Ninja

So many people are playing Ninjas wrong.

It's not that surprising to me, since the entire Katana World is built up around a high-knowledge high-skill level of play. You definitely can't do well just by slapping some cards together and playing by a general idea of field control and card advantage. Ninja decks have to go beyond that. To make the most of their superb prediction and highly advantageous traps, a player must be willing to consider every possibility and take calculated and intelligent risks. We're not talking about risks that can lose advantage if they fail. We're talking about risks that bait all but the smartest of opponents into continuing their predicted strategy. When a Ninja slips into the shadows, he forces the entire enemy army to waddle around like ducks, poking at every shadow out there.

Ninjas thrive on a non-optimal way of play. To them, field advantage and field control have entirely different meanings. Card advantage is gained not only from drawing extra cards but also from forcing your opponent to commit more cards than necessary. Ninja's start off relatively strong and increase their attrition as the game goes on. Sapping advantage like a leech, Ninjas force their opponents to die a slow, painful death all while waiting for the chance to strike. And when they strike, there can only be one acceptable outcome.

One slash. One kill.

But let me get back to my original statement that so many people play Ninjas incorrectly. How do I know this? It's because people are overrating Nanomachine Ninja, Tsukikage. More importantly, people are misusing his ability. I've never seen a card played more incorrectly ever in my life.

Nin!

Let's look at him very closely. His stats are 5000/2/1000, which is the same as Thousand Rapier Dragon. That's good, especially since Ninjas have lower base stats from other worlds. I'll be covering this disparity in a future article, but a basic concept is that if you can't beat em, then don't fight em. If you're not going to be able to win on base stats, then don't attempt to win by base stats. Tsukikage does deliver good base stats but that's not the point of Katana World to begin with, so he's basically an higher-powered vanilla that does nothing else.

HIs ability Nanomachine Body Replacement gives him infinite replacements of himself with all the non-monster cards in your hand. That's great, you can now treat your entire hand as soul for Tsukikage's pseudo-Soulguard with his 1-for-1 wash ability. How do we determine if Soulguard is good or not? Quality. Is Tsukikage worth saving? Let me rephrase that question. Is Thousand Rapier Dragon worth saving? The answer should be sometimes. Yes, there are times when you'd like to keep a Size 1 vanilla beater on the field. If Tsukikage's in the center, that's more center shielding for you. But honestly, most of the times you should just let Tsukikage die. That ability is a very situational ability that will only pay off with correct timing and foresight, not by dropping your entire hand of spells. Tsukikage should be run not for his ability, but for his stats. You can honestly not even use him in a deck and be just fine. He is by no means a be-all-end-all staple for Katana World.

I have calculated your defeat!

What should be and already is a be-all-end-all staple is Electron Ninja, Shiden. This guy is broken. Discard a Ninja Arts and pay 1 gauge to draw 2. It's just like Nice One! and Survival Chance with it's own catch, namely that you have to discard a Ninja Arts. That's such a non-issue, since you're going to have so many Ninja Arts in a deck. You also get a 3000 power beater who, if he is left alive, can generate +0.5 again the next turn with this ability. Not only that, he can also discard those Secret Swords you unfortunately drew into for cards you can actually use. Basically, you want to be using Shiden every turn to get this super fat hand so that you can bleed your opponent to oblivion.

"But Blaise, how do we bleed our opponents to oblivion?" Good question. The truth is that this wasn't possible until very recently, with a horde of new support for the attrition playstyle. Before, the best way to play Ninjas was totally different. So now let's revisit this in chronological order, from Set 2 to Set 3.

It's Sasuke!

Generation I Ninjas played best with weapons. Specifically one weapon, a promotional card called Windmill Knives, Mooncircle. This weapon, frighteningly, does not have a picture on the official Bushiroad cardlist yet. 1 gauge for 8000/2 and the ability to prevent destruction with 1 gauge. Wow, that's sweet. Oh, but there's a catch. You have to destroy the weapon at the end of every turn, unless you have a Flash-strike Ninja, Zanryu on the field. Oh no. I see where this is going now.

