Hi, love the deck! What would you take out for 4x Snapcaster Mages?

Probably 1x Spellstutter Sprite (Doesn't work well with Snapcaster), 1x Zephyr Sprite (weakest card in the deck), 1x Ronin Warclub (terrible in multiples, and less incentive to tap out) and 1x Higure, the Still Wind.

I'd also consider swapping Aqueous Form for Distortion Strike, as it has better synergy with Snapcaster.

I'd play around with the numbers a bit though. Spellstutter is such a strong card that it might be worth trying to find an alternative to cut, but going below 6x 1 cmc creatures is just not really acceptable.

Cool, was thinking pretty much the same. I'll probably try 3 Snapcaster Mages and leave Spellstutter Sprite in. I'll let you know how it performs, once I have time to playtest.

I have a similar Ninja deck i apprecate you opinion on it Ninjas!Ninjas! Blue ninjas!

Do you think that Sword of War and Peace could be a viable option. Protection from Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt rather than drawing a card might be a little underwhelming. Let me know what you think.

The upside of Protection from path is not worth the lack of removal that SoFaI gives. Further the extra damage War and Peace gives is very variable. It's a decent replacement, but certainly sub par in comparison.

Great deck I love it!

Have you thought of Faerie Impostor instead of a Zephyr Sprite or two. They really help maintain you board presence and they bounce at the cost of some reliability early on.

The reliability early on is more important to the deck than additional power. The ability for a removal spell to two-for-one us is also very important.

For reference - Spellstutter Sprite is most useful on turn two, following a turn-1 play of a Zephyr or a Miscreant. Familiar's Ruse is all but useless without them, and Ninja of the Deep Hours and Mistblade Shinobi are terrible cards without a one mana faerie (or a Sprite) to bounce.

The inability to play a creature on turn 1, despite it costing one mana is not worth the +1 power increase. We are close to running too much self-bounce already, and removing our main bounce targets to add more would push the deck over the edge, I am afraid.

Thanks for your great deck and the great report!I run a similar list with Scion of Oona, to make your small Faeries bigger. Have you tried Scion of Oona?With Mistbind Clique (I run 2 as well) I changed from 22 to 23 lands. I feel better to play Mistbind Clique and have 1-2 lands untapped to counter any removal or counter spell. Are 22 enough in your experience?Thanks for your point of view!Next time I am going to run 2 Dismember, to have some removal in addition to Vapour Snag. Time will show if it helps...

I've not yet had a proper chance to play with Mistbind Clique. Without it, I wouldn't have considered the Scion. With it, I am les certain.

As for Dismember - the reason I don't run them main board is because they are about as good as Vapor Snag in most match-ups, but seriously reduce the amount of time we have before stabilizing.

For example, one of the problem creatures (Kitchen Finks) laughs at it. Against most creatures, we're happy to later on bounce them and counter them, or to run them into a Clique, or even trade a 1 mana faerie wearing some equipment for them - in effect, Dismember is just quicker and marginally more efficient than the Snag.

By comparison, the Snag is also a utility card - it lets us re-use our Cliques, save them from targeted removal, and re-use our own threats as well as disrupting the enemy's. It's sort of Familiar's Ruse for one mana that targets a removal spell.

I have seriously considered running it in the sideboard, although I am not sure what matches I would bring it in for. For example, it's not good vs. Tron, Bloom or Burn, and is only mediocre against Twin (Vapor Snag is basically just as good), and I've found that we need no help vs. Infect, and in matches where the creature has a re-usable effect, we have Pongify - which is the card it would swap for... but Dismember doesn't hit Primeval Titan or Griselbrand, two incredibly relevant targets in my LGS, and also two of the notable targets Pongify comes in for.

Don't get me wrong, I agree Dismember is good, but I'm not 100% certain it's an improvement in all of the games that we need improvement in - it's not about finding the most powerful cards, but the cards that help us in the games we don't win often enough - e.g. upping our overall win percentage.

and I'm just not certain Dismember does that when it's fighting for a slot with Pongify.

I got your point concering Dismember, I totally agree and I am really not sure, if it is a good choice or not in this deck. I went with Pognify in the main instead of Dismember a few weeks ago, but against aggro-decks I found it not helpful.

