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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Strike Ninja
Ultra Rare

You can remove this card from play until the End Phase of this turn by removing 2 DARK monsters in your Graveyard from play. You can use this effect during either player's turn. You can only use this effect once per turn.

Type - Warrior/Effect
Card Number - IOC-007

Card Ratings
Traditional:
Advanced:

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale 1 being the worst.
3 ... average. 5 is the highest rating.


Date Reviewed - 01.23.06

 

ExMinion OfDarkness
Strike Ninja

I'm suprised we haven't looked over this thing more recently. It's sick and wrong in the right deck.

Strike Ninja is a 1700/1200 Dark monster that can essentially "dodge" destruction effects and battles he doesn't want to be in by removing 2 Dark monsters from the Graveyard. Assuming you're playing a deck with a lot of Darks (which is easy to do today, with Tomatoes, Dekoichis, Dons, Reapers, Sangan, Breaker...) you can assume you'll get the effect at least once, probably twice on your first Strike Ninja. Once he runs out of ammunition, he's half of what you need to remove for your NEXT Strike Ninja.

We've all played against the standard cookie-cutter deck; Strike can dodge a lot of the destruction effects. Assuming you have the monsters to remove, he has no reason to fear Smashing Ground, Sakuretsu Armor, Torrential Tribute (including your own), Dark Hole (again including your own)...and he just laughs in the face of Snatch Steal. Additionally, if you do let him go to the Graveyard, and you use Call of the Haunted or Premature Burial to revive him, if you use his effect once he's back on the field, he's no longer connected to the revival tool. That's pretty useful as well. Finally, he does aid in GY monster removal so he could be the star of a Return from the Different Dimension variant deck.

And although we don't talk about it much, in Traditional, he can dodge the almost inevitable Chaos Emperor Dragon explosion and leave you with great field position afterwards (that is, if you don't die from the burn.)

4/5 Traditional
4/5 Advanced
 

Leon

 
Strike Ninja

The other reviewers will be happy with this week. Far from reaching for good uses this whole week is chalk full of actually good cards. In many ways this makes the job easier.

We start things off with Strike Ninja. This guy has had an interesting evolution steming all the way back to the pure Chaos days before any banned lists were implimented. Early on we saw a deck that pitted this card in conjunction with D.D. Scout Plane. This provided a unique form of Tribute support, hence allowing a deck to run more of them then previously thought wise. In many ways this could have been a precursor to Soul Control. The build eventually died out, as new lists sapped the quickest forms of deck thinning for the Scout Planes: namely Painful Choice and Graceful Charity.

Each format tested new forms of this build but I do only see it coming back into popularity for this format due to two reasons. First, Paul Levitin and his success with the Bazoo the Soul Eater and Return from a Different Dimension deck. It allowed many connections to be made with Strike Ninja's closely related cost and provided a way to turn cost into advantage. Second, the recent success of the build in the European metagame at Pharoah Tours.

This guy has decent stats and a sick survival ability packaged in. The trick is giving him fuel to utilize the effect fully. Given the state of gameplay this can vary. Late game he can win it for you outright if you still have a decent lp buffer to be willing to take damage. Early game you may only get enough to remove it once. Usually it won't do as much for you.

Without a doubt he is a vicious turn to some originality if you choose to take this route. All dark lineups, with the synergy of Mystic Tomato, and the speed of the underused Cyber Jar can give this guy all the support you'll need.

This makes him also quite splash friendly, as all you'd really need to be doing is comitting yourself to a single attribute. Dark World, Generic Fiends, Toolbox, Tomato Control, and Return all can work well here.

Advanced: 4/5
Traditional: 4.5/5 - Use the Scout Plane build here. The speed is there and the results are superior then what Advanced has to use.
 

Coin Flip
Normally I pick fairly good weeks, and this time around is no exception. Today we have the legendary Strike Ninja.