Zanryu was covered in my very first article on card advantage, so I won't highlight what he does here. Instead, I'll point my finger at a very big issue with this card. Call cost 2 gauge. 2 gauge? Who has that much gauge to spare on a 5000/3/3000 Size 2? Seriously, that's way too much investment. His effect does gain advantage (+0.5) but honestly, who's going to attack him...you can just blow him up with like, every form of field removal common to standard decks. Thankfully, Mooncircle's maintenance cost is still enough to justify its gorgeous 8000 power (think 5000 + 3000 temporary for 1 gauge), but ain't nobody got the gauge to waste every turn for that.

Ninja power

With Onimaru, however, the situation is solved (at last!). You can ditch Zanryu-Mooncircle for a much better balance of Onimaru-suicide sword and run the full gambit of Movers. You have the Size 1 Hayate and the Size 3 Kotaro Fuma. Kotaro is gigantic, coming in with Double Attack and Move for a measly 1 gauge. His stats are laughable though, but they're acceptable and that's all that really matters when you're dealing 7 damage in a turn. Move him to the right after attack and activate the Right-hand counter and watch as your opponent cries tears of blood. See, bleeding.

Give me back my
Japanese crow

But there's a better way to play Ninjas now, thanks to two key cards. The first is Sky Ninja, Yamigarasu. If you want a card that belongs in every single Ninja deck in the universe, this guy is it. This guy is so broken. He has meh 4000/1/1000 stats that basically force him to play the role of a beater and kill stuff, but he gets Move in return which makes him an even wash. Oh, hey look he gets another ability. Whenever a monster across from him rests, you deal 1 direct damage. Umm, guys, that's a +0.75 for free. Let's check, does he have Move? Yup. So essentially every time your opponent has a battle phase, as long as that opponent has 1 monster on the field he's taking 1 damage. The best part is, Move activates for the turn player first and then the non-turn player (it's how play timing works). So there's literally no way for your opponent to get out of the damage. Not only can you fit Yamigarasu in a attrition-burn deck, but he also belongs as a second Mover in weapons-based decks. This guy's got it all.

Can't touch this

The second card is Fire Streak Ninja, Gokuen. It's surprising that a common is taking up the spotlight, but holy crap this card is amazing. He comes out fairly average at 2000/1/5000, but the true power lies in his ability. You can drop 1 card from your hand to give Gokuen +3000 defense for the turn. Normally you'd look at a -1 for only +3000 stats as a huge waste, since in calculations 3000 defense is only +0.5 advantage. But this is defense we're talking about here, and Gokuen starts off with a decent 5000 already. You can pump that up to a nice 8000 easily, which means that nobody's going to be getting over Gokuen that easily.

But that's not all. Gokuen's defense boosts lasts for an entire turn. As in once you buff him up, he stays buffed for good. In other words, if your opponent can't get over him with the first 1 attack, then they're not going to get over him. Gokuen forces a 8000 power link attack without question. Which means that they're going to waste a huge force to destroy a 5000 defense monster because Gokuen has the potential, the mere potential of becoming 8000 defense at any time. Gokuen drains an entire field's worth of attacks without losing anything. He doesn't have to use his ability to induce link attacks, he just has his ability and it's already good enough.

A smart opponent will still force you to drop a card, but it more or less guarantees that you won't be taking any damage that turn. Compare this to Tsukikage who, although he comes back, can't defend against Penetrate and won't stop other attacks from getting through. Gokuen is the Ninja equivalent of a perfect guard.

If you want to feel like an even greater boss, you can use Gokuen's ability during your opponent's main phase and again during the battle phase to pump Gokuen up to indefinitely large numbers. Remember that Gokuen's ability can be used on your own turn as well, so if your opponent Dragoenergy's a monster Gokuen is attacking you can discard another monster to save Gokuen from Counterattack.

My smile comes in foil

To complement these two amazing star players, we have a great trinity of support spells. First off is Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze. Cast the card and pay 1 life (-1.5) to rest a monster that your opponent has (+1). When this card is used against a monster with Double Attack, it becomes a +2 and +3 for Triple Attack. Also, when you use this in conjunction with Yamigarasu and Sniping Ninja, Yoichi then you're also dealing 1 direct damage (+0.75) which makes the card overall very flexible and useful as a pseudo-negate.

