> Introduction

I am personally not someone who likes to build commanders who see a lot of play. I like to explore niche legends and unplayable jank. At the time or writing, Yuriko is ranked at number 4 in terms of popularity on EDHRec.

"So CleanBelwas, if you don't like popular commanders, why did you build Yuriko?" I hear you ask.

The answer is a simple one. Because this deck is FUN.

Yuriko offers three things that make her an incredibly interesting and fun deck.

1. Games of chance.
   Her triggered ability is fun to resolve each and every time. Whether you have stacked the top of your deck (and you'll want to do this as much as possible) or you are playing blind, flipping over the top card is always a rush. Even with the most effective top deck manipulation, this deck is a gamble. The juxtaposition of running so low to the ground and including some of the most expensive spells in the format is a wild ride.

2. Strategies that are usually considered bad in EDH made viable.
   Aggro strategies are often considered to be less effective in EDH. In other formats, aggro is often reductively described as "counting to 20". Your one goal is to reduce your opponent's life total from 20 to 0 as quickly as possible. Doing this to three opponents, all of whom will be looking to stop you and start with twice as much life, makes this strategy far less consistent in EDH. Yuriko lets you play aggressively because the life loss she lays down hits all opponents equally, meaning you now only have to count to 40. Still a tall order, but significantly easier and, being in Black and Blue, you have all manner of tricks at your disposal to help see your game plan through.

3. Resilience.
   The resilience of the deck is all thanks to the star of the show. Our commander. We'll cover why in our next section. The way this deck works means that you very rarely feel out of a game. It is explosive. It can turn the game on its head in one turn. Despite the fact it follows very few traditional EDH deck building conventions, it puts up a hell of a fight. Sometimes it even wins those fights. It can come back from the brink of death and close out a game. I'm sure we've all been in games where we've thought "That's it. I'm out. I've got nothing". It happens to the best of us. I have never felt that way playing this deck.

It is worth noting that the deck list attached to this primer is intended to be played at more casual-to-mid power level tables. It is, by design, lacking some of the pieces to take it to the next level (as this would not be appropriate for my personal meta). If you are looking to play at a higher level, then take a look at the "Variants, Alternatives and Upgrade Paths" section where I cover some changes that could be made to power this deck up.

> Let's talk about Yuriko

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

What a gal. She is the driving force behind the effectiveness of this deck. Let's look at why.

• Commander Ninjutsu.
  This is a powerful ability. If you have an unblocked attacker, you may pay a blue and a black and essentially swap Yuriko with that attacker, all but guaranteeing her making a connection. You can activate this ability from the command zone or from your hand. This counts as activating an ability and therefore cannot be countered with counter spells (although it can be countered with Stifle type effects). This makes it incredibly easy for Yuriko to make contact with an opponent, and you'll want Yuriko to make contact with your opponents as much as possible. Outside of certain, very specific circumstances, it also entirely negates Commander Tax. It doesn't matter how many times Yuriko has been killed. Commander Ninjutsu will usually cost 2 (unless you're playing against certain stax pieces). You will be just as happy with Yuriko in your hand or in the command zone as you will with her on the field.

• Her ability triggers PER NINJA
  Ninja's aren't a massively supported tribe, but one thing they are good at is punching face. By carefully selecting our creatures, we are able to ninjutsu our ninjas into combat at a significant rate. The more we do this, the more times we get to resolve Yuriko's oh so fun triggered ability. Blue and Black's control elements and ability to make creatures unblockable only add to our ability to connect. The icing on the cake is when we manipulate our non-ninja's creature types with things like Amoeboid Changeling and Arcane Adaptation.

• She doesn't draw cards.
  One aspect of Yuriko that is often overlooked is that her triggered ability reveals the top card of your library and puts it into your hand. This is not the same as drawing cards. All of those EDH boogeymen like Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils have no effect here. It's a subtle distinction, but it matters. There are a lot of commonly used cards in EDH that look to punish players for drawing cards, or prevent them from doing so entirely. Yuriko doesn't care.

