Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Sun Quan, Lord of Wu!

Sun Quan is a six mana 4/4 that gives all of your creatures horsemanship, which means that the creatures can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship.

We have slowly been getting access to cards from Portal Three Kingdoms, making them easier to afford and build decks around, and Sun Quan’s effect only exist because of the need for evasion in Portal Three Kingdoms.

This makes your creatures incredibly difficult to deal with without spot removal or board wipes, so this allows us to go in on effects that activate when that creature deals combat damage.

Saboteur effects have existed in Magic for a long time, and there are plenty in blue that we can use.

Drake Hatcher is a recent example of a creature with a modern take on a saboteur effect, in that when it deals combat damage you put that many incubation counters on it and removing three can make a flying Drake token. What’s more, Drake Hatcher has prowess, so the more cheap spells we cast we can grow their power to get a bunch of tokens on the field quickly.

Some of those can be Aura’s that give a saboteur effect, like Curiosity, Curious Obsession, and Curious Inquiry are one mana Auras that facilitate you to draw cards with some giving a stat boosts as well.

We also have access to Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator which gains a loyalty counter when a creature you control deals combat damage, makes a creature you control unable to be blocked, make a token, or give you an emblem to make more tokens whenever a player casts a spell.

Now that we have access to creatures that can’t be blocked because of horsemanship, we have a much more effective access to creatures with Ninjutsu.

Mist-Syndicate Naga is an ideal creature with Ninjutsu because of the fact that when it deals combat damage, it creates a copy of itself. If the opponent doesn’t have the answer, then we can get wider and wider as we deal combat damage.

We can also achieve a similar effect with Thousand-Faced Shadow, which when it enters the battlefield from you hand attacking, you can create a tapped and attacking copy of any other attacking creature you control, which will become relevant in a moment.

Prosperous Thief works as a way to ramp up by making Treasure tokens, Mistblade Shinobi can bounce a creature, and Higure, the Still wind can tutor up Ninjas that you may need.

As for how we win, blue can win the traditional aggro way, but it may take a lot longer than other colors, so we need to expedite the process a little bit.

Infect and toxic are going to be essential in the mid to late game when we have a board established, and Phyrexian Juggernaut is one of the bigger threats with the fact that it must attack if able. If we are also able to get a Thousand-Faced Shadow onto the field via Ninjutsu then we can make a second copy to instant kill a player.

It would be easier to kill two players with a Blightsteel Colossus, but if that’s not in your budget then Phyrexian Juggernaut can do in a pinch.

If we manage to slowly poison other players via our smaller creatures like Blighted Agent, Plague Myr, or Myr Convert, then we have access to spells that have Corrupted to benefit us.

Glistening Sphere to proliferate and be able to tap for three mana, Phyrexian Atlas to deal a damage to each player with three or more poison counters, and Bring the Ending for a Quench that becomes a Counterspell.

Sun Quan gives us two forks that we can pursue to win the game. We either use a go wide aggro deck with a bunch of small creatures, or we get creatures that give poison counters to our opponents to win that way.

You can have both and pivot to either if you feel like you need to, which makes Sun Quan an much more interesting Commander, other than it’s unusual ability.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual