MTG Bushido Explained: How Bushido Works, All 37 Bushido Cards Ranked, the Commanders and a $102 Takeno Deck (2026)

Bushido is a Magic: The Gathering triggered ability: whenever a creature with bushido N blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn. A 1/1 with bushido 1 fights as a 2/2. A 3/3 with bushido 5 fights as an 8/8. It doesn’t matter how many creatures are involved: one block, one trigger, one bonus (the same once-per-combat rule as afflict). It is the samurai keyword of the original Kamigawa block, and it was built to make small, honourable creatures win fights they shouldn’t.

We pulled every bushido card from Scryfall, every deck count from EDHREC and the stats of every creature in the original Kamigawa block. There are 37 bushido cards in real Magic: 36 with the keyword and Fumiko the Lowblood, whose bushido is X. 36 of the 37 were printed between October 2004 and June 2005. The only exception is Jade Avenger, a frog samurai from Modern Horizons 2 in 2021. When Wizards went back to Kamigawa in 2022 with Neon Dynasty, it printed 23 new Samurai and gave bushido to none of them.

The 37 cards fill 94,332 Commander deck slots between them, and 21.4% of those slots go to one card, Fumiko the Lowblood, which isn’t played for bushido at all. This guide covers the rules word for word, the rulings that come up, every bushido card ranked by Commander play, the commanders, the cards that were bushido before bushido existed, what the keyword cost a creature in stats, legality in every format, and a $101.95 budget Takeno, Samurai General Commander deck that turns every bushido point into a permanent +1/+1.

What is bushido in MTG?

Bushido debuted in Champions of Kamigawa on 1 October 2004, on 17 cards. Betrayers of Kamigawa added 9 more in February 2005 and Saviors of Kamigawa 10 in June 2005. Then it stopped. So did Arcane, the block’s spell subtype, until Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel: Darkhold Destiny brought it back. The keyword came back once, on Jade Avenger in Modern Horizons 2, a set built partly from nostalgia for old mechanics. Fumiko the Lowblood is the only bushido card that has been reprinted in a Commander product (Commander 2015, Commander Anthology Volume II and Commander 2020).

The Comprehensive Rules define it in two lines:

702.45a Bushido is a triggered ability. “Bushido N” means “Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn.” (See rule 509, “Declare Blockers Step.”)

702.45b If a creature has multiple instances of bushido, each triggers separately.

In plain terms: when your bushido creature blocks, or when it attacks and the opponent blocks it, the ability triggers in the declare blockers step. When it resolves, your creature gets +N/+N until the end of the turn. The bonus lands before any combat damage, including first strike damage, so it decides who survives the fight. If the creature attacks and nobody blocks it, nothing happens: bushido is a fighting bonus, not an attacking bonus.

The bushido numbers are small. Of the 36 keyword cards, 25 have bushido 1, 10 have bushido 2, and one, Konda, Lord of Eiganjo, has bushido 5. White has 20 of the 37 cards, red 9, black 6 and green 2. Blue never got one.

How bushido works in combat

Bushido looks like rampage or flanking, but it plays differently. Rampage only pays when two or more creatures block, and it counts them. Bushido pays the moment any block happens, on either side, and it never counts anything. That makes it the most reliable of the old combat-pump keywords. The catch is that it’s public: your opponent can read the card, add the bonus in their head and simply not block, or not attack into it.

That last point is the real effect of bushido in a game. A 2/2 with bushido 1 is a 3/3 in every fight, so it walls 2/2 attackers and 2/3 blockers as if it were bigger. Opponents mostly respond by leaving it alone, which is often what a defensive white deck wants. Opal-Eye, Konda’s Yojimbo, a 1/4 defender with bushido 1, is the clearest case: it was printed to sit in front of everything.

Bushido rulings that trip people up

It triggers once per combat, no matter how many blockers

“Becomes blocked” happens once, whether one creature or five block. One trigger, one +N/+N. Likewise a bushido creature that blocks triggers once, even if some effect lets it block several attackers.

It’s a trigger, so it can be answered

Because bushido uses the stack, your opponent can respond to it. A blocker with toughness 1 and bushido 1 dies to a 1-damage ping in response, before the bonus resolves. Once it resolves, the bonus stays until end of turn even if the block is later removed or the other creature leaves combat.

