Goro-Goro and Satoru Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on February 28, 2024

Goro-Goro and Satoru | Illustration by Johannes Voss

Goro-Goro and Satoru immediately caught my eye when March of the Machine spoiler season began. I was kinda disappointed at first glance. I felt like the card focused more on Goro-Goro and his love of dragons, and not nearly enough on Satoru and his ninja reckoners. But on a second look it hit me: one of the best ways to trigger this card’s ability is to play ninjas. Since then I’ve been extremely eager to build a deck around this commander.

Let me get my only real complaint about this card right off the top: why is Goro-Goro and Satoru’s creature type “goblin human” and not “ninja samurai”? It would’ve been such a cool way to cook up some weird tribal shenanigans. Alas, we won’t be getting a cool ninja samurai commander for now.

No need to worry; this deck still has enough ninjas and ninja-style combat tricks to keep things pretty interesting and on-theme. There may be a lack of samurai, but considering Goro-Goro is somewhat of a loner, ronin-type of guy, it’d make sense if he didn’t associate with other samurai. He still brings a ton of dragons to the table, so we can’t complain.

The Deck

Counterspell | Illustration by Zack Stella

The Commander

Goro-Goro and Satoru may be a Grixis () commander, but it definitely feels like a Rakdos () commander with blue splashed in. It’s a commander that wants you to attack fast and consistently, and it doesn’t really worry about your creatures spending too long on the battlefield.

This is an unarguably aggro deck. Hit hard, hit fast, repeat. Something that makes Goro-Goro and Satoru particularly useful is its low mana value. You can ensure some dragons pretty early on when your opponents don’t have strong enough defenses, and you can keep recasting it without having to dish out tons of mana each time.

Catch Me If You Can: Evasive Creatures

Good and consistent evasion is really important for this deck. It doesn’t just let you hit with your haste creatures and ensure dragons enter the field; it also allows you to use creatures that wouldn’t trigger your commander’s ability to cheat ninjas into play, which then again ensures more dragons.

Cards like Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury, Phoenix Chick, and Tin Street Dodger move fast and have pretty decent evasion to ensure a hit the turn they come into play. Kolaghan can even bounce back to your hand so it’s always attacking on the turn it entered the battlefield.

Invisible Stalker can serve a similar purpose if granted haste, but it’s mainly here to serve as a conduit for ninjas to enter the battlefield.

On the other hand, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive and Alora, Merry Thief grant some welcomed evasion to your other creatures.

Live Fast, Die Young: Hasty Tokens

One thing most Rakdos aggro strategies have that can end up pushing some people away is their complete recklessness. People tend to be very loss-averse, so having to risk your creatures time and time again while also leaving yourself unprotected can be daunting. What happens when you take violent recklessness and you add just a little bit of strategy and intellect to it? This deck’s answer: expendable creatures that can only exist to be reckless.

Urabrask's Forge, Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink, Loyal Apprentice, Daring Piracy; these all give you access to hasty token creatures that won’t survive the end of your turn anyway (except for the Thopters). These tokens are key to keeping a consistent offensive against your opponents without risking anything of value. You also cash in on your commander’s dragon-spawning trigger.

Hit ‘Em Hard, Hit ‘Em Twice: Extra Combats

I’ve already made it clear that this is a deck that’s focused on attacking. But everyone knows that aggro isn’t exactly Commander’s most popular strategy. It’s risky to pull off when you have three opponents on the table, especially if they decide to be vengeful against you.

You better make the most out of any and every turn you decide to attack. You have a couple of cards to ensure you can attack several times in a single turn.

Karlach, Fury of Avernus, Hexplate Wallbreaker, Relentless Assault, Seize the Day, and Breath of Fury all let you exploit a single turn for extra attacks, dishing out some much-needed damage while also creating some extra dragons per turn.

War Eternal: The Wincon

This deck’s biggest possible wincon is direct damage, but if you play your attacks right you can also get what’s essentially a never-ending spawning of dragons.

