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Preview season for Commander 2018 was this past week, and it brought with it all manner of excitement from casual players of all varieties. However, there are also Legacy and Vintage players scouring these previews for potential playables. One in particular seems to have caught people's eyes: Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. This card is a Ninja lord that functions as a better Ninja of the Deep Hours. We don't see a ton of Ninja of the Deep Hours in non-Pauper formats, but a high enough density of similar effects could change that:
Blue-Black Ninjas - Legacy | scaryrawr
- Creatures (20)
- 1 Higure, the Still Wind
- 1 Mistblade Shinobi
- 1 Skullsnatcher
- 1 Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
- 1 Toshiro Umezawa
- 1 Vendilion Clique
- 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
- 2 Snapcaster Mage
- 3 Baleful Strix
- 4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
- 4 Spellstutter Sprite
- Planeswalkers (1)
- 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
- Instants (13)
- 1 Spell Pierce
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Fatal Push
- 4 Force of Will
- Sorceries (3)
- 3 Thoughtseize
- Enchantments (2)
- 2 Bitterblossom
- Lands (20)
- 2 Swamp
- 3 Island
- 1 Creeping Tar Pit
- 1 Faerie Conclave
- 1 Mutavault
- 2 Scalding Tarn
- 3 Flooded Strand
- 3 Underground Sea
- 4 Polluted Delta
To that end, this deck is playing a ton of cards that you're excited to pick up with Ninjutsu. Spellstutter Sprite and Baleful Strix are the premier effects here, but Snapcaster Mage is pretty good as well. In addition to these types of effects, you want to make sure that you back your Ninjas up with as much cheap interaction as possible so that you can put a Ninja into play without putting your shields down. Daze, Spell Pierce, and Force of Will are the premier effects in this category.
The goal here is to get a Ninja into play uncontested and then protect it with enough counterspells and discard to ensure that you can keep drawing extra cards off of Ninja of the Deep Hours or Yuriko. With just one or two attacks, you'll pull far enough ahead that it will be difficult for most opponents to pull themselves back into the game. The big question is this: Is the Ninja engine as good or better than other things that you can do with this shell of efficient interaction? Only time will tell.
