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sHecKii's Deck Garage
Deck 1: Strike Ninja
8.1.05 

Hey guys, it’s sHecKii from Team Savage and the Pojo.com Card of the Day Crew.  I will be one of the new Deck Mech’s for Pojo.com and I will be fixing at least one deck per week.  I’m going to start off by fixing my favorite deck in the world: Strike Ninja.  Since I haven’t received any e-mail’s from anyone (because this is the first Deck Fix), I will base the fix off of my regionals winning Strike Ninja from last season. 

What you should expect from me, as a Deck Mech, is to...

a)      Analyze the deck

b)      Fix the Deck

c)      List possible cards for the deck

d)      Explain how the Deck is supposed to work

For this post, since I am basing it off of a deck with cards that are no longer in this format, let’s just use this decklist as a crutch to explain how Strike Ninja is supposed to work.

April 1^st Ban-List Strike Ninja (Las Vegas Regional)

Monsters (20)
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Jinzo
3 Strike Ninja
3 D.D. Scout Plane
1 Zombyra the Dark
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Tribe Infecting Virus
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Don Zaloog
2 Newdoria
1 Magical Scientist
1 Sinsiter Serpent

Magics (16)

1 Pot of Greed
1 Painful Choice
1 Premature Burial
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Snatch Steal
1 Change of Heart
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 The Forceful Sentry
2 Smashing Ground
2 Scapegoat
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Creature Swap

Traps (6)

1 Return from the Different Dimension
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Ceasefire

SideDeck (15)

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Blowback Dragon
2 King Tiger Wanghu
1 Cannon Soldier
1 Exiled Force
1 Mirage of Nightmare
1 Emergency Provisons
1 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Creature Swap
1 Confiscation
2 Dust Tornado
1 Hallowed Life Barrier
1 Robbin' Goblin

Looking at this deck, obviously there are cards that are banned in the current format: Magical Scientist, The Forceful Sentry, Change of Heart, and most importantly Painful Choice.  Also in the SideDeck, Mirage of Nightmare and Confiscation.  We will not be talking about those cards in this review. 

The reason why I wanted to display this build is to give the readers a general idea about how Strike Ninja works.  This deck generates great hand/field advantage mid to late game due to the fact that your opponent will have a hard time destroying your Strike Ninja.  You are using D.D. Scout Planes to remove Dark monsters with Strike Ninja, abusing Tribute Monsters to generate more advantage, and using a secondary win condition of Return from the Different Dimension.  This deck’s main goal is to stabilize the early game forcing 1for1 trades to eventually achieve a ridiculous hand/field advantage to win the game.  I will go into more detail about how this deck is supposed to work in out NEW format later but for right now I wanted to explain the workings of Strike Ninja. 

More in-depth, cards like Newdorias, Smashing Grounds, and Sakuretsu Armor provided 1for1s so you will not fall behind too much in the early game.  Swords of the Revealing Light and Scapegoats helped to stall and set-up tributes and D.D. Scout Planes for it to “go off.”  The tribute monsters set up great advantage in general.  A tribute monster generally has better effects than non-tribute monsters.  You can abuse tribute monsters in this deck to gain amazing advantage and field presence at almost no cost.  How?  Glad you asked.

Let’s say you have 2/3 Dark monsters in the Graveyard (one of them being D.D. Scout Plane), Strike Ninja on the field, and a Tribute monster in hand.  Assume your opponent only sets one of monster and end’s his turn.  During the End Phase of your opponent’s turn, declare removing Strike Ninja from the game with 2 Dark monsters, one of them being D.D. Scout Plane.  During that End Phase, Strike Ninja will return back onto the field along with D.D. Scout Plane.  Now on your turn, you may either turn your D.D. Scout Plane into defence mode, or use it as a Tribute feeder.  If you had 3 Dark monsters in the grave, now you still have 2 Dark monsters in the graveyard, one of them being D.D. Scout Plane, and your Strike Ninja is still a force to be dealt with. 

This is a deck that my teammate Jae-Love has blessed me with.  He showed me this deck at the San Mateo regionals and ever since I’ve fallen in love with this deck and with his permission, I’ve made a version to fit my play style which eventually led me to qualify for regionals last season.

In this new format, with Magical Scientist and such being banned, Strike Ninja has lost popularity.  Strike Ninja was very hard to counter if the deck opened with a Painful Choice.  It mills off the D.D. Scout Planes into the graveyard to set up the combo with Strike Ninja.  With Painful Choice being banned for this format, let’s look at the possible ways to search out D.D. Scout Planes to set up the combo. 

1)       Mystic Tomato: This is one of the perfect monsters in this deck.  It’ll search out for the D.D. Scout Planes along with setting up the Tribute monsters (Remember, one of the great features in this deck is abusing Tribute Monsters, sort of like Soul Control)

2)      Magical Merchant: This has been Jae-Love and I’s tech for a long time.  In this format where it’s hard to search out and discard D.D. Scout Planes, this is a unique tech card.  If you get lucky, you may mill off at least 1 D.D. Scout Plane into the graveyard.  This card will involve some luck

3)      Sangan: It will search out a D.D. Scout Plane into your hand but most of the time, you’ll want to search out a Sinister Serpent or the next card I’ll talk about:

4)      Morphing Jar: I mentioned before this deck wants to force out 1for1 trades and eventually set up the Strike Ninja/D.D. Scout Plane combo for the win.  Giving your opponent the same amount of cards as you will not hurt you as much as you think

5)      Cyber Jar: This card is most abusive if you run multiple Flip-Effect monsters but once again, a card that gives the same advantage to your opponent as you may not hurt so bad in this deck.

