view from above's is satified by shu yun under commander color identity rules.
his identity is expanded to blue white and red.
"A card's colour identity is its colour plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card's rules text. A card's colour identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects."
But View from Above isn't asking for color identity, it's asking for color. Regardless of his Jeskai color identity, Shu Yun himself is only blue. You'll need a separate white permanent for View from Above to return to your hand.
wow you all forgot the card from the same set as shu yun hero's blade
Didn't forget it, OP mentioned he had it Though not by name, I suppose. View from Above is an excellent suggestion, though Shu Yun himself doesn't satisfy the return condition, so that's something to look out for.
Praise:
-Selvala: The very first game ended in back to back Storm Herds with a soul sister on board, and some applause. Later games have kept up, with more explosive and early token overruns.
-Toshiro: My most complimented deck, and a labor of love for the past three years. A good part of the deck is just an all-star team of my favorite instants in mono-black, from the ever-versatile Midnight Charm to the classic Vampiric Tutor to the always unexpected Withering Boon. It has a variety of win conditions, and is incredibly resilient.
-Marchesa: The aggro deck that laughs at boardwipes. There's always plenty of frustration around the table while the game is going, but when we're all stretching our legs and grabbing fresh beers afterward, everyone seems to agree that it was a good time.
Hate:
-Rayne: There's really only one person in the group who hates Rayne, but boy is he vocal about it. She's pretty standard wizard tribal control, with aura'd up Rayne smashing in as the primary wincon. Between her being slippery- Vanishing for MVP- and the aforementioned player being on the business end of a lot of the control when he tries to pull ahead, I can understand a little.
-Jaya: My group has a love-hate relationship with everyone's favorite pyromancer. On the one hand, I've gotten plenty of pats on the back for the deck working as well as it does. On the other, I don't think I've had nearly as many complaints about making the game miserable with any three of my other decks combined. I guess repeated lifelinkedInfernos bother them.
Ronin Warclub, Sai of the Shinobi, and Stormrider Rig will all attach to a creature when it enters the battlefield. Grifter's Blade can be flashed in, will automatically attach to Shu Yun, and also trigger his ability so you can give him doublestrike.
Great stuff in my Selvala "lets turn all this mana into tokens" deck. Often flash it in via Winding Canyons at EoT to get a sizable horde for beating with.
I've made pretty good use of Righteous Aura against various voltron decks. Not quite as good as Forcefield, naturally, but much easier to get your hands on. It's also stopped the occasional lethal Comet Storm, which is a nice perk.
Are there many ways to flicker or sac+recur him from the graveyard to reset his extra land per turn? Using the above examples it seems like we may have extra resources (cards) at our disposal that may be helpful to create a combo engine.
Exploration effects don't work that way. He'd come back, but you'd already have played two lands that turn, so the single extra drop he'd give you wouldn't do anything. If you could get multiples of him- via Sakashima or Mirror Gallery or something- you could do it that way, but you're probably better off just running Exploration and Oracle of Mul Daya and leaving it at that.
Most of my black decks are probably going to get a Westvale Abbey, but especially Savra and Teysa. Less sure about it for Toshiro but as a land slot it's a pretty low-risk inclusion.
I like Duskwatch Recruiter as a possible PDH commander. Both sides are pretty solid effects to have in the command zone. On the topic of PDH, I really wish Gryff's Boon was a common, because it'd've been perfect for Battlewise Hoplite. Oh well, at least he gets Ghostly Wings.
Open the Armory goes straight into both Tajic and Opal-Eye. Can't say no to a cheap tutor that grabs all my best stuff.
Probably going to test Call the Bloodline in Alesha, because a discard outlet is always a good thing. Maybe also Sin Prodder. Can't pull it out of the grave with Alesha, but it can dump things I can or throw some damage at my opponent's faces. Also, definitely Anguished Unmaking. Always glad to add more removal that can be Sunforged.
