Has anyone been having good results with this deck? How does it beat shadow decks?
What are it's good and bad matchups?
I'd say that right now the deck is pretty poorly positioned. Bad matchups would be eldrazitron and grixis death shadow. Good matches are traditional tron and jund and combo. Most of which is completely absent from the metagame. Burn and control are decent matches.
The deck seems pretty well positioned. Anyone else have success with the deck?
I went 2-2 with a rough version at modern night last night. I not going to post a list right now because it needs a lot of changes. But the list is very burn heavy and aggressive. That plan seemed to work best for me.
Lately I've been playing a more traditional version UR delver with a handful of counters and a ton of burn. It's been testing really well. The basic idea I'm going for is to churn through the deck with cantrips fueling bedlam revler and young pyromancer them finishing off the opponent with a bunch of burn to the face.
So far I've really liked how it plays and I e found young pyromancer to be one of the best cards in the deck. But I never want to draw more than first one. I tried a prowess version and I wasn't a huge fan. I thought that playing storm chaser Mage pulled the deck more towards a combo deck, in which case I didn't really want delver. The more traditional shell gives me more play against more decks and plays like a tempo deck rather than an aggro deck.
I'm inclined to agree with iakor. In my experience I've found mistblade to be good in exactly zero matches. Yes against infect he's fine but we should have a good infect match anyway. Being a 1/1 really hurts him. After the first ninjitsu a decent opponent will never let him get through again.
On Tron and mistbind clique. I've Tron to be such a horrendously bad matchup that I decided to dedicate zero sideboard slots to it. Tron is already on a downswing in modern with rise of dredge and burn to combat it. Mistbind in particular is good against more than Tron but the amount of times where we just don't have a faerie in play to champion makes him dead more often then not. Mistbind only truly excels when he is backed up my bitterblossom to make a huge amount of faeries. If we are bouncing our own faeries with ninjas we are not likely to have more than one faerie in play come turn 4-5 and that is just asking for a 2 for 1 blowout.
On my SCG NJ fiasco. I assumed the with dredge and burn on rise jeskai and jund would rise up to fight them. I wasn't wrong. It's just all the super aggressive players got crushed by midrange in the invitational and signed up for the open. So the open ended up being a linear nightmare especially at the lower tables.
For now I'm going to self the ninjas for a bit until the meta settles down again. The deck is incredibly fun and I love the look on opponents faces when I ninjitsu for the first time. But it's just not competitive right now.
If i don't get lazy I'll do a tournament report tonight. But it's not pretty.
I went 1-6 in the modern open. It was really rough. Deck just didn't work. I consistently drew the wrong half and was trying to pilot the deck through the aggro gauntlet.
Internet is out so I'm going to just post a few thoughts from my phone.
I've been playing ninjas in some form since Betrayers came out way back when. Ninja of the deep hours is my favorite card of all time so I have always tried to make it work. I casually played ninjas in modern on MODO for years until about a year ago when I decided I wanted to try and make it competitive. My MODO decks were all mono blue and used the ornithopter plan of going for a turn 2 ninja every game. Then using unblockable spells to get ninjas through every turn. It's fun and it works. But it gets crushed by the top tier decks.
Then I tried faerie ninjas in paper. I played it for a few months on and off with delver decks. I came to a really heartbreaking conclusion then. The ninjas were the worst part of the deck. Especially mistblade shinobi. Mistblade looks like it should be a really good card and when it is good it's fantastic. But it's a 1 mana 1/1 that gets blocked by everything. After the initial ninjitsu it's basically just a vanilla 1/1. It requires so much back up to work every turn. I cut them completely from the deck. It was a sad day.
On ninja of the deep hours. I love this card so much. I've been pairing it value creatures for years. It's fantastic and is the glue that holds a ninja deck together. It's also not a great magic card. The turn 2 ninja plan is not great in competitive modern I found. Leaving your ninja exposed for an entire turn is just asking for it to be killed. And most opponents know to kill it on sight. I slow roll my ninjas now. I'm not going to ninjitsu until I have enough mana and cards to at least look like I can defend it. Because of this I have more time to actually draw the ninja so I only play 3. My "competitive" ninja deck only plays 3 ninjas.
