Leap Strike — During your turn, Shao Jun has flying and first strike.
Rope Dart — Tap two untapped artifacts you control: Shao Jun deals 1 damage to each opponent.
Shao Jun is an Izzet artifact-aggro/combo commander who chips opponents to death with Rope Dart while threatening evasive commander damage. You flood the board with cheap artifacts and mana rocks, then repeatedly tap pairs of them to ping all opponents for 1 each. Meanwhile Leap Strike makes her a safe attacker—flying and first strike on your turn let her connect or trade up profitably for 21 commander damage.
Two clocks at once: incremental Rope Dart drain plus evasive, hard-to-block commander damage.
Cheap 3-mana body that's hard to profitably block on your turn thanks to flying and first strike.
Artifact-heavy shell naturally ramps, fixes, and enables explosive combo turns.
Rope Dart pressures the whole table simultaneously, great in multiplayer and against go-tall opponents.
Access to blue's card draw, counters, and red's burn/untap effects.
Rope Dart only hits 1 per activation—without an untap engine the clock is painfully slow.
Heavily reliant on her staying on the battlefield; she's a small body off your turn (no flying/first strike) and prone to removal.
Legendary Creature — Human Assassin
