Ninjutsu ninja game

The Ninjutsu mechanic is even itself sort of strange. Essentially, once blockers are declared, a player can swap out an unblocked creature for a Ninja in their hand. Cards like Ninja of the Deep Hours, Ink-Eyes, and Higure, The Still Wind have some sort of effect when they deal combat damage to a player, meaning that players are rewarded for finding sneaky ways to attack. Since players are also returning a creature to their hand, those cards can be replayed to generate even more board presence and advantage.

Unlike Hearthstone for fans of the game, these actions can be done while attacking at instant speed. They are usually underpowered compared to other creatures of the same mana cost, but their effects are usually worth building around. Because the name ninjutsu is so synonymous with Ninjas, Wizards of the Coast had limited the number of cards it could be printed on.

However, there were three big surprises that showed Wizards knows the mechanic and tribe is popular. After six years, the mechanic finally returned led by Yuriko, a new Legendary Creature for play in Magic 's card Commander format. Yuriko and Silent-Blade Oni were the only new ninjas printed in Commander a nd has seen play as far back as Legacy, but Modern Horizons finally brought focus to the tribe by adding eight new members including Ingenious Infiltrator and Fallen Shinobi.

These cards were all printed in supplementary sets - none of these ever made it to Standard after Kamigawa. With Standard sets, Wizards of the Coast can design more ninjas due to the larger amount of cards, meaning that the tribe could legitimately double in size.

The Ninja theme booster that was unveiled earlier this week revealed that there will most likely be ninjas in every color, meaning that many decks in MTG: Innistrad 's current Standard will get to play members of the tribe. Keep me logged in on this device Forgot your username or password? Don't have an account? Sign up for free! How do you defeat an enemy with ninjutsu? I'm playing the part where you have to find Kakashi Sensae and tell him Sakura wants to talk to him.

Then, you have to fight him in a new "training exercise". One of the battle requirements is that you have to defeat him with ninjutsu. How do you do it? Please help. And wasn't "Building On A Budget," like, three days ago? And wasn't the topic Ninja decks? It all started with my "Preconstructing Constructed" experiment , many moons ago.

My four-part deckbuilding adventure felt a little out of scope for a dedicated Magic Online column , but I was enamored with the idea of taking a preconstructed deck and slowly transforming it into a reasonable deck. Scott Johns gave me some latitude to pursue the idea, and away I went to build a Kamigawa Block Samurai deck.

When I had finished, I reflected that it was some of the most fun I've had, both playing and writing, in years. Apparently, you all liked my experiment too. The Message Boards were alive with discussion throughout the four weeks. I received a mountain of universally-positive e-mail.

When I ran a poll afterwards, I received these results:. I wrote to Scott. I told him that if he ever decided to add a column that focused on doing these slow, deckbuilding evolutions, that I was his man. Okay, I sort of pleaded with him. I really, really wanted to do more precon experiments. Then Nate Heiss got his job at Wizards. Then Nate decided to hang up his Building on a Budget sneakers. A quick note: for the rest of the info on the magicthegathering.

Nate was a machine. He pumped out a budget deck per week for almost two years. Those of you familiar with the column know that Nate also had a locked-in formula for his column. The decks were always thirty tickets or less on Magic Online. One deck per week. Same consistent structure to each article. A flippin' machine!

I am no machine. The core of this column will still be predictable, but this time around I'll often be taking a Magic preconstructed deck and evolving it into a respectable deck details below. Most of the time, I will be embroiled in this sort of preconstructed morph-o-rama exploration. Usually these explorations will take three weeks, but sometimes they'll be shorter and sometimes longer depending on the deck.

I won't only be evolving preconstructed decks from the new set, though. Older preconstructed decks are also fair game. So are other sorts of decks, including starting from a "bad rare" or some other nucleus. I'll also consider making decks for formats like Prismatic, Singleton, or multiplayer. In addition, there will be a lot more to this column than watching decks evolve. I plan on spanning the broad topic of budget deckbuilding as much as possible.

Expect me to try out "Top 10" lists of commons and uncommons, discuss analogues for hard-to-find rares, and translate tournament-winning decks into budget decks, for example. Which is all to say that if you are on a tight budget, enjoy budget-minded deckbuilding, or just fancy yourself a deckbuilding genius, I hope to constantly give you reasons to read the "other column" on Mondays.

Just keep piping up on the Message Boards to let me know what you think, and I'll adjust accordingly. At first glance, the idea of revolving a column around preconstructed decks' evolution sounds random. I have found two things to be true, however. First, a lot of players--especially those on a tight budget or just starting out--use preconstructed decks as the basis for their constructed decks.

I sort of knew this on instinct, but didn't know the full extent until I had an Internet column and received a flood of e-mail on the topic. Aaron talked about preconstructed decks a while ago , and I think his article provides a good window into both why Wizards makes preconstructed decks in the first place and also their use as doorways into the world of constructed Magic. The second thing I've found is that watching a "bad" deck slowly evolve into a "good" or at the very least "fun" deck is something lots of people enjoy.

For newer players, it's useful to see someone with deckbuilding experience articulate his choices at each step of the journey. Longtime players, meanwhile, get to "play along at home" and be armchair deck doctors. My hope is that each week you will log onto the Message Boards to pipe up with your opinions about the choices I make, offer suggestions, and argue over your own builds of the deck, and I don't think it will surprise you that I'll also be providing plenty of chances to influence the column with polls as well.

So, that's why I get so excited about evolving preconstructed decks. How I do it is a different matter entirely. I have adopted a set of Guidelines that I use to frame these articles. I call them "guidelines" instead of "rules" because I will almost always violate them at some point in the process. They're simply here to remind me and you to go slow and enjoy the ride. Here are the poll results from my last Into The Aether article :.

Ninjutsu by a landslide and Standard by a hair! When the time came to get the results for this one to Jay it was a mere. Incredibly, when we took the final results today to put the article into the server we had what we believe is the first tie on any magicthegathering.

Surely it's my job to be happy no matter what the results, but in this case I'm honestly thrilled. When I voted and yes, I sometimes vote in my own polls , these were the two I voted for.

Well, I'm a sucker for "blue weenie" decks that is, blue decks that rely on small, quick creatures and have been itching to explore the new Standard. The only potentially screwy thing about this result is that Nate ended his "Building on a Budget" reign with a Ninja deck , which makes for a sort of awkward transition.

In looking at Nate's approach, though, and comparing it with the starting Ninjutsu decklist, I'm confident that the Ninja deck I'll create will be markedly different from Nate's.

We'll see, I suppose, in a week or two.