It isn't often that a card comes around that is so awesome it inspires a whole decktype with only one real support card. I often cite Gravekeeper's as the most powerful theme in the game, and I often tell you that this is my philosophy. For good reason. Gravekeepers are so powerful that their best cards leak into other decks. I mean, when you build a Gravekeeper deck, you normally don't even use half of their support. There's Assailant, Spy, Spear Soldier, Necrovalley, Rite of Spirit, Royal Tribute, and maybe GK Chief. But most of the better GK decks don't even use Chief or Tribute. And when you think about it, these effects are insane. Rite of Spirit gives you mass amounts of free revival at no cost whatsoever. Necrovalley screws up games where one player is trying to remove cards with Chaos Sorcerer, Bazoo, Strike Ninja or Kycoo. It makes cards like Call of the Haunted, Premature Burial and Magician of Faith dead draws immediately, and nullifies their use if they're in hand. Playing this automatically makes those cards completely unusable… The equivalent of them not being in your hand at all. That's a -1 if I ever saw one. Assailant, like Tsukuyomi, offers an infinite supply of a card effect… Tsukuyomi offers the much more powerful Book of Moon, but Assailant doesn't take away your summon and combines Enemy Controller with excellent ATK.

If you are a consistent reader of my reviews or my internet writings (the few articles I've done or the posts I've made on the forums), then you are probably sick and tired of hearing me praise a theme you already know is good. I'm about to shift gears here.

Strike Ninja is by far one of the greatest cards ever designed ever. It turns every card you lose into a minor amount of card advantage. It offers a sort of pseudo advantage. If they use Bottomless Trap Hole or Sakuretsu Armor, all you do is chain Strike Ninja's effect and then he leaves the field and comes back. You have your Ninja, they don't have their trap… +1, anyone?

As well, he doesn't need several cards of support. The card is so elegant that he accomplishes with just his own effect a card advantage engine with its own protection, decent ATK, and that's not even telling you what happens when we toss in D. D. Scout Planes.

When those guys enter the mix… Yikes. On your opponent's end phase, you remove Ninja from play and then he comes back… If you removed any Scout Planes, you just plain win. +2 advantage. Then you tribute them for Monarchs or for Cannon Soldier…

Okay, that's fine and dandy, but surely that alone won't win… Damn straight. That's why you use the Scout Planes for Tribute bait for large, large pieces of meat… Well, actually, cardboard… Which would be intimidating enough on their own if not for the fact that they will swing for about a third of your life points. Fun stuff? Definitely.

Also, I'm a huge fan of Battle Phase Special Summoning. I consider it to be one of the most powerful things you can do in this game. A Call of the Haunted in the Battle Phase is usually gamebreaking. You can probably recall your own experiences, whether losing or winning, when that changed the scope of the game in a very bad way for one player or the other. Consider Strike Ninja. Now consider how many monsters you're removing from play. Now, let's say you use Return from the Different Dimension…

I just heard some eyes going wide with possibilities. RftDD will, in short, end a game. You attack with Strike Ninja. No response. 1700 damage. You remove Strike Ninja. You summon out Strike Ninja and at least two other monsters. You hit for at least 1700 more, and the variable damage of the two removed monsters. Assuming you only have two monsters removed from play. That's a two card combo that, in short, wins games. It's why I consider buying the exclusive packs a worthwhile deal. Every player needs access to three RftDD, and to a lesser extent, three Peten the Dark Clown. But there are so many combos with RftDD… Jinzo gives your freshly-summoned monsters trap protection, D. D. Survivor is permanently returned (as is Elemental Hero Wildheart…), and Cannon Soldier turns all of them into extra amounts of large damage. Sound cool? I thought so. How about summoning a Dark Magician of Chaos? I'd like a free Spell Card, yeah. Ceasefire, while not the best addition, is still another source of free extra damage. Exiled Force, maybe? With a tech'd Bazoo? What about Sangan? It would rawk to send him to the graveyard again, wouldn't it?

All of these cards weren't intended to combo with Strike Ninja. That's why Strike Ninja is such a powerful combo deck. They all stand alone and are powerful alone, and even more powerful together. It's the perfect concept of unity; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In that way, it also disproves conventional mathematics.

Successful themes are made by having elegant cards with simple and powerful effects. Look at the gadgets. The concept is incredibly simple, and the theme is powerful enough to be cookie cutter in Japan with only four cards for the theme in total… One of which isn't even used in Gadget decks! Necrovalley/GK requires a lot of deck space, but it rewards you by replacing the cards you would have used. Strike Ninja doesn't demand deck space. It just demands that you think your moves out.