Next up is Dark Ninja Technique, Poison Mist Formation. Do I really need to explain DoT? Pays off after 3 turns of direct damage.

What is the airspeed of
an unladen swallow?

Last but not least is Final Showdown on the Great Gojo Bridge. This card is terrible with Skull Warriors since monsters on your side will probably die anyways, but with Ninjas this protects your Shiden, Yamigarasu, and whatever other monsters you may have from harm. Once you set the bridge and put Gokuen as the gatekeeper, your opponent's going to be in quite a mess. This style doesn't synergize with weapons but it's a hell of a lot better at playing the stall game, granting victory from carefully prepared plays and maneuvers.

Now that we've covered the main two styles of playing Ninja, we'll go over the rest of the cards in orderly fashion.

Sadly not as good as
Asura Kaiser

Extermination Ninja, Slashing Asura is all about late-game. You have to discard your entire hand to field wipe, so the later it gets and the less cards you have the better. Since Kotaro Fuma is better for weapon decks, you'd want to use Slashing Asura as a lategame insurance for Gokuen-based decks (you can also discard extra copies of Asura for Gokuen's ability).

Cyber Onmyoji, Seimei is cool but 2 gauge for 6000/2/6000 is not really worth it, even if it's a Size 1.

Peeping analyze! Phantom Ninja, Kashinkoji pays 1 gauge for forced single attacks and the ability to peep at your opponent's hand. This is really useful, especially in the early game, and helps players keep tabs on key cards, combos, and particularly negates. Kashinkoji himself is ridiculously weak though, so you really don't want to run many of him.

He's quite the voyeur

Shinobi Scrolls is an interesting idea. You permanently set this card on the field to turn 1 gauge into 1 card in a maneuver similar to Shiden's Cyber Analyze. By setting a Ninja Arts beneath the scrolls and paying 1 gauge, you can draw 1 card per turn per soul-scroll and activate the Ninja Arts from the scroll whenever you want to. This is a secondary way to getting that card advantage that Ninjas need, but since Shinobi Scrolls is a -1 investment you need to activate it twice before it starts paying off. Note that, should you want to, you can put a card that's not a Ninja Art into the soul...but then that card is lost forever. Also note that you can put Lethal Formation into the soul as well.

Bandit Ninja, Goemon can be great to screw with gauge-dependent decks but he's a Size 2 which sucks.

Like Kirby

The final reason why nobody plays Ninjas right is because I don't see anybody running Hundred Face Ninja, Muraku. This card is single-handedly the card with the most potential in all of Katana World. His ability allows you to discard a card (-1), be it monster, spell, item, impact. You can then add to Muraku the power, critical, and defense of that card for the turn. He also has Counterattack. Do you know what this guy is? This is a monster that can hit 8000/4/8000 with Counterattack by dropping Shumokuzame. This is a monster that can deal 4 damage by dropping any 3 crit card including Onimaru. This is a card that can do anything you want it to do as a Size 1. Your opponent has absolutely no way of playing around Muraku without using field removal. Any attack against Muraku could potentially become a death sentence, and Muraku can hit for 4 damage while leaving room for 2 other Size 1's to chip in. In fact, Muraku delivers the most consistent OTK in all of Katana World. And no one uses him.

Get his name right

Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion is a 6000/2/5000 Size 3 that has a 2 gauge call cost. He has the ability to attack all monsters on the opponent's field simultaneously and deal 1 damage for each monster he kills. There are a couple of misconceptions with this card. First of all, when saving monsters from Vermillion's attacks you can only save 1 at a time. Treat his attack like 3 separate attacks happening simultaneously, so even if his attack fails to kill one monster, he still kills the others. If you nullify his attack, however, the entire attack becomes nullified. Secondly, his damage effect deals the damage at once, which means that using something like Chillax! will negate all the damage. You don't deal 1 tick of damage per monster destroyed, you deal X damage by destroying X monsters.

From an advantage POV, Vermillion is a wash if you can kill 2 monsters with his ability (-1 call cost, -1 stats, +1 extra kill, +1 damage). You don't count his effect as direct damage because he needs to attack to proc it (defeats the purpose of direct damage which should activate regardless of a negated attack).

