As I was sitting down to finally build this cube out in paper, I was thinking about last minute ways I could try to tweak/improve the Samurai deck and also got to thinking about other sets that I could potentially draw from for this cube. I've also been playing a whole lot of Street Fighter V lately as I'm super hype for VI to come out, so I thought I'd check out the Secret Lair: Street Fighter cards. Turns out that both Ken and Ryu actually fit pretty well into this cube. Yell at me for being part of the problem with modern Magic, but I don't care. This is perfect for this cube and my friends and I growing up would jam games of Alpha 3 and Third Strike long into the night, so that franchise holds a special place in my heart.
White
Ryu is a warrior which triggers the same things that a samurai would, so immediately this is a more relevant creature type that Kitsune being a random off-color ninja in white. His training is kind of awkward given that this deck is largely built towards attacking with only one creature, but if nothing else it provides some kind of value when this deck isn't able to do that. The discard can also possibly feed into some kind of shenanigans with the sisters Yamazaki, as well.
Red
- Peerless Samurai > Ken, Burning Brawler
- Lava Spike > Lightning Bolt (the Hadoken version)
Similar to Ryu, Ken is a warrior so I have no qualms with swapping a samurai out for Ken here. On whole, I think Ken is a lot stronger than Ryu is in this cube (which makes me happy as I'm a Ken main in SF) and I think he'll wind up being a pretty strong card here. I think Lightning Bolt might be a touch too strong in this cube, but I'll give it a go because I love the flavor of being able to Shoryuken into a Hadoken with Ken. If Bolt is a problem, I can easily swap back to Lava Spike.