Quick Links
Previous deck: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice // Next deck: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Go-Shintai of Life's Origin
By the time of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic The Gathering's Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, there is one name whispered across the plane's seedy underbelly. One everybody fears. The leader of the Hyozan Reckoners, he has an army of assassins and spies to do his bidding, all armed with poisons, cybernetics, and dark magic. He claims he's a descendant of the Kamigawan and Dominarian legend Toshiro Umezawa, but nobody is brave enough to challenge him on it.
Ninjas running over rooftops in tabi armed with kunai is a bit old-fashioned; Satoru Umezawa is the new face of Kamigawa's underworld, and he's willing to use anyone he can to cement his power. This week, we're turning everyone into ninjas with .
Satoru Umezawa is a 2/4 Human Ninja that costs one generic, one blue, and one black. He has a triggered ability, which allows you to look at the top three cards of your library and put one card into your hand and the rest on the bottom once per turn when you activate a ninjutsu ability. That is a really nice way to sort through the deck quickly to find the cards you need, but it isn't why we're here.
His static ability is terrifying: every creature card in your hand is given a ninjutsu cost of two generic, one blue, and one black. Ninjutsu is an ability that lets you swap an unblocked attacking creature you control with a creature from your hand, and usually is only found on ninja creatures. With Satoru, anything can dive in to surprise your opponents, so we're going to make use of it. We've got some of the scariest creatures in the Dimir colours of blue and black, and an easy way to cheat them out.
Ramp
Although blue and black aren't the colours best known for their ramping potential, we need a lot of mana t💦o afford all those ninjutsu abilities. That means we need to go hard on the ramp, by any mea♑ns necessary.
First thing, we've got the mana rocks. Silumgar Monument, Commander's Sphere, Dimir Locket, Dimir Signet, and Talisman of Dominance all produce coloured mana, while we've also got Thought Vessel for the unlimited hand size. After all, we're going to be bouncing creatures back to our hand a lot, the last thing we need is to be forced to discard them. There's also a Moonsilver Key thrown in there, because it's a massively underrated card that can help get an extra land out.
There are a few creatures who can help us, too. Magus of the Coffers can pay two and tap itself to produce black mana equal to the number of swamps you control (which is just Cabal Coffers, so we've got that in as well). Combined with the enchantment Intruder Alarm, which untaps all creatures you control whenever a creat﷽ure enters, we should be able to use the Magus to fuel a few ninjutsus each turn.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth works very well in this deck. Not only does it work with Cabal Coffers and Magus of the Coffers to produce lots of black mana, it ensures all your opponent's lands are swamps too for your Swampwalk creatures.
There's an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:infinite combo here, too. While more players might be familiar with the Deadeye Navigator and Peregrine Drake combo, we're going to swap Peregrine Drake with Palinchron. Palinchron untaps seven mana, and we can ninjutsu it in for the same mana value as we would a Peregrine Drake. It can also bounce itself to your hand for an added layer of ﷽protection.
To top it all off, there's Doubling Cube. Doubling Cube is an artifact that doubles the amount of mana in your mana pool. Because you've only got the combat phase to use your ninjutsu abilities, there's a small window of opportunity before your mana dissipates. It's just a good way to get as much mana out as we can during the combat phase, while hopefully keeping some mana sources open for your second main phase.
Draw
Blue and black are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:very selfish colours, so there are lots of ways to draw cards outside of Satoru's ability.
Because the whole strategy of this deck is hitting opponents with unblocked creatures, we can use cards like Reconnaissance Mission, Bident of Thassa, and Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar to draw cards on combat damage. There's also Sphinx of the Second Sun, which gives us an additional beginning phase (including draw) just before the end step, and the classic Phyrexian Arena to draw a second card each draw step. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is another fantastic card, as it can shut down your opponents while giving you a lot of cards each turn.
Sphinx of the Second Sun is an often-misplayed card. The ability is triggered at the start of your second main phase, but the second beginning phase doesn't happen until afterwards. You go from the second main phase to second beginning phase, and then straight to the end step.