It is worth noting though that Yuriko's trigger reveals the cards to the whole table. They're going to know if you ripped that counter spell or removal spell off the top and play around it. You are giving them information that you would rather they didn't have. It's not a major downside, but it is worth keeping in mind what cards your opponents have seen and what cards they haven't. If you have two counters in hand, use the one they know about and keep some tricks up your sleeve for later.

> Gameplan

The gameplan for this deck is relatively simple. Get Ninjas through, trigger Yuriko, have disgustingly large CMC card on top, repeat.

How we do this will generally follow the same pattern.

• Starting Hand
  Our first few turns are crucial. We need to get our game plan going. Our ideal opening hand would have: At least one land of each colour, a 1-2 mana evasive creature and a way to stack the top of our deck or to start digging. As well as this, we would ideally have some form of protection or counter magic, but given how quickly we can dig through our deck, this isn't strictly necessary. More draw spells and dig spells are fine here too.

• Early Game
  In the first couple of turns, we look to play low costed, evasive creatures. Our deck is full of 1 or 2 cmc creatures that either cannot be blocked outright, or have natural evasion built in. It is very important to our game plan that we are dropping one or two of these in the early turns of the game. This deck looks to apply significant pressure as early as possible and try and keep our opponents playing catch up. Dropping a small army of aggressive creatures in the early turns is the best way to do this for this deck.

• Bring in the Chief
  When the time is right, we want to get Yuriko in. Often this will be turn two, but not always. It is worth nothing that if you drop a 1 drop and ninjutsu on two, you will end up with 8 cards in hand at end of turn and will have to discard. Not a major downside, but worth playing around if there isn't something you are happy to discard in your hand. Usually a turn 1 creature, turn two top deck manipulation spell and a turn three ninjutsu is the sweet spot.

• Card Selection: What to pick and when
  This deck, by design, runs incredibly cheap spells, relatively few lands and no mana rocks. We make up for this by being able to filter through our deck, always selecting the best card for our current needs. Our high density of cantrips, top deck manipulation and yuriko keeping our hand stocked mean that we should at least be able to make our land drops consistently. This will be important going in to the mid to late game. This deck doesn't need many more than 4 lands to function, but we don't want to be stuck with fewer than that. Once we've got enough mana, we want to pay close attention to the board state. This deck is usually very good at digging through our library to give us the best cards available for any given situation. It is important to make sure you are always picking the right card for the current situation. If your opponents are likely to have a board wipe (based on their colours, deck, amount of mana available, propensity for running board wipes etc.), then you would do well to prioritise selecting counter magic. If you feel that your board state is relatively safe for now, then digging for a repeatable source of top deck manipulation (Scroll Rack for example) or some of the big hitters is a good idea.

• Mid to Late game.
  Towards the end of the game, we tend to play more tempo/control. We will often draw a card, do our thing with attacks and pass. We have a lot of cheap counter magic, cantrips and protection pieces. This deck HAS to get off to an aggressive start, so by the mid to late game, we will likely be a target for our opponent's ire. It is important that we have the means to mess with their plans while protecting our own.

• Threat Assessment
  This is important in any deck, and here is no exception. Protection of your key pieces is your most important consideration when deciding whether or not it is worth countering that spell. For the most part, the only things we care about countering are board wipes or combo pieces that win opponents the game. Don't fire off your protection pieces too soon. Remember that Yuriko is just as happy in the command zone or hand as she is on the field. If someone targets her with removal (and they probably will), it often won't matter. You can ninjutsu her back in at a moments notice. Don't be afraid to let her die.There are a subset of cards we include specifically so we can have her die to ninjiusu her back in later.
  The very nature of how this deck looks to win means that we care very little about what our opponents are doing. They will most likely be unable to block us, most of our key effects are abilities rather spells so they are much harder to interact with, and we are able to deploy our key pieces in the early game when most players are still casting their ramp spells. We deploy early and quickly, and our interaction should be mostly focused on protection.

• Is this Aristocrats?
  One of the most fun interactions with Yuriko is killing her ourselves only to Ninjutsu her back in a moment later. Yuriko by herself does not attack well. She is simply a 1/3 with no evasion when it comes to combat. We are running a lot of creatures that do a much better job at connecting with players. This, coupled with Yuriko's frankly too cheap ninjutsu ability, is why we run an amount of ways to kill Yuriko ourselves while reaping massive benefit as a result. Things like Village Rites, Abjure and Viscera Seer offer us huge advantage for a tiny mana investment, with the trade off being sacrificing our commander who we are happy being in the command zone anyway. It's a match made in heaven. A reasonably common interaction is to sacrifice Yuriko to gain some advantage and ninjutsu her back that very same turn. chef's kiss.

> Good vs. Bad matchups

This deck cares very little about what its opponents are doing. As such, it tends to fair surprisingly well a surprising amount of the time. It looks to examine of the "rules" of the EDH meta and use them to its advantage. Generally, most casual to mid power level decks will spend their first turns ramping and setting up, ready to put their plans in to action in the late game. This decks looks to take advantage of that lack of early game pressure and come out swinging. It generally fairs well against creature centric combat based decks as it looks to use the same basic win con but apply it much sooner. It can also hold its own against control or combo decks, provided the pilot can assess threats appropriately (so not so well for me) and know when to use their counters.

That said, as with any deck looking to utilise tempo or control strategies and a multiplayer setting, it can crumble to focused targeting. Holding off the concerted efforts of three players all trying to kill you and only can be tough. Your best hope is to kill them first. This is exactly why appropriate threat assessment is so important. Know when to let things die and when things are worth saving. We only run a finite amount of control magic so we can't expect to counter every single threat. If all three opponents decide to eliminate you first, this deck will likely struggle. As with most aggressive decks, it can struggle if opponents stabilise and make games go long. This deck is very much a proactive deck that races its opponents. If they stabilise before we can kill them, closing out games can be tricky for us.

We also fair relatively poorly against stax. Our deck looks to deploy lots of small evasive creatures, and the nature of Ninjutsu means that many of these are often bouncing from the field and back to hand, then back to the field and back to hand. This is only feasible because of their low CMC. A common action for this deck to take is to attack with an unblockable creature, activate ninjutsu, then replay that same creature in the second main phase ready for the next turn cycle. Cards that look to tax us for playing spells can seriously mess with our tempo. Don't let them resolve.

> High risk, High Reward

This deck looks to turn many EDH conventions on their head. Your classic EDH deck will run close to 50 mana sources in a combination of lands, dorks and rocks. This deck runs 33 lands, no dorks and no rocks. This is a risky strategy. It is vital that we get an aggressive start. The longer a game goes on, the further we fall behind by most of the conceivable metrics used to judge a competent EDH deck. If we get to the late game with our opponents life totals still high and no way of reliably stacking the top of deck with one of our big hitters, we are essentially left with a bunch of 1/1s and not enough mana. This deck needs to come out swinging and put opponents on the back foot. Apply pressure, be ruthless. Attack where your attacks get through. If you pull your foot off the gas, you're going to get out raced.

But if you keep up the pressure, keep getting hits in, be relentless, then the effect can be wonderfully devastating.

> Card Discussion

For the most part, a lot of our cards are reasonably interchangeable. One unblockable 1/1 for 1 is very much the same as another. As such, outside of specific cards, I will be talking about groups of cards and the roles they serve. I will still mention specific cards, but I won't be looking to include details on every single cards inclusion as most will be fairly obvious.

> Evasive Creatures

A cornerstone to our plan, these will generally fall in to three categories. Unblockables (Slither Blade, Dimir Infiltrator), Ninjas (Ninja of the Deep Hours, Mist-Syndicate Naga) and value creatures (Faerie Seer, Augury Owl). Our first two categories are fairly self explanatory, but the latter warrants some discussion. And naturally, any creature that can fulfil multiple roles is a dream (Changeling Outcast is both unblockable and a Ninja, for example).

Value creatures need to pass several checks. They should be cheap (2cmc or less), evasive (flying, menace etc.) and have a meaningful synergy with the deck or create meaningful value. Faerie Seer, for example, ticks all three boxes. Cheap, evasive and allows us to stack the top of our decks. Solid "enters the battlefield" abilities are the gold standard here as these creatures will likely spend a lot of the game bouncing back to our hands and being cast again. Shout out to Gingerbrute too. Colour agnostic, evasive and with haste. This guy is superb for keeping up the pressure and means you rarely have to take a turn off when he's around.

We look to run a reasonably high amount of these creatures. 20-24 feels like to sweet spot. We want to make sure we hit them in the early game and we want a lot of redundancy for when they die.

> Top deck manipulation

These cards make the difference between this deck being the roll of a dice or genuinely threatening. There are generally two types of cards in this category. Cards that let us dig and filter through the top of our deck, and cards that let us put cards back on top of our deck from other zones (especially the hand).

One of the most important effects this deck wants to make use of is putting cards in hand back on top of your library. This effect isn't that common, but it is integral to this deck. That's why we play Dream Cache. It is a 3 mana, sorcery speed Brainstorm, but even that is worth it for that effect.

Key cards include:

• Scroll Rack. The best card in the deck, without a doubt. It is perfect in this deck. It has a low CMC (sorry, Mana Value). It is cheap to activate. It lets you repeatedly put cards from your hand back on top of your library, which is a rare effect even to do just once. This lets you do it over and over again. And with its recent reprint in Commander Legends, it hasn't been as cheap as it now is for years. Pulling this from a pack was a huge driving force behind making this deck. It's a phenomenal card and pairs perfectly with Yuriko.
• Brainstorm. Instant speed, 1 mana, lets you rebuy the massive thing Yuriko put in your hand last time. One of the most important cards in your deck without a doubt.
• Dream Cache. Hey, it's worse than Brainstorm in almost every sense, but even bad Brainstorm is still good. And I guess it gets around Dispel and Mental Misstep, so that's cool. And to be fair, being able to choose to put cards on the bottom is actually pretty good. If you haven't hit a big mana finisher, this lets you disregard some chaff in your hand rather than be forced to put something back on top that you don't want to. Maybe it's better than Brainstorm? Joke. That's a joke.
• Soothsaying. By the time we are in control mode, it's nice to have a mana sink that lets us further our game plan. The shuffle effect is steep, but is sometimes useful.
• Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire. More efficient and better top deck manipulation more of the time. Attacks well, boast can be activated whether blocked or not, and gets any card to the top.
• Contingency Plan / Taigam's Scheming. At first, these cards seem a little innocuous, but they let you dig VERY deep for their mana cost, and letting you put dud cards in the graveyard rather than back on top is a blessing in the late game when you're just looking for those big hitters.
• Sensei's Divining Top. Turns out one of the most powerful cards of all time is quite good. People that aren't familiar with this card often misjudge just how good it is. It does an incredible job at smoothing out your draws and is nearly impossible to kill (since at can hide itself on top of your library when targeted). It is cheap to cast and cheap to activate. It is ludicrously good in pretty much any deck, and is particularly spicy in this deck, and we're not even taking advantage of it's combo potential.

> Big Mana Finishers

These are the cards we want on top when Yuriko triggers. These are what will kill your opponents. These also pose an interesting deck building question. How can we justify a 12 mana spell in a deck that only runs 33 lands and no rocks? We have to be very particular with what we include here. The key here is to include cards that have a high CMC, but have ways of negating that cost.

• Delve cards make up the most of our big mana hitters. We play a lot of cantrips or have a lot of spells that let us put things in the graveyard. Our graveyard fills up pretty quickly. We will rarely pay for anything but the coloured pips on a delve card.
• Aftermath or Split cards. These are another example of cards whose CMC belies the cost you pay. We play the cheap front half for tempo/control, have the option to aftermath the back half should we ever choose and when they are on top, and when Yuriko triggers we add both halves together to get a much larger number than we'd ever pay.
• The Cauldron of Eternity. Another card with a huge CMC that lets us cast for cheaper in the late game. It also has a semi-relevant ability.
• Draco. Draco is here for the memes. It's not the correct choice. We'll never cast it. But for my personal taste, there is no point in making a deck that cares about large CMCs without including the largest CMC. If you want to optimise this deck, take Draco out. Replace it with something you might actually cast one day. Just know that you'll never know the satisfaction that comes from ripping Draco off the top.

We want anything from around 10-14 of these cards. Unless, like me, you are a fool and include Draco, you will likely be able to cast these at some point in the game, so their inclusion is fine.

> Utility

For the most part, you should include the best cards you own / can afford. We're looking for classic Dimir tempo plays. We want good counterspells and removal spells. If you own or can afford and justify the free counter spells like Force of Will, they should definitely be in the deck. They're great. They're very powerful and their CMC is higher than you actually pay for them so they synergise with the deck.

You can also just play good old fashioned Counterspell. Good old fashioned Counterspell is also a very good card.

Some cards that are worth mentioning regardless of budget or availability:

• Abjure. This is a low key sleeper hit in this deck. Counters any spell for 1 mana, with the downside most often being that you put Yuriko back in the command zone, a place where we want her to be anyway. Yes please.
• Village Rites. Same kind of thing. 1 mana, draw two, put your commander where she wants to be. Also doubles up as good protection against exile effects.
• Into the Roil/Blink of an Eye. These cards are just incredibly flexible and versatile. They can rescue your permanents or out tempo your opponents, and have the flexibility to be able to replace themselves if you have the mana.
• Arcane Adaptation. Having all your non-ninja unblockables become Ninjas is very powerful in this deck. It's only really worth it at 3cmc though. Xenograft probably wouldn't make the cut.
• Trickery Charm. Surprisingly applicable card from the best Magic Set of all time. A 1 mana instant with three very relevant modes.
• Dive Down. This card is open for interpretation, but generally this kind of effect is worth having a few of. I'm also considering Lazotep Plating and Mizzium Skin. The +3 to toughness is somewhat relevant in my meta, but I'll probably end up finding a place for Plating too to protect things like Scroll Rack.

> Mana base

It is incredibly important that this deck gets off to a good start. As such, I made sure to not include any lands that always enter untapped or don't produce mana of at least one of your colours. You want to do everything in your power to make sure that you have access to both of your colours within the first couple of turns. I'm debating cutting River of Tears because of how fickle and situational it can be.

Naturally, if you have Duals or Shocks or any of the good dual coloured lands, they should be here too.

The only glaring omission here is fetches. Fetches are great at fixing colours, but the REAL reason they are so good is all of the other utility they offer, one aspect of which would be particularly valuable here. The ability to shuffle on command can be huge. Had I not traded my Onslaught Polluted Delta and Bloodstained Mire for a Cabal Coffers, I'd play them here. But I did, so here we are. If you have any fetch land that comes in untapped and lets the land it fetches come in untapped, play it. The shuffle is as good as the fixing.

> Notable Exclusions

Probably best to address the elephant in the room first. This deck runs no mana rocks. Not even Sol Ring. This is objectively not a great decision and if you are looking to build a Yuriko deck, I would respect it if you chose to include mana rocks. I chose not to as part of the reasoning for me building the deck in the first place was to try and build a deck without them and see how good it could be. In my opinion, the deck doesn't really need them, but I could definitely see adding the 0-2 cmc ones. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Dominance, Dimir Signet etc. would all be fine.

Cards I would include if I owned them but don't currently and so are not on the list

• Thassa, God of the Sea. Low CMC, regular scry effect and makes a creature unblockable. Lots to like about this card.
• Wingcrafter. I've struggled to get my hands on one of these, but I think it has the potential to be more useful than one of the redundant 1 mana unblockables. The big upside here is when you bond it with Yuriko to give her evasion too. Yuriko alone does not attack well. We run a lot of effects to negate this issue, but more of these effects are only going to be a good thing.
• Fallen Shinobi. A good Ninja.
• Temporal Trespass. Big mana delve spell with powerful effect.
• Mystical Tutor. Instant speed tutor that puts a card on top of the deck.
• Vampiric Tutor. Instant speed tutor that puts a card on top of the deck.
• Mothdust Changeling. Evasive and technically a ninja.
• Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate Reborn. A land that can hit for 7? Seems good enough to me.
• All of the good expensive control staples like Force of Will, Cyclonic Rift etc.
• Untapped fetches.

Cards I left out on purpose

• Demonic Consultation / Thassa's Oracle. A common wincon for the cEDH version of this deck, but just not what I wanted to do with it.
• Tutors. Or at least, too many of them. For me personally, the variance that comes from playing this deck is a huge part of the fun. I'm not really a fan of using too many tutors in EDH in general, and this deck is no exception. I also consider this to be the deck that I own that suffers least from having few or no tutors. There are two reasons for this. The first is that this deck cares very little about hitting a specific card. The effects this deck is looking for (low CMC, evasive creatures; bounce effects; counter magic; high CMC finishers) are all covered by a lot of redundancy. We have multiple ways to achieve any of our desired effects. This second reason, which plays well with the first, is that the card selection this deck offers is ridiculous. We can churn through this deck at an alarming rate, and our cards are designed to give us the best possible access to cards as we are churning through them, so finding an answer without the use of a tutor is usually fine. That said, being able to find any card in your deck in 100 card singleton is incredibly powerful. If you wanted to include them, I'd completely understand. As with everything in this deck, the lower CMC the better. Demonic Tutor, Scheming Symmetry, Wishclaw Talisman, Vampiric Tutor are all fine options at varying budget levels.
• Doomsday. I can definitely see the appeal here for Doomsday, but for me it's the same as tutors. I like the variance and don't particularly want to run cards that "solve" the game. The dream would be to be in a position where you can just have 5 high CMC cards left and get enough Yuriko triggers to kill everyone. My concern would be that if you don't win that turn, you've hugely messed up your ability to maintain momentum. This deck utilises its ability to dig through its library and its full graveyard to find what it needs. This becomes a lot trickier when your library is only 5 cards deep. Without building the deck around a specific Doomsday pile, it's just a dead card in hand unless you are in the position to win that turn. I'd rather have something that is always "on", rather than something that does nothing until I win.
• Expensive Ninjas. Being a Ninja isn't enough to include a place in the deck. If the CMC or Ninjutsu cost was above 4, I left it out. I want this deck running as low to the ground as possible.
• Whispersilk Cloak. This card seems real good on paper, but it just doesn't do enough for the mana. Most of my creatures don't need the unblockable clause anyway and shroud doesn't mean much with the amount of protection spells I have. UPDATE I'm trialing Whispersilk Cloak out. There's a chance that it wont do enough for the mana investment, but I think protecting Yuriko and ensuring she gets through in the mid game might be worth it.
• Rogue's passage. Again, seems good, but the creatures don't usually need help getting through and the activation cost, plus the risk of it being in your opening hand and keeping you off a colour didn't seem worth it.
• Bident of Thassa / Reconnaissance Mission. This deck hasn't struggled for card draw so far. Playing this most likely takes your whole turn off, leaving you vulnerable and making you draw all the cards you've carefully stacked on top. I'd rather cheap, instant speed top deck manipulation than these.

