$80 Yuriko Ninja Tribal | Commander Abridged Gameplay | Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
Hey friends, I'm back with another budget brew for you all: $80 Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. Yuriko's combat trigger is both a card draw engine and finisher wrapped in one, drawing you cards whenever a Ninja you control deals combat damage and making your opponents lose life equal to the card's converted mana cost. But what takes her to the next level is her commander ninjutsu ability, letting you sneak her into play by bouncing an unblocked attacker for just two mana without ever needing to pay extra mana for the command tax, so she can keep getting removed only to be ninjutsu'd back onto the battlefield for two mana each time.
Being super mana efficient card draw and a finisher wrapped in one and incredibly resilient to removal makes Yuriko a high-powered commander that is a serious contender even at the lowest budgets.
Our Yuriko list is pretty standard. The game plan is to cast cheap evasive creatures like Ornithopter, Changeling Outcast, Faerie Seer, and Spectral Sailor, then attack with them so we can ninjutsu in our Ninjas like Yuriko, Mistblade Shinobi, and Ingenious Infiltrator to make the most out of Yuriko's powerful combat trigger, or turn all our creatures into Ninjas with Arcane Adaptation to get maximum value out of Yuriko.
To make Yuriko's combat trigger even deadlier we're going to run cards with very high cmc's so our opponents will lose tons of life when we reveal them with Yuriko. We'll use cards that we can cast for way lower than their cmc, like Snuff Out, split cards that have a total cmc equal to both sides like Discovery // Dispersal, and of course Draco which we'll never cast but is still worth running since we can drain our opponents for 16 when we reveal it.
To make sure we're revealing the most expensive cards with Yuriko we'll also be running some topdeck manipulation cards like Brainstorm and Mystic Sanctuary. And for the ultimate fun and game-ending cards we've got a bunch of extra turn spells like Temporal Mastery and Temporal Trespass which kill our opponents very quickly.
And that's the deck! This is a straightforward Aggro deck that draws tons of cards, kills our opponents without even trying, and is really hard to shut down. Even with just a budget of $81 it's still a deck to be feared:
Omnath Crashing Through!
Zendikar Rising is out now, so it's time for some sweet new commander gameplay! We're kicking things off with Omnath, Locus of Creation next week!
