Splinter, Radical Rat Ninjas

Commander Overview

TMNT Week is here! This whole week we will be bringing you amazing new decks featuring new TMNT cards as commanders, we are so excited to showcase our first deck with Splinter, Radical Rat a very cool card who unsurprisingly synergizes extremely well with Ninjas and is a great card for ninjitsu as well since it is a cheap source of unblockable for all of our ninjas, also being able to trigger ninja abilities twice with cards like Donatello, Gadget Master or Mist-Syndicate Naga can allow us to build up quickly and become a formidable force with ease. Splinter is an amazing ninja commander and synergizes so well with the creature type.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is quite easy, we mostly play out our ninjas, make them unblockable with splinter and then ninjitsu other ninjas into play and trigger their abilities, the end-game can feel great with this deck since splinter can easily give one or multiple of our ninjas unblockable at any time which can be a great way to deal a ton of damage and triggering their abilities is great too. I would recommend this deck for an intermediate player, Ninjitsu can get a little complicated

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is synergized around ninjas and all of their abilities. This is absolutely expected since Splinter pushes us into that direction, and we have packed our deck with cards to interact with Splinter and all of our ninjas in general. Cover of Darkness is one of my favorite pieces of synergy in the deck and allows us to get our ninjitsu abilities easily, and if it’s the mid-late game and we want to start dealing some real damage, it can make our board very tough to stop. Splinter is one of the biggest pieces of synergies in our deck since they provide a two-mana way to trigger Ninjitsu and guarantees our Ninjitsu triggers happen twice.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: We actually have a lot of early-game creatures, as many of the ninjas in the deck are not very expensive to play, so we can be pretty aggressive in the early-game, getting Splinter out in the early-game is also very important for us as they are a huge part of our deck and help make the gameplan work a lot smoother. The early game is a great time for us since most opponents don’t have a ton of creatures besides mana dorks, and they don’t want to block, so we can trigger our ninjitsu quite easily.

Mid-Game: Things only improve for us in the mid-game, we have a lot more mana and we can use Splinter’s ability a lot more times in a turn, while we do have a decent amount of mana its nothing compared to the late-game so being mindful of the ninjitsu costs and the best plays is key at this stage of the game. The core game plan stays the same here, sneak our ninjas in and hit hard.

Late-Game: We are actually a deck that is perfectly ok with us going to the late-game, our commander and cards like Aqueous Form and Cover of Fear allow us to attack quite consistently without having to worry about our creatures dying, we can afford to play the long-game and do get bigger and better as the game goes on.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

Outside of our artifacts, we really don’t ramp at all. We have a pretty low overall cost, and with cards like Patchwork Banner and Herald’s Horn, we can bring out our support creatures quite cheaply. We often ninjitsu most of our creatures just based on how the deck works. We don’t ramp very much in this deck, but since we are ninjitsu’ing creatures so much, we rarely play full cost for our creatures.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Esper is a very good color combination for drawing cards, and we have some great ways to draw cards. Since we are in Esper, we have access to cards like Night’s Whisper, which are cheap and easy ways to fill up our hand, and since we have forty life, losing two doesn’t feel bad at all. I’m also a huge fan of Satoru, the Infiltrator which is an amazing card that synergizes with our deck perfectly, we ninjitsu a creature on pretty much every combat and with Splinter on the battlefield Satoru’s ability triggers twice which can be a consistent source of two extra cards every turn which is extremely strong and allows us to keep our hand full. Lastly, I want to highlight Kindred Discovery, a true staple for creature-type focused decks and just an amazing source of card draw, especially since we attack constantly.

Removal

We have a good suite of removal in the deck, we have counterspells like Dovin’s Veto and An Offer You Can’t Refuse, which are cheap and easy ways to stop our opponents from broken stuff and can also be used to protect our creatures and permanents if we need to. We are not a selfish deck by any means, while we don’t have a ton of removal and are most certainly not a control deck we can hold our own and stop our opponents from getting too out of hand, disrupting combos or killing an opponents best creature with cards like Anguished Unmaking or Generous Gift are great options for our deck to have. We are pretty good at removing stuff that our opponents have, and since we have quite a lot of sources, we don’t have to be very conservative with them.

