Against the Odds: Oops, All Kaitos (Pioneer)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week brings the long-awaited return of planeswalker tribal as we head to Pioneer to play every Kaito that exists! Thanks to Foundations, we're now up to four different Kaitos—Kaito Shizuki, Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, and Kaito, Dancing Shadow—giving us more than enough for a planeswalker tribal deck. Of course, the question for these decks is always, "What ties all the different versions of a planeswalker together?" In the case of Kaito, this is pretty easy. Every Kaito cares about cheap, evasive creatures, and most of them care about Ninjas! As a result, building around Kaito is pretty simple: load up on every Kaito possible, back them with some cheap fliers and as mana Ninjas as we can muster, toss in a bit of removal, and we're good to go! What are the odds of winning with every Kaito in Pioneer? Let's get to today's Against the Odds and find out!
Against the Odds: Oops, All Kaitos
The Deck
Kaito is an interesting planeswalker to build around. Oftentimes, planeswalker tribal decks are overloaded with expensive late-game planeswalkers, but Kaito is different. The most expensive Kaito is just four mana, and most Kaitos can be cast (or ninjitsued) into play for just three mana! As a result, Kaito Tribal is one of the most aggressive planeswalker tribal decks of all time.
As I mentioned in the intro, Kaito actually is a pretty easy planeswalker to build around. Since Kaito is a Ninja, most Kaitos either make Ninjas or care about Ninjas, and all Kaitos want to be in a deck full of cheap creatures because they all have abilities that care about us attacking with creatures. (Kaito Shizuki's +1 draws us a card if we attacked, Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator gets extra loyalty when we deal combat damage, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares can be ninjitsued into play with the help of an unblocked creature, and Kaito, Dancing Shadow can be double-activated if we bounce a creature that dealt damage back to our hand).
As such, the rest of our deck is overloaded with cheap, evasive creatures, with as many Ninjas as possible. Thousand-Faced Shadow and Moon-Circuit Hacker give us Ninjas to chip in for combat damage and power up our Kaitos while also growing from Kaito, Bane of Nightmares' +1 emblem. Mockingbird isn't technically a Ninja, but it often is in reality since we can use it to clone a Ninja; plus, worst case, it's a cheap flier. Finally, Mutavault gives us a Ninja in our mana base.
Rounding out our creatures are a couple of other cheap fliers, which sadly aren't Ninjas. But there are only so many playable Ninjas legal in Pioneer, so we have to make do with what we have available. Spyglass Siren gives us a one-mana flier that can make a Map, which we can use to trigger revolt on Fatal Push (one of two main-deck interaction spells alongside Thoughtseize). Brazen Borrower is a bit more expensive but super powerful in the late game, when we can use our Kaitos and Ninjas to bounce it back to our hand and repeatedly use its adventure mode to bounce our opponent's permanents.
And that's basically the deck: play cheap Ninjas and fliers, play as many Kaitos as possible, and hope for the best!
Wrap-Up
By the record, Kaito Tribal might be the best planeswalker tribal deck of all time. We ended up going 8-2 with the deck at Mythic on Magic Arena, good for an 80% match-win percentage. It turns out that Kaitos might actually be pretty good.
If the deck has a problem, it's that the Kaitos are too strong and too aggressive. While we did eventually get all four Kaitos on the battlefield at once, which was sweet, in a lot of our games, we'd play just one or two Kaitos, and they would snowball into a win before we could get additional copies on the battlefield. I guess this is a good problem to have, but it was still pretty shocking, especially for a planeswalker tribal deck, which are usually pretty slow and grindy.
The other nice thing about Kaito is that none of the versions are bad. A lot of planeswalkers have one or two really good cards and then a bunch of medium or even bad cards, but not Kaito. Kaito, Dancing Shadow is probably the weakest of the bunch, but it was still pretty solid as a weird removal spell that can draw us cards. Kaito Shizuki and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares were both very good, which probably isn't a surprise since they have seen some tournament play. The biggest surprise was probably Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator. Getting loyalty whenever we hit our opponent with a creature makes the "–2, make a 2/1 Ninja token" way more powerful since the Ninjas we make give us more loyalty to make even more Ninjas, and doubly so once Kaito, Bane of Nightmares's emblems start buffing the tokens.
So, should you run out and start playing Kaito Tribal in Pioneer? While playing three or four copies of every Kaito is probably a bit over the top, I think the answer is yes. The deck absolutely crushed it, to the point where I think an Oops, All Kaitos deck might actually be oddly competitive in Pioneer!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
