MTG Salvation

Alright, so I decided to return to this commander after a couple of years of trying to break him. Newer sets and cards have come along and I stumbled upon what most people (including myself) have been doing wrong with Sun Quan, Lord of Wu. Sun Quan is a great commander because although monoU, you can use it for aggro. However, the point isn't to drop fatties and hope for the best; that's too slow. So why not take advantage of blue's love for the slow drain and make a deck that's aggro after the mid-game? Enter Sun Quan's token army.

Instead of holding mana to drop large creatures with bonuses for getting combat damage in against opponents, I decided to slowly but surely grow a token army and hold off until I can cast Sun Quan and then go in for the alpha strike. I tested a lot of token producing spells in U but found that they were too expensive and sat in my hands for too long (looking at you, Clone Legion and Rise from the Tides). In order to make the deck faster I added some instants for drawing. In order to protect my tokens a couple of counterspells. Then I left all the better token makers - the ones that are basically clone effects. I also limited the amount of fatties in the deck so that I can keep mana open for counterspells. The deck runs a healthy amount of artifacts but these are for acceleration either by casting cost reduction or mana production. The other artifacts are protection-type equipment.

The deck usually trickles tokens until the pipe bursts and the tokens come spewing out. The slower token makers are Docent of Perfection, Talrand, Sky Summoner, and Lullmage Mentor since they're dependent on casting instants and/or sorceries. However, when cloned, Docent of Perfection and Lullmage Mentor become brutal token producers. The best creature to clone though is Sharding Sphinx it creates a 1/1 blue thopter when it deals combat damage and then the blue thopter production increases exponentially! One of the main wincons has definitely been smashing face with blue thopters. I almost always hold on to Rite of Replication specifically for Lullmage Mentor or Sharding Sphinx.



I'm liking how the deck is running. It's not as consistent as I would like given that the average CMC of nonlands permanents is pretty high. I know that I could make the deck even better than it is. I've won by combat damage and I've also won thanks to Laboratory Maniac.

I ran cards like Quietus Spike and Scytheclaw but I cut them because I wasn't ever really able to use them to their full potential. They would definitely make games shorter so maybe I could add them back? However, I feel that the deck has so many different ways to diverge into: tokens, aggro, artifacts, etc. I don't want to have too much of a hodgepodge.

I definitely need to test it some more. Any suggestions are welcome, being as I want the deck to be as menacing as possible!

Grand Architect deserves a spot. You are running a lot of artifacts and you are mono blue. He will help out. Mizzium Skin is an all around good card to keep the crew safe. Coral Atoll stinks. Replace it with something else. Brass Squire will assist with equipment.

I like your deck a lot, but the exiling stuff from the top of libraries will direct a lot of hate towards you in a group game.

Thanks!

Mizzium Skin and Brass Squire are some great suggestions. It helps with moving valuable equipment around in a pinch (particularly the greaves and shroud).

Raven Guild Master makes one an automatic target. However, I fear the eldrazi and sometimes the best way to get around it is exiling them. The only reason I don't have Denying Wind is because it's costly and I only really run one other spell which is Cyclonic Rift. Though I am considering adding Scourge of Fleets in order to have another mass bounce effect.

Updated the main post. I really want to get back to brewing with Sun Quan, Lord of Wu. There are better monoU commanders but for some reason I really want to break this guy! I just like building different things off the beaten path every once in a while .