Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Fumiko the Lowblood!

Fumiko is a four mana 3/2 with bushido X where X is the number of attacking creatures and creatures your opponent control attack each combat if able.

Bushido is an interesting ability because it functions whenever the creature attacks or blocks, meaning that it can be used offensively or defensively, and the second ability of Fumiko also can work offensively or defensively.

The forced combat effect only affects your opponents, meaning that we have the advantage in being able to consistently have ways to block, which means that we can potentially build an interesting combination attack and defense deck.

First, we need to look at our defenses.

I mean literal defenders. Walls are not uncommon in red, especially in older sets, and they can prove to protect us when we are beginning to set up our turns.

We don’t need to have any threats early on, but we do need to make sure that we have things like Wall of Granite to make sure that we can survive some of the early threats.

There are also defenders like Tuktuk Rubblefort, which not only has reach, but also give all of our creatures haste, which will come into play as the game progresses.

While we are still setting things up, we need to make sure that our opponents are attacking each other and not us, and that is where one of the newer evergreen mechanics in Commander comes into play.

Goad is a fun mechanic in which we can also force our opponents to attack, but they cannot attack us if possible.

All we need to do is make sure that we can consistently get the goad effect going, which is a little more challenging because many red creatures with goad effects are either triggers when they enter or attack.

Komainu Battle Armor is an example of that where either it or the creature it is equipped to must deal combat damage for its goad effect, but the creature has menace and it goads each creature that opponent controls.

If we had Fumiko out for a couple of turns prior, they may not have enough blockers for us to deal with our creature, so this ratchets up the pressure just a little bit.

All the while we should also start accumulating some medium value creatures that can deal a solid 2-4 damage each. If they have some form of evasion like flying or menace then that’s even better.

Glorybringer comes to mind to deal some extra damage when it attacks, as well as something like a Redcap Gutter-Dweller which we can use to sacrifice creatures to gain some card advantage while growing the Redcap Gutter-Dweller.

Then we come in with how we win the game, and that is a combination of goad effects and extra combat spells.

Spectacular Showdown is a card that can give a creature a double strike counter and goads that creature, which for 2 mana isn’t bad for one of your creatures, but if you Overload it for 7 mana then every creature gets a double strike counter and is goaded, which includes your opponents creatures.

This means that you turn all of your opponents creatures into missiles that must attack your other opponents before they attack you, and then when it gets to your turn, they have few to no blockers to deal with us.

Pair our creatures with something that can give us extra combats, like a Combat Celebrant or a Relentless Assault which means that we can pick off any opponents left standing.

It seems odd for a red deck to play the slow game, but remember that if we properly set things up then we should have a good mix of attackers and blockers so that if we just miss a little bit of damage to win the game, we don’t immediately die on the crack back.

Fumiko was an interesting Commander to look at because it flips the common red playstyle on its head. While you can certainly play a full aggro style with Fumiko, I think it’s more interesting if you build up to a massive swing out while forcing your opponents to do the hard work.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual