in drawing an additional card (with the slight condition that it’s only the first time in a turn).  It obviously also protects from a bit of hand production. 

Cycling is good enough on its own in the environment, but the wheel around which the sub-theme rotates is Unpredictable Cyclone.  It’s a little chaotic, but casting things for free is always a bonus.  Cycling Yidaro into Titanoth Rex or Greater Sandwurm will be just fine by me.  The downside is that occasionally, I’m going to cycle into the Neutralize when I don’t really want or need it.  When the deck gets tighter, I suspect that Unpredictable Cyclone will be one of the cuts, but it’s just fine for the early days.  The box was also generous with the other card draw, so getting to the business cards in the deck shouldn’t be a problem. 

Choosing Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths gave me plenty of mana fixing, so I’m happy with that.  Like everyone else, I got all of the two-color lands in my colors plus Evolving Wilds and Farfinder, as well as Migration Path.  There’s no ramp besides that; Ketria Crystal and Humble Naturalist are the only accelerants so far. 

All in all, I was relatively happy with the starting point.  Again, it’s not the Nethroi that I had wanted and still hope to build toward but it played reasonably well.  In the first game we played on the RC stream, Crystalline Giant was a superstar, getting hexproof, which allowed me to put on a clinic of silliness with Illuna and mutate.  I killed each of Toby, Scott, and Gavin with commander damage, ending at 113 life.  I was justifiably the first one out when we played games that Sunday, one of them in spite of having Illuna enchanted with Colossification for three turns.

Week 2

My choice was between War of the Spark and Throne of Eldrane.  It was a choice mostly borne of laziness, since I didn’t act far enough in advance to acquire anything else.  As I mention above, the possibility of getting a Fling got me salivating, which is why I chose Throne of Eldrane.  Here’s the packs, which I recorded and made notes on as I opened them:

Pack 1:

A very Food-driven, Knight-dominated pack, without much exciting for me.  Having the Turtle to make Illuna unblockable seems like going too far for too little.

Pack 2: 

Certainly better than the previous one, but still nothing bomby.  Maraleaf Pixie and Spinning Wheel will go in for some acceleration.  Opt will probably find a home as well.  Opportunistic Dragon is simply better than any number of creatures that I already have in that it’s a 4/3 flyer; the triggered ability to take away something from someone else for a while is probably really important, especially in being able to get Illuna damage through.  Nothing so far in two packs has fed my Nethroi fantasy.

Pack 3:

Ugh. Still not getting much help.  Maybe Rampart Smasher, again as just a creature that’s better than what I have, but not much more.  I’m certainly not running the recursion required to make Folio of Fancies worth playing.  Searing Barrage is removal, but it’s a little spendy.  Trapped in the Tower might be a play if I do go the Nethroi route and I’m going to Sharpie ARYEL onto it.

Pack 4:

I was going to call it worse than Pack 1 until we got to the uncommons.  While the rare doesn’t do me any good, the three of them are going straight into the deck.  The problem with Syr Carah is that I’m not really set up to take advantage of the bottling effect.  Most of the time, I’m going to have to use it on my own turn so that I can decide whether or not I want to play the card unless I can somehow steal Ben’s Leyline of Anticipation. 

Pack 5:

Oof.  Clackbridge Troll (which I know that Scott also got for his deck) is saucy once I go black.  Wildwood Tracker might be good just to have a one-drop.  Scorching Dragonfire might find its way in, just for the exile part. 

Pack 6:

Well, if I’m going to make the switch, Witch’s Vengeance might be the catalyst.  Add it to the Extinction Event that I have in my pool, and I might be onto something.  I think I’d still be weaker than I am.  I  lose too many good multicolored cards by getting out of blue, to include Kinnan and Keruga, as well as a few of the mutates.  At this point, it’s not worth it.  I’m a little salty that I got zero playable rares for my current deck and didn’t get the one common I hoped for, but I knew going it that there was a chance I’d get wrecked.  I’ll move forward, swap in the few that make sense, and try to make a long-range plan. 

I ended up swapping in more than I expected. 

In:

Out:

In Week 2 games, Illuna continued to be a bit of a one-trick pony.  The deck did reasonably well in drawing cards and mutating, but that was about its only path to victory.  Once Illuna got killed a few times, it was hard to come back and I still didn’t live the dream of killing someone with a Colossified commander.  Week 2 MVP card was Ram Through, which did result in player deaths due to Illuna’s trample.  It’s a card people might be sleeping on in normal Commander, which I think they should revisist.