Enter red. Ninja is not the win condition in the deck. It's a value creature to gain even more value off of spellstuter Sprite and snapcaster mage. Bolt snap bolt is how I win games now. Ninja is just the engine that gets me there. I'm now running UR ninja faeries with the basic faerie shell. 4 miscrent 4 spellstuter 2 vendillion clique 2 mistbind clique. The mistbinds are also on the verge off getting the axe for more interaction. But they made the cut for this weekend based on some last minute testing.
I'm really enjoying the deck so far and I finished 2-1 at modern night with it last week. I should have been 3-0 but I misplayed against UW control and lost a counter war when I knew he had an extra dispel in hand.
My list is designed to prey on the midrange decks of the format. Mostly jund. The best part of ninja of the deep hours is that it dodges abrupt decay. So we should always have a counter in hand to deal with the inevitable removal spell. From there it's just a grind. Slowly gaining advantage off of ninja and remand.
I guess I'll just post the deck list.
4 faerie miscrent
4 spellstuter Sprite
4 snapcaster mage
2 vendillion clique
2 mistbind clique
3 ninja of the deep hours
2 dragons claw
2 pillar of flame
3 relic of progentitus
2 ancient grudge
1 hurkyl's recall
2 dispel
1 negate
1 spell pierce
1 spellskite
Good matches are jund, infect and combo decks.
Bad matches are burn, Tron and coco decks.
Moderate matches are junk and other blue based decks.
On junk. As long as lingering souls never resolves it's good of us.
On Tron. I think it's unwinnable. The on cast triggers of ulamog and new emrakul wreck us. And Tron will get to those cards no matter what. We are just not fast enough to race.
On blue decks. We have an advantage of an actual clock. It's slow. But it's there. Combined with the cards off of ninja we can usually get there. But these decks are typically paired with white and supreme verdict which we can't beat.
Other blue decks like delver or
Grixis we actually have more interaction and can prevent a threat from actually resolving.
That's the basic plan here. Stall and few turns. Counter the first spell possible with spellstuter then try to ride ninja for as long as possible letting as little resolve as possible. Then bolt them to death.
Sorry of the lack of card tags and my scattered thoughts. I've been known to ramble and tell stories. And this was much longer than I initially planned to type out on my phone. Also sorry for any typos or grammar issues. I'm not editing on my phone.
I have been playing the UR version for a couple weeks and i found that I am a big fan of the counter package in the sideboard. There's plenty of situations where you just need more counter spell. but I really don't agree with main board lava spike. It's not obvious on paper but I've found that faithless looting is super good in the deck. Being able to dig for answers pre undoing is fantastic and post undoing you get rid of excess lands. Not to mention the prowess triggers. I guess lava spike is fine in the burn out plan, but after an undoing you should be able to dig for bolts. I would even play main board dispels over lava spike. Does lava spike really advance your main plan with the deck? What happens when you draw them after an undoing? You wait an entire turn to use them and by that time you can just cast all your cantrips to start digging for another undoing or bolts. By that time your opponent had an opportunity to use his 7 new cards while lava spike sat useless. I would play dispels first then looting before I added spike. But maybe I'm wrong.
What counters are you playing in the SB? Currently, I'm running 1 Dispel and 2 Negate (I have already 2 Dispel MD). I might add a Flashfreeze, since Rhino and co are a pain in the ass (however, I have Send to Sleep for those threats).
Greetings,
Kathal
I'm running 2 flashfreeze 2 negate 1 dispel and 1 izzet charm in the sideboard. mostly to deal with the abundance of control and Tron in my meta. Against Tron it's a pure race with the potential for me to get blown out because shoal can't really interact with their gameplan. And against control is just additional protection for delver
yes, i like 8 better, as not mulliganing your starting hand is very imprortant.
Also, 7 mana is very important, that is the threshold for which you can cast/activate belcher, and also the mana needed to chancellor. playing 8 lands gives you one freebee.
By this logic 8 just gives you one extra that you have to thin out. Making you more consistent to 7 but slowing you down slightly.
