It's a sorcery in a deck that primarily wants to be playing at instant speed when it can, making it a painful cycle in the early turns (when you generally want to be cycling it). Its utility goes up if you have a second (or third) Snapcaster Mage, but I prefer Aqueous Form at the moment - the ability to scry repeatedly is fantastic when put onto a Ninja, and nets value more if you can protect the creature (which we usually can).

Heh, I've been intrigued by that card ever since I saw it and never realized it wasn't an instant :) Well, I guess Aqueous Form makes a lot more sense then.

I don't like Mizzium Meddler very much. He's a 3 mana 1/4 (so provides little/no pressure), and the only time he's better than a counterspell is when he's attracting a Lightning Bolt (or similar piece of removal). He's too expensive to be reliable against Infect (and they may well have enough spells to go over the top anyway), and Bogles get most of their early enchantments down by turn 3, meaning that if you don't get him out on curve, he's going to be terrible... and even if he does, Spellskite would have been better.

Without Vendilion Clique, I would probably consider a singleton Quickling, Glen Elendra Archmage, or another piece of equipment, depending on the other changes you have made to the deck. Clique is hard to replace directly because it serves three roles - flash creature with an ETB effect for a Ninja, beatdown to close out the game, and hand disruption vs. all of the decks we struggle to interact with.

You could also go down the Cryptic Command or Into the Roil route to add some versatility to the deck, in an area it lacks.

What are your thoughts on Dismember? Is it worth a main board slot? Or only a sideboard option?

And also regarding Ronin Warclub. Is the +1/0 more from the Warclub worth it for the additional 1cmc casting compared to that of Stormrider Rig?

Yes, +1/+0 is worth the extra 1 CMC. You don't play them early on in the game - you play them to help you close it out, and 2 power vs. 3 power is a massive difference (as it usually works out on a 1/1 flyer).

You shouldn't be playing either early in most situations.

I have been back and forth on a one-of Dismember in the main deck, and a second in the sideboard. You never really want to draw two unless it's fantastic in the match-up. Ultimately, I've kept to one in the side, as aggressive match-ups are already painful enough. It might be the wrong call.

Thanks for answering my questions! I guess I have to playtest more to find out the accurate number of Dismembers in the deck. It is almost always useless when I draw it(paying 4 life is not great too.)

I have one last question though. Have you considered running cantrips? Say, Serum Visions or Gitaxian Probe? At times I find myself running out of gas and have nowhere to spend my mana on. My only source of additional card draw is NotDH and sometimes Cryptic. Haven't tested the deck yet with cantrips since I currently don't own any.

If I were going to run cantrips, they would have to be instant speed. As there are no decent cantrips at instant speed, I don't run them.

If we get Opt in Modern, I might have to reconsider.

The deck has terrible match-ups against Abzan CoCo, Abzan and Jund (Jund being the easiest of the three).

Any deck running Thoughtseize or Lingering Souls is very rough for the deck.

I don't much like Crystal Shard. While we enjoy bouncing our own creatures, we never really go into the game and decide it's our primary game plan. It will never realistically hit an enemy creature when it matters, and so is a bad card in a deck like this.

Sweet! This inspired me to make my own ninja faerie deck Hey Look Listen NINJAS! so obviously +! From me... something i use is Distortion Strike which has rebound that makes things nice.

I am not a huge fan of Distortion Strike (at least without lots of Snapcasters). The reason is simple - when it sticks, Aqueous Form would have stuck, and the only creatures I really care about it sticking on are Mistblade Shinobi and Ninja of the Deep Hours.

In those cases, repeated Scry 1 + their effect will often win the game. Two hits with them may not, and the extra damage is often irrelevant.

Still, the difference is minor, so I'm sure you'll do fine regardless. :-)

I can see that... Honestly more or less an option I've used to make this deck "more my own"... I looked at quit a bit of faerie/ninja decks and this one was hands down my favorite! Again great job and thanks for the inspiration.

Do you think running a playset of Polluted Delta is too much life-losing or is it worth it if u had them?

I don't think the thinning is ever really worth the life loss in a deck that isn't hyper-aggressive. Without something black to splash, I would not consider running them. Running four of them means that on average, you take approx. 1 damage per game, and draw approx. 0.07 of an additional card.

Links below:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/standard-archives/91308-fetch-lands-deck-thinning-is-a-myth

http://www.gatheringmagic.com/magic-the-classroom-hyper-math/

http://www.northwestmagic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3893

Effectively to make a difference, you need to be running somewhere around 12 fetches, averaging 3-5 life lost per game to draw less than an additional card. Since there are decks aggressively attacking our life total, that life loss is purely not worth it for what is an incredibly negligible effect.

Further note: We also actually want to draw up to a higher number of lands - we regularly want to hit five mana. This is typically done by cantripping and slowing the game down such that we reliably get there. Further lowering our chance to draw land hurts our early game without contributing much into the late game.

So no, I would not consider running them.

Hi. I wanted to say thank you for this deck. It is what I based my faerie deck around originally, then it got turned into strictly mono blue faeries. Then I decided to go back to the ninja faerie idea.

I was wondering how you felt about the new eldarzi deep fiend. I used two tonight in replace of the 2 snapcasters as I dont own them. I also used 2 mana leaks, and 2 crypt commands as I dont have spell pierce.

I can make up my deck and have you look at it. It was great fun, and I think my sideboard needs some help.

I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it. If you're not sacrificing a Ninja, I don't see that we can get it out early enough. The 2-for-1 hurts against a lot of decks, and I'm not sure it helps our bad match-ups enough to be worth running (e.g. Jund hits it with Lili or Terminate, etc), but I'm going to actually sit down and work through how often we could cast it and how impactful it is in different match-ups.

My initial thought is that the presence of Path making it a "bad" investment, and the fact we can already run Mistbind Clique is a big deal. Maybe a combination of the two would be good?

I am going to try it again at FNM. I find burn a rotten match up, but not sure what I can do about that. Maybe the new common blue counter. In other matches, I found it acted like Mistbind Clique 3 and 4. There is a high possibility I can borrow 2 snap casters though.

Hi long time reader of your varents of this deck. And i just want to say thank you for putting together such good primers for the different version of this deck :)

I've been playing around with a budget version for a while now and starting to get results at small local tournaments and fnm (normally anywhere in the top 6 if i play well).

This is something you may what to add to your primers. For most players it's a fairly steep learning curve to play this style of bounce control deck. (I learned more about obscure stack rules playing this than any other deck.)

Finally I've found that Smuggler's Copter is generally a little better than Ronin Warclub in most situations. As the increase in damage from a fairy is the same and you get the looting trigger before you have to ninja but after you get the scry allowing you to loot into a ninja juring the combat prosses. Finally if your opponent just has blockers down you can crew with a ninja to basically give it flying which is nice :) My list is fairy ninjas (super budget)

Thanks for the response. I haven't taken this list out for a spin in a while, as the local metagame has really turned against blue decks, but I've been meaning to trial Smuggler's Copter. How do you find it pairs with Mistblade Shinobi?

very well, as there are many times in the mid/late game that Mistblade Shinobi just can't get through or when the only creatures on their board have strong enter the battlefield effects. Smuggler's Copter basically turns it into a flying more powerful Ninja of the Deep Hours for combat. alternative i've bounced Smuggler's Copter to activate a ninja instead of a fairy for when the fairy count for Spellstutter Sprite really matters.

recommend 2 or 3 Chart A Course mainboard. been using it and found its an excellent addition in decks with a low curve (without cryptic and sword)