Ninjas .dec

I have played with plenty of Ninjas in my time. Who doesn't love them? Cool as they might be they are not all that good and never really were if we are honest with ourselves. I wrote this well before the Modern Horizons spoilers started and obviously now we have some rather spicier new ninja at our disposal. I will account for this at the end of the article and proffer an undated list.

There was not enough ninja and there was no real reason to build around the tribe. Then I saw a Commander's Quarters episode on a Yuriko commander deck and thought it would translate into cube fairly well. Yuriko does provide good reasons to play with Ninjas as a tribe with potent payoffs on offer. Due to not having the card as a commander the synergies had to be toned down rather but I was a big fan of the resulting deck. It is the first time I have translated a commander deck to cube despite having done countless translations from standard, legacy, vintage and modern. I suspect I will be doing more based on the fun and success of this list.

So what is the plan for this deck? Broadly speaking it is a tempo based Dimir deck that houses some nice synergies. It has a lot of value through those synergies as well as a lot of reach. The deck uses cheap evasive dorks to allow you to ninjitsu out cards easily. It uses things that give evasion to let ninja cards in play continue to do work too. It then uses some cards with unusually high CMC and library manipulation to pull out a massive Yuriko hit. This last part is very lightly supported and uses cards that are otherwise good to do so as it is a little bit of a win more synergy. That being said it does give you confidence going into a race and massively ups the threat value of your low power evasive cards. Another good ninja synergy is dorks with EtB effects that you can reuse should you get to bounce them with the ninjitsu. What with this also falling into the win more camp this is a synergy that is only very lightly addressed.

This kind of deck is typically weak to other tempo creature decks as blue and black creatures are less good at generating tempo than the Naya colours. The ninja variant seemed better equipped to handle other creature decks. It blocks the cheaper aggressive creatures fairly well and can effectively disrupt and then race the decks packing meatier dorks. As such this list seems to have favourable matches against aggro, midrange and control for the most part. It would however lose a lot of game against combo when compared with many other Dimir tempo builds but you can't have it all! Here is my list as of pre Horizons;

24 Spells

Mothdust Changeling
Siren Stormtamer
Wingcrafter
Fatal Push
Vampiric Tutor
Inquisition of Kozilek
Preordain

Baleful Strix
Looter il-Kor
Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
Spellskite
Surge Mare
Collective Brutality

Thassa, God of the Sea
Never // Return
Mistblade Shinobi
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
Thief of Sanity
Vendilion Clique

Ninja of the Deep Hours
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Hostage Taker
Whirler Rogue

Temporal Trespass



16 Lands



Comically the MVP of the list was the Mothdust Changeling. It really did it all. It is an evasive one drop that will easily assist a ninjitsu trigger and secure a hit with Yuriko or Deep Hours. If you manage to get your Yuriko out then Mothdust acts as an evasive ninja itself and can be one of the most dangerous threats you have. Horizons not only brought us new ninja cards but also new changeling cards and so we have some extra redundancy for that side of the deck going forwards too. The other one drop dorks all do work in the list too. Stormtamer protects your key ninjas and Wingcrafter helps to get them through after their initial hit.  Vampiric Tutor is a little heavy handed but it sets up a big Yuriko hit nicely as well as finding it in the first place for you. A smattering of card quality, hand disruption and removal round out the non-creature complement of the one drops nicely.

In the two slot we have some more potent evasive and utility dorks as well as some value in the EtB effect of Baleful Strix. Tetsuko Umezawa is outstanding in this list. She gives most of your ninjas complete evasion as well as a lot of your other cards and she does all this while costing little and having a nice solid body.

Thief of Sanity just works well in the list given that it is also a high value card you want to make connect with face. The protective and evasion granting tools empower Thief while in turn it taxes the removal of your opponents and increases the chances it or a ninja are doing work. Thassa is a bit of everything. Some card quality, some evasion, and a decent chance of being a massive body to hold the board. Clique is a bit of everything too being disruption or card quality, an EtB effect to recur, an evasive body to ninjitsu with, and just a good stand alone card. Whirler Rogue also does a great job of being an all rounder. It offers a good degree of stats and board presence, has and gives evasion, and has an EtB effect that is nice to reuse. One of the best things about Rogue is that the evasion it offers is no mana cost and as such can allow you to make big plays with ninjas and EtB effects.

Never // Return is reasonably low powered removal in this list being fairly low tempo however it has a lovely CMC of 7 when flipped with a Yuirko trigger. There are a bunch of other split cards like this that work well to give you more options on big damage hits. Typically they are a minor downgrade on a best in slot effect and so you don't want to go over board on such things. Discovery // Dispersal could well replace the Preordain in this list. You would gain utility and payoff potential but you would lose some tempo, potency and consistency for doing so. We are talking very minor amounts of all these things but it will add up fast across a couple of cards.