6)      Chain Disappearance: This card is one of the most SideDecked cards in the current metagame.  Not only does it counter Scapegoats or removed all copies of Thousand-Eyes Restrict from the game, if you summon a D.D. Scout Plane in some shape or form, you will remove ALL copies from your deck/hand/field from the game and it will magically come back next turn, which is a very slow/situational Painful Choice but Chain Disappearance can counter Goat-Control to some degree; a good metagame call nonetheless

7)      Tribe-Infecting Virus, Lightning Vortex, Graceful Charity, Card Destruction, Raigeki Break, etc...honorable mentions for discard effects.

Tribute Monsters:

1)       Dark Magician of Chaos: Using two D.D. Scout Planes to tribute for this amazing monster provides great advantage.  Now with Delinquent Duo and Graceful Charity presented in the new ban list, this card has seen more play.

2)      Jinzo: One of the best Dark tribute monsters in game as well as one of the best tribute monsters in the game period.  Everyone’s seen this card played so I will not explain/review it.

3)      Mobius the Frost Monarch: This is one of the best monsters for this deck.  Remember Mobius the Frost Monarch has an inherent 2for1 effect; which means when you are in a situation that’s hard to come back from, it’s one of the best monsters possible.  Also, in a format with many Traps being played, this is a great tech.

4)      Blowback Dragon: Instead of the Zaborg the Thunder Monarch (which was mainly used to counter Fiber Jar), I believe Blowback Dragon is a better Metagame call for this format.  This card can counter flip effects based on coin flips and will automatically destroy Spirit Reaper if it targets the flip towards it.  Overall removal and perfect for this deck.

5)      Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Airknight Parshath, Mefist the Infernal General, Dark Ruler Ha Des, etc...honorable mentions for this deck. 

Tech Cards:

1)       Brain Control/Metamorphosis: With 4 tribute monsters, you’ll need a way to tribute monsters with little or no drawbacks.  Using Brain Control and/or Metamorphosis using Magical Merchant, Scapegoats, Sinister Serpent, etc...will be a great tech.

2)      Return from the Different Dimension: This is a secondary win condition for this deck.  If you used Strike Ninja multiple times but finally ran out of Dark monsters to keep its engine going, you can play this card to win instead.  This card was recently reviewed by the Pojo.com staff, hence I will not go into great detail about this card.

3)      Zombyra the Dark: One of the under-rated monsters in the game in my opinion.  In this format, more and more people are using Airknight Parshath and D.D. Assailant.  This card can take care of both to a certain degree.  Also, the fact that you can search him out with the next card and it’s a Dark monster makes him highly playable in this deck.

4)      Reinforcement of the Army: This card can search out your win condition, Strike Ninja, along with every other good warrior one may want to play in a deck.  It’s one of the most “broken” tutor’s in this format and not to be scuffed at. 

5)      Creature Swap: This card can be amazing in this deck with D.D. Scout Planes on the field but remember in a format with at least 2 Scapegoats in every deck, it may be a dead card.

6)      Scapegoats, D.D. Designator, Exiled Force, Newdoria, Card Destruction, Smashing Ground, Enemy Controller, etc...honorable mentions for this deck.

New School Strike Ninja

Monsters (18)

1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Jinzo
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Blowback Dragon
3 Strike Ninja
3 D.D. Scout Plane
1 Zombyra the Dark
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Morphing Jar
1 Sangan
1 Sinister Serpent

Magics (17)

1 Pot of Greed
1 Graceful Charity
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Premature Burial
1 Snatch Steal
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Nobleman of Crossout
2 Scapegoat
2 Metamorphosis
1 Brain Control
1 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps (7)

2 Chain Disappearance
1 Return from the Different Dimension
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Mirror Force

This deck is at 42 cards and personally, I wanted to add 2 more cards into this deck: Smashing Ground(s) and/or Sakuretsu Armor(s).  This is one of the ways to build this deck.  You may want to try the Magical Merchants, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Airknight Parshath, D.D. Warrior Lady, Magician of Faiths, and try to fit in a Black Luster Soldier- Envoy of the Beginning in this deck.  Also, you may want to add the other cards I talked about for this deck.  This deck list is not by all means the best build of this deck but it’s a great start.  I haven’t tested this at a regionals or any big events like that.  I hope you guys liked/learned from this article and hopefully I gave a good insight to a deck that is less commonly played. 

E-Mail me at sheckii.teamsavage@cox.net for a potential deck to be fixed AND posted on this website (In the Subject, PLEASE type “Deck Fix: *your deck theme/name*”).  You can also e-mail me about any questions regarding the game and I will do my best to answer every single e-mail as soon as possible.  Hope you guys enjoy me as the new Deck Mech for Pojo.com and enjoy reading my articles.  Thank you ^^v

- sHecKii aka Tony Lee