Multiple instances add up

Rule 702.45b: each instance triggers separately. The ruling on Sensei Golden-Tail says the same. If Sensei gives a training counter (and bushido 1) to a creature that already has bushido 2, that creature triggers twice and gets +3/+3. This matters for Takeno, Samurai General, which counts every point.

Fumiko’s X is counted when the trigger resolves

Fumiko the Lowblood has bushido X, where X is the number of attacking creatures. The official ruling: the bonus is calculated each time the trigger resolves, based on the number of attackers at that moment. If an attacker is removed in response, X drops.

No block, no bonus

Bushido doesn’t trigger on attacking alone, on dealing damage or on being targeted. A bushido creature that goes unblocked hits for its printed power. That’s the difference from exalted, which pumps the lone attacker before blocks.

Lifelink and trample use the boosted numbers

The bonus is real power. A blocked Konda, Lord of Eiganjo deals 8 damage, and with trample from equipment the excess carries over to the player.

Every bushido card, ranked by Commander play

All 37 real bushido cards, sorted by how many Commander decks on EDHREC run them. “X” in the bushido column is Fumiko. Prices are the cheapest ordinary printing on Scryfall at the time of writing.

The top of the table isn’t about bushido. Fumiko the Lowblood is in 20,209 decks, more than the next three cards combined, and her second line is the reason: “Creatures your opponents control attack each combat if able.” That’s a forced-attack effect on a four-mana body, the kind of card that goes in red decks that want opponents to swing at each other, and she has been reprinted in three Commander products. Toshiro Umezawa (5,451) is played for his instant recursion: whenever an opponent’s creature dies, you can recast an instant from your graveyard. Jade Avenger (8,074) is a two-mana 2/2 frog samurai that fights as a 4/4, and it’s the only green bushido creature in Pauper and the only one printed this decade.

Below those three, the list turns into the white samurai deck: Konda, Sensei Golden-Tail, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Nagao, Opal-Eye, Kentaro, Takeno, Konda’s Hatamoto, Hand of Honor. Each sits in roughly 2,700 to 4,500 decks. These are the cards people actually play for the keyword, and nearly all of them are in the deck at the end of this guide.

The bushido commanders

Eleven bushido cards can be your commander. EDHREC deck counts for each:

Toshiro Umezawa leads 2,196 decks, four times the next commander, and those decks aren’t samurai decks. His EDHREC page is mono-black removal and rituals: Dark Ritual, Tragic Slip, Snuff Out, Infernal Grasp. Every creature you kill lets you recast a removal spell from the graveyard, so the deck is a removal loop with a 2/2 attached.

Takeno, Samurai General (515) is the one commander that cares about bushido itself. Its static ability reads: “Each other Samurai creature you control gets +1/+1 for each point of bushido it has.” A bushido 1 samurai becomes a permanent +1/+1 bigger and still gets its bushido trigger in combat, so it effectively counts twice. Takeno’s EDHREC top cards are the bushido samurai from the table above, which is as close to a “bushido deck” as Commander gets.

Kentaro, the Smiling Cat (188) lets you pay X instead of a samurai’s mana cost, which means any colour of mana casts your samurai. Isao, Enlightened Bushi (213) is the green option and regenerates any samurai for {2}; his decks lean on Auras like Rancor and Snake Umbra. Brothers Yamazaki (376) is a joke-legend that breaks the legend rule if you have exactly two copies, which a singleton format makes impossible, so in Commander it’s a three-mana 2/1 with bushido 1.

Neon Dynasty went back to Kamigawa and dropped bushido

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (February 2022) printed 23 Samurai. None of them has bushido. The samurai mechanic in Neon Dynasty is a trigger word, “Whenever a Samurai or Warrior you control attacks alone”, found on cards like Raiyuu, Storm’s Edge, Eiganjo Exemplar and Selfless Samurai. Across all of Magic there are now 51 Commander-legal cards that trigger when a creature attacks alone, the space exalted opened in 2008.

One Neon Dynasty card kept bushido in all but name. Jukai Trainee, a green Human Samurai, reads: “Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.” That’s bushido 1 with the reminder text written out and the keyword removed. Because it doesn’t have the keyword, Takeno doesn’t count it.

