The MTG card Shuko has seen an explosive price spike over the weekend, jumping from just $2.50 all the way to $16. This increase of 540% is all down to Shuko’s free equip cost, and a new Modern Horizons 3 card that has both Modern and Commander players salivating.
Taken at face value, Shuko is a pretty mediocre equipment card from the old MTG set Betrayers of Kamigawa. But what’s useful about it is that it’s the cheapest MTG equipment card that can be equipped for free.
That makes it a wonderful companion for the new Modern Horizons 3 card Nadu, Winged Wisdom, who can use Shuko to draw an inordinate amount of cards, and ramp into an unstoppable position.
This new Blue-Green bird creature gives all your other creatures an effect which activates whenever they’re targeted with an ability. You look at the top card of your library and if it’s a land play it; if not it goes into your hand. The MTG mana ramp this provides can then help you pay for all the cards you just drew.
Where Shuko comes in is you can equip it to each creature you control for free, allowing you to effortlessly get the maximum number of triggers from Nadu (you’re limited to two for each creature).
With cheap creatures, Dryad Arbor, blinking Nadu, or any number of other tricks, it’s pretty easy to use Shuko and Nadu to get through your entire deck. But you don’t need to go for the Thassa’s Oracle MTG combo necessarily – usually it’ll be enough to draw an enormous number of cards and play an enormous number of lands, putting you in a commanding lead.
One great thing about this interaction is that it entirely dodges Orcish Bowmasters: MTG Lord of the Rings’ recent answer to card draw that’s become meta defining in a bunch of formats.
We should mention that as well as it looking tasty for EDH and Modern, Legacy players are also speculating on the Nadu + Shuko combo. That’s because there’s already a Shuko deck in the format, the delightfully named Cephalid Breakfast. This card uses Shuko and Cephalid Illusionist to tear through your own deck, finishing things up with Thassa’s Oracle.
While it doesn’t fit the typical colors of the deck, Legacy players have the mana options available to experiment freely with different MTG color combinations, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom seems like an exciting new inclusion for the archetype.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our list of the best MTG Commander precon decks or our cEDH tier list.