The deck is awesome, and the card is awesome. Proof of a good theme is seeing the best (and, in some cases, worst) cards of a theme leaking out into other decktypes. This theme only has two real support cards (Ninja and Scout Plane), and Ninja has already leaked out of its respective deck for very, very good reason. The card is awesome.

So I'll give you your ratings and end this obsessively long review. Two pages in Word… And that's before it's sent into the small CotD frame on Pojo.com...

General:
Traditional: 3.8/5
Advanced: 4.1/5

Considering how powerful Dark Realm is in Traditional, your deck should be chock-full of DARKs and LIGHTs all around, but especially DARKs. And hey, it stops the Yata lock cold. I'd play this here in a second, unless it interfered with Dark Realm.

In Advanced, small +1 advantages destroy the game in a second. It's ironic how a +1 in Traditional is usually followed up by a -1 and is in no way indicative of an endgame, yet that format is so ludicrously unbalanced and Advanced seems to indicate the winner by seeing who gets the first +1…

Strike Ninja.dek:
What are you, stupid?

Traditional: 5/5
Advanced: 5/5
 

dawnyoshi Strike Ninja is a fine example of an effect that Konami REALLY needs to work with more: multi-trigger. Basically, at any point outside of the damage step (and not in response to spell speed 3 effects), you can remove two dark monsters to “ninja vanish” your nifty monster out of the game until the end of the turn. This makes for some powerful evasion versus cards such as Sakuretsu Armor, and it also makes those mass removal effects less powerful. Strike Ninja is very good in this format, and is definitely worth exploring as a deck theme. Right, Jae? :P

In traditional, Strike Ninja doesn’t offer anything to first turn kill, but it’s actually decent in the chaos and Dark World decks that could exist in the format. Dodging in response to Chaos Emperor Dragon is just ridiculous, and Dark World has an infinite symbol on it for the number of dark monsters the deck runs. It’s good tech in both.

Advanced: 4/5
Traditional: 4/5
 

Otaku

Today we look at Strike NinjaStrike Ninja came in the English Starter... oh, wait, we are talking about the card and not the Dungeon Dice Monsters figure.  Pity, I really like DDM… and we’ve covered this Strike Ninja twice before.

Stats                : In terms of [just] stats, Strike Ninja is very good, though not great.  Level 4’s only draw back is the infamous stall cards (Level Limit-Area B and Gravity Bind) just barely catch it.  Of course, being a Dark Monster is fairly good since so many Dark Monsters are so strong.  Being a Warrior is great: it is the best supported of the Monster Types.  The combination of the two leads to many, many good combos.

An ATK of 1700 is good for a Level 4 Monster unless it is purely a beatstick.  1200 DEF is a slight concern: people still pack that lone Book of Moon, and Tsukuyomi still sees good play.  At least they’ll need another Monster along with Tsukuyomi.  Still, it isn’t a huge concern.

Effect(s)            : You may remove two Dark Monsters from your discard pile to remove Strike Ninja from the game until the End Phase of the turn.  This would be pretty lame except, surprise!  It’s one of the few Monster effects that are Spell Speed 2.  In other words, when ever anything threatens Strike Ninja you can remove it from play to avoid said problem.  It’s pretty useful; just remember you will need fuel for the effect.

Uses and Combinations  : D.D. Scout Plane springs immediately to mind.  They’re too strong, but they will Special Summon themselves to your side of the field if they removed from play.  It is a bit annoying that they are in ATK mode (making it a bad idea to use them so Strike Ninja can dodge a Sakurestu Armor), but anything the opponent does on his/her own turn, you just scored a big advantage.  There are many, many effects that can make use of them; at the very least they will reduce the damage from an attack even if they are stuck in ATK mode.

You can also just remove good Dark Monsters from your discard, then use Dimension Fusion or Return from the Different Dimension (the latter is recommended) to suddenly swarm the field.  And of course, Reinforcements of the Army and The Warrior Returning Alive make it that much harder to get rid of Strike Ninja.

Ratings

Traditional       : 3/5 – It’s a tentative score here.  You can really through an opponent off if you keep dodging their best cards.  Still, what do you if your opponent forces you to clean out your Graveyard giving you one dodge… and they nail you after you come back.

