Lu Xun, Scholar General - A Magic the Gathering Card Review

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

You might be wondering, what’s so great about a 1/3 for 2UU? Lu Xun, Scholar General is originally from the ancient and extremely rare Portal: Three Kingdoms set. He finally saw a reprint in Commander 2013.

The key mechanic in that set was called Horsemanship. Honestly, Horsemanship might as well say unable to be blocked, because only other creatures with Horsemanship can block a creature with that ability. There are only a few creatures in the game with that mechanic, and all are from that set.  Sun Quan, Lord of Wu  is the other creature well-known for Horsemanship. His ability gives ALL of your creatures Horsemanship, which is pretty fantastic.

Lu Xun  is a bit less exciting than  Sun Quan, but his effect is very useful. Whenever he deals damage to an opponent, you may draw a card. Now,  his ability is not limited only to combat damage. If you were to find a way to have Lu Xun deal damage to an opponent, say with an Equipment that causes target creature to deal 1 damage to a target player, you would still draw a card.

Obviously, card draw is awesome to have in any deck, so Lu Xun can fit into a lot of Blue decks with ease. Since becoming available in the Commander 2013 product,  Evasive Maneuvers, players only need pay about a dollar per copy for him now. Previously, you would need to shell out over $20 for a single copy of him. Now that he’s more accessible, it’s a lot easier to see him fitting into a lot more budget lists.

Also, Lu Xun, Scholar General is a Legendary Creature, meaning that he is a potential Commander. While he’s probably nowhere as good as Sun Quan as a Commander, the fact that he can be a consistent draw engine that oftentimes can’t be blocked means he can be a surprisingly decent Voltron-style commander. Any abilities that can give him double strike allow you to draw two cards instead of one.

A deck built around him could be a more fair version of Azami, Lady of Scrolls – a Commander which allows for such a ridiculous draw engine that it hits its win conditions more often that not. He may be only a casual sort of Commander. But it's interesting to consider what sort of draw-based shenanigans could be made with him at the helm. If you'd like, EDHREC, the premier EDH decklist website, has a few suggestions for building a Lu Xun EDH deck.

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