Shirei Laughs Last

Commander / EDH* Aristocrats Mono-Black

tombie15

Creature (25)

• 1x Big Game Hunter
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Bone Shredder
• 1x Bottle Gnomes
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Deathgreeter
• 1x Falkenrath Noble
• 1x Fume Spitter
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Heap Doll
• 1x Hex Parasite
• 1x Hope of Ghirapur
• 1x Marionette Master
• 1x Mindless Automaton
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Perilous Myr
• 1x Phyrexian Plaguelord
• 1x Pitiless Plunderer
• 1x Scarecrone
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Thoughtpicker Witch
• 1x Triskelion
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Weaponcraft Enthusiast
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Imperial SealGC
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Minions' Murmurs
• 1x Reprocess

Artifact (17)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Charcoal Diamond
• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Darksteel Plate
• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Genesis Chamber
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Spawning Pit
• 1x Spine of Ish Sah
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Trading Post
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Dark Prophecy
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Infernal Tribute
• 1x Last Laugh
• 1x Mind Slash
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Revel in Riches
• 1x Vampiric Rites

Commander (1)

Land (35)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 1x High Market
• 1x Mortuary Mire
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 23x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold

Instant (4)

• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Thrilling Encore
• 1x Vampiric TutorGC
• 1x Wake the Dead

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Maybeboard

Creature (26)

• 1x Abyssal Gatekeeper
• 1x Blood Pet
• 1x Bogbrew Witch
• 1x Cadaver Imp
• 1x Chimney Imp
• 1x Crypt Rats
• 1x Cryptbreaker
• 1x Death Cultist
• 1x Disciple of Phenax
• 1x Disciple of the Vault
• 1x Dutiful Attendant
• 1x Festering Newt
• 1x Grim Guardian
• 1x Infectious Host
• 1x Kalastria Healer
• 1x Marsh Flitter
• 1x Myr Retriever
• 1x Myr Sire
• 1x Nether Traitor
• 1x Pilgrim's Eye
• 1x Qarsi Sadist
• 1x Rotting Rats
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Soot Imp
• 1x Soul of New Phyrexia
• 1x Thrull Parasite

Artifact (9)

• 1x Bubbling Cauldron
• 1x Culling Dais
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Magebane Armor
• 1x Mind's Eye
• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Spine of Ish Sah
• 1x Staff of Nin

Instant (2)

• 1x Renegade's Getaway
• 1x Rush of Vitality

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Forbidden Ritual
• 1x Morbid Curiosity
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sign in Blood

Land (2)

• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Spawning Pool

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Attrition

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Poor-quality photos of this deck here: https://imgur.com/a/WNVwg5D

Hello! Welcome to my Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker primer! Off the bat, I want to say that I hope this primer serves as a showcase for the ideas behind this deck, rather than a template for you to make a carbon copy of it. I'm very proud of this deck mostly because of the care that has gone into crafting and tweaking it into what it currently is, and I hope that instead of seeing a pile to 99-cards and a commander, you might see an idea come to realization, which might inspire you to do the same, either with Shirei themselves, or with another commander.

Intro

I have always liked narrow and niche commanders which force you to play with narrow and niche cardpools, and utilize off-the-wall technology and synergies to function, and so I've had my eye on Shirei for a very long time even before building this deck. The issue I kept encountering when I would consider building this deck was that none of the lists or primers I looked at felt like real decks, but rather, janky gimmicks that had no chance of actually winning games. There were two builds for Shirei: either you went the Shadowborn Apostle route, or you played a pile of bad 1/X creatures, neither of which actually seemed like legitimate decks. This is a real deck. It isn't a good deck, it's not a competitive deck, and it's not a resilient deck, but it's very real, and when it does what it wants to do, it's very, very good at it.

Some notes:

• This deck is absurdly fragile. It's a bit of a glass cannon, and it's easy to disrupt. I don't know that I've ever heard of a deck just outright losing to Gauntlet of Power naming black before, but this deck does exactly that. This is a casual deck, in the truest sense, and can fare very well against other casual decks, but is quite easily neutered by tryhard decks.