Advanced        : 3.75/5 – Strike Ninja works best in its own deck, where it is the centerpiece, though a single copy won’t hurt any Dark-heavy deck.  Fortunately, its deck is fairly strong, and does see successful competitive play.

Limited            : 4/5 – Assuming you can pull several even half decent Dark Attribute Monsters you should be able to annoy the heck out of your opponent.  The 1700 ATK is also more useful here.  Just remember that it’s a little easier for the Dark Revelation Volume 2 is more favorable as it has better common Dark Monsters than Invasion of Chaos.

Summary

Strike Ninja is a strong card capable of supporting a strong deck.  The reason it scores comparatively low for a deck centerpiece that can also show up in certain other decks (Dark heavy ones) is that in and of itself, it’s not as impressive.  If you don’t have a way to take advantage of it, I attack Strike Ninja and it “dodges” via its effect.  This triggers a Replay, and now I get to declare my attack again (often a direct attack now).  This isn’t a huge issue, and it is much easier to get into play than many other deck foci.

-Otaku


Dark Paladin
Today we look at Strike Ninja, a card I really really like for no particular reason...it's probably the artwork.

Strike Ninja is one of those cards that I reall see working in only one of two decks, and technically, those two decks could be about the same with a few minor additions.

Strike Ninja has 1700 attack and 1200 defense which is fairly good for a Level 4 monster. He is also a Dark Warrior type which is pretty meh currently (I don't care about Chaos Sorcerer). By removing 2 Dark Monsters from your graveyard, you can remove Strike Ninja from the game until the end phase of the turn.

Also, Strike Ninja can use his effect on either players turn which is good, yet there is a downside. IF he's your only monster, your opponent can strike you directly with his monster or monsters. Strike Ninja could be an excellent choice in a Dimension Fusion or Return From the Different Dimension deck.

The other deck I consider using Strike Ninja is a Dark Magician of Chaos deck. Odds are you'll all ready be running Dimension Fusion or RFtDD if not both in the aformentioned deck anyway. You activate either to bring back a load of powerful Dark monsters for a world of pummeling (hopefully.)

Ratings:

Traditional: 3.5/5
Traditional Dimension Fusion/RFtDD/DMoC deck: 4.5/5

Advanced: 4/5
Advanced Dimension Fusion/RFtDD/DMoC deck: 5/5

Art: 4.5/5 Awesome

You stay classy, Planet Earth :)
 

sHecKii
Strike Ninja

I seem to do card of the days like a lunar eclipse: happens rarely but brightens up the whole world...well minus the whole world part...

WELL I am back for this week, since school has been a breeeeeze so far and hopefully you guys won't forget who I am dxP!

*NOTE* THIS IS A LONG REVIEW

What a card for me to come back to, STRIKE NINJA! ^^ I'm not sure when everyone decided to run Strike Ninja but I'm glad people noticed this versatile Tsukuyomi proof (meaning DEF > 1100), "oops-your-smashing-ground-sakuretsu-armor-widespread-ruin-etc...-doesn't-work", WARRIOR!

Now let me stresssssssss the WARRIOR part. What makes warriors so loveable by almost every duelist across the nation? Running Warriors opens a "searchablity" aspect for a deck other themes lack. Now sure you can run the same cards and simply draw them, but the benefit of a searcher like Reinforcement of the Army brings consistency to a deck, which is one of the most important aspects in building.

Now Strike Ninja's effect "dodges" Sakuretsu Armor, Torrential Tribute, Dark Hole, Soul Exchange, etc... It can remove itself (or for you Magic players: Astral Slide itself) for the turn and returns back to your field. Basically you can protect Strike Ninja for as long as you want, long as you have enough Dark monsters in the Graveyard. It's great in this current metagame, which is dominated by solid 1for1s, (Smashing Ground, Sakuretsu Armor, Exiled Force, etc...), "top-decking" situations, and lots of Dark monsters (Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotives, Sangan, Spirit Reapers, Don Zaloog, D.D. Survivor, Gravekeeper's Spies, etc...) so the Ninja "splash" is okay. If you haven't thought about/seen Ninja in this metagame, you should try it yourself and see what the hype is about.

