Into the Arena: Tuning Ninjas and Enchantments!

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has been out on Arena for a little while now and its impact on Standard is starting to be seen. It seems that the metagame has changed quite a bit in the last few weeks, and a number of new decks are becoming popular. Cards like Spirited Companion, Generous Visitor, and Rabbit Battery are making their mark, and powering archetypes including Orzhov Midrange, Naya Runes, and Mono-Red Aggro. To my delight, both the decks I brewed right before the set was released have been performing quite well in the new environment. In fact, the enchantment deck I brewed is very similar to many of the Selesnya enchantment decks that have been becoming quite popular.

I have been playing and tuning my Ninja deck and my Enchantments deck from two weeks ago, and in this article I’ll provide a quick update on each deck now that they have been tested. I’ll also include the sideboards I have created for them to counter the current metagame!

I have not seen many other players using Ninjas in the ranked queues, but I have been pretty successful with my brew so far. Most of the synergies that I noted in my original article are indeed quite strong, and Ninjutsu in general has been impressive. Lantern Bearer and Thousand-Faced Shadow have both been impressive one-drops that help set up Ninjitsu, although Network Disruptor has underperformed so far; it is a fine flier but it’s ability hasn’t been as useful as I thought it might. For now I am continuing to play two copies of it. 

Spectral Adversary has turned out to be one of the best cards in the entire deck. It works great as a two-drop that enables Ninjitsu, and then can be played later in the game to remove some troublesome creatures for a turn or protect your creatures from removal. I underestimated how powerful it would be to use Spectral Adversary to hold off an opponent’s attackers for a turn, which has now won me a few games that came down to the wire.

As I suspected, Kaito Shizuki has been great, and I have decided to play an extra copy of him for a total of three. He often draws you an extra card every turn, which is game-winning against many slower midrange and control decks. 

One card choice that did not work out was Zareth San, the Trickster. When playing the deck I quickly realized that he could only Ninjitsu with unblocked Rogues, meaning he was much less useful in this deck. On top of that, there were rarely any opponents that had good things to steal in their graveyard. For now, I have decided to keep a few copies of The Trickster in my sideboard for matchups where it will be possible to get a Hullbreaker Horror or Lolth, the Spider Queen from an opposing graveyard.

Here is my updated Ninja Tempo decklist:

There are some pretty good sideboard options for Dimir these days, starting with Annul. This one-mana counterspell hasn’t received much attention in the past, but in the wake of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty it feels like every deck is taking advantage of sweet artifacts and enchantments. Annul is an incredible answer to everything from Wedding Announcement to Ogre-Head Helm.

The rest of the sideboard is filled with sweet answers for everything from planeswalkers to enchantments.

Moving on from ninjas we have the sweet enchantment deck I brewed two weeks ago. When I was testing these two decks I actually ended up playing against a lot of players using an almost identical Selesnya list, and I can see why. Kami of Transience, Generous Visitor, and Jukai Naturalist are extremely powerful, even in comparison to some of the other accelerated synergies taking place in Standard these days. Many of the more competitive enchantment decks I have seen take a different approach from my original list, and go by the name of Naya Runes.

Combining the three creatures above with Runeforge Mystic and a number of runes from Kaldheim is a really cool way to make an enchantment deck, and I hope that deck continues to be successful! Despite this, I am sticking to my original premise for the deck. Going tall with Michiko’s Reign of Truth and taking full advantage of Weaver of Harmony is too sweet to give up on. This list took a lot more tuning than the Ninjas deck, and there were a few card choices I had to completely replace. However, the deck has continued to get more powerful, and I think it might be my preferred option for tournaments going forward.

The essential core of enchantment creatures and creatures that benefit from enchantments is all still in the list, but many of the enchantments surrounding them have been replaced. Azusa’s Many Journeys turned out to be too slow, and because this deck has a fairly low land count it often didn’t even help ramp. Teachings of the Kirin was alright but it was also slow and the creature you get when it flips was underwhelming. Ranger Class has been a nice replacement for these, as it gives you board presence right away and continues to be useful later on. 

I found that Starnheim Courser was surprisingly good in the deck for a three-mana common, but still trimmed one copy to lower my curve. I also decided to completely cut Orochi Merge-Keeper as the ramp was usually unnecessary and I pretty much always just wanted to cast more enchantments instead.

Lastly, the deck really needed some top-end to provide some explosiveness in topdecking scenarios. This is where my singleton copy of Hallowed Haunting comes in. Its a great way to end games in your favour, but it requires a little bit of time to get going. In the sideboard I have included even more top-end options that can be brought in for games that you expect to go long. 

Also in the sideboard, I have four copies of Borrowed Time which is the best available removal spell for everything from Goldspan Dragon to Lolth, Spider Queen. The two copies of Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr can be brought in for matchups where you need more power and toughness and aren’t worried about exiling removal, such as against mono-red. The two copies of Fang of Shigeki are cheap enchantments that can be great blockers against decks playing larger creatures, including opponents utilizing Kami of Transience!

Both these decks have been super fun to develop, and they have performed a lot better than I usually expect from my pre-release brews. Switching back and forth between them has also been nice because they have such different play styles. This season of Standard has been very refreshing so far, and at the moment I am planning on just continuing to use these two brews to see where they can take me. Hopefully these decklists can help you enjoy some refreshing Standard games too!