Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Shiko and Narset, Unified!

Shiko and Narset are a four mana 4/4 with flying, vigilance, and a Flurry ability of whenever you cast your second spell each turn, copy that spell if it targets a permanent or player, and you choose new targets for the copy and if you don’t copy a spell this way, draw a card.

When this Commander was spoiled, I initially wrote them off as a pretty standard spell slinger Commander, however I was listening to a video by Maldhound talking about the Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commanders with 33elk when it was brought up that so long as the second spell targeted a player or permanent that it would copy, which included Auras.

There is one particular Aura type that I was very interested in, and that was Curses, which means that the game plan of the deck is to cast cheap instants and sorceries in order to get the first spell for Flurry, and have the second spell be a Curse that targets two players in order for us to get a ton of value.

The first thing we need are cheap instant and sorcery spells that we can cast so we can cast a Curse second.

Path to Exile is staple removal in white at this point since it exiles a creature and then its controller may search their library for a basic land and put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. It also stands to reason that this also works well if it is the spell that we copy with Shiko and Narset to exile two problematic creatures.

Brainstorm draws us cards and can help set up our draws for later, Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target and can be used by Shiko and Narset’s ability to deal 3 damage to two targets, and Snap can be used to bounce a creature and untap two lands which can also be copied to bounce two creatures and untap up to two lands.

Boros Charm is also a really good spell that can either deal 4 damage to target player or Planeswalker, giving target creature double strike until end of turn both of those being able to be copied by Shiko and Narset if necessary, but also can give permanents we control indestructible for a turn if we need it.

Slick Sequence also works really well with us casting a couple of spells each turn since it deals two damage to any target and if we happened to have cast another spell this turn we can draw a card, which can help keep our hand full.

Speaking of keeping our hand full, Faithless Looting can be used to draw us two cards and then discard two cards with Flashback so we could cast it again late, Gitaxian Probe to be a spell we cast by paying 2 life instead of a blue mana to look at target player’s hand and draw a card which can be copied, and Enter the Enigma which has it so target creature can’t be blocked this turn and we draw a card which can also be copied.

Now comes the Curses that we want to copy as our second spell in order for us to hinder our opponents and help us.

Curse of Opulence is a cheap Curse that whenever the enchanted player is attacked us and each opponent that attacks that player make a Gold token, which is like a Treasure but it doesn’t tap to make mana, which has its own niches, but for us can be a way to store up mana for bigger Curses.

Curse of Shaken Faith can be a way to hinder decks that cast a lot of spells because when the enchanted players casts a spell other then the first spell that they cast each turn, then Curse of Shaken Faith does 2 damage to them, which can hinder a spell slinger deck if they decide to go ham.

Curse of the Bloody Tome mills the enchanted player two cards at the beginning of each of their upkeeps, Curse of Exhaustion has it so that the enchanted player can’t cast more than one spell each turn, and Curse of the Nightly Hunt has it so that the enchanted player’s creatures must attack each turn if able.

Maddening Hex is one of the better Curses to copy because whenever the enchanted player casts a noncreature spell, they roll a d6 and then Maddening Hex deals whatever was rolled as damage to the enchanted player and then attaches itself to another one of our opponents, and with two floating around, this can really cause a lot of damage.

Speaking of copying spells, Curse of Echoes has it so that whenever enchanted player casts an instant or sorcery spell, each other player may copy that spell and choose new targets for the copy that they control, which can lead to a lot of potentially interesting outcomes.

Ideally we want to win with Curses, doing what we can to make the most out of what the Curses do when attached to multiple players.

Curse of Unbinding is a way for us to take the enchanted players things because at the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a creature card, with that creature card being put onto the battlefield under our control, with the rest of the revealed cards being put into the graveyard.

Fraying Sanity is a pretty cheap Curse that can start chipping at an opponent that at the beginning of the end step, the enchanted player mills X cards where X is the number of cards that were put into their graveyard this turn, which when paired with a Curse of Unbinding that went far into a deck can be a massive amount of milled cards.

Curse of Bloodletting can be used to have damage that is dealt to enchanted player be doubled, Curse of Obsession let’s the enchanted player draw two additional cards each turn at the cost of them discarding their hand at the beginning of their end step, and Curse of Surveillance can have any number of other target players other than enchanted player draw cards equal to the number of Curses attached to the enchanted player.

Overwhelming Splendor is a big Curse that has it so that creatures the enchanted player controls becomes 1/1’s and lose all abilities and they cannot activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities or loyalty abilities, and since there are only so many decks that have Planeswalkers, this means that they can only do so much while we use our creatures to deal a good bit of damage.

Speaking of, we can also make use of other cards that gain a benefit from us casting multiple spells each turn. Since Cori-Steel Cutter was banned in Standard, it has settled in price and it can be a great way to get some damage in because it gives equipped creature +1/+1, trample, and haste, and when we cast our second spell each turn we make a 1/1 Monk token with prowess and attach the Cutter to that Monk.

Token makers that trigger off of us casting noncreature spells like Third Path Iconoclast which makes a 1/1 Soldier token when we cast a noncreature spell, Monastery Mentor which makes a 1/1 Monk token with prowess when we cast a noncreature spell, and Aligned Heart that whenever we cast our second spell each turn we put a rally counter on it and make a 1/1 Monk token with prowess for each rally counter on it.

Shiko and Narset could definitely be a fine spell slinger Commander, but becomes much more interesting when we add a new dimension in Curse which then turns a spell slinger deck into more of a control deck that seeks to lock our opponents down while we build up our board.

The downside of this deck is that it needs Shiko and Narset in play in order to make the most out of their Flurry ability to copy the Curses onto an additional opponent, and our better Curses also happen to be pretty expensive to cast. This means we need to spend some time getting some access to mana so we can cast our spells reliably.

We have plenty of access to interaction that can be copied, but with us needing to be able to cast our more mana intensive Curses, we may be shields down on occasion, meaning our interaction becomes more limited. They are cheaper, but that also comes with the caveat that it is more limited in what those interaction pieces can do, depending on the Bracket of course.

Shiko and Narset are a Commander that really benefits from some lateral thinking because while it does function well as a spell slinger Commander, we can take that into more directions then expected.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual