MTG Salvation

Hey, i wanted to build a samurai deck (no money rescrition) and i tried almost everything.
What i came up is that the best thing to do is a white/red deck.

I tried to build up something modern legal, but the games end in the same way, my hand gets empty and my value on board is not enough.
I made a lot of playtesting in cockatrice in local game where i control both decks and i always chose as the opponent a modern legal deck.

The best i made is this
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/decks/395-modern-samurai#Details:overview
and to me the choices i did seems good, but still i can grant that this deck sucks.
Potentially the idea is to have a lot of samurai on board and then force the enemy to attack with Fumiko, cause bushido sucks in attack (enemy can just ignore you, make you tap and your damage without bushido is low) but it is awesome in defense.
But the reality is that you never see a scenario like this.
The wall is there to cycle a little bit the deck cause without it the plays you can do ends too early. And there is no good draw engine for white/red.

Is there a way to make a samurai deck acceptable in modern?

I'd suggest something like this, but honestly this looks more like a bad Humans deck. Lack of playables and decent payoff cards makes Samurai a very difficult tribe to build around.

As you already put in evidence, the point was keeping the samurai theme and not just "put the best samurai card in a deck".
I'm so unhappy that they wasted this tribe.

Problem is that there is no draw engine and you will never extend your board cause of that. Also you will never get "samurai buffs" cause when the legendary that buffs enters probably they will be alone, cause this tribe has no source of control, and while you summon your samurai that outside combat do nothing the enemy can build his strategy in the easiest way.
Best tribe as lore, worst tribe as gameplay.

Believe me I tried my best too, but I was trying out versions with Collected Company, but it was still a bad tribal deck in general.

The only thing it had going for it was the mainboard graveyard hate in Samurai of the Pale Curtain that could throw off a lot of decks.

ye, that one is good but the 2mana slot in my deck is already full.
I would drop the wall, but then i would have to add something to cycle a bit and white/red sucks in that.

Surely i would counter some decks, but it would worst against all others.
The more i look my decklist the more i think it is well created, surely it can better but if i want to keep the theme i see little chance of improvement.

Collected company seems good. I probably have to find a way to cheat samurai on the board and outnumber the enmy fast.
I'm not giving up yet.

In my list I ran Noble Hierarch, mostly because ramping into CoCo is good and like always the exalted comes in handy. Samurais were lacking in the one drop category so it worked out.

it's not your fault, Samurai is just a lacking tribe in Modern. Compare it to humans, elves, fish. Pretty sure even goblins and allies are better :/

Quote from metalsgs »

Is there a way to make a samurai deck acceptable in modern?

Do you see any samurai deck in the tier list?

Unfortunately no. The tribe, whike cool, is lacking. They were designed to be able to beat the average creature in combat but are small. These two things combine to make them nearly worthless. THere has been abkut ten years of power creep in the creature department. Ad they are not fast enough to put any pressure on the modern control or combo decks.

Samurai is a nice looking tribe.. unfortunately, they don't really have much good creatures. Best samurais I can think of is Samurai of the Pale Curtain, seen it being used in legacy... and also Godo Bandit Warlord for fetching powerful equipment like Batterskull.

hmm, there is some synergy though, toshiro can yawgmoth's will spells. flashing back collected company and fatal push is relevant stuff.

is there a 3cc clone creature? such a creature with brothers yamazaki would be cool, since your getting double 4/3s essentially.
maybe soulbond creatures might offer some strength as well.


4 noble hierarch

4 collected company
4 fatal push

4 Toshiro Umezawa
4 Brothers Yamazaki
4 Battle-Mad Ronin
4 Kuro's Taken

2 Isao, Enlightened Bushi
2 Iizuka the Ruthless
2 Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho
2 Tenza, Godo's Maul
4 shuko

There's Phantasmal Image (and Protean Raider I guess...), but idk how good that is, as any copies of Brothers Yamazaki beyond 2 will be stranded in your hand again.
And most other good samurai are legendary, so copying does rather little there as well.
Really, the biggest draw I can see to that list is playing Toshiro t2-3 then going double Fatal Push / Terminate / Bolt the next turn.

Aside from that... most samurai are sadly pretty small.
Like Battle-Mad Ronin. Sure, 2 mana 3/3 sounds deece, but if they can just let it ping them for 1 each turn, it's pretty inconsequential.
Till your opponent has a bigger creature and just eats it.

In general the issue with Bushido is, that you need to make your opponent want to block your creatures and take unfavourable trades, instead of just letting them through.
Putting them in a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation.
Just by themselves they are kinda better on defence, warding off attackers.

They can still make for a fun and fine casual deck though, even if they won't ever see competitive glory with the current pool. ^.^
(I know bc I have a janky W/R Samurai list for the kitchentable since quite a while. :3c )

"Bushido" is just a useless mechanic in Modern (and in general) and the creatures are pretty bad anyway.

Quote from D90Dennis14 »

"Bushido" is just a useless mechanic in Modern (and in general) and the creatures are pretty bad anyway.

ya it really needs first strike in conjunction to make it really good.

which whenever wizards does "return to Kamigawa" they probably will enhance the boshido ability by putting it on more 1 drops. block or becomes blocked, gains XXXXX ability or triggered ability. when boshido activates -this creatures does.....)