OHKO's & Infinite Combos! A Satoru Umezawa MTG EDH Deck Guide *UPDATED*

Satoru Umezawa is one of the most popular Commanders to come out of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. He makes tricky plays by granting all your creatures ninjutsu. And the deck has some sweet OHKO’s and infinite combos that will make him hyper-competitive too!

Satoru Umezawa

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In many ways, Satoru Umezawa plays out similarly to Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow Commander ninjutsu {U}{B} ({U}{B}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand or the command zone tapped and attacking.)
Whenever a Ninja you control deals combat damage to a player, reveal the top card of your library and put that card into your hand. Each opponent loses life equal to that card's mana value. as a Commander. Both decks revolve around playing cheap, elusive creatures, attacking with them, and using ninjutsu to swap them out for better threats right before they deal damage.

But while these two Ninja decks are similar in some ways, they are very different in others. Yuriko is a dedicated Ninja deck, playing an entourage of Ninjas like Ingenious Infiltrator Ingenious Infiltrator Ninjutsu {U}{B} ({U}{B}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking.)
Whenever a Ninja you control deals combat damage to a player, draw a card. and Fallen Shinobi Fallen Shinobi Ninjutsu {2}{U}{B} ({2}{U}{B}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking.)
Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player exiles the top two cards of their library. Until end of turn, you may play those cards without paying their mana costs. .

But Satoru acts more like a Sneak Attack Sneak Attack {R}: You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. That creature gains haste. Sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step. as your Commander. He’s all about putting GIANT creatures into play at a discount.

Best Cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty

Thousand-Faced Shadow

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Thousand-Faced Shadow is everything a Ninja deck wants. You can play it as a one-mana flyer to enable other cards with ninjutsu. But it has its own ninjutsu ability that is quite relevant to Satoru’s strategy.

When you put Thousand-Faced Shadow into play via ninjutsu, it makes a copy of another attacking creature. In this deck, you can make tokens of massive creatures like Blightsteel Colossus Blightsteel Colossus Trample, infect, indestructible
If Blightsteel Colossus would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal Blightsteel Colossus and shuffle it into its owner's library instead. , Mindleech Mass Mindleech Mass Trample
Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may look at that player's hand. If you do, you may cast a spell from among those cards without paying its mana cost. , and Archon of Cruelty Archon of Cruelty Flying
Whenever this creature enters or attacks, target opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker of their choice, discards a card, and loses 3 life. You draw a card and gain 3 life. .

Silver-Fur Master

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Satoru already discounts big creatures in your hand. But Silver-Fur Master will discount them further by reducing all ninjutsu abilities by one mana.

With this card, you have the potential of putting things like Blightsteel Colossus Blightsteel Colossus Trample, infect, indestructible
If Blightsteel Colossus would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal Blightsteel Colossus and shuffle it into its owner's library instead. into play as early as Turn 3.

Kaito Shizuki

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Kaito can make a stream of evasive attackers to fuel Satoru’s ninjutsu tricks. And his +1 ability can help find the big threats in your deck.

Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant

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Satoru Umezawa is interested in all the biggest, baddest creatures in Magic: the Gathering. Phyrexian Praetors, such as the new Jin-Gitaxias, match that description perfectly.

Putting Jin in on Turn 4 with Satoru’s ability can break your opponents’ wills. Jin will counter the first spell an opponent casts each turn. Plus he’ll make copies of your artifacts, instants, and sorceries.

Best Ninjutsu Enablers for Satoru Umezawa

Any deck that focuses on ninjutsu will want cheap creatures that can attack and reliably not be blocked. Flying, unblockable, fear, shadow, etc. are all keywords we’re interested in.

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Changeling Outcast is one mana, unblockable, and technically counts as a Ninja in case you do want to throw some additional Ninja support into your deck like Ingenious Infiltrator Ingenious Infiltrator Ninjutsu {U}{B} ({U}{B}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking.)
Whenever a Ninja you control deals combat damage to a player, draw a card. .

