making Ninja-Mask playable.

[kl0wn]

Kowal/kl0wn@ I really like your list, but thers one small problem ive noticed is that you dont always get 2mana first turn, and therfore cant play mask or survival until next turn, thats really bad if your opponent gets drain mana or plays chalice for 2.(which happens alot in workshopp matchups)

If they Chalice for 2, you win with Shapeshifter/utility man beats. It can still be done, and I've done it quite a bit. They would really need to Chalice for 2 and 3 to shut you out. Even then, you can still go Aggro with small men (including Squee) and Jiggapede.

of course it dosent kill you, and this is one of the reasons you play fow and duress, but upping the mox count to 5 wold solve this problem, right?

All I can say is try it out. I never felt comfortable with cutting colored mana sources for off-color sources, personally.

[Lashkar]

What about splashing white for Meddling Mages instead of Duress ? This addresses the blue-count and upps the creature count (which is, arguably, never bad in a deck (ab)using SotF).

[Arvid]

Meddling Mages are decent, but just slower. For example, turn 1: Land, BoP. Turn 2: Land, Duress (clearing off counters), Mask/Survival is a nice play which couldn't be done with Meddling Mage. It's a whole turn slower and only really better vs. combo. 

[Kowal]

It's not even really better against combo.  They usually have more ways to remove a mage than they do to aim a kill spell (Freeze or Tendrils) at your face.  I'd much rather have a chance at snagging some of their artifact mana with Duress on turn one than cross my fingers and hope their hand is so bad that they don't win before I can cast a Mage and that they have no way to get rid of it for the next two or three turns while I set up a Shifter kill.

[Dipstik]

The best bet against combo is Root Maze. It fits the curve better, too. I think it's worth playing a couple copies maindeck since it's also good against sac lands and stax variants.

[spawn]

Ive been thinkin alot about the four duress, yes they are prety good against combo first turn or so.
root maze is also good, but it messes up your own deck to(I think).
meddling isnt wath you want either.

swords to plowshares is really good, and another card Ive been thinking about is misdirection.
maby it sound crazy running misd in ninjamask, but it works good in gifts deck, right?
its blue, it can counter and it can protect your guys from removal.

what about it?

also, Im having some problems with platinumangel pre sideboard, maby some sort of removal should be included i main anyway.

maby cutting gigapede, and try with gilded drake, and cut duress for misdirection..

/spawn

[Purple Hat]

isn't the real problem that ninja mask has against CS welders?  as I recall this was the whole reason for running ground seal in the deck back in the day.  it prevents the whole targeted wrath of god thing that comes from welding a shapeshifter into the dreadnaught it's copying.

[NWI Team_Zilla]

If you are worried about welders, just throw some Pithing Needles in, or some Carrionettes(which are working well for me these days).  But usually Welder doesn't have a giant impact on you.

[Dipstik]

Root maze is a better answer against combo than duress. It fits your colors better, allowing you to drop black entirely if you choose. I like to keep it in for sideboard... engineered plague was pure gold at chicago, and I still think Chains is worth boarding.

Keep one Gilded Drake in the main as your answer to platinum angel.

The goblin welder one-sided wrath thing is scary in theory, but it doesn't really come up all that often. Pithing needles in the board might be a good call anyway just to shut down their welders, however.

[carl]

another card Ive been thinking about is misdirection.

what about it?

This has been done over 2 years ago.

also, Im having some problems with platinumangel pre sideboard, maby some sort of removal should be included i main anyway.

maby cutting gigapede, and try with gilded drake

I've done it for a long time.

But usually Welder doesn't have a giant impact on you.

In my book, Welder hitting is almost shutting half of your deck.

The best bet against combo is Root Maze. It fits the curve better, too. I think it's worth playing a couple copies maindeck since it's also good against sac lands and stax variants.

I don't know about main deck, but it's a good card against combo. So is Arcane Laboratory (a bit slow, but that good).
Despite de WW mana cost, I would also have another look at True Believer.

I know offcoulor moxes isnt that good in this deck, almost every spell costs 1blue, or 1green, but you can still play 1st turn survival or mask with a mox and a land.

I tried that, with red in March 2004.