I would maybe play the removal spells instead of Aqueous Form (or Disortation Strike). Because Aqueous Form is not helpful if we are in the disadvange. I felt that the monoU Ninja-Faerie-deck is very strong if we have some creatures on the board and we have options with Ninjas, Spellstutter Sprite and counterspells. But in situations when we are behind the opponent, I felt hanging on. Therefore the idea to play with removal and 4 bounce spells in the main. Other option would be Sower of Temptation, Threads of Disloyality of, Vedalken Shackles...

Concerning Mistbind Clique: I had three matches against Token, Soul Sisters and WU-Tron (with Gifts Ungiven) last week; and I think I will take them out of the deck. Because there are too many situations, where Mistbind Clique is a dead card (not enough mana, no Faeries on the board...), Skaab Ruinator could be an option as a finisher with 1-2 in the main. What do you think? Looking forward to read about your experience with Mistbind Clique :-)

But the main thing I want to change is to play with Swords of Fire and Ice. I have to try :-)

I wouldn't run Pongify in the main at all. You are correct that they don't help against aggressive decks, but then the Dismembers are also somewhat dead against them. Sure, in theory using Dismember on a Goblin Guide is going to save you more life, but in practice neither is a good choice. You want removal for other match-ups and need to focus on bounce/counter/disruption against aggressive decks. If you are on the play, you ought to do well. On the draw, you'll need a strong hand. Mistblade Shinobi does relatively well here.

Aqueous Form is in the main as it's practically a hard lock against a lot of decks without interaction, and our ability to counter removal spells is usually greater than most deck's ability to throw removal at us. Aqueous Form + Mistblade has won many games, and Aqueous Form + Ninja of the Deep Hours is great value, even if it only lasts for a turn or two. If I were to remove it, it would be for another "force multiplier", like Cryptic Command, or similar. Perhaps Snapcaster Mage if I owned them.

I understand the want to play Sower of Temptation or Vedalken Shackles in the main deck, and it is not a bad idea. The problem with Sower is that it's a four mana creature that you want to rush out as soon as possible (the window to use it for maximum value is typically very short), and that doesn't mesh well with our plan to hold up mana and counter spells as they are played. In effect, we can't cast and protect it until turn 6+, which is not when I expect it to be wanted.

Vedalken Shackles is marginally better because the opponent is less likely to have artifact hate in game 1. It might be worth trying, but they are outside my budget and so I haven't contemplated them too heavily... However, the deck functions based on creatures, and I would hesitate to play a non-creature spell that costs 3 mana and doesn't make our existing creatures stronger when we run so many effects that require self-bounce, and self-bounce + Shackles is not a fantastic combination. Ninja of the Deep Hours, returning your Tarmogoyf is not a strong play (as an example), and this goes doubly so for cards like Monastery Swiftspear and Goblin Guide - two of our biggest threats.

In effect, it helps out against the moderately expensive creatures, which we don't often have a problem with in the first place.

Here's my thought on Mistbind Clique (it will still be a while before I manage to get to play with mine):

We have almost no cards that cost 4+ mana. In fact, they are the only card we ever expect to cast for 4 or more. They are the only creature in the deck that survive bolt, and provide a short clock for our opponent... and play well with our theme (self-bounce). If you've drawn one and have no creatures in play, then just about any other card you could have drawn would also be dead. Further, we run two to minimize the chance of drawing both. The liklihood of two in hand when we run only two is incredibly small.

Finally, the effect they provide on an empty board is basically a time walk effect. Against many decks (e.g. Twin, Tron, etc), they provide fantastic interaction, and make turns more predictable. If you can land it once, we run enough self-bounce to lock the opponent out of the game for long enough to finish it. Ninja of the Deep Hours to return it, and then cast it on their turn, to tap all of their lands (for example). Vapor Snag, Familiar's Ruse and others are all great ways to use it.

There will be times when it's a dead draw, but the amount that happens (and another card would have saved the game) ought to be very slight vs. the times when it swings a match in our favour. Even if all it does is provide a flash 4/4 body to block with.

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Finally, the Sword of Fire and Ice is amazing. The deck wouldn't be half the deck it is without two copies. It turns a 1/1 faerie into 5 points of damage and draws you a card. If you can resolve one and protect it, you ought to generally win the game against almost any fair deck, and even against unfair decks, the card advantage and clock make it hard for them to win through. I think it's probably the most important card in the deck.

