You should probably list this as "casual" rather than "legacy." Looks fun though.

Fabricate will slow you down a lot, why not just get rid of them and add more copies of your artifacts?

It's definitely not casual. Try facing only two 5/7 unblockables and you won't be talking about casual anymore, even though you haven't even seen half of what the deck can do. Also, i label by card legality, and therefore it is legacy. Even if it were casual, I'd use the casual hub instead of the casual format so people can see without clicking what card range I use.

Don't be fooled by the low price, it can be really nasty. I'm sure it wouldn't last a second in a world championship tournament, which is why I didn't use the "competitive" tag, but casual is far, very far below this. I'm still finding new knacks every time I playtest it.

Fabricate has a good reason: I can't put 6 Birthing Pod in the deck. Even if I could, I would end up with multiple exemplars of it all the time, and every one after the first is practically a dead draw. Transmute on the other hand becomes one and thins the deck out a bit. If I already got the pod out, I can still search for Blasting Station or... Oh, right, I dropped the Baleful Strix . Anyways, it's just the same reasoning as for playing fetchlands instead of taplands.

Some cards in the deck seem to have become illegal overnight... Anyway, they aren't. Whoever tried to fix Vela the Night-Clad and Throat Slitter , do a better job next time and don't forget about Legacy, please. The re- fix is submitted and should take effect soon.

Might have to give this a shot. I'm trying to learn how to pod for melira pod modern deck that I want to play and this would be a good step to get there. I'll try and post the results.of playing your pod deck here if I remember. +1 from me

Thanks for the upvote, urasa.

I hope you can get something out of it. The deck is a bit different from the usual melira pod deck, mainly because it doesn't run melira. XD
My Persistent Modulation (advice welcome) deck is a bit closer to melira pod in the way it sacs creatures that immediately return to the field.

Im sure there are better six drops, but one that comes to mind that would be fun is Aurelia, the Warleader , she doubles the efficiency of your ninjas, Doom Blade ing and Unsummon ing them quicker. And allows you to deal twice the combat damage that would would have done originally. Just a thought, love the deck idea

Thanks, fijord, that looks like it has some potential. I'll proxy it and give it a try, and let you know how it worked out.

i could see archetype of imagination working well as your 6 drop as he effectively all makes all your creatures unblockable.

please note he is a born of the gods card and so may not be currently available

Sun Titan , Vigor , Dread , Laquatus's Champion , Massacre Wurm , Gleancrawler , Darien, King of Kjeldor , Xathrid Demon , Prime Speaker Zegana ...

I searched the gatherer for 6CMC cards, and sorted them by community rating...
Here is the result

Thanks, urasa I'll try it out. Everything can be tested with proxies if you have a pen and some paper. It's a good thing that my playgroup allows proxies for playtesting purposes.

Did you check if they have synergies with the deck, MyRevival? I did the same search, but if you suggested something that I missed, I'll count that too. It was actually my intention to find cards that gatherer won't put on the first page, but are better for the deck than the popular ones.

Anyways, with that many suggestions piling up, I'll have to cap the reward at 3 tokens. I won't put wore than 3 more alternate wincons in the sideboard anyway, so the three cards that go in the deck earn a token.

Yes. I think if you looked at my suggestions, they would show synergies, most of which include recursion, finishing blow, one sided board wipe, card draw, damage prevention...

I did not just plop the first ten cards off of that page. I went 3-4 pages deep picking out the cards that I thought fit. I'm not even in it for the tokens, I just like Birthing Pod as a card, and any use of it feels awesomely deserved.

Yes, Birthing Pod is becoming one of my dearest favorites too. I'm currently working towards adapting a BUG variant of my United Power of Reborn Sacrifice to include two of them.

I've had a few test games against different decks today, and whenever i could have called a cmc6 creature, we "saved" the game and played it out for every possible candidate.

Aurelia, the Warleader was a tricky one. The trouble is that her ability resolves in the declare attackers step, while ninjutsu can't be used until blockers have been declared and lets the ninja enter the field tapped. So the ninjas are still tapped in the second battle phase. She could give creatures already on the field another attack, what would only be moderately effective for Dimir Infiltrator , so I decided to dismiss her. Sorry.

archetype of imagination worked great. My ninjas flew over the opponents creatures, bouncing and killing them. He also couldn't go on full attack and finish me off first because none of his creatures had haste to attack before it gets removed again. Some had, but those were killed and not bounced. Thanks, urasa That one's a keeper. Once i got it, of course.

Gleancrawler was surprisingly good. It returned the Throat Slitter i just sacced for it almost immediately, so I could call Vela the Night-Clad directly in the next turn. And there's no luck needed to pull that off. I even managed to hardcast it once (that's what you get for stalling, lol), and it worked out rather good due to its decent combat abilities. That one's going in the deck, MyRevival.

Vigor was interesting. I expected nearly unkillable attackers to be a safe bet, but without trample or evasion, it's no use if they can still be blocked. I removed it just like the first one.

Massacre Wurm turned out to be very specialized, but really useful in that particular situation. When testing against a token deck, it ruined killed the two billion tokens he summoned by infinite, and allowed me to swing for lethal with the other creatures. Long story short, it's useful against an opponents superior creature presence, if you have one unblockable to get Throat Slitter out. If you have the time to hardcast it, then it's clearing the field for all your attackers, that's quite neat too. It's a "probably", staying in unless I find something better.

