Heiko Yamazaki, the General
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Brawl Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Heiko Yamazaki, the General

Legendary Creature — Human Samurai

Trample

Whenever a Samurai or Warrior you control attacks alone, you may cast target artifact card from your graveyard this turn.

Recommendations View more recommendations

Crow_Umbra on Obi-Wan Budget

10 months ago

The recent Aurelia Multiverse Legends reprint is such a huge benefit to budget decks. I know your overall budget is $75, but do you have a budget per card? I have a few suggestions within budget that I think could push your deck a little more without breaking the bank:

  • I think you can probably cut Heiko Yamazaki, the General and Raiyuu, Storm's Edge you currently have 5 Warriors & 3 Samurai in deck. From playing Isshin extensively this past year, you definitely want to be attacking with more than one creature per combat haha. Solo attacking usually only happens in early game or after recovering from board wipes.

  • Since you already have Duke Ulder Ravengard and Hammers of Moradin, you could lean a bit more into Myriad. Hammers of Moradin is one of my favorite cards in my list, and usually punches above its weight. Some other Myriad creatures you could include are Genasi Enforcers and Elturel Survivors.

  • To pair with Myriad and your creature token production in general, I'd recommend getting in some ETB damage effects like Corpse Knight, Impact Tremors, and/or Witty Roastmaster. This helps get some damage in "around" defenses, and softens up opponents even further for when your creatures connect.

  • I think Delina, Wild Mage could be an eventual swap/upgrade to Flamerush Rider. Yes, you can Dash out the Rider, but the copies that Delina makes are not Legendary, which can have a higher ceiling on doubling up those triggers you typically wouldn't be able to.

  • Karlach, Fury of Avernus could be a budget-ish (less than $10) swap for Raiyuu if you want another extra combat effect. Karlach doesn't even need to attack, she just checks if you are attacking.

  • Breena, the Demagogue or Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant could be potential swaps with Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Both are a blast, and add some fun political wrinkles to games while helping you (and opponents) draw cards. They're high risk/high reward. Breena can help grow herself or your other threats, and Karazikar can help deflect aggro away with Goad.

  • Lastly, I'd recommend Gruesome Realization as a swap for Faithless Looting. Yes, Looting is cheap & has Flashback, but it isn't super helpful in this deck since you're not utilizing your graveyard as a resource. Gruesome Realization has helped me cut down other opposing creature token boards in a few games, or drawn me cards if I wasn't playing against those types of strats.

I hope these suggestions are helpful. Overall your deck has decent synergy, but I think a handful of the suggested swaps can get it a bit more honed in. Hope you have fun with Isshin, he's a blast.

Crow_Umbra on $25 Budget Isshin

11 months ago

Hey there, I saw your post on Reddit and figured I'd leave my suggestions here. I think for the most part, the majority of the deck is solid, but you can likely swap out Heiko Yamazaki, the General, Asari Captain, Peerless Samurai, Raiyuu, Storm's Edge, Selfless Samurai, and Tempered in Solitude, since all of those only care about solo attacking Warriors or Samurai, or solo creatures in the case of Tempered in Solitude. From having played Isshin a lot, the deck wants to swing out with more than one creature a lot of the time, and these cards all feel at odds with the rest of your deck.

Some potential swaps that can still fit your budget:

  • Scapegoat - Mana efficient and budget friendly board protection. I had this in for a while before Clever Concealment was printed.

  • Signal Pest - Very solid one drop for just about any Isshin list.

  • Accorder Paladin

  • Genasi Enforcers

  • Rakdos Signet - Your ramp is a little light, 1-2 more rocks can help.

  • Soul Partition - Pulls excellent double duty as a either a removal piece or can protect one of your permanents.

  • Elturel Survivors - Something I've wanted to find a slot for in my Isshin deck, but haven't been able to.

  • Scrappy Bruiser - A new piece of tech from MOM that's meant to synergize more with Backup, but can be a pseudo protective piece here.

Niko9 on You Totally Got This...! (Attacks Alone)

1 year ago

Those are all pretty interesting suggestions. I was very seriously looking at Reinforced Ronin as a probably better Rabbit Battery but in the end my love of bunnies kinda wins out, and also just being able to later in the game buff a first striker. I might just give them a try on here and see how it does. But at the same time, I do want to keep it as a not full aggro deck, more of a slow and steady create-a-board, and pump and first strike synergy is fairly effective creature protection.

I'd bet your deck is far more effective : ) I just really enjoy having a big Beloved Princess who, once she's over 3/? with first strike, she becomes a "gain 3 life and kill a chump" every turn.

Heh, I'm going to try it both ways and see how it does. Thanks again! I didn't really realize the synergy of Reinforced Ronin and Heiko Yamazaki, the General but that's really good. So extremely versitile : )

seshiro_of_the_orochi on You Totally Got This...! (Attacks Alone)

1 year ago

I recently build my own very casual samurai tribal, and Exaltation is just insane there. It's basically the "attack alone" version of Beastmaster Ascension.

Btw, the value engine I'm running in addition to what Norika can do with enchantments is Heiko Yamazaki, the General with Reinforced Ronin.

Also, Ironsoul Enforcer is pretty awesome as well.

Wuzibo on Questioning the Iona Banning

2 years ago

Hello.

I took a few year hiatus from the game. One of the last things I did was pick up an Iona, Shield of Emeria for my kaalia deck.

Upon returning to the game, i have learned she has been banned from the format. Ok, fair enough, she is quite strong.

But then I looked up why she was banned. "Because locking mono-colored people out of the game isn't fair/in the spirit of the format/whatever."

Bullshit. Pure bullshit. She should be unbanned or Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace should be banned because they completely lock out a mono-red artifact/graveyard player. I used to play daretti. The whole reason I switched to Kaalia was because of Leyline of the void and Rest in Peace coupled with the fact that mono-red doesn't have enchantment removal, which simply stopped me from playing my deck with no recourse. I played Daretti, Scrap Savant but Feldon of the Third Path, Squee, Goblin Nabob and Squee, the Immortal, and Heiko Yamazaki, the General all are similarly just boned hard with no recourse by it.

"But you can still Introduction to Annihilation, Nevinyrral's Disk, Oblivion Stone, or Scour from Existence it."

Ok, yeah, and the mono-colored player could do that to Iona. Or, they could run Mycosynth Lattice and make everything colorless so she becomes irrelevant. So why is she banned?

There is literally no justification for Iona being banned that doesn't also justify the banning of other cards.

"It's unfun"

So is sire of insanity and being slaverlocked and stax.

"It prevents players from getting to play the game"

So do the enchantments i mentioned above, sire of insanity, and slaverlocking. So does stax.

"It's overpowered"

Yeah, so is everything with annihilator.

At the very least, Leyline of the void should be banned until they print a mono-red enchantment removal card because it makes it so mono-red graveyard decks don't get to actually play their deck and get to only play a half assed gimped version of it, and it can start the game on the board. This is exactly why they said they banned iona. "its not in the spirit of the game to basically lock one mono-colored player out of the game". Except theyre not "locked out". They can still play lands and colorless artifacts and try to find a land based or artifact based answer to Iona. Same as me with my daretti deck when the game started with Leyline of the Void out. Sure, i couldn't use my graveyard stuff, and even if i ulted my commander, it wouldn't do anything, so i might as well not play him, but i can still just hardcast all my artifacts and stuff.. You couldn't cheat out iona turn 1. You can't put RIP out turn 1. Leyline can be on the board turn zero, so there isn't even an argument that the red deck should be winning before leyline hits the field. So like, Iona doesn't actually lock a mono-colored player out of the game. It just feels that way. The same as permanent enchantment based graveyard hate does to mono-red.

Also, Iona should be unbanned, because according to most people mono-white is the worst commander color, so Mono-white needs something strong, or they should follow their reasoning for the ban to its logical conclusion and ban a bunch of other stuff. If they had just banned her for a generic "she's too strong" i would have accepted it, but they didn't. They gave a reason that is the exact reason I found playing Mono-red graveyard artifacts no fun at all.

Just Reban "painter's servant".