Deck Review: Chun-Li

In my pod, there’s a player (@RyRySamurai is his Moxfield username, where you can find this and other decks) who is an Assassin Pilot known for sandbagging haymakers until later in the game. He played a Naya Commander who stormed the table with a Ghired deck that never failed to build an army of rhinos.

Then Secret Lair: Street Fighter came out, and the Chun-Li menace was born.

Before we dive into the deck review, I want to establish a process for reviewing decks. This is something I do on MTG discords where players post their decklists for edits, suggestions, or to get clout. I try to go through and make suggestions for decks that have no comments yet, sometimes getting the post some attention. When reviewing decks, I have a four-step process that I try to do:

1. Review the mana curve

I like to review the mana curve first because it allows us to determine the “narrative” of the deck. This curve, which features more 1-2 drop spells, tells us that we’ll be able to take more actions earlier in the game, and the higher cost spells should allow us to close the game.

2. Review the card types

Moxfield is great about allowing you to see how much of each card type you have. All decklist sites have some version of this, but something I appreciate about Moxfield in particular is how nice everything looks and how easy it is to find everything.

More instants and sorceries tell us that our board state won’t necessarily be the most impressive, so we need to prioritize keeping opponents in check who will have more creatures, as they’ll be aiming free attacks at us if we aren’t careful. Azorius Control needs to be able to outlast opponents, so cards that allow us to deal with big threats are a necessity.

From my past interactions with the deck, this is usually the case. Chun-Li needs to attack to get her trigger, so she’s not able to block.

3. Review the cards

This is our opportunity to verify the assumptions we made about the deck we created in steps 1 and 2. As we review the cards, we want to find:

• Cards that allow Chun-Li to get her attacks off.

  • Niblis of Frost, You Come To A River, Winged Boots, Cyclonic Rift, Mother of Runes, and Gods Willing. Mother of Runes and Gods Willing also provides some form of protection to keep Chun-Li in the game, or can keep one of the few key creatures we have able to block in a pinch, because Protection prevents damage.

• Cards that help us fend off aggro opponents.

  • Ghostly Prison, Loxodon Gatekeeper, Monastery Mentor, Thalia, Chrome-Host Seedshark, and Authority of the Consuls are all excellent picks. Authority of the Consuls is an excellent pick, because even though this deck doesn’t have much lifegain synergy, that life can keep you in the game a little longer.

• Game-Enders (Not necessarily Game-Changers, mind you)

  • Hull-Breaker Horror and Swarm Intelligence are great ways to finish off the game, while Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant can help us stall for time when we need to.

4. Review the deck plan

Now that we’ve taken a look at different basic aspects of the deck, we can get a clear picture of how this deck is meant to play. Turns 1-4 are focused on setup, where we get some instants and sorceries in the graveyard before bringing out Chun-Li. The attack pattern follows a Voltron strategy, so you want to ideally either spread considerable damage across the table or chase down a single opponent with Commander Damage.

I think the most slept on card is Leonin Lightscribe, who can turn the tokens the deck makes into an impressive army, especially when Chun-Li gets a bunch of spells off.

This deck delivers a strong performance every time I see it, and now I understand why. There is a lot of draw, allowing it to be very consistent with Chun-Li, even recurring some of the card advantage cantrips when we need it.

If I were to make recommendations, I would consider adding Candlekeep Inspiration, which allows even the exiled Instants and Sorceries to add damage to the board, which is a fun way to end the game in Azorius. It also turns cards with static bonuses like the Prowess Monks from Monastery Mentor or Incubated Phyrexians from Chrome-Host Seedshark into even bigger threats.

As a heads up: I’ll be taking a Monday post hiatus over the next month as I work on two other projects of mine: working on a novel called Clean, about a bounty hunter trying to get health insurance, and set up another blog, called Groundworks, where I’ll host some political analysis tools to help people who have never got involved start volunteering or even run their campaigns, as well as making the language of politics easy to understand.