Last Update: January 15th 2025
Intro: The Idea
I had taken some time away from Magic for personal reasons, only checking spoilers and news once a week or two. Then came the day I first saw Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, and the idea of a Ninja deck in Standard/Pioneer was all of a sudden quite feasible. The card is busted, at least when utilized in a deck specifically built for it, which is exactly what I've tried to achieve with this list. That +1 emblem alongside a deck filled with Ninjas and spells to disrupt our opponent's gameplan and get their creatures out of our way, is a match made in heaven. Let's dive deeper.
Deck Tech
The main idea is pretty straightforward, you want to get a cheap evasive creature in play as quickly as possible and you also ideally want to have value Ninjutsu cards in hand to start playing around. The ideal enabler is of course none other than Ornithopter but a Mockingbird for X=0 or a Thousand-Faced Shadow will do just as good. For round 2 you want to have a Moon-Circuit Hacker or a Silver-Fur Master to Ninjutsu in. Finally, the best T3 play is, in most cases, going to be Kaito, Bane of Nightmares.
That's it, really. Everything else in the deck is a matter of preference and it's there mostly to support the cause of enabling Kaito, Bane of Nightmares as soon as possible and getting things out of the way of our attackers.
Even though the star of the show is undoubtedly Kaito, the deck is versatile enough to be capable of winning even in the worst-case scenario of him never entering the battlefield. One such way is by stacking Ninjas like the Silver-Fur Master and making an explosive attack with the support of a Ninjutsu activation from Thousand-Faced Shadow copying the rat and dealing 5-8 extra damage out of nowhere to finish the game. I've won countless games with that Ninjutsu ability catching the enemy off-guard. The deck can manage just fine in tempo scenarios too.
Not to mention this list's incredible ability to adapt to any game by taking advantage of Mockingbird to copy our Rat or any good creature on the battlefield + give it flying (You should see the reaction of an opponent who gets introduced to a flying copy of their Sheoldred, the Apocalypse before having it pushed). It helps make the deck more adaptive and versatile.
This deck has all the tools it needs to dominate and finish most games off without too much thinking involved in the process, at least once you get used to the idea. It can also be very explosive with T4 Wins being an uncommon but realistic scenario, given the right hand.
Fun Facts and Tricks
The Ninjutsu mechanic is really fun and can be used in many clever ways. But first of all, I'll talk about the two main high-value scenarios of the deck that many people might miss upon just taking a quick look at the decklist. The first one is a neat synergy between Ornithopter and Satoru, the Infiltrator, everytime the thopter enters the battlefield it triggers Satoru's ability so its a 0 mana sorcery-speed draw spell as well as an amazing Ninjutsu enabler. Also, Ninjutsu allows you to have on-demand Revolt triggers for Fatal Push since a permanent you controlled left the battlefield to return to your hand.
Another trick I've used from time to time, mostly for fun, involves Floodpits Drowner and any ninjutsu creature. First, you flash the Drowner in at the opponent's end step and stun their good creature. Then you attack using the drowner and activate its ability after damage but before combat is over. In response to the activation you ninjutsu it back to your hand since it still is an unblocked attacking creature, but the ability is still on the stack so when it resolves it shuffles the opponent's creature into their library while your Drowner is chilling back in your hand.
Outro
This deck can go in many different directions to win and I'm sure there are countless options I haven't looked at yet for fully optimizing it. The idea is the same though, Ninjutsu is fun and there can be many tricks and fun mechanics around it. All sorts of suggestions are welcome and I'm looking forward to making this list the most optimized Ninjutsu list with your help.
Major Update (January 11th 2025)
After careful consideration of many helpful suggestions and tips from other players, I've come up with this updated list. The main difference is the complete removal of Thoughtseize from the mainboard and the partial removal of the deck's main 2-mana removal spells. The reason is simple: speed.
I have found Fading Hope to be incredibly useful in this deck since we don't care about permanent removal of enemy creatures, rather we want cheap ways to get things out of the way of our attackers + it's a nice way of filtering our next draw. The card can also be used to save a creature from removal and if that creature has ninjutsu we get an additional activation which means even more value.
I've added back the 2 extra copies of Floodpits Drowner because the card is indeed amazing and also Biting-Palm Ninja for hand disruption, it has worked wonders every time I've drawn into it + it exiles so it gets rid of many annoying graveyard synergies.
Overall I wanted to maintain the Ninja-oriented character of the deck to play along the +1/+1 busted emblem of Kaito, I think the list is very promising and I've seen great results in MTGA. Let me know what you think, every suggestion is appreciated!
Minor Update (January 15th 2025)
-1 Thousand-Faced Shadow
+1 Mockingbird
Win rate of the list with said changes: 65% on Explorer BO1 ranked (more than 60 matches) and I'm currently Platinum 1.
Also testing -2 Satoru for an extra Mutavault and an extra Biting-Palm Ninja, but haven't reached any conclusions yet.