Ornithopter is actually one of the best cards in our deck. It’s zero mana and flys. So when we return it to our hand with ninjutsu, we are guaranteed to replay it in our second main phase, and it will be ready to attack again the following turn for more Ninja tricks.

Baleful Strix is an elusive threat just like the first two cards, but it also lets us draw a card when it enters the battlefield. This is key, as it will be an important piece to the infinite combo we’ll talk about later in the article.

There are tons of creatures similar to these and you’ll want to stock up on a bunch of them:

Memnite Memnite | Buy At TCGPlayer
Phyrexian Walker Phyrexian Walker | Buy At TCGPlayer
Wingcrafter Wingcrafter Soulbond (You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters. They remain paired for as long as you control both of them.)
As long as this creature is paired with another creature, both creatures have flying. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Hope of Ghirapur Hope of Ghirapur Flying
Sacrifice Hope of Ghirapur: Until your next turn, target player who was dealt combat damage by Hope of Ghirapur this turn can't cast noncreature spells. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Faerie Seer Faerie Seer Flying
When this creature enters, scry 2. (Look at the top two cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom and the rest on top in any order.) | Buy At TCGPlayer
Siren Stormtamer Siren Stormtamer Flying
{U}, Sacrifice this creature: Counter target spell or ability that targets you or a creature you control. | Buy At TCGPlayer

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Big Threats to Ninjutsu into Play

Razaketh, the Foulblooded

best-demons-commander-razaketh — Razaketh, the Foulblooded | Wizards of the Coast

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Razaketh, like in many decks, is effectively a one-card combo enabler in Satoru Umezawa. You can sneak it into play for four mana with Satoru’s ability. From there, we can sacrifice creatures to tutor our library for cards. We can get whatever we need, be it counterspells to protect our creatures, removal to disrupt our opponents, or combo pieces to win the game.

Blightsteel Colossus

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Blightsteel Colossus has been sharing the limelight with Satoru. Ever since the new Ninja was spoiled people have been talking about the synergy between Satoru and Blightsteel and how they can OHKO opponents out of the blue with extra sneaky infect damage.

**In fact, the one-two combo has been generating so much attention that Blightsteel Colossus has started to spike in price. So, if you’re interested in playing Satoru in Commander, you might want to consider picking up your copy of Blighsteel sooner than later!

Phyrexian Praetors

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The Phyrexian Praetors are extremely powerful, but they also cost a lot of mana. That’s why they typically show up in reanimator-style decks, where you can put them in the graveyard via discarding or milling them, and then resurrect them with spells like Reanimate Reanimate Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. You lose life equal to that card's mana value. or Dance of the Dead Dance of the Dead Enchant creature card in a graveyard
When this Aura enters, if it's on the battlefield, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with this Aura." Put enchanted creature card onto the battlefield tapped under your control and attach this Aura to it. When this Aura leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller sacrifices it.
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and doesn't untap during its controller's untap step.
At the beginning of the upkeep of enchanted creature's controller, that player may pay {1}{B}. If the player does, untap that creature. .

The point is, cards like Jin-Gitaxias are amazing when you don’t have to pay ten mana for them. Well, thanks to Satoru Umezawa, they effectively cost four mana in our deck. That’s a great rate for Jin and Sheoldred. And they come into play right in time to draw seven cards in our end step, in the case of Jin, or make our opponents sacrifice creatures, in the case of Sheoldred.

Going Infinite with Satoru Umezawa

Gaining Infinite Mana

You can make infinite mana if you have Satoru Umezawa on the field, an unblocked attacker like Ornithopter Ornithopter Flying , at least five untapped lands, and two of the following cards in your hand:

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With the above prerequisites met, assuming we have 7 lands in play to make simplify the combo, here’s how the combo works:

Using Satoru’s ninjutsu-granting ability, put any of the above creatures into play for 4 mana. Let’s use Peregrine Drake as the starting point for this example.
Peregrine Drake enters, and with its trigger on the stack, float 1 mana from one of your lands not used to pay for its ninjutsu cost. Peregrine’s ability will resolve, untapping 5 lands. (You now have all 7 of your lands untapped + 1 mana in your mana pool)
Ninjutsu Palinchron into play in exchange for Peregrine Drake. With Palinchron’s trigger on the stack, float 3 mana from one of your lands not used to pay for its ninjutsu cost. Palinchron’s ability will resolve, untapping 7 lands. (You now have all 7 of your lands untapped + 4 mana in your mana pool)
Continue swapping Peregrine Drake and Palinchron in and out of play via Ninjutsu, netting mana each time you do so. You now have infinite mana!

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A Substitute Combo Piece

You can exchange Panharmonicon for one of the Peregrine Drake effects in the combo above and still go infinite. Just make sure you float your mana between Palinchron’s first ETB trigger and Panharmonicon’s copied trigger.

But Panharmonicon can be useful in our deck beyond just being a combo piece. We can double up on powerful ETB abilities like Sepulchral Primordial Sepulchral Primordial Intimidate (This creature can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it.)
When this creature enters, for each opponent, you may put up to one target creature card from that player's graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. or Diluvian Primordial Diluvian Primordial Flying
When this creature enters, for each opponent, you may cast up to one target instant or sorcery card from that player's graveyard without paying its mana cost. If a spell cast this way would be put into a graveyard, exile it instead. , both of which are good cards to pair with our Commander anyways.

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Winning With Infinite Mana

If we’re making infinite mana in our combat phase, it will disappear when we transition to our second main phase. So we’ll need to figure out a way to win at instant speed. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but here are two:

If Baleful Strix Baleful Strix Flying, deathtouch
When this creature enters, draw a card. is your original unblocked creature, it will be in your hand after you’ve performed your infinite mana loop. At that point you can use ninjutsu to swap Baleful Strix in and out of play until you’ve drawn your entire library. Using one last Ninja trick, put Thassa’s Oracle into play and you win the game.
If you don’t have access to Baleful Strix, any X spell that draws us cards, like Blue Sun’s Zenith, will do the trick. Cast it for X mana where X is the number of cards remaining in your library, then put Thassa’s Oracle into play via ninjutsu and win on the spot.

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best-merfolk-commander-mtg-thassas — Wizards of the Coast

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Protection for Your Commander and Combos

Our entire deck depends on Satoru sticking around on the field. Without him, our hand will often consist of 8-11 mana spells that we have no way of putting into play. So, we need to make sure our Satoru resolves when we cast him, and make sure we can protect him while he’s on the field. To do that, we’ll need a suite of counterspells.

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More Counterspells

You’re going to want more than three counterspells in your deck. So here are a few more options:

Pact of Negation Pact of Negation Counter target spell.
At the beginning of your next upkeep, pay {3}{U}{U}. If you don't, you lose the game. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Swan Song Swan Song Counter target enchantment, instant, or sorcery spell. Its controller creates a 2/2 blue Bird creature token with flying. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Flusterstorm Flusterstorm Counter target instant or sorcery spell unless its controller pays {1}.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.) | Buy At TCGPlayer
Mana Drain Mana Drain Counter target spell. At the beginning of your next main phase, add an amount of {C} equal to that spell's mana value. | Buy At TCGPlayer

While the above counterspells are some of the most efficient in the game, they are also some of the most expensive. Here are some budget options that you can play alongside the above spells or in place of them:

Counterspell Counterspell Counter target spell. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Dispel Dispel Counter target instant spell. | Buy At TCGPlayer
Spell Pierce Spell Pierce Counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays {2}. | Buy At TCGPlayer

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Satoru Umezawa - An MTG Commander Buyer's Guide UPDATED

Shamus Molony

Satoru Umezawa