The official Preview Season for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is under a week away, and yet another leak has surfaced on good ol’ Reddit. This new card is crazy good, and can be quite deadly in almost all formats. Let’s take a look at it and where it’s applicable.
DISCLAIMER: THIS CARD IS NOT CONFIRMED BY WIZARDS OF THE COAST, AND MAY NOT BE REAL!
Thousand-Faced Shadow
Thank you once again potato camera for this image. Luckily we can make out what’s happening here. So the Thousand-Faced Shadow is a 1/1 for a Blue. It has Ninjutsu for 2UU and Flying. Where this thing gets crazy is in it’s effect. When it enters play from your hand, if it’s attacking (if we ninjutsu it in), we can make a token of another attacking creature that’s ALSO tapped and attacking.
So, if we ninjutsu this in, this means that at least one of our creatures went unblocked, which means that we’re past the Declare Blockers Step. When we create the token, that token will be unblocked as well. This has a few major upsides that impact any format this card will see play in. We’ll talk about one specific format and one more general application.
More Ninjas!
Our more general application is going to be for decks that are already playing a bunch of Ninjutsu cards. Given that our token is going to be unblocked, this gives us another fantastic option to ninjutsu in another more impactful creature. I expect that this play pattern will be something that comes up in Standard, Alchemy, Historic and probably Pioneer.
COMMANDER
Thousand-Faced Shadow is going to be an all star in Commander. Satoru Umezawa quickly became a massively popular commander choice, influencing price spikes in different cards like Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow and Dimir Signet. Giving Ninjutsu to all of our creatures can allow us to leverage Thousand-Faced Shadow to sneak in quick kills with Blightsteel Colossus. We can either ninjutsu it in, or we can copy an already existing Blightsteel and take out 1 player.
READ MORE: It’s a Magic Monster Mash! Best Cards For Volo, Guide to Monsters in Commander
This is a super cool card, and I expect that things to get really crazy in Standard! What are your thoughts on this card? Let us know in the comments!
