This deck started out as a demon tribal deck but has evolved into more of a combo deck. As time goes on I may end up cutting more demons to make room for more shadowborns and further help my combo, but for now I like having the demons as an alt win con for games when I don't want to be super competitive.
How the combo works:
In this example hand, I will use an extremely unlikely hand as your opening draw. Hell, even if you got it, you probably wouldnt keep it. But doing it this way makes it easier to keep track of cards in hand vs what's drawn, and your opening hand doesn't matter too much anyway.
So, opening hand in this example
1x Swamp
5x Shadowborn Apostle
1x Thrumming Stone
Well assume all draws are swamps, for simplicity's sake.
So turn 1, draw a swamp, play it, play a shadowborn, pass.
Nothing scary, your opponents are now aware you're playing a shadowborn apostle deck, but meh. It's not like we can hide that for too long.
Turn 2
Play another swamp, play 2 shadowborns.
Man, we're aggressive. Totally the dominating threat on the board. They need to target us, now. We can swing with a shadowborn if we want, but what's the point.
Turns 3 and 4 go much like this. Swamp, vomit shadowborns, rinse lather and repeat, so skip those.
Turn 5
Play thrumming stone
Turn 6
Here well mix it up a bit. Instead of drawing a swamp, we'll draw a shadowborn apostle. Cast it, trigger ripple. Why is the deck 33 shadowborn apostles? Because that means that 1/3 cards are shadowborns, so with 4 cards in the ripple we are effectively guaranteed to play them all. So we will. All shadowborns come to the field, we have 33 shadowborns out, 4 mana untapped (we haven't played a land this turn), and a thrumming stone that is now literally useless since there are no other spells with multiples in the deck. Seems like a good turn to win.
Pay 1 mana, sac 6 shadowborns.
27 shadowborns on field. 3 mana untapped.
Pull out razaketh.
Sac a shadowborn to razaketh, 26 shadowborns and one razaketh on field. 3 mana untapped. We're gonna find nykthos. Play it as land for turn.
Produce mana equal to devotion t red. Remember we aren't playing red. Cry because we fucked up our combo. Ask opponents to take it back and produce black mana like we're supposed to. They let us. Because we're nice. They love us. With 26 shadowborns and 1 razaketh, that's 29 black flosting and still one swamp untapped. Let's tap that swamp so it's a nice even 30 mana floating. Sac another shadowborn to raz. Because he's big, beefy and hungry. Feed him. Pull out Ashnod's altar. Play it. 27 black floating. Sac 1 more shadowborn to raz. Pull out torment of hailfire. Sac the remaining 24 shadowborns to the altar, for 48 colorless mana. Add that to our 27 floating black. Cast torment of hailfire for alot. Gg?
This combo seems very magical christmaslandy, but this deck kinda forces us into magical christmasland. If we don't have the thrumming stone in hand, who cares? Play shirei, sac the apostles to find rune scarred demon, the apostles come back at eot, do it next turn instead. With rune scarred now adding to devotion to black. All that we need to draw are enough mana to cast thrumming stone and shadowborn apostles, and the deck is stacked with enough of both that it's virtually impossible not to draw them.
On to the obvious question, why Shirei. Razaketh is a legal commander too, and shirei isn't generally a part of our combo but razaketh definitely is. Fair. But if razaketh is our commander, 1) our opponents know were playing a combo deck before the game even starts and 2) it's very difficult to get him into the library and find him with shadowborn apostle. Meaning we have to pay more mana for him and that slows us down.
"But alias. Why not athreos? Edgewalker is great bro!"
Very true. Edgewalker is great. And the athreos shadowborn deck worked great for Josh Lee Kwai. But that's not me. As my example showed, my deck isn't necessarily built around recurring my shadoworns to tutor for 800 demons. It's about tutoring for 1 demon and then winning the game. So getting edgewalker out and then casting the rest of the shadowborns for free isn't that important to me, and when i do need to recur my shadowborns (like in the rune-scarred scenario above) I only want to have to do it once, meaning it's all too easy for my opponent to pay their 3 life and I don't get my creature back. And since shirei brings them right back to the field instead of through my hand, again, edgewalker isn't necessary. If for some reason I do need to cast all of my shadowborns in one turn (ie, using secret salvage to find them instead of thrumming stone) I can cast one, sac it to the phyrexian altar for b, use that b to cast the next, repeat as necessary, then shirei brings them back at eot and I combo off next turn.
What I love most about this deck is that it can be as competitive or as casual as you want it to be, without changing the decklist. If my opponent has ticked me off and I want to punish him, I have a super heavy combo win at the ready. If im feeling more laid back and want to enjoy the game more, I can win with my demons instead. If I start off going for demons and someone is dangerously close to using one of the super aggressive wins I avoided by using my demons, I can use cards like Contamination or smokestack to bring the game back to a slower pace.
Flip