Protection

As I mentioned previously, our counterspells can be used offensively and defensively. We are able to use them however we need. I tend to try to keep Splinter on the field as much as we possibly can, so protecting Splinter from single-target removal is a key in the deck and something our counterspells are perfect for. Inkshield is a protection piece that is good at any stage of the game but shines in the mid-late game or whenever opponents are going super wide and attacking with everything. Since Inkshield creates flyers, they can be a huge momentum shift if our opponents don’t have flyers, and preventing us from dying is pretty great, too. Beyond that, we don’t have a ton of sources of protection in the deck, but we make do as we do have quite a few counters in the deck.

Utility / Support

We have so many awesome ninjas in the deck that trigger twice with Splinter on the battlefield, so let’s go over some of the best! Fallen Shinobi is one of the pricier ninjitsu costs in the deck, but its effect is just insane, and doubling it with Splinter and getting four cards off the top of an opponent’s library that we can free cast provides a tremendous momentum swing and, more importantly, takes those cards away from our opponents. Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni is a true ninja legend and for good reason, being able to reanimate a creature from an opponent’s graveyard is amazing in the mid-late game after some stuff has died, and just like Fallen Shinobi, taking that resource away from an opponent is very strong. I also want to highlight Mist-Syndicate Naga, which is a card that snowballs so much, and after a few turns against an opponent who has few creatures, we can have so many of them, especially since Splinter allows us to make two copies!

Bad combats can be devastating for us, and because of this, we have ways to protect our creatures. Pump spells and protection spells can be very tough for us in combat, so cards like Reconnaissance allow us to make it like the combat never happened and, more importantly, protect our creature. Cunning Evasion is a great card if an opponent flashes in a creature or creature tokens or blocks in any way that we didn’t anticipate, another card that allows us to back out of a bad combat situation.

Mana Base

Not a lot is going on in our mana base in this deck. It is pure efficiency, and it is very easy for us to get all three of our colors online, but outside of dual lands and triomes, we don’t have any interesting non-basics within the deck.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition is combat. Splinter greatly assists with this since even if we aren’t trying to do ninjitsu attacks, he can make our ninjas unblockable, which is especially good if our opponents have a ton of creatures that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to punch through.

Strengths of the Deck

Our ninjas being unblockable easily with Splinter is a great option for our deck at any stage of the game, allowing ninjitsu to almost always be an option for us.

Our ninjitsu abilities triggering twice allows us to get ahead of our opponents very quickly.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Since Splinter is a huge part of our deck and the main way that we make our game plan work, they are often a huge target and will likely die multiple times in a game unless we draw a lot of our protection cards.

While we are great at attacking, we almost never want to block with our creatures. Because of this, we can take a lot of early game damage from our opponents.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Krenko, Mob Boss. Matchup Record: 1-4

This was a terrible matchup for our deck. We are much slower than Krenko, and even though we are good at attacking unblocked, we just don’t deal enough damage to outpace Krenko. This was a terrible one for us; the only saving grace is keeping Krenko off the field as much as we can.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Anguished Unmaking, Despark and Throat Slitter.

Game 2: Vs Shelob, Child of Ungoliant. Matchup Record: 4-1

I liked this matchup a lot. While we aren’t able to interact much with Shelob’s spiders since they have a pretty steep ward cost, we can rely on our removal as well as our mostly unblockable creatures. Shelob is a pretty slow deck, and we are too, but since we can make our ninjas unblockable, we have the edge.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Silver-Fur Master, Thousand-Faced Shadow and Mist-Syndicate Naga.

Game 3: Vs Kilo, Apogee Mind. Matchup Record: 3-2

A winnable but tough matchup, their commander is a powerhouse. They can do some pretty broken things with all of those proliferate effects. Keeping Kilo off the field and dominating combat is the best way to win here. Do not underestimate Kilo; they can get big quite quickly, but keeping them off the field is the best way to deal with them.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Anguished Unmaking, Cover of Fear and Raise the Palisade.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed the first deck for TMNT week. Ninjas are an extremely fun creature to type to play both because they are strong, but because of the ninjitsu ability, they feel like you are truly being sneaky like a ninja, just an amazing deck that is a blast to pilot.