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Satoru Umezawa

Legendary Creature — Human Ninja

Whenever you activate a ninjutsu ability, look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. This ability triggers only once each turn.
Each creature card in your hand has ninjutsu {2}{U}{B}.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{1}{U}{B}
Color identity
BU
Rarity
rare
Set
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
Price
$1.02
EDHREC rank
#3484
Buy on TCGplayer
Satoru Umezawa card art
Satoru Umezawa lets you ninjutsu any creature in your hand — regardless of its mana cost — whenever an unblocked creature connects, turning every chip-in attacker into a backdoor for Peregrine Drake or any other bomb you're sitting on. The cost is a three-mana legendary who does nothing the turn he enters and dies to every removal spell in the format, so protecting him or building around the ability immediately is non-negotiable. Splinter, Radical Rat decks show up with him in over half their lists precisely because that shell already wants to connect with small creatures and drop massive payoffs for free.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Splinter, Radical Rat

Splinter, Radical Rat

57.0% of decks · synergy 0.55

Splinter, Radical Rat appears in 57% of Splinter decks alongside Satoru Umezawa because the commander already incentivizes attacking with small unblockable or evasive bodies, and Satoru turns every successful hit into a free threat deployment from hand.

02
Goro-Goro and Satoru

Goro-Goro and Satoru

49.3% of decks · synergy 0.48

Goro-Goro and Satoru shares a name with the card and shares a game plan — connect with creatures, generate value — making Satoru Umezawa an obvious redundancy piece that nearly half of those 8,475 decks run.

03
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

34.4% of decks · synergy 0.31

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is the premier ninjutsu commander, and Satoru Umezawa gives Yuriko decks a second engine that can cheat in massive non-Ninja threats off the same unblocked attacks Yuriko already wants to make.

04
Satoru, the Infiltrator

Satoru, the Infiltrator

32.2% of decks · synergy 0.28

Satoru, the Infiltrator rewards combat damage with card draw and impulse effects, and Satoru Umezawa complements that by converting those same combat steps into free creatures from hand, doubling the payoff for every successful swing.

05
Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima

Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima

20.8% of decks · synergy 0.19

Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima rewards unblocked attackers with ghost tokens and pressure, and Satoru Umezawa layers on top by letting those same combat steps deploy high-cost threats without ever tapping a land for them.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Satoru Umezawa is built to live — the format's large card pool means you have access to the most broken ninjutsu targets imaginable, and a 40-life pod gives you the time to land him and start connecting. In Legacy and Vintage he's legal but irrelevant; three mana for a do-nothing-now legendary is far too slow against turn-one and turn-two kills, and the ninjutsu ability doesn't compensate for that tempo gap. Modern and Pioneer have similar problems: Satoru Umezawa has no competitive home in either format because fair three-drops need immediate impact to justify the slot. Oathbreaker is the one non-Commander format worth mentioning — as a planeswalker-adjacent build-around he can function, but the 20-life clock makes the slow setup riskier.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$1.02 cheap tier

At $1.02, Satoru Umezawa sits in the bulk-rare tier — strong enough to anchor entire archetypes, cheap enough that there's no budget reason to skip him. Given the consistent demand across Yuriko, Splinter, and dedicated ninjutsu builds, that floor is unlikely to drop further.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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