I'm still not sure if Vial is suitable here. Has the meta slowed down enough for us to Vial effectively? I'm thinking it's too late for us to utilize the ETB abilities of the creatures we are using with Vial here, such as Spellstutter Sprite and Augury Owl. Off a first turn Vial we probably need 3 or 4 turns to see them make any impact and even longer for Augury Owl since it's a scry effect.
I took the advice and lowered my curve greatly and swapped out the imposters since it really made a lot of sense. added in a couple cards of removal as tech as well. I wanted to focus my ninja build as crippling my opponents hand and strike quick and do most damage as possible and it looks like its looking like that :). Any other suggestions that could improve the flow of it is greatly welcomed, and again thank you for the advice thus far.
The deck tags are a bit messed up, anyway I copied and pasted the relevant text here, I think you still need to reduce the number of cards to 60. Consistency in a deck is very important and having more than 60 cards reduces the consistency and how a deck can perform in an optimal way. A category which you can reduce from is the number of "Ninja Helpers", personally I try not to use more than 4-5 of them, because other than facilitating Ninjas in play they do every little otherwise. I won't remove them completely also because sometimes the Ninjas need a bit of extra help when they are in play.
so, to those who are still playing Darth Knights, I was looking through my binder for ideas on my Marchessa EDH and came across Necromancer's Stockpile. Has anyone tried this out for some CA?
Necromancer's Stockpile does look well suited to Darth Knights, I can see many synergies with Haakon and Gravecrawler etc. At the moment I would try it as a direct replacement for Liliana of the Veil (I sold my Lili playset when her price spiked) , it's definitely a reliable and budget way to get the Haakon engine started. At the moment I'm just concerned whether the mana sink for stockpile will slow the deck down too much.
The little knight with the funny name, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, is the best knight two-drop available in Modern for the Burn match-up. Few Burn decks pack enough mana to reliably hit three on turn three, so Nimbus greatly slows their tempo.
I like Knight of the Holy Nimbus too, it's unique ability is useful against burn and it has an interesting name and nice art. I don't really fancy drawing him in the middle to late game though, so maybe this is the reason why I haven't tried him yet.
Pyroclasm will still wipe your board (assuming you have a bunch of 2/2s) even with Adaptive Automaton out, but not so with Honor of the Pure. We have so many good 3-drop options already, that I'd rather stick with the cheaper and harder-to-remove Honor of the Pure than squeeze in Automaton. You could just replace the Automatons with Phyrexian Metamorph instead as Exemplars 5-8 and have some added utility. I really want Silver Knight in Modern, though.
The full spoiler of KTK came out. As I suspected, no new Knights. It's soldiers, warriors, and berserkers (mounted riders).
Unfortunately you were right , looking at the set as a whole, it seems knights didn't really fit into the theme. It doesn't seems like the other 2 sets will have knights as well.
Has there been any sort of significant talks about running snapcaster mage in any lists? seems like a powerful card to be able to re-use.
Yes, Snappy is IMO the best ninjutsu enabler there is. The only reason not to run him is if you run too few spells (less than 12 or so) and the fact that a playset will set you back $120.
He works even better in a ninja deck than in your regular UWR control/delver/twin list because we can reuse him so well. 4 snapcasters, 4 spellstutters and 2 or 3 cliques are auto-includes in any blue ninja variant I build.
Personally I don't really consider Snapcaster Mage as an Ninja enabler, I have him in my deck because he is just too strong to ignore when you are playing a sufficient number of instant/sorcery spells. I usually play 2-3 Snappy in my deck because after taking into account other Ninja enablers and the Ninjas themselves, there are barely any space left in the deck for non-creature spells, also Snappy's effectiveness is diminished with lesser sorceries and instants, thus finding the balance is critical here.
I love these ninja decks and am thinking about making my own soon.
Has anyone thought about using triton shorestalker or vault skirge?
Shorestalker was discussed on last few pages (spoiler: there was no consensus on whether it is good or bad).
Skirge is IMO just bad. The lifelink isn't terribly relevant (beating down is only a secondary purpose of an enabler) and you won't be able to power him up consistently (which is why Affinity loves him). And you have to pay life to be able to cast him for 1.
