Riku of Two Reflections, Spellslinger Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 1, 2024

Riku of Two Reflections | art by Izzy

Are you ready for some spellslinging? Riku of Two Reflections definitely is! Originally printed in Commander 2011, Riku of Two Reflections was reprinted nine years later in Double Masters.

To make a spellslinger deck work, you need more instant and sorcery cards than anything else in the build. Today, we have for you a deck with over 40 instant and/or sorcery cards. Let’s go on an “adventure” to discover how this is possible. Did you figure out the hint yet?

The Deck

Adrix and Nev, Twincasters | Illustration by Andrew Mar

The build uses adventure cards to maximize your access to instant and sorcery spells without compromising on creatures. With 26 instant and sorcery cards and another 17 instant/sorcery spells contained in adventure cards, you have 43 opportunities for spellslinger greatness by copying these spells with Riku’s first activated ability. 

There are also some double-faced Zendikar Rising cards where you can cast an instant or sorcery spell on one side or play the land card on the back instead. You can treat these cards as either extra ways to spell sling or as consistent ways to hit land drops. 

The Commander: Riku of Two Reflections

Riku of Two Reflections is a spellslinger commander specialist mainly because of its first ability of copying instant and sorcery spells. The commander aims to cast low-cost instant and sorcery spells, leaving enough mana open for the copy ability.  

Say that you want to cast Cultivate, which is only 3 mana including a green. As long as you leave up blue and red mana before casting this spell, you can get four basic lands with one card, two of which enter the battlefield tapped. Now that’s some substantial ramping!

The commander’s secondary ability of copying nontoken creatures is an added plus and has plenty of targets thanks to your adventure creatures. Of course, it’s beneficial to include a creature base of mostly non-legendary creatures so that you can keep the token copies.

Adventure Spells

Adventure spells are an essential component of this EDH deck. You can cast and copy the instant or sorcery that is on the adventure side before casting the permanent, which is usually a creature or enchantment that can also be copied with the commander’s second ability. Plus, the one most important adventure card, Beluna Grandsquall, has the ability to reduce the permanent part of any adventure spell by .

The Seek Thrills portion of Beluna Grandsquall lets you collect all the cards with adventure spells on them from among your top seven cards. There are 16 other adventure cards in the deck, which means a high chance of being able to put at least 1-2 in your hand when you cast Seek Thrills.

Double the Fun With Double-Faced Cards

There are many Zendikar Rising modal double-faced cards that not only increase how many instant and sorcery spells are in the build but enhance your land base for when you need to hit land drops instead. When we say double the fun, we mean that you can go one of two ways with the multiple options that double-faced cards grant.

Khalni Ambush has one of your creatures fight a creature your opponent controls, or you can play Khalni Territory as a tapped green source.

Silundi Vision allows you to fetch an instant or sorcery card from the top six cards of your library or Silundi Isle can be played for blue mana. Note, Silundi Vision will not let you pick up an adventure card, unfortunately.

Kazuul's Fury lets you sacrifice a creature and deal damage to any target based on that sacrificed creature’s power. Kazuul's Cliffs is a tapped Mountain when you need it. Fun fact, copying this spell with Riku won’t require another sacrifice for the copy.

Remember that with Riku’s first ability to copy instant and sorcery spells you can get double the benefits on all these spells, as well as double the creatures when you cast your adventure creatures and use Riku’s second ability.

Flashy Finishers

Since this is a spellslinger Commander deck, you can only expect some unique and flashy finishers.

With enough mana, you can use both abilities on Riku of Two Reflections to win with Biovisionary (in Commander!). This involves casting Biovisionary, targeting it with Double Vision, then using Riku to copy both Double Vision and the original Biovisionary when it enters the battlefield. Resolve the stack and you’ll have four creatures named Biovisionary on the battlefield, causing you to win the game on your end step. It’s a 9-mana combo that involves three cards, but we did say unique and flashy!

You can also win the game with some combination of Mirror Image to copy Biovisionary and Finale of Devastation to find whatever part of the combo you’re missing, even if Biovisionary’s sitting in the graveyard. You could also just cast Finale for X = a lot.

The Mana Base

Basic lands include 10 Islands, eight Forests, and seven Mountain with an emphasis on blue spells in the deck. Outside of a few mono-red spells and some multi-color spells, red will primarily be utilized for copying instant and sorcery spells with Riku’s first activated ability.

Steam Vents and Stomping Ground are the two shock lands in the deck, and you have Scalding Tarn, Wooded Foothills, and Misty Rainforest as fetch lands for added consistency.

Hinterland Harbor is one of the check lands that come in untapped as long as you control a basic land type of one of the two colors listed. As long as you control two or less other lands, Copperline Gorge and Spirebluff Canal come in untapped.

Yavimaya Coast and Karplusan Forest are two of the pain lands in the deck. You can either tap them for colorless mana with no damage taken, or you can tap for one of two colors at the cost of 1 life.