Cards I'm considering, in order of likelihood of inclusion

• Soothsaying. Was in the first iteration but was replaced with Varragoth. A rate of 1 mana for 1 card doesn't dig deep enough when we run so low to the ground, but it might make it back in as a mana sink after more play testing. If I find I often have mana left open, I'll find space to put it back in.
• Smoke Shroud. A common problem with ninjas is that after their surprise attack, they struggle to get through. This helps massively.
• Wonder. Gives my whole team flying. The likelihood of me controlling an island by mid game is very high and it should be easy enough to put it in the yard.
• Call of the Death Dweller / Gruesome Menagerie. This deck already runs unearth, but a little more redundancy for creature recursion might be worth it. It hasn't been much of an issue so far, but it's something I'm conscious of.
• Flood of Recollection. Why have a subpar Brainstorm when you can just have Brainstorm again? This deck runs a lot of instants and sorceries, some with very specific niche application. This is a way to rebuy instants or sorceries for a very small mana investment. Whether it's a Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, Counterspell, Brainstorm or whatever, having a second go at our most impactful spells for a mere 2 mana seems worthwhile.
• Mystic Sanctuary, Mortuary Mire and Halimar Depths. Being able to stack the top of your deck for close to free seems great. The "cost" here is a land that enters tapped. In the late game, these will be exceptional. This deck doesn't need much mana, so once it's hit 4 or so, these are straight value. Being able to put that Draco or Dig Through Time back on top before attacking could be huge. The loss of tempo if they are in your first few lands puts me off though. Obviously, you'd never want to play these early game so would prioritise dropping other lands first, but you don't always get that option and it's far better to hit your land drops than to miss one for potential future value. I could probably get away with it in my meta, and may play test these, but if you're looking to build this deck well I'd probably avoid.
• Explorer Scope. I don't know why, but I think this has potential to be good here. Cheap to play, cheap to equip, and has the added bonus of getting lands off the top of my deck to a) ramp and b) not have a land on top when yuriko triggers. I might play test it. And if I do it'll probably be crap and I'll remove it again. But I am intrigued.
• Cover of Darkness. Low CMC, gives every creature near unblockable, which hugely reduces the chance of stalemates and allows much more profitable attacking throughout the course of the game. A little pricey for my usual purchases, but if you have the budget or have it in your collection, it can put in work.
• Coastal Breach. Mass bounce spells have the potential to be better for this deck than board wipes as I should be able to rebuild and apply more pressure far more quickly than my opponents.
• Board Wipes. Haven't found the need yet, but I suspect as my meta adjusts it may become essential. Decree of Pain comes highly recommended.
• Thalakos Seer. That LTB trigger is nice, but it would depend on how often I can manipulate cards two deep rather than one. I think it'll be fine. Worth a play test.
• Equipment that has a "whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player" trigger. I've been toying with the idea of a few of them, specifically Dowsing Dagger for ramp, Mask of Memory for card selection, and Mask of Riddles/Skeleton Key for evasion plus card advantage. The issue I'm having is that things are so tight on mana in this deck and these require a turn to play and a turn to equip, and the equipped creature will likely end up back in my hand anyway.
• Auto-equip equipments. Things like Hero's Blade or Sai of the Shinobi could be ways to get in extra damage and keep the pressure mounting. Their CMC tends to be reasonably low and saving on the equip cost makes them feel way less bad. If I start to have trouble finishing people off, these may be worth a play test. Probably not, but maybe.

If there are any cards you would expect to see here, please let me know. I'll be sure to add them to any relevant discussion areas with my thoughts on them.

> Variants, Alternatives and Upgrade Paths

Yuriko is the commander of a fun and powerful cEDH deck. This deck is not a reflection of that build, although it does employ some of the same strategies and looks to take advantage of the same upsides Yuriko provides. If you are looking for the cEDH deck, the cEDH decklist database is a good place to start.

Yuriko is also capable of commanding a decent, mid range ninja tribal deck. As I mentioned, this deck is looking to run as low to the ground as possible, with a low average CMC and no mana rocks.

To uprgade this deck, I would first look to secure untapped fetches (Polluted Delta, Prismatic Vista) and top deck tutors (Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor). These will help with the game plan and offer the required utility needed for manipulating the top of your deck. After that, a more comprehensive control package with the free to play counter spells (Force of Will, Force of Negation, Fierce Guardianship) would do wonders for late game interaction and sticking with the "high CMC, but you pay less" theme. Also, cut Draco. That card is not good.