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Chun-Li, Countless Kicks was a part ofMagic: The Gathering’sUniverses Beyond crossover with the Street Fighter series. The card was later re-released as Zethi, Arcane Blademaster to give players an opportunity to purchase the card who missed the window on the original Secret Lair release or prefer to not use a crossover card. Both cards are functionally the same, but this guide will refer to it as Chun-Li.
The deck is Azorius (white/blue) with a unique playstyle that lands between Voltron (focusing on a specific creature and keeping it protected with high stats) and spellslinger (casting as many spells as possible).
Sword of the Animist
x13 Island
x8 Plains
Sanctum of Eternity
Seachrome Coast
The deck consists of 13 creatures, eight sorceries, 30 instants, 11 artifacts, three enchantments, and 34 lands. Since Chun-Li, Countless Kicks can only target instant spells with its ability, they make up a majority of the deck.
Key Cards
Chun-Li, Countless Kicks
Chun-Li, Countless Kicksis the heart and soul of the deck. It lets you constantly cast instant spells with the multikicker ability. Chun-Li copies all the spells exiled and lets you cast them, meaning that youstill need to pay mana to actually cast the spells.
Chun-Li is uniquefor a Voltron commandersince it getting removed isn’t the end of the world. This is because it lets you re-cast Chun-Li and activate the multikicker effect again toexile even more cards with kick counters.
Once a card is exiled with a kick counter, they will remain in exile with the kick counter permanently (unless moved to a different zone). Chun-Li copies all cards with kick counters, so even if you used the effect on cast for two different sets of cards, you can copy all of them since they all have a kick counter.
You do need to attack in order to copy the spells, so you do have to put Chun-Li in the line of danger. However, by giving it evasion with lands such asRogue’s Passage, this doesn’t become an issue. Even if Chun-Li is destroyed in combat, this just gives you another chance for more multikicker usage.
Aetherflux Reservoir
Since you are still casting the copies with Chun-Li, this still counts as casting a spell. As such,Aetherflux Reservoirwill continuously give you extra life each time you cast a spell. Since you can cast so many spell with Chun-Li, the lifegain from Aetherflux Reservoir will constantly give you life so you won’t have to worry about getting attacked.
You start with 40 life in Commander, letting you reach the 50 life needed for Aetherflux Reservoir’s activation easily. You’ll be casting so many spells that even after the life payment, you’ll still have a hefty amount of life remaining so you’ll stay in the game after activation or recover quickly after use.
Monastery Mentor
While Chun-Li is your main source of spellcasitng,Monastery Mentoris one of your biggest payoffs. The deck mostly consists of noncreature spells, letting you constantly trigger Monastery Mentor’s ability to createtoken creatures with prowess.
You canspend a turn building up an army of tokens, and then with the next Chun-Li attack, swing in with a ton of creatures with prowess, gaining massive stat boosts from all the spells you’ll be casting.
High Tide
High Tideis the most useful instant in the entire deck. You need to pay mana to cast your instants, and High Tide lets you generate even more mana with all of your Islands. You want High Tide in the graveyard as soon as possible to exile with Chun-Li so you can use it every attack.
High Tideonly affects Islands, so it won’t affect your Plains or mana generated from artifacts. It will only add an extra blue mana for cards with the Island typing, but since that’s so many of your lands, this won’t be much of an issue.
Vega, The Watcher
Cards you copy with Chun-Li are being cast from exiled, meaning you’ll get to draw cards from their cast withVega, the Watcher. One of the biggest downsidesof spellslinger decksis that you’ll quickly run out of cards in your hand.
Vega, the Watcher ensures your hand is always refilled with more action, letting you cast more spells to take advantage of your other creatures' effects. The extra card draw lets you get interaction like counterspells and removal into your hand so that you’re able to make sure you cut off your opponents' ability to interact with you if needed.
How To Play The Deck
A Chun-Li, Countless Kicks Commander decks wants to get their best instants in the graveyard early. This can be accomplished with cards that draw and discard such asCareful Study,Windfall,andFaithful Mending.
The mana curve is very low, with only two instants being over two mana. This lets you ensure you can always cast the spells with Chun-Li’s ability to constantly without having to worry about not having the mana to cast them.
There are a few different win conditions for Chun-Li decks. Since you cast so many spells, this helps bringup your storm counterwith ease.Brain Freezeworks for multiple players. you may either use it aggressively to mill your opponents every turn, or on yourself to mill your own cards to get more instants into the graveyard.
Show of Confidenceis another route to a wind condition. This gives Chun-Li (or any other creature)a +1/+1 counterfor each instant and sorcery cast that turn. This gives a massive stat boost and if used on Chun-Li, opens up the ability totake someone out of the game through commander damage.
Cards that cantrip (draw a card for one mana) are also a vital part of the strategy. Cards likeLeapandShadow Riftboth make Chun-Li by giving it flying and shadow respectively, and draw you a card in the process. you’re able to re-use these spells every attack, keeping your hand full while swinging in wth Chun-Li without having to worry about blockers.
The non-commander creature lineup is primarily made up of cards thatcreate a token whenever you cast a noncreature spell. This helps to generate a large battlefield of creatures so that you’ll always have blockers available to fend off any attackers. Since you can make so many tokens, another route to victory is winning with a large amount of tokens.