4 Birds of Paradise
1 Quirion Ranger
4 Survival of the Fittest

1 Anger
3 Goblin Welder
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

1 Phage the Untouchable

1 Ancestral Recall
4 Force of Will
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Voidmage Apprentice
3 Volrath's Shapeshifter

1 Black Lotus
4 Illusionary Mask
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Myr Retriever
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Platinum Angel
1 Triskelion

3 Forest
3 Taiga
4 Tropical Island
2 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
2 Naturalize
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Viridian Zealot
3 Blood Moon
2 Viashino Heretic
1 Gilded Drake
2 Stifle
1 Duplicant
2 Tormod's Crypt

But I never took it to a tournament (not enough testing, many Slaver at that time).
I guess DSC is better than Platinum Angel.

edit: what about sylvan library? wouldnt it fit in the deck wery well?

You have more important spells at 2 mana.

[Arvid]

Making a hybrid of Mask and TnT is an interesting thought, and it makes Survival shine even more. However, Goblin Welder has absolutely no synergy with Phyrexian Dreadnought, and fatties like Platinum Angel, DSC, Triskelion (and Duplicant which I think could fit nicely) has no synergy with Illusionary Mask at all (except as an overcosted Aether Vial). The only thing weaving these decks together is Survival and I wonder if it's enough.

IMO Kira, Great Glass-Spinner is better than Gigapede, since it does about the same thing for your Shifter/Phage and can protect your 'Noughts aswell. We'll lose the recurring beatstick against control but I think we can live with it.

[Gabethebabe]

Just came back from holidays and can´t really help correcting the below error

If you play Shapeshifter with Woodripper on top of your graveyard, your shapeshifter comes into play with however many fade counters on it. You can use those counters to destroy artifacts as long as the Shapeshifter is a Woodripper. But if it ceases to be a Woodripper at any point, then you can't use the fade counters to kill artifacts, the Shapeshifter is a copy of whatever creature is on top of your graveyard and has fading counters on it that do absolutely nothing. Unless it becomes a creature with fading again. At which point, you will have to remove however many counters it tells you to at the beginning of your upkeep. When you try to remove a fading counter from it and you can't, it dies (if it's still a fading creature).

Someone let me know if I've left anything out.

This is all irrelevent though, because you shouldn't be playing Woodripper in the deck.

As I said: Fading and Shapeshifter is NOT a combo and VS with Woodripper in the GY comes into play with 0 fade counters.

The effect of the Shapeshifter is a continuous effect. Continuous effects are applied at the moment the permanent hits the table. At this time the
- "As comes into play"
- Comes into play with .. (counters)
- If would come into play
- Comes into play tapped

have already passed, as these are replacement effects that affect the way the permanent comes into play and are executed before the permanent actually hits the table.

Also, because of this, if you play VS with Nought on top, you don´t sac creatures.

First: you apply replacement effects that modify the comes-into-play event
Second: you apply continuous effects
Third: you put "when comes into play" abilities on the stack

[NWI Team_Zilla]

Making a hybrid of Mask and TnT is an interesting thought, and it makes Survival shine even more. However, Goblin Welder has absolutely no synergy with Phyrexian Dreadnought, and fatties like Platinum Angel, DSC, Triskelion (and Duplicant which I think could fit nicely) has no synergy with Illusionary Mask at all (except as an overcosted Aether Vial). The only thing weaving these decks together is Survival and I wonder if it's enough.

Goblin Welder is mostly a backup strategy for the deck, it gets thrown down when your Illusionary Masks are in the graveyard and you want to hurry up and win.  Or if you SotF for the Platinum Angel, then toss it to go get Goblin Welder, you can have a Platinum Angel down a turn later, unless you allready have Anger in the Yard.  Not to mention the ability to screw with your opponents stuff pretty badly if they were running DSC or Stax.  That's the beauty of running Goblin Welder in here, you really don't need it to win, it's just there "Just in case.." 
Goodluck with the deck fellas, and does anyone have any recent Tourney Reports on it?

[Arvid]

I think you'd rather play 4-c than cutting Duress, maybe you could replace Duress with some other disruption (Root Maze, Misdirection?) but 8 non-welder disruption/protection spells seems lika a minimum, be it that Goblin Welder works in a disruptive/protective way against Stax/Slaver.

[Dipstik]

If the top card in your graveyard is a creature at the time this card comes into play, it comes into play with the appropriate characteristics of that card and will trigger any of its own (or others) comes into play abilities as appropriate. [D'Angelo 1999/06/01] It will not apply any "as comes into play" text on the creature card, however. [D'Angelo 2001/08/31]

I believe this means the card comes into play with fading counters. It comes into play with the appropriate characteristics of the card. Anyone else want to comment? Aside from saying "don't play woodripper" anyway