I played a bunch of games last night and had a ton of success. Only lost to UWR control because of snapcaster shenanigans. Ground seal in the SB along with guttural response helped a lot but I still feel like this matchup will end up being a losing cause for us. Any thoughts? I didn't have trouble protecting my belcher it was just getting to that point which was brutal. Having harrows and reaches countered early really hurts.
I would prefer Guttural Response, it can hit, bounce spells etc?
Guttural Response can also protect spells like harrow. Nothing is corse than having harrow countered. Pact can only be used to protect belcher because we HAVE to win right then or we lose the game.
I've been testing a list similar to the one in the OP and I really don't think that losing a dork is a big that big a deal for this deck. Even getting blown out by wrath effects isn't that rough because by the time a wrath effect is relevant (around turn 4) we should already be able to play belcher just off of the lands in play and activate it. That said I'm thinking of cutting down to 6 dorks to main deck something to protect ourselves. Also healing leaves is pretty awful unless it's totally awesome. It's either exactly what I need to stay alive for 1 more turn or it's wasted space in my hand that would be better filled with air.
I typed this on my phone then didn't proof read so excuse any errors.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/707993#paper
I'm not sure how I feel about it. To me it looks like delver will never flip. And I'm 50/50 on if shoal belongs here.
I'd say that right now the deck is pretty poorly positioned. Bad matchups would be eldrazitron and grixis death shadow. Good matches are traditional tron and jund and combo. Most of which is completely absent from the metagame. Burn and control are decent matches.
Glimmer doesn't do enough. 4 mana for 2 cards just isn't enough. And collar requires too much set up unless you are running 3 lavamancer in the 75
I went 2-2 with a rough version at modern night last night. I not going to post a list right now because it needs a lot of changes. But the list is very burn heavy and aggressive. That plan seemed to work best for me.
4 monastery swiftspear
3 bedlam revler
2 young pyromancer
4 lighting bolt
2 vapor snag
2 mana leak
2 remand
2 spell snare
4 thought scour
4 serum visions
4 gitaxian probe
3 lava spike
2 forked bolt
4 flooded strand
2 polluted delta
2 wooded foothills
2 steam vents
3 sulfur falls
3 island
2 mountain
So far I've really liked how it plays and I e found young pyromancer to be one of the best cards in the deck. But I never want to draw more than first one. I tried a prowess version and I wasn't a huge fan. I thought that playing storm chaser Mage pulled the deck more towards a combo deck, in which case I didn't really want delver. The more traditional shell gives me more play against more decks and plays like a tempo deck rather than an aggro deck.
What do you guys think?
On Tron and mistbind clique. I've Tron to be such a horrendously bad matchup that I decided to dedicate zero sideboard slots to it. Tron is already on a downswing in modern with rise of dredge and burn to combat it. Mistbind in particular is good against more than Tron but the amount of times where we just don't have a faerie in play to champion makes him dead more often then not. Mistbind only truly excels when he is backed up my bitterblossom to make a huge amount of faeries. If we are bouncing our own faeries with ninjas we are not likely to have more than one faerie in play come turn 4-5 and that is just asking for a 2 for 1 blowout.
On my SCG NJ fiasco. I assumed the with dredge and burn on rise jeskai and jund would rise up to fight them. I wasn't wrong. It's just all the super aggressive players got crushed by midrange in the invitational and signed up for the open. So the open ended up being a linear nightmare especially at the lower tables.
For now I'm going to self the ninjas for a bit until the meta settles down again. The deck is incredibly fun and I love the look on opponents faces when I ninjitsu for the first time. But it's just not competitive right now.
If i don't get lazy I'll do a tournament report tonight. But it's not pretty.
I've been playing ninjas in some form since Betrayers came out way back when. Ninja of the deep hours is my favorite card of all time so I have always tried to make it work. I casually played ninjas in modern on MODO for years until about a year ago when I decided I wanted to try and make it competitive. My MODO decks were all mono blue and used the ornithopter plan of going for a turn 2 ninja every game. Then using unblockable spells to get ninjas through every turn. It's fun and it works. But it gets crushed by the top tier decks.
