Into the Arena: Brawling with Satsuki!

In the week since Kamigawa’s release I have been playing a lot of Arena. Most of the time I’ve been drafting in order to explore this amazing new set and build my collection. Although I haven’t been playing any new decks in Standard or Historic yet (to save up my wildcards) I have taken one stab at Constructed by building a brand new Brawl deck! 

Most new sets these days have a lot of great legendary creatures to build Commander and Brawl decks around, and that has definitely been on purpose as those formats get more popular. Even still, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty stands out as having an incredible batch of legendaries. Many of them are honouring Legendary creatures from the original Kamigawa, and many of them are brand new characters. 

Some of the new planeswalkers also look like they would make great Brawl commanders. I like The Wandering Emperor a lot but sadly she loses her surprise value when she is used as a commander, so I didn’t end up building a deck around her. Meanwhile, Tamiyo, Compleated Sage looks like the compleat package, offering some disruption and the ability to build a board presence from your graveyard (which goes great with Tamiyo, Collector of Tales). I would have made a Tamiyo deck but I already have a Simic deck for Brawl with a planeswalker commander that I love. On the bright side, Tamiyo, Completed Sage will go excellently into that Kasmina, Enigma Sage deck.

In order to choose the commander I wanted to try first, I decided to just look at multicoloured options, which make deckbuilding a lot easier. I also wanted to choose a commander that supported a specific theme, and ideally one that would allow me to play with a lot of the other new Kamigawa cards. Isshin, Two Heavens as One and Hinata, Dawn-Crowned both immediately caught my attention as low-cost tricoloured commanders with abilities that you can build around. My only issue with them was that their abilities were a little bit broad, and I am sure many other people will be building decks with them. I wanted to go in a unique direction and ended up narrowing in on three options: Kaito Shizuki, Satsuki, the Living Lore, and Tameshi, Reality Architect. 

Tameshi is an interesting Azorius commander that I really wanted to build a deck around. I was hoping to surround him with other cards that return noncreature permanents to their owners hands, in order to trigger his drawing ability. Sadly, Historic just doesn’t have enough cards to build a 100 card deck for Tameshi. Maybe he’ll be better as a unique general in larger formats! Kaito Shizuki was another case of me realising there just aren’t enough cards in Historic for it to work. Since this is the first Arena set with ninjas I just couldn’t piece together a deck based on them.

This left me with Satsuki, the Living Lore, and this time I was not disappointed. Satsuki’s saga theme was really fun to build around because I love sagas as a card type, and getting to speed them up can really increase their power. There are a lot of great new sagas in Kamigawa and I was able to include a ton of new cards, but there are also a lot of great green and white sagas from older sets, so the deck doesn’t feel too sparse. Enchantments in general are a very common theme for Selesnya, so I had no problem finding excellent cards for my list. From the new Kami of Transience, to Setessan Champion from Theros, to Sythis, Harvest’s Hand which was added in Historic Horizons, there are a lot of insane enchantment synergies to include.

I have never played a singleton enchantment deck before, but I can now see why its a popular Commander and Brawl archetype. I’ve played about a dozen games with this deck and it’s a blast! I have tuned the deck a bit, mostly to increase its consistency and explosiveness, and this is where the list ended up:

Although I initially expected to build a midrange deck that centered around gaining value from sagas, it turns out this is actually more of a combo deck. The synergies are just so strong, and the focus of most games is trying to assemble an enchantment engine that can continuously draw cards, gain life, and build a board presence. 

One of my favourite cards in the deck is Generous Visitor. The humble one-drop is indeed very generous, as it can quickly top your creatures up with plenty of counters. The early board presence it provides is key to throwing control opponents off-balance and keeping aggressors at bay. Another great card that I’ve never been able to play with before is Idyllic Tutor. The tutor is certainly ideal for this deck, as it can grab all of the most important cards from your library, whether it’s a set-up card, a removal spell, or a finisher.

Overall, the deck is a great shell for Satsuki. Getting to activate his ability with two or three sagas on the battlefield feels great, and it often feels like this deck is just outpacing your opponents. Enchantments are a versatile card type. They can be creatures, they can be removal, they can be used for card advantage and for aggression. I think if you wanted to build the most powerful version of this deck you should field Calix, Destiny’s Hand. He has been extremely powerful every time I play him, usually winning me the game. However, I have personally had more fun playing with Satsuki and all the new sagas!

This deck has been a great way to use a lot of Kamigawa cards in one of my favourite formats, and its been really satisfying to see the saga theme from the set make such a powerful constructed impact. This deck also highlighted how much Historic Horizons has impacted Brawl, as I noticed that a lot of the best cards in this deck were from that set. I ended up trying out a number of cards I had never played with before, and that’s always one of the best experiences in Magic, and the main reason I would recommend trying out this brew! Satsuki, the Living Lore may seem like a low-profile two-drop, but this deck really showcases her and creates some amazing moments.