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Kentaro, the Smiling Cat

Legendary Creature — Human Samurai

Bushido 1 (Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)
You may pay {X} rather than pay the mana cost for Samurai spells you cast, where X is that spell's mana value.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{W}
Color identity
W
Rarity
rare
Set
Betrayers of Kamigawa
Price
$2.11
EDHREC rank
#17083
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Kentaro, the Smiling Cat card art
Kentaro, the Smiling Cat lets you pay generic mana instead of white pips to cast Samurai, which sounds narrow until you realize it's doing real work in multicolor Samurai builds where white is a splash rather than the base. The payoff is immediate and functional — Whitemane Lion loops that would strain a shaky mana base become trivially consistent, and that alone is enough to earn Kentaro, the Smiling Cat a slot in any Raiyuu, Storm's Edge list.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Raiyuu, Storm's Edge

Raiyuu, Storm's Edge

11.6% of decks · synergy 0.12

Raiyuu, Storm's Edge attacks the combat step hard, and Kentaro, the Smiling Cat smooths out the one structural weakness of a Boros Samurai list — casting off-color Samurai through a greedy mana base without losing tempo.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Kentaro, the Smiling Cat is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, though competitive play in Legacy, Modern, and Vintage has no appetite for a 2/2 legendary with a tribal cost-reduction ability that applies to a small creature type. Commander is the only format where Kentaro, the Smiling Cat does real work, specifically as a support piece in Samurai tribal lists where the density of white-heavy pip costs in the tribe creates a genuine mana problem worth solving. Outside of that niche, it's a bulk rare in every format it's legal in.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$2.11 cheap tier

At $2.11, Kentaro, the Smiling Cat sits in the cheap tier — accessible for anyone building Samurai tribal without a second thought. It's niche enough that demand will never spike dramatically, so this price is effectively a floor; buy it when you need it and don't wait.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.