Then I tried faerie ninjas in paper. I played it for a few months on and off with delver decks. I came to a really heartbreaking conclusion then. The ninjas were the worst part of the deck. Especially mistblade shinobi. Mistblade looks like it should be a really good card and when it is good it's fantastic. But it's a 1 mana 1/1 that gets blocked by everything. After the initial ninjitsu it's basically just a vanilla 1/1. It requires so much back up to work every turn. I cut them completely from the deck. It was a sad day.
On ninja of the deep hours. I love this card so much. I've been pairing it value creatures for years. It's fantastic and is the glue that holds a ninja deck together. It's also not a great magic card. The turn 2 ninja plan is not great in competitive modern I found. Leaving your ninja exposed for an entire turn is just asking for it to be killed. And most opponents know to kill it on sight. I slow roll my ninjas now. I'm not going to ninjitsu until I have enough mana and cards to at least look like I can defend it. Because of this I have more time to actually draw the ninja so I only play 3. My "competitive" ninja deck only plays 3 ninjas.
Enter red. Ninja is not the win condition in the deck. It's a value creature to gain even more value off of spellstuter Sprite and snapcaster mage. Bolt snap bolt is how I win games now. Ninja is just the engine that gets me there. I'm now running UR ninja faeries with the basic faerie shell. 4 miscrent 4 spellstuter 2 vendillion clique 2 mistbind clique. The mistbinds are also on the verge off getting the axe for more interaction. But they made the cut for this weekend based on some last minute testing.
I'm really enjoying the deck so far and I finished 2-1 at modern night with it last week. I should have been 3-0 but I misplayed against UW control and lost a counter war when I knew he had an extra dispel in hand.
My list is designed to prey on the midrange decks of the format. Mostly jund. The best part of ninja of the deep hours is that it dodges abrupt decay. So we should always have a counter in hand to deal with the inevitable removal spell. From there it's just a grind. Slowly gaining advantage off of ninja and remand.
I guess I'll just post the deck list.
4 faerie miscrent
4 spellstuter Sprite
4 snapcaster mage
2 vendillion clique
2 mistbind clique
3 ninja of the deep hours
3 vapor snag
2 electolyze
4 lightning bolt
4 remand
4 mana leak
3 spell snare
1 spell pierce
4 flooded strand
2 polluted delta
1 wooded foothills
2 steam vents
2 sulfur falls
1 breeding pool
1 mountain
7 island
Sideboard
2 dragons claw
2 pillar of flame
3 relic of progentitus
2 ancient grudge
1 hurkyl's recall
2 dispel
1 negate
1 spell pierce
1 spellskite
Good matches are jund, infect and combo decks.
Bad matches are burn, Tron and coco decks.
Moderate matches are junk and other blue based decks.
On junk. As long as lingering souls never resolves it's good of us.
On Tron. I think it's unwinnable. The on cast triggers of ulamog and new emrakul wreck us. And Tron will get to those cards no matter what. We are just not fast enough to race.
On blue decks. We have an advantage of an actual clock. It's slow. But it's there. Combined with the cards off of ninja we can usually get there. But these decks are typically paired with white and supreme verdict which we can't beat.
Other blue decks like delver or
Grixis we actually have more interaction and can prevent a threat from actually resolving.
That's the basic plan here. Stall and few turns. Counter the first spell possible with spellstuter then try to ride ninja for as long as possible letting as little resolve as possible. Then bolt them to death.
Sorry of the lack of card tags and my scattered thoughts. I've been known to ramble and tell stories. And this was much longer than I initially planned to type out on my phone. Also sorry for any typos or grammar issues. I'm not editing on my phone.
I'm running 2 flashfreeze 2 negate 1 dispel and 1 izzet charm in the sideboard. mostly to deal with the abundance of control and Tron in my meta. Against Tron it's a pure race with the potential for me to get blown out because shoal can't really interact with their gameplan. And against control is just additional protection for delver
By this logic 8 just gives you one extra that you have to thin out. Making you more consistent to 7 but slowing you down slightly.
Guttural Response can also protect spells like harrow. Nothing is corse than having harrow countered. Pact can only be used to protect belcher because we HAVE to win right then or we lose the game.
I typed this on my phone then didn't proof read so excuse any errors.