Delve cards are another great way to cheat on your CMC and thus get some naughty Yuriko hits. Temporal Trespass does feel like the very best on offer. Not only is it the highest CMC of the delve cards but it also does what you most want. Things like Gurmag Angler are just big dorks and offer no real synergy. Cruise and Dig are value but you have plenty of that already. Murderous Cut is great but it isn't that high of a CMC and you have plenty of other good options on spot removal. With this list not being one heavily able to fuel delve I am reluctant to play more than one delve card and so Trespass gets the nod.

Jace is in the list for two reasons. Firstly I wanted a Brainstorm effect so as to setup Yuriko hits on big cards. Secondly I wanted a planeswalker in the list so as to have better threat diversity. Mind Sculptor is the most well suited to what the deck is trying to do of any on colour walker and conveniently has one of the highest power levels on offer too! Below is a list of the cards I considered for this list. They are generally similar to those already in the list and fall into one or more of the categories of; cheap evasive dork, high CMC relative to real cost of playing, a ninja, an EtB effect, and/or disruption. I leaned towards blue cards in the build to support Thassa hence not playing some of the lovely black fliers main.


Shadowmage Infiltrator
Merfolk Trickster
Nightveil Sprite
Mausoleum Wanderer
Pilfering Imp
Kitesail Freebooter
Connive // Concoct
Discovery// Dispersal
Commit // Memory
Misdirection
Force of Will
Mulldrifter
Shriekmaw
Walker of the Secret Ways
Jace, Cunning Castaway
Skullsnatcher
Throatslitter
Waterfront Bouncer
Higure, the Still Wind

I liked how this list functioned. It had enough synergy going on to give you things to be working towards. It had a lot of potential power and a lot of interaction from the synergy however it was not reliant on it at all. The deck functioned well simply as a Dimir tempo deck. It had sufficiently high powered cards and a good rounding of interaction to allow it to go toe to toe without ninja abuses. The synergies were worth including and added a lot to the deck without taking much away from it. It is a deck that can play fair or unfair as the situation commands. It has very good matchups in some places and the ability to compete in others. Dimir tempo is typically good against control and bad against a red aggro deck. This is just as good against control as a more conventional tempo list and while it might be weaker in a lot of ways to the red aggro deck it can just aim for full combo mode and easily race the red deck. It is able to play a 0/4 and a 0/5 because the potential damage output of Yuriko and this helps offset having a lot of 1/1s in the deck against the aggressive lists even when not combo-ing off. The main deck has a lot of replaceable cards and non-essentials and there is a significant number of alternate options too meaning this is a build I can revisit frequently and still have a new experience without compromise on power. That and the ability to tweak it according to meta requirements.

Here is a first pass at how I would look to build it now with a deeper pool of high powered ninja on offer;


24 Spells

Chrome Mox

Mothdust Changeling
Changeling Outcast
Siren Stormtamer
Wingcrafter
Fatal Push
Vampiric Tutor
Inquisition of Kozilek

Baleful Strix
Looter il-Kor
Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
Spellskite
Kitesail Freebooter

Never // Return
Mistblade Shinobi
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
Mist-Syndicate Naga

Ninja of the Deep Hours
Ingenious Infiltrator
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Hostage Taker
Whirler Rogue

Fallen Shinobi

Temporal Trespass

16 Lands



I have cut Thief of Sanity, Vendilion Clique, Thassa, God of the Sea, Preordain, Surge Mare, and Collective Brutality. For these I have added in Chrome Mox, three new ninja, Changeling Outcast and Kitesail Freebooter. We have more reasons to have ninja connecting with Ingenious Infiltrator. This makes the changelings better and means we can expect more card advantage coming through our attacks. This supports the Mox addition and Preordain cuts reasonably. Mox is really nice for powering out the snowball cards which can simply be card draw ones but is most notably Mist-Syndicate Naga which needs to be answered urgently! The Mox also helps support the increase in cost of the deck. Not just the slight CMC average increase but also the fact that with more ninjitsu on the go more things will need playing twice. With more ninjitsu we needed more dorks and early ones hence the addition of Freebooter over Brutality. I would like to add in another one or two drop dork that fits the bill but nothing sprang to mind and cuts are hard! Thief of Sanity was an easy cut as Fallen Shinobi does much the same sort of thing. Thassa and the supporting Surge Mare got cut simply for being a little unreliable and likely at the low end of the power and performance end of the deck. I want to fit in Cunning Evasion to this list but it looks like it would need a total rework rather than this simple update. Cunning Evasion is nuts with ninja cards but you probably want to support it more directly than the ninjas and include more cheaper creature cards with more EtB (and leaves play) effects and less evasion. This new list looks like there is much more reason to be doing it and seems to pack a lot more punch with a wide array of dangerous looking angles of attack.