Let me go back to the Deck construction of Strike Ninja. There are 3 schools of thoughts on Strike Ninja: Play just 1 as "tech," Play 2 and hopefully it makes a big impact, or play the max amount 3 and base a deck on it. If you want to base your deck on Strike Ninja, you have to know about D.D. Scout Planes. Now they are 800/1200, Lv 3, Dark Monsters that basically states if Scout Planes are removed from the game SOMEHOW, bring it back to the field in Attack mode during that End Phase. So if D.D. Scout's are in the Graveyard and you remove them from the game with Strike Ninja, they return on the field during that End Phase. The great thing about Strike Ninja is that if you get Scout Planes in the Graveyard, Strike Ninja for the rest of the game will be "safe" from "destroy" spells (or that's the assumtion at least). But wait, "What happens when you run out of Dark monsters?" Good question!

See, in a FULL on Strike Ninja deck, you use these D.D. Scout Planes as Tribute Food. This concept is very similar to Soul Control, which revolves around achieving advantage using Tribute Monsters (in this case, Monarchs). You are using the dodge ability of Strike Ninja, with Scout Planes, so a) you still have Strike Ninja, a solid creature, b) now you have 1-2 Scout Planes on the board, in this case Tribute Food, and c) keep the cycle going by re-using Scout Planes to remove Strike Ninja and maximizing potential with Tribute Monsters. Try it yourself; you might enjoy the ridiculous advantage this deck can create.

Now if you are running 2 Strike Ninjas, you could also be running the D.D. Scout Planes, but you don't need to. You could focus your deck with multiple Dark monsters and depend on the "ninja-ness" of Strike Ninja to maintain board advantage. Same thing with 1 Strike Ninja but it'll be hard to draw the Strike Ninja sometimes and you may lose advantage fairly quickly.

WOW, this was long. If you read through all this, sHecKii is fairly impressed. Have a fun time practicing with Strike Ninja, I'm sure you guys will love it like I love it.

Ratings:
From 1-3 in a deck, with proper Dark monster count: 4.5/5 [more like 4.2 but let's round up rather then down]

Dark Maltos

 

Strike Ninja

This guy was the 1st ultra I pulled from his pack. Back then I liked him, but I lacked the skill to use him properly.

Strike Ninja is Duke devlins fav card asides from Orgoth the relentless, a card unreleased in the American card game, and its not hard to see why. This guy practically avoids any destruction ability the opponent may throw at you for a relatively cheap cost.

This is a monster with a lot of potential, especially in the right deck. Synergy with Don alone makes him a standout.

2 darks from the grave should not be hard, being the primary type in dueling , but it m,ay be costly to keep up. Keep that in mind.

Traditional ; 3/ 5 Not bad here, but there are better combos with removing cards here, as you know.

Advanced : 4/5 If used properly.

Art ; 4/5 Pretty sweet innit?
 

Bob Doily
Strike Ninja review

So this week was a week of really solid cards to review, and I missed it ><. Well, better late than never, Strike Ninja. Right off the bat his stats are awesome, Lv 4 Warrior, meaning another card for Rota, while being Dark means that not only is he support for chaos, but as you will see support for himself. Finally 1700/1200 means he can survive Tsukuyomi and is on par with DDA.

His effect is what makes him shine, in the current meta 2:1s are extremely rare, and mostly you see the use of various 1:1s. Well Strike Ninja allows you to simply dodge them turning what would normally be a decent trade off for the opponent into a +1 for you. Being a multi-trigger effect is the main reason that he is good, chaining to standard issue Sakuretsu Armor, Smashing Ground etc. Furthermore though he is extremely beneficial because of his cost, not discards, not LP, but dead monsters. Not only was he an early example of a solid use of expended resources, but he required you to remove 2 Darks.

With all of these benefits there has to be a few drawbacks. Well that is true, there are only a few drawbacks to this monster. First off early game he won’t have much fodder, but to make up for this he is fodder for other copies of himself. Secondly it hinders chaos decks to a point by putting further strain on the resources to bring out your Chaos Sorcerers. Yes you can run one, but usually only one as a tech in a deck that runs the Sorcerer, but at the same time the Sorcerer goes to feed the Ninja….

If all this wasn’t enough, he even sets up Return from the Different Dimension, which as has been demonstrated in the past, is an extremely powerful late game win condition.

All in all, the ninja is a really solid card.

Traditional: 3.9/5 (he can dodge Chaos Emperor Dragon :D)
Advanced: 4/5

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