For this wincon to work, you need:

• Your commander in play;
• At least one creature that entered this turn and can hit an opponent;
• Breath of Fury enchanting that creature; and
• Anger in your graveyard or Mass Hysteria on the field.

The rest is easy (kind of). Attack with the creature that you know will hit (and any other creature you want to attack with), which creates a dragon token. The original attacking creature is sacrificed by Breath of Fury which also gives you a new combat phase; attach your enchantment to your new dragon, attack, create a new dragon, rinse and repeat.

There are a few extra cards you can throw in to make the process faster or easier, like Dragon Tempest to either deal even more damage to opponents or to remove possible blockers they control. Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury is good since its ability stacks over attack phases, so creatures you control steadily grow more and more powerful.

The Mana Base

The deck has a relatively straightforward mana base, using plenty of non-basic lands and mana rocks to ensure some mana fixing. There’s three utility lands in the form of Otawara, Soaring City, Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance, and Takenuma, Abandoned Mire.

The Strategy

This deck’s strategy depends on combat and being able to pass through your opponents’ defenses. Being able to hit opponents while your commander is on the field lets you build up a massive army of dragon tokens, which can quickly overpower the other players on the table.

To ensure that, you obviously have creatures with evasion and ways to make your creatures unblockable. This doesn’t ensure you’re going to be hitting with creatures that entered the battlefield this turn, so a big number of your creatures are ninjas. That way you can “recycle” your creatures so that they’re always a creature that just entered the battlefield. Especially useful for this is Satoru Umezawa since it gives all your non-ninja creatures ninjutsu, which is an incredible battle trick.

Even if your commander isn’t on the field, this deck can keep attacking and dealing damage, using cards like Reconnaissance Mission and Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar to draw tons of cards and gain some advantage.

The extra combat cards also let you get particularly aggressive to put some pressure on your opponents.

Other utilities in the deck include cards that allow you to bounce your creatures back to your hand, which can protect them but is also useful for your commander’s ability.

Combos and Interactions

This deck is mostly straightforward with its interactions and combos, wearing its aggressive strategy on its sleeve.

Rule 0 Violations Check

The only possible rule 0 issue you may come across is the Breath of Fury infinite combats combo, but it also needs a pretty complex setup so I wouldn’t worry too much.

Budget Options

Most of the expensive cards in the deck have a very specific use, like Cyclonic Rift or Mana Drain. If necessary, they can simply be replaced by cards with similar effects (like other wraths or counters).

Arguably, the more irreplaceable cards in the deck aren’t that expensive by themselves, so any truly expensive ones can be replaced relatively easy with more ninjas, cards that are unblockable or have some decent evasion, or some useful interactions for the deck.

Other Builds

You can honestly modify the build around this deck as much as you like, as long as you keep in mind what your commander does. There’s a strong focus on Goro-Goro and Satoru’s ability, but the deck itself is a decent combat-oriented deck even if you don’t have your commander in play. You can lean more heavily on the ninja theme, or you can go for a more haste-and-evasion centered approach.

I’m personally using Goro-Goro and Satoru as the commander for an aesthetic deck I’m building, which is essentially a reckoners/cyberpunk deck. All the cards must have a cyberpunk or cyberpunk-adjacent aesthetic, representing Satoru’s reckoner gang. I opted for this card and not Satoru Umezawa because red gives access to some removal and aggressive cards that fit nicely into a reckoner theme. But this is a build for another time.

Commanding Conclusion

Blood Crypt | Illustration by Adam Paquette

I personally really like this commander and this build. Since I was already building the reckoner theme deck around Goro-Goro and Satoru, I wanted an alternative build that would be a bit stronger so I didn’t risk being stuck with a weak deck that ended up being unfun to play.

Did you like this build? How would you build it or play it differently? Would you like me to detail my silly reckoner deck on another post? Feel free to leave a comment! And while we’re at it, pay the official Draftsim Discord a visit, where you can join a wonderful community of MTG fans!

That’s all from me for now! Have a good one, and I’ll see you next time.