Though it isn't exactly card draw, creatures like Wrexial, the Risen Deep and Mindleech Mass both give us some card advantage by plucking things out of your opponents' graveyards and hands and casting them for free.
Unblockable Creatures
Ninjutsu is a powerful ability, but it has one huge caveat: you need an unblocked, attacking creature. When an opponent knows you're up to ninjutsu shenanigans, they'll often try and block everything they possibly can to not give you an in, so we need to make one.
Fortunately, there are lots of cheap creatures that are either impossible or very difficult to block. Things like GIngerbrute, Blighted Agent, Invisible Stalker, Quag Vampires, Slither Blade, and Tormented Soul can all attack and swap out wജith ninjutsu then come straight back in 🔜thanks to their very low mana costs.
However, we might want to swap between bigger, more easily blocked creatures. There are cards like Aqueous Form, which make the enchanted creature unblockable, Levitation, which gives every creature you control flying, and Filth gives creatures Swampwalk. Sun Quan, Lord of Wu, a particularly 🐷tricky inclusion, which gives creatures you contro𒅌l horsemanship.
Creatures 🌟with horsemanship can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship.The mechanic is so old and obscure that nobody ever uses it. It might as well just read "creatures you control are unblockable".
For smaller instances, we can use cards like Artful Dodge, Slip Through Space, Ghostform, and Labyrinth of Skophos to give one or two extra creatures u🍸nblockable each turn.
Time To Win
Before getting to the big, game-winning creatures, don't sleep on one of the new cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Silver-fur Master. Silver-fur Master reduces all nin🎃jutsu costs by one generic, making everything only cost o൩nly three mana instead of four.
Once all the pieces are in place, it's time to bring out the big guns: infect. Instead of reducing an opponent's life total, creatures with infect gives the opponent poison counters. Get ten poison counters and you immediately lose.
Infect is a controversial mechanic in Commander, as it wasn't scaled with the format's life totals in mind. It's still legal, though, so it's totally fine to play as long as you check with your playgroup beforehand.
Infect sources include Ichor Rats, Blighted Agent, Phyrexian Juggernaut, and the one-hit-killer Blightsteel Colossus. Blightsteel Colossus is amazing with Satoru, as he side-steps a lot of the card's weaknesses (it not having haste and being easily chump-blocked are the big two).
The plan of this deck is simple: get an unblocked creature, swap it out with Blightsteel Colossus or another infect creature, and knock that opponent out of the game. Bounce Blightsteel back to your hand with something like Into the Roil to set things up for your next turn🔜, when you can knock someone else out.
If that fails, though, you can always just win through non-infect combat. Lord of the Void, Jin-Gitaxias, Wrexial, Sphinx of the Second Sun, Mindleech Mass, and Silent-Blade Oni (one of onlღy two actual ninjas in the deck) all deal big damage when needed.
Powering The Deck Down
This deck can be trick🐬y to balance because ninjutsu is inherently a powerful ability.꧒ There are ways to do it, though.
First and foremost, take out all the infect damage, especially Blightsteel Colossus. They are cards that aren't suitable for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:lower-power games at the best of times, and with Satoru shoring up all of the Colossus' weaknesses it makes it way too much. You can replace them with simple big creatures and instead focus on winning through combat damage over infect.
Next, take out 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the tutor, Vampiric Tutor. Satoru already does a lot of decent card filtering, so relying on that to find the cards you need feels more reasonable for a slower game. You should also remove Jin-Git𝔉axias, Core Augurꦍ. It can completely lock your opponents out by forcing them to discard, and with lower powers they may have fewer ways to come back from it.
Lastly, the infinite mana combo's got to go. Being able to ninjutsu in all your creatures at once is overkill for slow games, and having the freedom o cast whatever you want outside of combat is too much. Pulling Deadeye Navigator out of the deck allows you to still have the little bit of ramp granted by Palinchron, but without it getting too silly.
The Full Decklist
For the full decklist, expand the box below or check out ༒.