I didn't test the other suggestions, there were different flaws that made me dismiss them right away.

urasa and MyRevival both earned a token, MyRevival will eventually get a second if nothing tops his Massacre Wurm . Congrats!

Had a quick look through the 6 cmc cards on the gatherer and would be interested to see what would happen if you tried these cards that caught my eye Sunblast Angel and Nacatl War-Pride

I see Nacatl War-Pride as one turn slower, but quite a bit better than Massacre Wurm ... And less specialized.

I had the same impression for Vigor . It works great in my green deck, and two out is absolutely broken. But I can definitely see the frustration in this deck now that you point it out. The creatures have to be able to survive the first round of blocks to get really big, and Ninjas are mostly small, and shouldn't be blocking.

And thanks for the Token!

(Side brewing note) I see Aurelia, the Warleader and Nacatl War-Pride being quite impressive together.

Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni ??

Also Blood Pet to speed it up, and Baleful Strix is just too good for ninjutsu to ignore.

@ Next_rim

You apparently missed something about how the deck is supposed to work. But that is my fault for writing such a sloppy description. I'll rewrite the description to be perfectly clear about the way the deck works, maybe with some detailed examples. As soon as I find the time...

True, Baleful Strix is great. It's actually one of my favorite cards. I've decided to drop it because the tutoring I have (Fabricate into Birthing Pod into everything) makes it obsolete. It's also a way too valuable creature to use it without decent evasion. The Gravecrawler and Dimir Infiltrator are a very smooth way to provide me recursive or unblockable attackers, so I'm sticking with them.

The use of ninjutsu in this deck is mainly to feed the Birthing Pod with a 5cmc creature that enters the field for 3 mana. Since I'm combining two mechanics here, I don't have enough slots to include every good ninja (you won't see Ninja of the Deep Hours here) and every creature that works well with it.

I am sometimes playing a common ninja deck with Augury Owl , Baleful Strix , Mistblade Shinobi , Ninja of the Deep Hours , Throat Slitter , Sai of the Shinobi , Thassa, God of the Sea , Bident of Thassa , Fireshrieker and a few othery, and it's always fun to play. However, I find that my Teenage Mutant Ninja... What, no Turtles? is a lot better at utilizing ninjutsu than the usual dimir build.

Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni is 6 mana, and a very competitive wincon. I didn't suggest it because of ninjutsu.

Also, try Phyrexian Revoker , it shuts down 1/3 of Legacy staples. If it resolves, ofcourse.

Also, Kokusho, the Evening Star . Very solid guy, and easy to combo with many things.

That's the great thing about Birthing Pod : Most counterspells are useless against abilities, so once it's on the field, creatures being countered isn't likely to happen. Phyrexian Revoker is quite easy to call with it. Except if your opponent gets one out first...

Kokusho, the Evening Star looks interesting, since there's already a sac outlet on the field when it's called. That could be something. Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni is competitive, but works best when i can make it unblockable, so this is not the right deck for it.

I'll be back when I had a chance to test the cards out.

I agree with you Triforce-Finder about your description of this deck as "not a casual deck." I believe that the best definition of "a casual deck" is a deck that is designed with an objective other than winning as the primary objective (for example, many EDH decks are built with sociability as the primary objective). As the contrapositive of "a casual deck," "not a casual deck" would mean a deck designed either with winning as the primary objective, or a deck designed with no objective at all.

The way in which you articulated your card choices is clear evidence to me that you designed this deck with winning as the primary objective. Therefore, I believe it is not a casual deck.

I am in a similar boat as you with some of my decks. For example, I play a Mono Green Infect deck in Legacy, and I often hear players call it "casual." However, I have learned not to play this Infect deck in a truly casual environment, since I will usually win on the second or third turn and promptly get accused of playing a deck that is too competitive. Like you said about this Ninja Pod deck, I probably would not take my Infect deck to a large tournament, but for smaller events, it does just fine. Just because a deck is not ideal for a long tournament does not mean it is casual, and I really wish people would actually try playing in a truly casual environment, or at least take the time to carefully define what they mean by "a casual deck," before they start using that term to describe people's decks.

On an unrelated note, I have really been liking the comments you have been leaving on the netdecking discussion thread, including the ones not in response to mine.

Thanks for the kind words, thEnd3000. It's nothing I'm letting bother me too much, although it is a bit annoying sometimes. On the other hand, when someone calls a deck casual, I have a good excuse to brag about it shamelessly...

Forgot to add my shocks and temples to the decklist, d'oh!

Changed that, it runs smoother now.

After looking at your deck list carefully, it seems to me that only Brainstorm and Aphetto Alchemist are Legacy only cards. Granted, Brainstorm is pretty nuts, but I think you may also have a Modern deck on your hands. Basically all my Modern decks are conversions from my Legacy decks, and they have been doing pretty well, so you may be able to make some adjustments to account for the difference between the Modern and Legacy metagames, and you might be able to play this both in Legacy and in Modern, like I do with all of my decks.