Primer -- Dimir Tempo (Ninjas)

Canadian Highlander Aggro Counters Ninjutsu Tempo UB (Dimir) Unblockable

GrimmScott

Creature (35)

Instant (24)

Land (31)

Sorcery (5)

Artifact (3)

Enchantment (2)

Maybeboard

Creature (5)

Instant (3)

Dimir Tempo

Reasons to run Dimir Tempo

If you like saying "No" to a ton of your opponents spells
If you like playing on your opponents turn
If you enjoy playing with ninja's
If you enjoy playing games where there are many different lines of play
if you want to make your opponent scared to play a single card in fear of responses

if you enjoy any or all of these things, this deck may be the one for you

Point Decisions

Points: Mox Sapphire(3), Mox Jet(3), Treasure Cruise(1), Mana Drain(1), Dig Through Time(1), True-Name Nemesis(1)

For this deck there are, in my opinion 2 ways to use your points. Ancestral Recall + dig, cruise and true-name or double mox + dig, cruise, true-name and mana drain.

I chose to go with the double moxen as it gives you one extra point to work with that can be used on Mana Drain as well as allowing for more explosive starts

by choosing to run Mox Sapphire and Mox Jet you do sacrifice some of the draw power that Ancestral Recall gives you, but I believe that in a deck like this going faster than your opponent is what you generally want to be doing.

I run Treasure Cruise because of the hand reload it gives you after your graveyard starts filling up with counter spells and creatures, paired with Dig Through Time you have quite a bit of card draw in the deck. I run True-Name Nemesis simply because the card is nuts, it was built for a multi player format and being only 1 point in Canadian highlander lets you run a card that can win the game on its own for minimal cost. Finally I used my remaining one point on Mana Drain because its an amazing counter spell that ramps you the following turn.

Notable Exclusions

Vampiric Tutor: I chose not to run vamp tutor because, while it does give you card selection, and it can close out games by being cast in response to a Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow trigger, I believe that your points are better spent in larger draw spells like Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise. the card can be very strong in certain meta games but where I play there are a large number of creature based mid range strategies that run hate bears cards that stop tutoring such as Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter.

Umezawa's Jitte: Simply put, I'm bouncing my own creatures with ninjitsu too often to make this card a fast enough clock for it to make the cut, if you cut down the number of ninja's to 3 or 4 this card could be quite solid

Mind Twist: I want to be holding up mana each turn and generally want to be playing on my opponents turn and not my own, a sorcery speed discard is not what I want to be doing with my mana. if you want more disruption, run more of the less mana intensive options such as Duress or Divest

Ancestral Recall: This card is quite frankly amazing, it draws 3 at instant speed with no drawback, but I value the double moxen and the extra point that gives me more than the card draw.

Synergy's and Combos

The first synergy in the deck is Ukkima, Stalking Shadow with literally any ninja. The fact the card reads "When it leaves the battlefield" means that whenever you ninjitsu Ukkima back to your hand you drain 2 from your opponent. Ukkima, Stalking Shadow also doubles as an unblockable beater in a pinch.

The next card in the deck that can act as a house is Slitherwisp, with 10 flash creatures in the deck this card acts as a varitable card draw engine that also drains your opponent when you cast a spell with flash, while also having flash itself allowing you options on spending your mana

another combo that lets you counter a spell every turn is Deprive + Mystic Sanctuary. This duo of cards lets you counter any spell each turn because for some reason Mystic Sanctuary was printed with the "island" land type letting it be bounced as the additional cost of Deprive letting you infinity recur deprive should you so choose. Very strong combination of cards when playing againsed combo decks such as doomsday, Abzan undying, storm, and time vault.

Meta Calls

I choose to run a minimal amount of planes walker removal in the deck in exchange for a higher density of creature kill spells and counterspells.

If you play in a more spell heavy meta game, some cards to change would be Heartless Act, Dismember, Force of Despair and Malicious Affliction in exchange for more versatile cards such Eliminate, Collective Brutality, Mystical Dispute or effects such as Stifle if your playing againsed a lot of Thassa's Oracle decks or lands deck to distrupt effects such as Karakas or Blast Zone

The Game Plan

There are two ways the deck plays depending on the match up, either re-actively or pro-actively

Control

if your playing againsed hard control you want to be playing pro-actively, meaning, you want to be applying pressure to your opponent through creatures and by discarding them through Thoughtseize effects until your opponent gets to 3 or 4 mana availble at which point you want to start holding protection because of the high density of 3 and 4 mana board wipes inluding but not limited to Wrath of God, Damnation, Kaya's Wrath, Anger of the Gods and Toxic Deluge. All of these are going to suck for you if they resolve. Generally againsed control, go fast and hold up at least one piece of interaction a turn and you should have minimal problems

Midrange

midrange decks are a fairly even match up and make up most of my personal meta, some of the common decks you'll see include: mono white death and taxes, abzan garbage platter, izzet blitz, 4 color pile decks, mono green hoof decks, and mono red aggro/midrange/beefy decks. the decks that don't include red are favored for you, while the red decks are a harder match up. This is due to the many low cost, instant speed kill spells that mono red runs that kill your unblockable creatures before you get to swing with them. Notable spells include Lightning Bolt, Abrade, Incinerate, Shock, Chain Lightning and a whole bunch of others. Againsed midrange decks you want to land and protect your unblockable creatures and constantly threaten the ninjitsu againsed your opponent if they ever drop to 10 or below life. you want to be playing proactivly againsed midrange decks as they dont usually have enough answers to remove all of your creatures of fight through your high density of counters

Combo

Combo decks constantly have the threat of being able to "go off" on any given turn which forces you to play re-activly to them. You want to land one of your low cost creatures and ninjitsu it into one of your snowballing ninja's such as Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Moonblade Shinobi or Mist-Syndicate Naga and then hold up counters for the rest of the game to stop them from going off. the other plan is to land either Brineborn Cutthroat or Faerie Vandal, both cards that get bigger the more you interact with your opponent. both of these cards reward you for play counter and draw spells on your opponents turn and represent a very fast clock if left unanswered

Update: an idea I have been playing around with is lutri the spellchaser, it acts as both another flash creature for slitherwisp, it's an effective beater and allows for some absolutely dirty plays with counter magic and kill spells. I absolutely love lutri with instant speed interaction like fatal push. Againsed aggro and midrange decks it's just such a massive tempo swing killing 2 creatures and putting a threat on the board. For example your monogreen opponent just finished their turn 4 and now has a steel leaf champion, a questing beast, and some mana elves. Lutri let's you blow up the 2 biggest threats with fatal push, or any other kill spell.

Lutri also works with counter spells and works wonders againsed force of will in response to your counter magic. Your opponent casts jace, you counter it, your opponent force of Wills in response and BOOM you hit em with the otter, copy your spell pierce or whatever you used to counter jace in the first place and now your stupidly ahead on board and are ready to ninjitsu on the following turn, and are ready to hold up the other again. Long story short I love this card

Suggestions

Updates Add

Another Update — April 16, 2021

Edit

After re-reading Test of Talents and the way it works in Canadian highlander, it does everything the deck wants to do, it counters a spell, you get to look at your opponents hand, setting you up for future counter spells, and you get to look through your opponents deck letting you see their higher end plays and win conditions if they are not playing something glaringly obvious like academy or storm. The card that is being replaced is Heartless Act, as it's a basic albite efficient kill spell and I would rather counter a stormplayers stuff then kill a creature most of the time, and for the most part I think this deck fairly easily beats out other creature decks, we are just faster.

Card Changes — April 11, 2021