Party in the Storehouse (casual Shirei)

[Weebos]

I'm thinking about making myself a Shirei deck and your list is very helpful, but I have one question: How do you win?

[RedPanda]

My opponents usually lose all hope of winning and scoop, but occasionally it comes down to getting bits of damage through with power 1 creatures.

Originally Posted by ash and fire

I will say vesper, that in my experience, having a royal assasin or a sorceress queen on the board with shirei is generally always a positive. In an environment looking for ledgitimate answers to the likes emrakul, royal assasin proves his worth time and time again. Plus having him on the field is such a deturrant to your opponents feeling froggy. And the versatility of the queen is ledgendary with shirei. Having it make your pact on a stick a 0/2, or your phyrexian plaguelord a 0/2 so they will reccur is some supreme hotness. Especially with a thousand year elixir to grant them hastiness so you can sack em and do it again.

Usually when I'm staring down an Emmy, Royal Assassin isn't the answer I'd care to have. There's better options that work more efficiently with the deck... And often we can simply recur enough permanents to not be as concerned about annihilator as others might. Jhoira's really the only troublemaker because of her board wipes, but there's not much a Royal Assassin can do about that.

[viperesque]

Originally Posted by Weebos

I'm thinking about making myself a Shirei deck and your list is very helpful, but I have one question: How do you win?

To go into a bit more detail: this particular version of the deck is about as slow as it gets, and it's never going to win before turn 20. The normal wincon is massed tokens, for which you use Pentavus, Triskelavus or Marsh Flitter. When you're spamming possibly as many as twenty per turn cycle, it doesn't take long to build up lethal. But as RedPanda says, once you gain complete board control (something that, for me, tends to happen around turn 30+ if it happens at all), your opponents will usually be nice enough to scoop and save you the trouble.

[viperesque]

ash and fire made the excellent suggestion in another Shirei thread of Genesis Chamber. I'm currently trying that out and will probably move it in on a permanent basis soon. Oversold Cemetery is probably going to find itself being replaced by Phyrexian Reclamation fairly soon, too.

Now, I've been having some problems with artifacts of late. Gate to Phyrexia can dominate games, but it is quite a slow answer, because you need to wait around until your next upkeep. However, there aren't any other decent black or colourless spot-removal cards for artifacts. A friend of mine gave me a good idea, though: Karn. Does anybody else do this in mono-black? It seems like quite a good way of making artifacts more fragile.

[davidboan]

Originally Posted by viperesque

A friend of mine gave me a good idea, though: Karn. Does anybody else do this in mono-black? It seems like quite a good way of making artifacts more fragile.

I've seen this used to good effect. The black deck I've seen it run in also used Liquimetal Coating in conjunction with Karn as a way to deal with enchantments

[ooollliii]

Have you thought about Infectious Host?

I'm not sure whether +1 counters stay on in the yard but if they don't is Carrion Feeder viable?

[bkwrds]

Originally Posted by ooollliii

Have you thought about Infectious Host?

I'm not sure whether +1 counters stay on in the yard but if they don't is Carrion Feeder viable?

I'm not a judge or rules advisor of any kind, so I might be corrected by other members of the board here in some of the finer points of this answer, but no, absolutely not. Unless there's an exception I'm unaware of when a card changes zones (ie battlefield to graveyard, like this instance) it has no "memory" of what it "was" before. So if it's exiled with +1+1 counters, they're gone. Same with graveyard.

Don't think you need Carrion Feeder to come in and out of the yard to work, just to sac all your little men to him and have them come back turn after turn. Could speed things up once you have Triskalevus or another token making dude come up.

I also think Karn is an awesome idea. You could tap Vault of Whispers to Karn's effect, then it would a) 'die' and b) return at end of turn. Time to search for artifacts!

Reason I decided to post in the first place: could you amass enough fellas in a turn to win off Flesh Allergy? Or maybe just Culling Dais? Could be entertaining. I'm building my own version of this deck for sure; I got Cabal Coffers and Nirkana Revenant for $2 a piece value in trades at FNM, so I thought I'd try to build a MB EDH deck. Was looking for something less agitating than Anowon, although maybe I could build Anowon for the Jhoira/Sliver Queen table.

EDIT: Some things you could "manify" with Karn:

Wayfarer's Bauble
Wanderer's Twig
Scrabbling Claws
Phyrexian Furnace
Nihil Spellbomb
Necrogen Spellbomb
Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Conjurer's Bauble
Expedition Map
Juju Bubble

If you wanted to combo off with any of these, you could also add Salvaging Station, which would let you just plain draw a card each time you sac something... so you'd have two possible effects to make these cards better than cantrips.

EDIT 2: I just realized that Ashnod's Altar (which is already in your deck) and Spawnsire of Ulamog can give you a lethal Flesh Allergy. If you have Mirari you can lethal two guys with it.

[Squeestoy]

Edit: Sorry misposted.
Do you have a 1v1 list of this deck?

[viperesque]

Originally Posted by Squeestoy

Edit: Sorry misposted.
Do you have a 1v1 list of this deck?

I don't, no. We never play 1v1 games in our playgroup except on the rare occasion that we can't find any more players, so I really can't be bothered with one.

Originally Posted by ooollliii

Have you thought about Infectious Host?

It seems really slow. Even in a four-player game, it takes five turn cycles to kill someone, assuming I can get it online and not be messed with. And all that time, I'm just pissing someone off.