I've had a few particularly fun wins. Beating down an entire table with an army of 7/7Mulldrifters, finally seeing my convoluted infinite damage combo based on Lava Spike and Desperate Ritual come together, and a few others, but two stand out.
First, playing Savra, grinding out a long game until only myself and a Riku player are left. He kept playing and copying creatures, and I kept making him sacrifice them. It looked like a stalemate for a while, but I finally ended up going in for the win with a pile of wolf and ooze tokens that I'd been slowly building up.
Second, playing Toshiro, where I managed to win during an opponent's combat phase. I've posted the full story before, but if you don't want to click through and read it, Wake the Dead can do some crazy stuff when you've got Gary and a phalanx in the 'yard.
I've noticed a lot of newer players get something in their head that they want to do- whether it be during deck construction or actual play- and then tunnel-vision hard on that, missing a lot of important things along the way.
First example to come to mind: playing at a table with two new-ish players. I'm playing Selvala, throwing Parley draws around like candy, and the guy to my right is one of the new players, with Trostani tokens. I've got an Urban Burgeoning on Wirewood Lodge, so I untap it and get an extra Parley in during Trostani's upkeep. I reveal a Martial Coup, and even make a big deal of pointing it out to both of the new players so they can play accordingly. Trostani immediately proceeds to vomit his hand onto the table and build up a board of tokens large enough that if he had haste he'd take the game right there. My turn comes around and I Parley a few times into the Martial Coup for 15. He just sits there dumbfounded because he was too focused on going off that turn and not paying attention to what was happening in the game.
He's learned his lesson since, but it's still something I see in almost every new player I'm trying to teach.
You can runsomedeathtouch to keep Alesha fairly safe, since she has first strike. Dolmen Gate can also be handy to keep both her and your reanimated dudes alive on the swing. Really, though, the best option I've found is Reconnaissance. You can pull away from unfortunate blocks, and if you don't need to, you can always activate it after combat damage to untap and be ready to block yourself.
I can second Toshiro. Like most monoblack you want Coffers and Urborg, which have recently gone up in price a bit, but the rest of the deck can be put together fairly cheap and still remain effective.
I still run Magmatic Force in my Riku deck. The mana cost doesn't matter too much with how hard RUG can ramp, and with all the cloning effects I run the damage stacks up pretty quickly. Baleful Force is in Toshiro as a budget-friendly reanimation target. I don't think I've ever hardcast it, but I've never been sad to see it in my graveyard.
My brother runs it in his Titania deck. He put it in as a joke, but it won him a game in conjunction with Concordant Crossroads and some overrun effect or another before. Just the one game, though.
Toshiro is going to love Warping Wail. Counter magic and exile removal? I'll take it, even if it means I need to slide in a few more rocks and/or utility lands to make use of it. Considering Spatial Contortion, too, but I don't know how often the Devoid will be relevant.
Rayne gets Void Shatter, though I'm not sure what I'll be cutting for it. Merchant Scroll for Dissipate has been relevant a few too many times for me to want to make that swap.
Yeva might end up with Zendikar Resurgent, but I'm not sure. Probably proxy it up and test a bit before actually getting my hands on it.
Opal-eye doesn't get any new toys this time around. That's okay, he's patient.
Shu Yun loves cheap cantrips, haste, and evasion, so Slip Through Space and Expedite will definitely make the cut when I finally actually put the deck together.
But View from Above isn't asking for color identity, it's asking for color. Regardless of his Jeskai color identity, Shu Yun himself is only blue. You'll need a separate white permanent for View from Above to return to your hand.
Didn't forget it, OP mentioned he had it
-Selvala: The very first game ended in back to back Storm Herds with a soul sister on board, and some applause. Later games have kept up, with more explosive and early token overruns.
-Toshiro: My most complimented deck, and a labor of love for the past three years. A good part of the deck is just an all-star team of my favorite instants in mono-black, from the ever-versatile Midnight Charm to the classic Vampiric Tutor to the always unexpected Withering Boon. It has a variety of win conditions, and is incredibly resilient.
-Marchesa: The aggro deck that laughs at boardwipes. There's always plenty of frustration around the table while the game is going, but when we're all stretching our legs and grabbing fresh beers afterward, everyone seems to agree that it was a good time.
Hate:
-Rayne: There's really only one person in the group who hates Rayne, but boy is he vocal about it. She's pretty standard wizard tribal control, with aura'd up Rayne smashing in as the primary wincon. Between her being slippery- Vanishing for MVP- and the aforementioned player being on the business end of a lot of the control when he tries to pull ahead, I can understand a little.
-Jaya: My group has a love-hate relationship with everyone's favorite pyromancer. On the one hand, I've gotten plenty of pats on the back for the deck working as well as it does. On the other, I don't think I've had nearly as many complaints about making the game miserable with any three of my other decks combined. I guess repeated lifelinked Infernos bother them.
Exploration effects don't work that way. He'd come back, but you'd already have played two lands that turn, so the single extra drop he'd give you wouldn't do anything. If you could get multiples of him- via Sakashima or Mirror Gallery or something- you could do it that way, but you're probably better off just running Exploration and Oracle of Mul Daya and leaving it at that.
I like Duskwatch Recruiter as a possible PDH commander. Both sides are pretty solid effects to have in the command zone. On the topic of PDH, I really wish Gryff's Boon was a common, because it'd've been perfect for Battlewise Hoplite. Oh well, at least he gets Ghostly Wings.
Open the Armory goes straight into both Tajic and Opal-Eye. Can't say no to a cheap tutor that grabs all my best stuff.
Probably going to test Call the Bloodline in Alesha, because a discard outlet is always a good thing. Maybe also Sin Prodder. Can't pull it out of the grave with Alesha, but it can dump things I can or throw some damage at my opponent's faces. Also, definitely Anguished Unmaking. Always glad to add more removal that can be Sunforged.
Jaya gets Avacyn's Judgment for sure.
Tireless Tracker and Traverse the Ulvenwald will probably find their way into Yeva.
First, playing Savra, grinding out a long game until only myself and a Riku player are left. He kept playing and copying creatures, and I kept making him sacrifice them. It looked like a stalemate for a while, but I finally ended up going in for the win with a pile of wolf and ooze tokens that I'd been slowly building up.
Second, playing Toshiro, where I managed to win during an opponent's combat phase. I've posted the full story before, but if you don't want to click through and read it, Wake the Dead can do some crazy stuff when you've got Gary and a phalanx in the 'yard.
First example to come to mind: playing at a table with two new-ish players. I'm playing Selvala, throwing Parley draws around like candy, and the guy to my right is one of the new players, with Trostani tokens. I've got an Urban Burgeoning on Wirewood Lodge, so I untap it and get an extra Parley in during Trostani's upkeep. I reveal a Martial Coup, and even make a big deal of pointing it out to both of the new players so they can play accordingly. Trostani immediately proceeds to vomit his hand onto the table and build up a board of tokens large enough that if he had haste he'd take the game right there. My turn comes around and I Parley a few times into the Martial Coup for 15. He just sits there dumbfounded because he was too focused on going off that turn and not paying attention to what was happening in the game.
He's learned his lesson since, but it's still something I see in almost every new player I'm trying to teach.
Jaya and Chandra are usually best friends, and Chandra, Flamecaller is no exception. She'll probably be getting a Sea Gate Wreckage too.
Rayne gets Void Shatter, though I'm not sure what I'll be cutting for it. Merchant Scroll for Dissipate has been relevant a few too many times for me to want to make that swap.
Yeva might end up with Zendikar Resurgent, but I'm not sure. Probably proxy it up and test a bit before actually getting my hands on it.
Opal-eye doesn't get any new toys this time around. That's okay, he's patient.
Shu Yun loves cheap cantrips, haste, and evasion, so Slip Through Space and Expedite will definitely make the cut when I finally actually put the deck together.
Kazuul's Toll Collector is going to make a sweet PDH deck, too.