Zendikar Rising MDFCs such as Kazuul's Fury, Glasspool Mimic, Valakut Awakening, and Bala Ged Recovery up your land count while providing valuable spells for Riku. There are enough extra instant and sorcery spells on the 17 adventure cards that allow you some wiggle room if you need to just play these double-faced cards as lands.

Blighted Woodland is like a land and a ramp spell in one card. You can use it for colorless mana early in the game, then tap and sacrifice it to ramp ahead later in the game. Blighted Woodland can get you the mana fixing you need if you’re not finding one or more of the colors you need by that point.

Of course, we have the usual Commander ramp staples including beloved mana rocks Sol Ring and Arcane Signet. Riku’s a mana-intensive commander, best to have some extra sources of mana hanging around.

The Strategy

One of the key goals of this Riku of Two Reflections spellslinger deck is to maximize how many different instant and sorcery spells you can cast by incorporating adventure cards into your creature base. You can cast an instant or sorcery adventure, copy it with Riku’s first ability, have the creature go on an adventure, and then cast the creature permanent spell later in the game so it can be copied with Riku’s second ability.

You can outvalue your opponents with the many creature tokens you create with Riku’s second ability. Alternatively, you can outright win the game in combat through sheer numbers, or utilize a couple of creatures that have a win-the-game ability.

Your non-adventure creatures should have beneficial ETB abilities or good static abilities worth copying. For example, copying Goblin Electromancer will result in a 2-mana discount to all your instant and sorcery spells.

Combos and Interactions

This spellslinger deck is filled with combos and interactions that’ll help you to win the game in unique ways. From draining your opponent’s life total to sneaky win-the-game mechanics on cards, your play pod will be left wonder what hit them!

Rite of Replication and Terror of the Peaks interact together to give you near-infinite damage. Kicking Rite of Replication makes five copies of Terror of the Peaks. The original dragon’s ability triggers five times, dealing 5 damage each to targets of your choice. The other five Terror of the Peaks tokens get the same trigger four times each. Hence, you can deal 125 damage total divided among 25 targets. If you’re playing a 4-player pod and they each have 40 life still, that outright kills the entire table!

Dockside Extortionist, Snap, Eternal Witness, and Riku of Two Reflections combo off to give you infinite colored mana, infinite creature tokens, and an infinite storm count. If you can manipulate Snap, Eternal Witness, and Riku’s activations in the right order, you’ll eventually have infinite token copies of Dockside Extortionist and infinite Treasure tokens. This assumes your opponents have at least a combine total of five or more artifacts/enchantments in play for Dockside to net mana.

Narset's Reversal and Twinning Staff combo off to give you infinite magecraft triggers. You can infinitely draw cards off of Archmage Emeritus’s magecraft ability, drawing until you get all of your combo pieces to win the game. Or, if you really want to get crafty, you can cast Laboratory Maniac to mill yourself out and still win the game.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Some of your pod members may not like win-the-game cards like Laboratory Maniac and Biovisionary in a Commander game. Check with the other players in your group to see their thoughts on these types of cards, though you should point out that combos involving these cards involve a lot of moving pieces.

Budget Options

The deck itself is already pretty budget because the creature, instant, and sorcery base consists mostly of adventure cards. Terror of the Peaks and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces are a couple of the more expensive creature cards in this build.

Replace Sakashima of a Thousand Faces with Mirror Gallery or Mirror Box for the same legend rule effect. This lets you copy legendary creatures with Riku, which comes up from time to time. Plus, Mirror Box can increase the power and toughness of nontoken creatures with the same name, which synergizes well with Riku’s second ability.

The fetch lands in the deck such as Wooded Foothills are about $15-$17, which can be pricey for some budget players. Try a slow land like Rockfall Vale in its place.

Other Builds

If you want a different spellslinger version of Riku, try instant and sorcery spells with flashback with a few cost reduction effects like Catalyst Stone. Curious Homunculus transforms into Voracious Reader when there are three or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, which gives you more cost reduction to work with. Each flashback spell is essentially two spells for Riku to copy. Throw in cards like Think Twice, Galvanic Iteration, and Narset's Reversal.

Of course, you can lean into the creature-copying ability on Riku instead, in which case you’re free to copy whatever creatures you like the most. ETB value creatures or haymaker finishers, Riku leaves things pretty open-ended.

Time To Do Some Spell Slinging!

Beluna Grandsquall | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

We hope you enjoyed this Riku of Two Reflections spellslinger EDH deck guide! Whether you prefer adventure spells or flashback spells to increase how many instant or sorcery spells you can sling, the choice is yours.

Connect with other like-minded spellslingers on the Draftsim Discord for more inspiration. Check out more spellslinger decks in the Draftsim deck guides section of our website.

Until next time, copy and sling those spells to your heart’s content, Magic players!