Spoiler Highlight: Satoru, the Infiltrator in Legacy

Howdy, partner! Welcome to Oko's Wild West, also known as Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Spoiler season has already begun, and right away one card stood out to me because of its potential in Legacy:

Recently, I commented in other articles how Vintage is an extremely powerful format, but that doesn't change the fact that Legacy is also one of the most powerful formats in the game. Curiously, despite the vast variety of cards at its disposal, this format doesn't have cheap, competitive cards that draw us cards and give us card advantage. Cards like Wrenn and Six, Lurrus of the Dream-Den, Dreadhorde Arcanist, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and Expressive Iteration have all been banned already.

A new card that fits all these criteria recently heavily impacted the metagame - Up the Beanstalk. Well, now we have another card that will potentially draw us many cards for very little mana, and it is in the right colors to interact with some decks that already exist in this format.

The fact this card is both black and blue means it is useful both to pay for Grief and Force of Will, and this is an excellent point in its favor. Besides being fuel for 2 of the most important cards in Legacy, this card also offers us other benefits. Let us take a look at how he works.

First, he draws cards when he and other non-token creatures you control go into play without you spending mana on them. So, the aforementioned Grief interacts with him, as do the other Elemental Incarnations (Fury, Subtlety, Solitude, and Endurance) when Evoked, and also 0-cost creatures, like Ornithopter or even Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis.

As for its second line of text, it works both with Reanimate targets and similar as with other creatures that go into play directly from your hand, be it via Ninjutsu or effects like Aether Vial.

Anyone can tell how Satoru creates numerous windows for us to draw one or more cards with him. As bonus, he also has evasion, somewhat, because he has Menace.

The first deck that came to my mind when I saw Satoru is right there in his creature type: Ninja!

The Ninja deck, despite not being among the decks in this format's upper tiers, has countless fans and tends to (pun intended) catch opponents by surprise. Satoru, the Infiltrator plays organically with the Ornithopter and Ninjutsu theme, and like so creates even more resources to this deck.

And, to capitalize on this new Ninja even more, why not add part of the Scam package (Grief + Reanimate + Troll of Khazad-dûm)?

On the other hand, another deck that could possibly be interested in the possible card draw our esteemed Kamigawa ninja (currently lost in the Thunder Junction Wild West) provides is the current Legacy boss, Scaminator - the hybrid version of Reanimator and Dimir Scam. Both Evoking Grief and eventually Reanimating creatures will draw us cards with Satoru.

It is important to remember we can even revive Satoru himself to draw cards in games that go on for too long and if we have too many cards in hand that Reanimate other cards: it isn't difficult to imagine situations in which he would be a better target than Grief after the first few turns.

The last possible home we'll suggest for this new card is Esper Vial, in which we'll trigger Satoru both with the card that names this deck, Aether Vial, and the various "Flicker" effects (exiling and returning a creature into play) this deck uses.

In the list we added above, we added multiple copies of Satoru because, unfortunately, we can't tutor him with Recruiter of the Guard, but his ability is useful enough to make this deck want multiple copies of it.

When the spoiler season started, and I saw Satoru, the Infiltrator, right away I imagined this card would find space to develop in Legacy.

One thing I noticed when I was playing Boros Initiative is how impactful it is to have access to multicolored cards, considering this format is, as time goes on, more and more dominated by "pitch spells" (spells that can be played if you exile a card in its color). Is Forth Eorlingas! a terrific card? Yes, but the fact it can also pay for Solitude, Fury, and/or Pyrokinesis is what makes it even more valuable.

I see the same in Satoru: this card, on its own, represents several extra cards for you, without requiring you to stray away from your decks' game plans, and also serves as fuel for your key cards. It would be foolish to sleep on this card and not take this opportunity to recruit Satoru, the Infiltrator's services!

See you next time!