Preview season for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty doesn’t officially kick off until January 27th, but Wizards of the Coast (WotC) was kind enough to give us an early present for the holidays, a peek behind the neon curtain, as it were! Of particular interest to Commander fans, we got to see two new legendary creatures we can start plotting and scheming decklists with.
First off is a new modern version of Heartless Hidetsugu: Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos!
Our Ogre Shaman from ancient Kamigawa is back, but this time as an Ogre Demon! What’s cool about this switch is that Kamigawa Ogres had a thematic tie to Demons with cards like Blood Speaker and Villainous Ogre.
From a Commander deckbuilder’s perspective, there really weren’t enough cards of sufficient power and synergy to realistically build a symbiotic tribal deck around Demons and Ogres. Compare these to the Angel cards that boost a Human tribal theme:
So, what does it mean that we now have a legendary Ogre Demon creature with red and black color identity? Perhaps WotC will lean harder into the relationship between Ogres and Demons in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and maybe fleshing the themes even more in one of the associated Commander decks. I hope so, but I also know that there is a ton of Kamigawa ground to cover in just one single set, things that fans want to see again as well as the shiny new neon side of the modern-day setting.
Making the new Hidetsugu an Ogre Demon could just be nothing more than a nice call-back to the Ogre and Demon ties from the original Kamigawa sets. Still, if you have some interest in building a tribal deck around Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos, it probably wouldn’t hurt to trade for or buy some singles to get ready!
Ogres
Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos has a built-in ability to sacrifice creatures, so Ogre Slumlord and Zombie Ogre play nicely in that that space. Unfortunately, the number of quality Ogres dries up pretty soon after this list, unless you’re playing a fair number of Equipment cards for Kazuul’s Toll Collector or have other artifact shenanigans going on for Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient.
Fortunately, the bench is much deeper on the Demon side of the equation.
Demons
While Hidetsugu is a Demon, I don’t think we’d want him as the commander for a full Demon tribal deck. Rakdos, the Showstopper is the obvious commander choice if that’s what we wanted to do. But assuming that Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty brings playable Ogres and cross-tribe synergies, we can definitely drop in some excellent Demons and tie things together with the incredible Maskwood Nexus.
Sacrifice/Dies for Profit
Of course, nothing about Hidetsugu’s abilities suggests tribal strategies at all. It does however have a cheap sacrifice ability that produces a small effect. This brings to mind Viscera Seer, though Hidetsugu’s ability costs one black mana more and lets you scry one card deeper. Is scry 2 worth a mana plus a sacrificed creature? Probably not, but since it sets up Hidetsugu’s second ability, it can sometimes do some fun things. However, I do think that we’d want to lean hard on surrounding our commander with cards in the 99 that benefit from creatures being sacrificed or dying, and there are definitely tons of them in the Rakdos color identity.
It’s nice to note two things about Hidetsugu’s first ability. First, it doesn’t involve tapping, so you can use it right away assuming you have black mana available. Second, Hidetsugu can sacrifice itself, which is quite handy if it’s going to be dying anyway.
Top of Library
Of course, the juiciest part of Hidetsugu is its second ability, which ties direct damage together with the exile/use-it-or-lose-it form of card advantage that’s been used a lot in red these days. It’s an interesting dance since the higher the cost of the spell, the bigger the damage, but then the less likely you’ll actually be able to cast it, considering the ability costs three to activate and potentially an extra black mana to set it up with the scry ability.
It’d be wise to include a lot of other ways to set up the top of your library to better manage that dance. I imagine you can even use it some just to help make your land drops each turn, because the more mana this deck has, the better its abilities get. And speaking of that, I think Explorer’s Scope might be some spicy tech here, since it lets you know what’s on top of your deck before activating its ability, potentially clearing a land off the top of your deck.
Next up is the red representative of a new cycle of legendary Dragon Spirits—Atsushi, the Blazing Sky!
In a side-by-side comparison, it’s clear that the new mythic Dragon Spirit is better than its predecessor, but they definitely serve different functions. While Ryusei’s dies trigger is a battlefield sweeper, Atsushi generates resources when it dies, either exile/use-it-or-lose-it card advantage or three Treasure tokens.
Any of the artifacts listed in the Top of Library section above would certainly be nice inclusions for an Atsushi deck. But let’s dig a little deeper.
Treasures!
Treasure synergies has been heavily supported by Magic design in the past few years, so leaning into Atsushi’s Treasure-making ability is going to yield sweet dividends. In particular Academy Manufactor is a great inclusion, turning each infusion of Treasures into Clue and Food tokens too. I also really like Treasure Map for its transformed side Treasure Cove, which can turn each Treasure into actual card draw.
Then there’s Magda, Brazen Outlaw, which will let you sacrifice five Treasures to search your library for an artifact or Dragon card and put it right onto the battlefield. I really like searching up Maskwood Nexus in this way, which will turn all your attacking or tapping creatures into Dwarves and every creature in your deck into Dragons that can be searched up.
Artifacts
If we want to lean even further into Treasures, they are artifacts and red has some sweet artifact synergies we can pepper into the deck. Hellkite Tyrant isn’t a bad Dragon to search up with Magda, potentially attacking and stealing a bunch of artifacts from an opponent that’s gone a little bonkers on their artifact ramp. I also really like Inspiring Statuary as a way to turn Treasures into mana by tapping them rather than sacrificing them, though only to cast nonartifact spells.
The last new legendary card that was previewed, Kaito Shizuki, can’t be your commander, but it does very nicely slot into another popular tribal commander.
If you’ve already got a deck built around Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow – like I do! – then you’re super-excited about Kaito Shizuki and the return of Ninjas to an upcoming Magic set. Modern Horizons really fleshed out the tribe with a lot of cool cards to add to all the sweet Ninjas from the first Kamigawa block.
Ninjas & Stuff
It would be the biggest troll in the world if Kaito Shizuki was the only card in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty that had something to do with Ninjas. My assumption is that we’ll have at least a handful of new quality Ninjas to consider for our Yuriko deck, but I do think Kaito likely deserves a slot.
Kaito can hit the battlefield, make a 1/1 blue Ninja token that can’t be blocked, and then phase out, so you can bank on getting at least one more use out of Kaito before it becomes vulnerable to attacks from your opponents. Ninjas love to attack, so that +1 loyalty ability should equate to raw card draw most of the time, but if you really want to loot a card into the graveyard – say, for reanimation shenanigans – you can certainly activate it before your attack step.
Before I sign out, I did want to take a moment to praise the new full art ukiyo-e basic lands:
Wow. Just, wow! These ten lands are gorgeous and are clearly home runs design-wise. I’m hoping that enough packs are going to be opened that the prices won’t be too insane, because there are a lot of people out there that are going to want them. Thankfully they’ll be available to find in Draft, Set and Collector Boosters.
So, what are your predictions for what we’ll be seeing in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty once the previews begin? Do you think we’ll be getting more Ogre and Demon cross-tribe synergies? On a scale of 1-5, which new Dragon Spirit will be the best and where does Atsushi fall? How many awesome new Ninjas will we see?
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