Leaping Ninja, Sarutobi is great. Compared to the other destruction spells like Art of Item Blasting, Sarutobi does the same job with 1 less gauge (Item Blasting can negate an attack though which makes it a wash, but stuff like Cecilia's Spell Disarm can't). She can't target items, but that's not an issue since she gets rid of devastating Set Spells like Thunder Formation or Mission: Nazaro Springs. And she's can be a paper wall if need be. Flexibility precedes victory, especially in a gymnastics competition.

Next up...Hyper?

Super Lethal Formation isn't really better than normal Lethal Formation because power and defense don't mean much to most Ninja decks. There's not much else to say about this card, other than the fact that its continuous ability does in fact activate in the deck as per new Bushiroad ruling, which means Linzo can indeed search it out. But why you would want to give your monsters +1000/1000 is beyond me when that barely means anything in Katana World. And to top it off, it requires one more gauge? Yo I'm paying 3 gauge for the stuff that's going under this thing, you think I have an extra one to spare for 1000/1000 on a 3000/1/1000 Shiden? Please.

Hack n' slash

I personally always found weapon Ninja to be the strongest playstyle of Ninjas. Before, you only had Onimaru as a decent weapon but BT05 gives us Juzumaru as well. Juzumaru is pretty expensive to equip but never goes away, has 3-crit and becomes 6K power with two or more Ninja on the field. In other words, it's good, especially with the new Move options.

When I was testing Katana World for purposes of finding the best build, I ran max copies of Tempest, Garo-oh for the amazing synergies it had with weapon Ninjas on a whole. You could call him but not use his ability, only activating Double Attack when needed to get that upper edge against your opponent. Now, you don't even have to make that kind of a sacrifice. With Electric Speed Ninja, Inazuma, you can have your Double Attack forever. Of course, 4000 power is not that high but it's very usable. She's definitely staple and a great asset to Ninjas.

The key to victory

I really really don't like 0 crit monsters. If there's no monster to kill then this thing's a complete waste. However, gauge is a great resource to get and stats this high are pretty rare in Katana World. Having one or two of these is a well-founded idea and a relatively consistent way to gain gauge.

Art of Heat Haze can be seen as free Move to any Ninja you want, given that they're Size 2 or lower. Since Heat Haze improves with card quality, you want to use it something useful like Inazuma.

Fang Style Ninja, Kibashachi gets a shout-out for being the best Size 3 Ninja, having Double Attack and greater than 6000 defense. Very resilient, cannot be hit by any counter removal and most spell removal, and still has Double Attack and good power. Even better, it's a Water archetype, so you can get it to 10000/9000 with the appropriate Set spell.

Let's run away from this

But the best card that Ninjas got this set definitely has to be Runaway Female Ninja, Yukishiro. Yukishiro is almost broken. She hits for 2-crit on your turn. Then, on your opponent's turn, you can sacrifice her and pay 1 gauge to nullify any spell he casts during his main phase. You wanted to draw? Nope. You wanted to gain gauge? Nope. The only spell that your opponent could possibly get away casting would either be a bad spell or a destruction spell targeted at Yukishiro. This means that Yukishiro should be called to the left or right so that your opponent has to waste destruction spells on her in order to guarantee a spell during the main phase.

You can even give Yukishiro Art of Heat Haze and get her back after using Soulguard, nullifying up to 2 spells during your opponent's turn. But that's just cheeky and kinda BM.

Big shield

Tsukikage, Giant Shield. LOL. So he's another target for the Blademaster in the TD which is cool. But that ability...we can actually abuse that quite well, though Katana World is currently missing a crucial card that's already out in Japan. But hey, here's a use for all your Clear Serenities if you like dumping those. Giant Shield's staying power is not to be trifled with, especially with a hand full of Body Replacements and Noroihikagami. Too bad he completely nulls Ninja's fantastic Size 1 game though.

I don't know if you have room for Size 2 vanillas, but Rasenmaru is 3-crit which is nice (but costed!). Hitting 8K isn't that hard anymore thanks to your new Size 3 options.