I'm not sure whether +1 counters stay on in the yard but if they don't is Carrion Feeder viable?

Plenty of other Shirei players here run him, but I'm not sold. While the counters don't stick around in the graveyard, Shirei looks at how he last appeared on the battlefield, which means that a single counter will stop Shirei reanimating him (same reason as why Skullclamp isn't the best card in the deck). This means that he's basically a vanilla sac outlet, because the only way to keep him around is to sacrifice him to himself in response to his other activations, and stop him getting counters that way. Sure, he can occasionally become huge and end games, but he just doesn't seem worth a slot over something with more utility like Viscera Seer.

Originally Posted by bkwrds

I also think Karn is an awesome idea. You could tap Vault of Whispers to Karn's effect, then it would a) 'die' and b) return at end of turn. Time to search for artifacts!

Call me incredibly dense, but the animate-then-reanimate side of Karn didn't even occur to me until you mentioned it. Maaaaaaan. Okay, he's definitely going in.

Reason I decided to post in the first place: could you amass enough fellas in a turn to win off Flesh Allergy? Or maybe just Culling Dais? Could be entertaining. I'm building my own version of this deck for sure; I got Cabal Coffers and Nirkana Revenant for $2 a piece value in trades at FNM, so I thought I'd try to build a MB EDH deck. Was looking for something less agitating than Anowon, although maybe I could build Anowon for the Jhoira/Sliver Queen table.

Both Culling Dais and Felsh Allergy seem distinctly underwhelming. If I wanted cards to perform those functions, I'd use Infernal Tribute (which I do already) or Carnage Altar, and Exsanguinate (40+ mana isn't that hard for this deck).

Wayfarer's Bauble
Wanderer's Twig
Scrabbling Claws
Phyrexian Furnace
Nihil Spellbomb
Necrogen Spellbomb
Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Conjurer's Bauble
Expedition Map
Juju Bubble

The only problem is that I don't really want to be running cards solely because they are good with Karn. That seems like a trap. So of those, I'd only really want to run the Map (and I do already). For what it's worth, though, it also does Sol Ring and Skullclamp!

[helghast101]

Cards I would look into

Beseech the Queen- Good since everything costs so little.
Night's Whisper/Sign in Blood- Cheap draw is always good.
Demonic Collusion- Another diabolic with a buyback.

[viperesque]

Some updates:

-Crystal Ball
-Magus of the Coffers
-Oversold Cemetary

+Phyrexian Reclamation
+Genesis Chamber
+Karn, Silver Golem

EDIT: One more:

-Jet Medallion
+Diabolic Tutor

[Chuck_Finley]

Hey Viper! I just stumbled across this deck and I must say I really like it. I just started playing EDH and I'm using a Teneb deck that also likes to generate advantage by recurring small creatures (read: creatures that fit Sun Titan and Reveillark requirements). I was wondering what your thoughts were on Big Game Hunter. I didn't see it mentioned at all in the thread so I didn't know if you decided against it or overlooked it.

[Jubokko]

I'm really interested in making this deck, but I'm kind of on a budget. What pricey cards would be the easiest to cut without damaging the integrity of the deck.

So far:
Wasteland
Volrath's Stronghold

[viperesque]

Originally Posted by Chuck_Finley

Hey Viper! I just stumbled across this deck and I must say I really like it. I just started playing EDH and I'm using a Teneb deck that also likes to generate advantage by recurring small creatures (read: creatures that fit Sun Titan and Reveillark requirements). I was wondering what your thoughts were on Big Game Hunter. I didn't see it mentioned at all in the thread so I didn't know if you decided against it or overlooked it.

He was a late cut from the initial draft of the deck, and I'm happy with that decision so far. The thing is, most of the creatures I really want to kill tend to be quite small, or shrouded/otherwise immune to such things. I know it sounds weird, but it's an unusual large creature that has a relevant, repeatable ability into the bargain, and I couldn't (or could, if you prefer the perverse American form of the idiom) care less about dumb beaters most of the time. Given that Bone Shredder, a card with a smaller targeting restriction and built in self-sacrifice, is (in my opinion) one of the worst cards in the deck, I don't feel like Big Game Hunter would be all that great.

Originally Posted by Jubokko

I'm really interested in making this deck, but I'm kind of on a budget. What pricey cards would be the easiest to cut without damaging the integrity of the deck.

So far:
Wasteland
Volrath's Stronghold

It's a bit of a shame cutting Stronghold - I would try to leave it till last on your list of cuts. Things wins games all day, and such. Anyway, most of the other expensive stuff is outside the core of the deck, so is reasonably cuttable. Avatar of Woe, Visara, Gate to Phyrexia, Nirkana Revenant, Gilded Lotus, Sol Ring, Top, the various Tutors and draw spells (although it's a shame), Damnation, Disk, Greaves, Karn, Shield, Nexus, Coffers and its other engine pieces (Urborg, Vesuva, and the decidedly cheaper but fairly useless on its own Deserted Temple), Glaciers, Phyrexian Tower - all of those can be dropped (for more one-power guys, or budget replacements) without taking away what makes the deck work. You'll just lose some consistency. The only semi-expensive card that I would absolutely insist you keep is Grave Pact, and ideally Stronghold.

[fzian]

Originally Posted by viperesque

It's a bit of a shame cutting Stronghold - I would try to leave it till last on your list of cuts. Things wins games all day, and such.

Just for curiousity, what is your opinion on replacing Volrath's Stronghold with a more budget Haunted Crossroads?