I have seen decks splash B sorely because of Tormented Soul, and it can only be good that we have a blue version in Triton Shorestalker. IMO if you are not going through the Faeries route in a blue decklist, Triton Shorestalker should be one of the key choices as a ninja enabler.
So... Iplayed the deck against some other modern decks and I have to be honest... The deck feels weaker now than it ever has before. Anyone else felt this?
It feels weaker because all the other decks are adapting and evolving with newer cards and strategies, while we are pretty much struck with the same knights, our only consolation is that banned cards don't really affect us .
One of my buddies told me about this deck. Was thinking about going the Ninja Rat route, to give my Swarmyards a bit of play. Does it preform well?
I have a decklist for Ninja Rats on the main page, it works pretty well, not Tier one but it is able to put in some competitive games. I played 4x Swarmyard and it's pretty funny sending my Typhoid Rats in and Ninjutsuing them when I have Swarmyard in play. This combination of deathtouch and regenerating rats almost always eventually result in a successful Ninjutsu. Also I like hiding Liliana of the Veil behind Swarmyard and Rats. Basically the deck is very easy and affordable to form (excluding LotV).
With the return of Windswept Heath, I can finally remove the oddball Zendikar fetchlands (Verdant Catacombs, Marsh Flats) in my deck and get fetchlands that match the colors of deck.
Yup, I'm glad to see Windswept Heath back too, being a GW deck it definitely feels more at home using the same color fetchlands !
Personally for me, I'll still advocate running 4 pieces of Aether Vial, granted we do not want to draw 2 or more Vials but I will ensure my chances of seeing an Aether Vial in my opening hand is at the maximum.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is very good and hoses a number of deck however seeing that he is playing 10 spells in 4x Silence, 4x Brave the elements and 2x Unmake, Thalia might just hurt him as much or more than the opponent.
The deck tags are a bit messed up, anyway I copied and pasted the relevant text here, I think you still need to reduce the number of cards to 60. Consistency in a deck is very important and having more than 60 cards reduces the consistency and how a deck can perform in an optimal way. A category which you can reduce from is the number of "Ninja Helpers", personally I try not to use more than 4-5 of them, because other than facilitating Ninjas in play they do every little otherwise. I won't remove them completely also because sometimes the Ninjas need a bit of extra help when they are in play.
yup, thanks for the link, I read up on the criteria...anyway it seems like there is no sentiments for this!
Necromancer's Stockpile does look well suited to Darth Knights, I can see many synergies with Haakon and Gravecrawler etc. At the moment I would try it as a direct replacement for Liliana of the Veil (I sold my Lili playset when her price spiked) , it's definitely a reliable and budget way to get the Haakon engine started. At the moment I'm just concerned whether the mana sink for stockpile will slow the deck down too much.
I like Knight of the Holy Nimbus too, it's unique ability is useful against burn and it has an interesting name and nice art. I don't really fancy drawing him in the middle to late game though, so maybe this is the reason why I haven't tried him yet.
Unfortunately you were right
Personally I don't really consider Snapcaster Mage as an Ninja enabler, I have him in my deck because he is just too strong to ignore when you are playing a sufficient number of instant/sorcery spells. I usually play 2-3 Snappy in my deck because after taking into account other Ninja enablers and the Ninjas themselves, there are barely any space left in the deck for non-creature spells, also Snappy's effectiveness is diminished with lesser sorceries and instants, thus finding the balance is critical here.
I have seen decks splash B sorely because of Tormented Soul, and it can only be good that we have a blue version in Triton Shorestalker. IMO if you are not going through the Faeries route in a blue decklist, Triton Shorestalker should be one of the key choices as a ninja enabler.
It feels weaker because all the other decks are adapting and evolving with newer cards and strategies, while we are pretty much struck with the same knights, our only consolation is that banned cards don't really affect us
I have a decklist for Ninja Rats on the main page, it works pretty well, not Tier one but it is able to put in some competitive games. I played 4x Swarmyard and it's pretty funny sending my Typhoid Rats in and Ninjutsuing them when I have Swarmyard in play. This combination of deathtouch and regenerating rats almost always eventually result in a successful Ninjutsu. Also I like hiding Liliana of the Veil behind Swarmyard and Rats. Basically the deck is very easy and affordable to form (excluding LotV).
Yup, I'm glad to see Windswept Heath back too, being a GW deck it definitely feels more at home using the same color fetchlands