Magic: The Gathering‘s Secret Lairs are usually alternate cosmetic treatments for existing cards, providing exciting new themes and valuable reprints for players. However, Wizards of the Coast has sometimes released original cards as part of crossovers with other franchises. The first such instance was with Secret Lair x The Walking Dead, and later Secret Lair x Stranger Things. Now, fans of the classic arcade fighter can rejoice at the arrival of Secret Lair x Street Fighter.
The Secret Lair will feature eight new cards, each themed around a fighter from the original roster of Street Fighter II. While all feature innovative and interesting designs based off their movesets and playstyles from the games, they will only be legal in the Vintage, Legacy and Commander formats. Vintage and Legacy play at such a high level of power that it’s unlikely any will be viable there, but players really wanting to put their new cards to use can turn to Commander. As legendary creatures, each fighter can helm their own Commander deck.
Ryu, World Warrior
Ryu, World Warrior isn’t the most powerful card, sadly limited by what’s perhaps the worst color pair for a commander: red-white. Still, that doesn’t mean players can’t get up to some shenanigans using the card. Training will let players buff Ryu if he attacks alongside creatures with greater power.
Playing a creature with three power on turn two is a great way to accomplish this, and red-white does have a suite of powerful creatures with such stats. Examples include Spirit of the Labyrinth, Cathar Commando and Loyal Warhound. Once they do they can proliferate those counters using cards like Grateful Apparition and the Sword of Truth and Justice. That same sword and its ilk are great for suiting up Ryu and pumping up his power before players untap him using his Hadoken ability.
Chun-Li, Countless Kicks
With perhaps the most aptly-named mechanic for a card, Chun-Li, Countless Kicks has multikicker. By paying any number of blue or a white mana when they cast her, players will be able to exile instants from their graveyards and cast them on future turns when Chun-Li attacks. This means players will want a deck filled with instants, along with cards to discard them and protection for Chun-Li.
Windfall, Frantic Search and Thirst for Knowledge are great ways to discard instants. What those instants are is up to the player, but great picks include mana-generators like High Tide and Turnabout, bounce spells like Cyclonic Rift or Engulf the Shore, and classic get-out-of-jail-free card Teferi’s Protection.
Blanka, Ferocious Friend
With the voltage he produces, it’s only fitting that Blanka helm a storm deck. This combines elements of storm and beatdown decks, as players play spells to damage their opponents while pumping up Blanka to swing in as a finisher. Those spells have to target Blanka to trigger his Electric Thunder ability, so cheap instants, sorceries and auras that cantrip are the name of the game.
Some good picks include Ancestral Anger, Viridescent Wisps, Rile and Charge Through. Other good pump spells that sadly don’t draw a card are Temur Battle Rage, Unleash Fury and Invigorating Surge. A small protection suite for Blanka might make use of spells that target him but also give him hexproof or indestructible, such as Withstand Death, Tamiyo’s Resolve or Snakeskin Veil.
Dhalsim, Pliable Pacifist
Dhalsim is a bit tricky to build a deck around. While “reach” is a flavorful way to depict his stretching abilities, it’s not a conventionally powerful keyword in Magic. He can let reach creatures get in for damage without much fuss, but only if they have low power. He’d be fairly underpowered without hexproof, which is an amazing ability on a commander.
Players committed to building around him might actually want to fill their deck with spiders. Almost every spider has the reach keyword, and a similarly high amount benefit from outsized toughness compared to their power. This means players can use cards like Huatli, the Sun’s Heart or Assault Formation to increase the damage dealt by their spider army while still benefiting from Dhalism’s unorthodox evasion.
E. Honda, Sumo Champion
E. Honda is a fairly recognizable archetype in Commander: defender/toughness matters. This mean players have to pump up the toughness of a bunch of creatures with high toughness, then use an effect like E. Honda’s Sumo Spirit to make them assign damage equal to that toughness. However, there are two small wrinkles to actually putting him at the helm of a Commander deck. For one, he’s mono-white. This gives players a pretty slim part of the overall card pool, and few creatures with high toughness relative to their cost.
Second, E. Honda doesn’t actually let creatures with defender attack. Most creatures with high toughness also have defender, which prevents them from attacking. Instead, consider playing E. Honda in a deck helmed by Arcades, the Strategist (who provides access to green, blue and white while also letting defenders attack) and then using one of green’s creature tutors to get the sumo fighter into play.
Guile, Sonic Soldier
Guile‘s card is red, white and blue, just like the country he’s from. He starts off with a charge counter, and he can remove it when he attacks to either deal damage or gain lifelink and indestructible. This lends itself to a fairly standard beatdown strategy, but it’s awkward due to players having to alternate adding and removing counters from Guile.
To get around this, players should consider running proliferate cards like the Sword of Truth and Justice, Thrummingbird or Inexorable Tide. Putting +1/+1 counters on Guile will also synergize neatly, letting them proliferate both the +1/+1 and charge counters. Some good inclusions for that counters theme are The Herald of Secret Streams, Teferi’s Time Twist and Citadel Siege.
Ken, Burning Brawler
Like his rival Ryu, Ken is sadly pigeonholed into the worst colors for Commander: red and white. Because of their lack of long-term sustain through ramp and card draw, as well as aggro strategies that don’t lend themselves well to Commander’s higher life total, red-white decks can really struggle.
Ken’s way around this is Shoryuken, which lets him cheat mana costs by casting sorceries for free. This includes extra combat-step cards like Seize the Day, Relentless Assault and World at War. However, his power will need to get a little higher to achieve this. He can do this with his inbuilt prowess ability, but it’s probably more efficient to suit him up with protective equipment that boosts his power incidentally.
Zangief, the Red Cyclone
Zangief benefits from good colors and and unorthodox strategy for a Commander. Swinging in with him lets players require the opponent to block and almost certainly lose one of their creatures, after which they have to sacrifice one of their noncreature permanents. Him gaining indestructible on the player’s turn helps with this, but can also be exploited in a myriad of other ways.
Playing a card that destroys all creatures like Damnation or Crux of Fate will clear the way for him to swing in if played before combat. However, players can also opt to use his ability to deal with a creature noncreature before destroying all creatures anyways. Giving him trample using equipment like Shadowspear, Loxodon Warhammer or Embercleave is also a good idea, since he only needs to assign one point of excess damage. The rest can go directly to lowering opponent’s life totals.
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