Anyway, I'll make sure to post my results after I finally get to try the Mistbind out.

Do you think that Judge's Familiar could be better than the 1/1 faerie? You have to sac it for it to be as effective with Spellstutter Sprite but it has the extra flexibility of being able to counter on its own.

I do not. The ability to re-use Spellstutter Sprite effectively is part of what gives this deck power, and without at least 6-8 one mana Faeries, that makes Spellstutter Sprite a bad card. It's very much an all or nothing plan.

Ok that makes sense, forgot about the advantage of bouncing the sprite. Also sacing the bird wastes tempo so the vanilla faerie does seem better. I may try it as a 1 of replacement just for fun tho, really fun budget deck, just gotta get the clique.

Thanks for your answer and your thoughts! I got your point and I will definatly give Aqueous Form a chance. The Scry effect I suppose is very helpfull, too.You are right concering Dismember and cards like Goblin Guide; therefore the Swords would be the best answer. I continued to play with Dismember to have some more experience and played against Jund (was nice against Olivia Voldaren) and WU Controll (did a good job against Restoration Angel). In some matchups Dismember is a helpful addition to bounce/counter, in other matchups it might be a dead card. 1 or 2 could be an option, but I would never play more.

Another card I would like to check out is Disrupting Shoal. It kills our card advantage on the one hand, but on the other hand it could help if we are on the draw and not able to interrupt with Spellstutter/Counter in time or if we could play NotDH on turn 2 and want to have the option to counter something. Have you ever played it in our deck?

If you had no budget constraints what would your list most likely look like? I've played various iterations of the deck in both legacy and modern and enjoyed them but haven't had the budget (till recently) to build the deck so I wanted to see what your version would look like so I could try it out.

The sideboard would change a little, and I might include a Mutavault. I would also experiment with 1-2 Snapcaster Mage's. Overall, it's incredibly close to "complete", and any changes to be made would be metagame decisions rather than hard changes to the deck.

E.g. Mutavault vs. Ghost Quarter #3 depending on whether you expect to see big mana decks/decks with manlands (e.g. Affinity, Infect, Tron, Eldrazi) or midrange decks and decks with plenty of instant speed removal (e.g. various flavours of Abzan).

Dismember might come in depending on the metagame, but overall is generally better outside of it.

What would you change to add black in here? Budget ideas and then what you think without budget. I have a majority of the expensive black hand removal and removal. All long with the land support for these two colors.

Hey dude! First thing to say - I love this deck. I've played with it for a week and I'm just obsessed, it's ridiculously fun. However, my buddies are urging me to get a real modern deck and buy in with some staples, to get my foot in the door now that I've started to like the format. On that note, I changed the deck a bit for a dimir faeries deck which I'm super excited about. If you want, you can check it out here: Black Ninja Faeries I've avoided a few money cards so I have things to trade into, but I'm very excited to see how this deck plays out.

Have you considered Writ of Passage instead of Aqueous Form? Not sure if forecast is better than scrying every turn, but just an option

I have. I would much rather be scrying, as the forecast is not really where we want to be with most of the ideal targets. It also means that it falls off if a Warclub is assigned.

Writ of Passage is good against a deck with Lingering Souls, as it can be used to get a Faerie through to Ninjitsu. If I were expecting to see a lot of flyers, I would use Writs. Fortunately, I don't expect to see too many, making the Aqueous Form the better card for the deck.

Hi! I am a faerie-ninja palyer too and i really love your deck! I use 2 copy of Hidden Strings and Sword of Feast and Famine wich garant me untapped land for counters.I also love to play an addictional copy of Mistbind Clique, against midrange decks you can totally landlock your opponent with the help of soome bouncer...

This an awesome deck, I'm building a black blue competitive faerie ninja deck, would you mind taking a look at it? I think you know how to pilot faerie ninjas. I think a couple Quickling could be fun, great deck and +1

Ninja fae!!

Modern* wolfboy

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I really dig this deck, and its budget counterpart. What are your thoughts on Slip Through Space as an evasion enabler? You get less value than with Aqueous Form or Distortion Strike, but on the other hand it's never a dead draw.