Today there are 78 Commander-legal Samurai, and 37 of them have bushido, all from 2004 to 2005 plus Jade Avenger. Sort Samurai by EDHREC rank and the picture is clearer:

Of the 15 most-played Samurai, one has bushido, and it’s Fumiko, played for something else. Modern samurai decks are built around Isshin, Two Heavens as One, which doubles attack triggers, and the “attacks alone” cards. A pure bushido deck is now a nostalgia build, which is also why it’s cheap.

Bushido before bushido: the cards that had it first

The text “whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N” was printed years before Kamigawa gave it a name. A Scryfall search for that wording on cards without the keyword returns six cards:

Chub Toad, from Ice Age in 1995, is bushido 2 nine years early: a 1/1 that fights as a 3/3. Raging Gorilla and Dromosaur do a lopsided +2/-2 version, and Escaped Null takes only power. None of them is a Samurai, and none has the keyword, so they don’t work with Takeno or with Sensei Golden-Tail. They are worth knowing if you’re explaining the keyword, or if you’re looking for one more frog.

What did bushido cost a creature?

Was bushido “free”? We compared the bushido creatures from Champions, Betrayers and Saviors of Kamigawa with every other creature in the same three sets, grouped by mana value. Same sets, same design era, so the comparison is fair. Average power and toughness are printed stats, before the bonus:

At one, two and three mana, bushido creatures have the same or slightly better stats than the other creatures in their sets. The keyword was effectively free on cheap creatures. From four mana up, bushido creatures give up about a point of power on average: at five mana, 2.25 power against 3.13. Across all mana values the bushido creatures are half a point of power smaller, mostly because the expensive ones paid for their bonus up front. The samples are small (35 bushido creatures against 294 others), so treat the four-plus rows as a direction, not a law.

The practical reading: cheap bushido creatures are just good stats in combat. A two-mana 2/2 with bushido 1 is a 3/3 in any fight, and the design didn’t charge for it.

When bushido is good, and when it isn’t

Good: on defence. A bushido blocker makes small attackers bad trades, and its bonus applies on your opponent’s turn too, which most pump effects don’t. It’s good with first strike (Kitsune Blademaster fights as a 3/3 first striker for three mana) and with indestructible (Konda never dies in a fight). It’s good with protection from a colour, as on Hand of Honor and Hand of Cruelty, because the protected creature can block that colour freely. And it’s good with Takeno, which turns the keyword into a static anthem.

Bad: against evasion and against no blocks at all. A bushido creature does nothing against flyers it can’t block, and nothing when it attacks unblocked. In Commander, opponents with bigger creatures can simply refuse to block your 2/2s and take the damage, so bushido decks need a way to make every hit count: equipment, anthems and Call to Glory.

Is bushido legal? Format by format

Every bushido card is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage and Modern. Modern starts with Eighth Edition and Mirrodin (2003), so the whole Kamigawa block is in, and Jade Avenger is a Modern Horizons card. 15 are commons and legal in Pauper, among them Jade Avenger, Kitsune Blademaster, Devoted Retainer and Araba Mothrider. None is legal in Pioneer or Standard, and none in Premodern, which ends with Scourge in 2003. Nothing with bushido is banned in any of these formats. Two more cards mention bushido and are left out of every count here: the Unhinged joke card Greater Morphling, which isn’t legal anywhere, and the Unfinity sticker sheet Slimy Burrito Illusion, which can put bushido 2 on a creature but is a sticker sheet rather than a card you build a deck around.

Budget Takeno, Samurai General bushido deck ($101.95)

Mono-white, 18 bushido samurai, 16 more samurai and samurai payoffs, and enough equipment to make every bushido point hurt. Takeno is the engine: with Takeno out, a bushido 1 samurai is permanently one bigger and gets its bushido trigger on top. Every card was checked against Scryfall for Commander legality and colour identity, and the price is the cheapest ordinary printing of each card.

How the deck plays

Turns one to three: play cheap samurai. Devoted Retainer, Hand of Honor, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Konda’s Hatamoto and Kentaro come down early and trade well thanks to bushido. Kentaro lets you pay X for a samurai instead of its printed cost. Pearl Medallion, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Mind Stone speed you to Takeno on turn four or five.

Once Takeno lands, every bushido samurai gets a permanent bonus. This table shows the deck’s bushido samurai with and without Takeno. The “blocked” columns include the bushido trigger:

Konda’s Hatamoto gets another +1/+2 and vigilance from Takeno itself, since Takeno is a legendary Samurai, so it ends up a 3/5 before combat. Konda, Lord of Eiganjo becomes an 8/8 indestructible vigilance creature that blocks or is blocked as a 13/13.

