The Firefly Ninja is a very trick card to analyse. On one hand, with only 2HP and 1 Attack Power, it isn’t a very strong card at all, and with a Summoning Cost of 3, it might seem a little expensive. On the other hand, it has 2 extremely potent defensive abilities that can cause your opponent some big problems – it gains Perfect Dodge when on a Fire Field (which when combined with the Field Bonus, boosts its HP to 4, giving it a measure of protection against the low cost Magic Attacks), and if you have a Spider Ninja on the board, it becomes Invisible, making it immune to all attacks.
So, the question is, is it a good card because it has the potential to survive for a long time, or a bad card because it is so weak? Unlike the other Ninja cards, it has no special attack ability to make up for its low Attack Power, but to make up for that, it has its Perfect Dodge power, giving it the chance to survive long enough to get other Ninjas on the board. Ultimately, it depends on the current board situation. If there is a Fire Field free, and your opponent isn’t heavy on the Magical Attack cards, the Firefly Ninja can be extremely useful. However, placing it on a non-Fire Field is basically a waste of time – he’ll do very little damage and get picked off extremely quickly.
So really, the best use for this card is as part of a Ninja Deck (something which has been much less popular lately) – playing the Firefly Ninja first onto a Fire Field gives it the chance to survive for long enough that you can get your other Ninjas onto the board to complete the Invisibility set up they have. Outside of this role, the Firefly Ninja is little more than a very weak Annoyance card.

The biggest weakness of this card is its vulnerability to Fieldquakes. A Fieldquake will rob it of both its Field Bonus and its Perfect Dodge, leaving it in a very weak position, and if the Field it is on has Water on the reverse side, the Fieldquake will destroy it entirely. This means that as the lynchpin of a Ninja deck, it is very easily removed, causing the rest of the deck to crumble beneath it. Should you find your opponent using this card against you, this is the simplest, cheapest way to remove it from play. Just Fieldquake it, and it becomes little more than an expensive low level card and a single blow from most cards will finish it off.

Despite this though, it can be a useful card in the right circumstances. If your opponent is running low on Mana, and can’t afford a Fieldquake (or he doesn’t get one when he needs one – it’s happened to all of us, probably more than once), or if he simply decides to ignore the Ninja (which is also possible, due to the decline in popularity of Ninja decks), it has a good chance of surviving the entire match. With some careful placement and some support from other cards (a Verzar Canine, maybe), it can even overcome its Fieldquake weakness.

In the end, the use of this card depends on your deck. The Firefly Ninja is obviously a core component of the Ninja deck, but it can also do very well in Dodge decks or decks designed to make your opponent burn extra Mana. And remember, Clare Wil’s Banner can make even the weakest card into a big hitter.

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Trade for this card at the Eye of Judgment Card Manager