I'm pretty hyped about Agent Ninja, Mamiya for giving you a free +1 on-call to Lethal Formation, of all things. Since Lethal Formation stays on the field, it's basically the same thing as having it in hand so Mamiya is a legit +1. You can ditch Star Crusher with Shiden or pay it out from gauge and then add it into Lethal Formation so you have multiple in the same soul. Works great with Super Lethal Formation. I'm curious to see if we get more Agent Ninjas to make a Lethal deck viable and fun.

Hey! Listen!

Tsukikage's big brother...err, little brother...err, relative is here to help your Ninja game. Byakuya comes with 1 less crit and 1000 less defense than Tsukikage. You can't protect Byakuya like you can with Tsukikage either. Instead, Byakuya comes with Shadow Dive and a Counter Act ability to discard non-monster cards to restand Byakuya. In essence, he turns every non-monster card in your hand into a Trans-flame. It's a great thing to use when you want to go for game.

But even better than using Byakuya for a game win is using Byakuya in conjunction with a Tsukikage to summon Gojinmaru into your field. Gojimaru is ridiculous. We're talking Size 2 coming in with 2 soul minimum, has Double Attack, 2-crit, Shadow Dive, 7000/7000 and Move...what the hell, this thing has everything. It can tank. It can field clear. It can slam 4 damage with little retaliation. It can synergize with every weapon you have in your arsenal. Are you ready for math? Katana World vanilla stats are 5000/2/5000. You pay 1 gauge, and both Byakuya and Tsukikage will go to the soul so they're both washes (you pay some price for having oddly specific requirements). But so far, -0.5 in the tank. Add +1 for 2000/2000, +1 for Double Attack, +0.5 for Move, +1 for Shadow Dive...that's seriously a +3?

Make like a ninja and disappear

If you want to mathematically win in Ninjas, looks like Gojinmaru's going to be your main deal.

So there's the problem with having to draw into at least one of four Byakuyas, but you can ease the difficulty with Yumi Ninja, Suiha. On-call pay 1 gauge for a free call of any Size 1 or less Ninja. There's your 8 copies of Byakuya. As for Tsukikage, you can run Blademaster Mode to naturally have more copies in your deck in addition to the Suihas that can call them. So this deck is actually really consistent and efficient.

A little bit of history - apparently Shadow Dive was the Ninja's technique, stolen by the Death Rulers (and I guess Slashknife Dragon). Anyways, Sekitetsu has said Shadow Dive with the additional El Quixote-style topgauge on-hit ability, giving you really good gauge ramp options without turning to Clear Serenity.

No, I'm not paying 1 gauge for my opponent to +1.

Scenery!

The big deal is that in Buddy Allstars, they printed what will be 4 copies of a card with Tsukikage in its name and 4 copies of a card with Byakuya in its name. For Gojinmaru's ratios, this is huge. Really huge. You can now run 12/8 or even better run 8/8 and Suiha and get Gojinmaru super consistently. But it gets even crazier, because Tsukikage SD has the ability to grab Byakuya from the drop for only 1 gauge. So it's even harder to miss. Plus, if Tsukikage SD is in the soul it gives +1000/1000, making Gojinmaru a 8000/2/8000 Double Attacker. They're practically force-feeding you this combo now. Byakuya is also pretty good but not reliable if you're up against Hero World or something.

Oh right, we can't forget about Secret Sword stuff. So Secret Sword based decks get a special gauge ramp cards that also recurses Lethal Formations which is...well, uninteresting. Agent Ninja Mamiya already grabbed Secret Swords from drop so I'm not quite sure why you'd want to put them back.

The new Secret Sword, Starlight, is a different matter. It triggers when a monster on your field gets destroyed (cough cough Gojinmaru Move). You can then destroy either a Size 2 or smaller monster or an Item. And then deal 2 damage. That's a pretty good deal for 2 gauge.

Fire Ploy Ninja, Toranosuke is great alongside Set Impacts and spells for strong destruction. Depending on your playstyle, it's arguably better than searching for your own card, and gives non-Tsukikage decks a fighting chance. I'm all about that.

- updated to H-BT04, CP01, H-EB04, H-TD02, H-PP01 -

All images used obtained from the official Bushiroad website and used here solely for reference purposes. Future Card Buddyfight!, logos, and respective content belong to Bushiroad. Large images belong to the Buddyfight! Wikia.