Our Kirkland brand Light Cycles do fantastic work in this deck, tapping down an opposing blocker to set up ninjutsu and giving us an evasive threat to bounce with an “enters the battlefield” effect when we have a ninjutsu card in hand.
Perusing trophies, I quickly noticed that most had at least a single copy of High-Speed Hoverbike, which bots draft 1.67 picks later than humans. Blue also contains bounce and blink effects, but we’re going to call upon our Ninjas to do the heavy lifting for us most of the time. The real kicker is that in Dimir, we’re able to use ninjutsu to return them to our hand, if we deem necessary, and repeat the whole Saga over again. Now, let’s be clear: these are two exceptional cards in most decks in the format. Seeing a Life of Toshiro Umezawa available Pack 1, Pick 8 feels like stealing candy from a robot baby. On top of all of that, they both become creatures, like some kind of charitable vending machine Transformer named Ultra Snackus.Īccording to 17Lands, the two Sagas have Average Taken At (ATA) numbers of pick 5.03 and 4.91, respectively, meaning they’re available roughly two entire picks (3.11, 2.76) after humans would take them in a Premier Draft. The latter slows down our opponent’s creatures and then draws us between two and four cards. The former can pick off a small creature, make one of ours big, or gain a little life if we’re in a race. The mythic uncommons of the archetype are undoubtedly Life of Toshiro Umezawa and Behold the Unspeakable. What if I told you that the sixth- and eleventh-best cards, period, in Dimir were reliably available as our fourth pick? Is that something that might interest you? So, if you’re looking to advance your rank in the new season this weekend and get some drafts in, I want to break down how you can maximize your playtime. Fortunately, the artificial “intelligence” is ignoring one of my favorite archetypes: Dimir Ninjas. Like John DiMaggio on Futurama, Quick Draft is back, baby! By the time you’re reading this, we’ll have one week left to beat the bots (not Bender, but Magic Arena) at Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (NEO) Draft.