From there, attack. Nagao pumps every samurai on attack, Call to Glory untaps the team and gives +1/+1, Rally the Ranks and Honor of the Pure stack anthems, and Cathars’ Crusade puts counters on the team every time another creature arrives. Imperial Oath makes three 2/2 Samurai tokens, which have no bushido but still count for Nagao, Call to Glory and Vanquisher’s Banner.

Key cards

Oathkeeper, Takeno’s Daisho is the priciest card in the deck and the most important. Equipped creature gets +3/+1, and when a Samurai wearing it dies, it comes back. On Konda or Takeno it makes removal look bad. Konda’s Banner goes only on a legendary creature and gives +1/+1 to creatures sharing its colour and another +1/+1 to creatures sharing its creature type. On Takeno, every white Samurai in the deck gets +2/+2. Kusari-Gama: whenever the equipped creature deals damage to a blocker, it deals that much damage to every other creature the defending player controls. On a blocked Konda that’s 8 damage to each of them. Herald’s Horn and Vanquisher’s Banner both name Samurai: the Horn cuts each samurai’s cost by one and digs for more, the Banner gives +1/+1 and draws a card whenever you cast one.

Sensei Golden-Tail adds training counters, and each one gives bushido 1 and makes the creature a Samurai. That means it can turn any creature into a Takeno target, including the Imperial Oath tokens. Opal-Eye protects your best attacker by redirecting damage to itself. Indebted Samurai grows every time a samurai dies, and Heirloom Blade (+3/+1) puts the next samurai from your library into your hand when the equipped one dies.

Removal is cheap and white: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Generous Gift, Banishing Slash and Alabaster Host Intercessor. Ghostly Prison taxes the counterattack, and Ethereal Haze and Dawn Charm are fogs for the turn you can’t afford to take a hit. Unbreakable Formation makes the team indestructible, and cast in your main phase it adds a +1/+1 counter and vigilance to each creature.

Upgrades

With more budget, add Land Tax, Smothering Tithe, Teferi’s Protection, Tatsumasa, the Dragon’s Fang and Kor Haven. To go the other way, our budget swaps tool suggests cheaper stand-ins for any card in a list. There’s also a community Kentaro, the Smiling Cat bushido deck on KrakenTheMeta built around the same samurai.

The priciest cards

The ten most expensive cards add up to $71.75, about 70% of the list. Replace Oathkeeper and Konda’s Banner with two more cheap samurai and the deck drops to about $75.

Want a different take on samurai? Browse community decks on KrakenTheMeta, or read how ninjutsu, the other keyword from the same block, became a whole Commander archetype.

Bushido FAQ

What does bushido do in MTG?

Bushido N means: whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn. It’s a triggered ability, defined in rule 702.45.

Does bushido trigger when attacking?

Only if the attacking creature becomes blocked. An unblocked bushido attacker gets no bonus.

Does bushido stack?

Yes. Each instance of bushido triggers separately, so bushido 1 plus bushido 2 gives +3/+3. Fumiko’s bushido X is calculated when it resolves.

Does bushido trigger more than once if several creatures block?

No. A creature becomes blocked once per combat, however many creatures block it. One trigger per instance of bushido.

Can you respond to bushido?

Yes. It uses the stack, so your opponent can kill or shrink the creature before the bonus resolves.

How many bushido cards are there?

37 in real Magic: 36 with the keyword and Fumiko the Lowblood’s bushido X. All but Jade Avenger came from the original Kamigawa block in 2004–2005.

Is bushido still being printed?

Barely. The last new bushido card was Jade Avenger in Modern Horizons 2 (2021). Neon Dynasty (2022) printed 23 Samurai without it.

What is the best bushido card?

For a bushido deck, Konda, Lord of Eiganjo: bushido 5, indestructible and vigilance. By Commander play, Fumiko the Lowblood, in 20,209 decks, mostly for her forced-attack ability.

What is the best bushido commander?

Takeno, Samurai General, the only commander that rewards bushido directly. Toshiro Umezawa leads more decks, but they’re built around instants, not bushido.

Is bushido legal in Modern or Standard?

All 37 bushido cards are legal in Modern, Legacy, Vintage and Commander, and 15 in Pauper. None is legal in Standard or Pioneer.