MTG Salvation

So I recently made a deck around Nin, the Pain Artist that has been a blast to play with and pretty cheap to build. Most of the cards were just ones I had lying around; the rest were either really cheap, or one or two expensive cards that I felt the deck particularly needed (*coughStuffy Dollcough*). The entire deck costs about $62 according to the prices on this site.



So Nin could be played in a much more control-y fashion (I only run three counterspells, and two of those give me something neat in addition to countering a spell), but where's the fun in that? The point of this is to let everyone do their cool things - with maybe me doing a few more cool things than they are. Seems to work better in multiplayer, but isn't bad in 1-vs-1.

How does the deck run? I never use more than a couple of CIPT lands (except for cyclers, which I only use in mono decks...and often cut for mana-doubler support). I just wonder how big (and how often) you use Nin's ability.

I might also use Word of Seizing for its utility.

Usually it's get some creature down (preferably indestructible), and start using Nin on that creature to dig for a couple of key things:

Hand extenders: Reliquary Tower, Spellbook, Venser's Journal.
Theft spells: Unwilling Recruit, Act of Treason, Traitorous Blood, Mind Control, Corrupted Conscience, Volition Reins
Leyline of Anticipation - just because.
Win conditions: Stuffy Doll, Psychosis Crawler, Red Sun's Zenith, Devil's Play.

With the X burn spells, I also try to copy them to further increase the damage, although sometimes triple Knowledge Exploitation is fun, too. :3

By "run" I just meant if it had any problems in the way you play the deck. Can your deck survive a Hallowed Burial? Is it too reliant on the general?

Ah, I see. I haven't had too many problems with it so far, although it is a bit light on win conditions (making cards like Denying Wind or Sadistic Sacrement (kicked) problems).

I don't think it's too reliant on the general, although having Nin certainly helps. Nin's the fastest way to draw cards in the deck, but there are plenty of others.

Hallowed Burial is not a card I've seen in my meta, to be honest. If anything, the meta is sweeper light, with the exception of the Child of Alara deck that also runs a bunch of reanimation on top of 5-color goodstuff (mostly blue-green-black with a pinch of white and hardly any red). I have not yet played this deck against that one, and I suspect bad things will happen when I do. The deck doesn't seem to be too dependent on its creatures, but its non-creature permanents are rather useful.

Edit: I should note that I haven't played it just a whole lot yet - only something like four or five games. It tends to make games take a while.

Gotcha. I've wanted to build Nin for a while and wondered about cards like Training Grounds, Rings of Brighthearth, Magewright's Stone, and Thousand-Year Elixir for her. I imagine my build would be too dependent on her, though.

I considered Training Grounds, but it only interacts with two creatures in my current deck list - Nin and (sort of) Echo Mage - so it didn't make the cut.

Rings or Thousand-Year Elixir might be worthwhile, especially if you have some other activated abilities. I wouldn't bother with Magewright's Stone, though, because you're essentially missing out on three cards by splitting it across two activations of Nin - unless you're trying to kill opponents' creatures, but you probably don't want to do that with Nin except as a last resort, anyways. This, of course, assumes you want those cards specifically for Nin, and not for other creatures in the deck. If your other creatures are worth it, go for it, but in general mine aren't. The only exception to that is Echo Mage. Now there's a creature worth untapping.