Notes & Combos
A weird little Ninja hybrid exploring Krawler Soma's synergy with Ninjas. The cost of flipping a monster face-down is often irrelevant in this deck, making Soma a "free" extender, minus the obvious deck strain of 2 little Krawlers. The collection of Level 2 bodies can produce a Ninja in "Ninja" Shadow Mosquito, but this synergy doesn't come up as often as I expected. The card is still insanely good anyways though, cheesing out wins esp in tandem with Meizen. The main reason that synergy doesn't come up that much is because a bunch of level 2 bodies also enables Spright plays, which goes a lot farther than turning 2 bodies into 1 Ninja. Ignoring anything else, an unrestricted Soma makes Elf, IP, Carrot and a Level 2 body on board, with Elf getting another L2 next turn so IP can make 3 mat Apollousa.
While the necessary Spright cards take up a decent amount of space, their use isn't just restricted to Soma since the Ninja engine also has Level 2s, 3 Mitsu and 2 Green in this case. So even though there are some times that the Spright cards can be awkward (mainly stuff like say, Hanzo+Spright), more often than not they're a welcome addition to your hand even without Soma. This also means Elf can help recycle Ninjas. Green is particularly nice to bring back, since linking it off with IP means making Apo itself becomes a disruption.
A notable addition to the deck from the rank 2 pool is Mannequin Cat, which is an insanely flexible searcher with the wide array of attributes in this deck. Earth (Maxx C, Fenrir) is the most impactful, giving Tobari or Jioh for disruption, or Soma on your turn for extension. Ash Blossom's Fire also gets Kagero from deck for recovery. Additionally, if your opponent used a hand trap turn 1, it makes Art Notebook live.
The Ninja engine is culled a bit to make room for this, naturally. Tobari is dropped to 2 since it's awkward in hand, and Village is dropped entirely since some hands aren't even summoning Ninjas turn 1. Baku struck me as a bit clunky, and in this particular build Sprights and Soma provide plenty of extension. Both traps are at the minimum 1 to be searched.
Non-engine-wise, there's not a ton of room. Anti Maxx C cards are mostly maxed out, though Called By/Crossout are just as much for Ash Blossom. I've found Imperm pretty unimpressive this format, so I swapped to a set of Bystials for their use vs Branded/DLink/Mathmech. There's also enough Darks so that they're still usually summonable vs other decks.