• This deck paradoxically fares much better against more skillful opponents. I realized early on that newer players, or players with poor threat and game assessment tended to see the sheer quantity of what this deck was doing rather than the quality of it. This deck does a lot of stuff, and most of it is really inefficient. Newer players fail to recognize that you saccing and recurring Scarecrone for a full turn rotation to draw 4 cards for 4 mana is actually quite a bit worse than what what most simic decks do with one card in one turn (I am not trying to insinuate that this engine isn't good, only that by comparison to what most other decks can do, it's mediocre). The whole deck functions on these small interactions, and while skilled players will see that you really aren't doing much, new players tend to freak out and start blowing their removal left and right in an effort to stop you. I try not to play this deck against new players as the result.

• This deck is HARD to play. You'll find that you regularly have to navigate stacks that have 20+ spells and triggers on it at once, and the way you navigate these stacks can determine the outcome of a game. Sequencing is very important, as is stacking your triggers correctly. I would try and shortcut my triggers at first when I began getting used to the deck because it became very time consuming, but it turns out that resolving each Blood Artist and Dark Prophecy trigger individually is crucial.

• This deck is dynamic! While you'll find that you typically win with one of the win-cons outlined below, the route to achieving those win-cons differs every single game. This is very important to me, as I tend to get bored of decks once I figure them out, but this deck keeps me on my toes. I find that - more so than most other decks I've piloted - I am my own primary opponent when playing this deck, and my actual opponents just keep it interesting.

Gameplan

The gameplan breaks down like this:

Step 1) Protect Shirei

This deck does very little without Shirei, so we invest heavily into protecting them. The deck is very robust once it gets online, but you will sit there doing nothing without Shirei on board, so use your tutors conservatively to get protective cards like Darksteel Plate or Lightning Greaves.

Step 2) Control The Board and Accumulate Value

The novelty of the deck is that you're using bad cards to gain insurmountable value over your opponents. Shirei's ability triggers EVERY end step, not just yours, so you play a lot on other people's turns. It's worth noting that Shirei's ability triggers AT end step, so you must sac your critters as active player moves to leave their second main phase, otherwise your stuff won't come back until the next turn. Use cards like Big Game Hunter, Perilous Myr. Triskelion and Spine of Ish Sah to deal with problematic permanents. If Shirei is well protected, tutoring up Spine of Ish Sah + Trading Post can be wise, especially if you're dealing with enchantment and artifact-centric decks. Disruptive cards like Mind Slash, Thoughtpicker Witch and Hope of Ghirapur help you keep your opponents in check while you pull ahead and churn out advantage.

Step 3) Go Off

The dream is to control the board with Grave Pact effects until you can slam Genesis Chamber, then Living Death, bringing back some number of Aristocrats (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, etc...) and flooding the table with Myr tokens. Last Laugh is an aristocrat on steroids, and will usually end a game pretty quickly once it hits the table. Cards like Deathgreeter and Blood Artist will offset the damage dealt by Last Laugh, so you'll want to hold priority and sac your whole team, so your aristocrat lifegain triggers stack along with the last laugh triggers. Last laugh can't kill you if all your opponents are dead, even if the stack is otherwise lethal to you, because you win the game when priority is passed, regardless of what's on the stack.

Otherwise, a straight up aristocrat attrition based win-con is totally acceptable. We can achieve this with Blood Artist and co, or with Marionette Master. We have a number of ways of generating either artifact creatures or treasure tokens, and I find that she's really potent with the correct setup.

Bitter Ordeal is an alternative win-con in the right situation, but mostly we want to use it defensively to eat difficult-to-deal-with threats before our opponent can draw them. We've got no built-in way to create infinite gravestorm, so it's unlikely that you'll be exiling more than one person's library, but I've seen it happen before (With Living Death and Hive Mind). Casting this with gravestorm at 9-10 can be absolutely okay in order to preemptively eliminate the best cards from our opponents decks.

Revel in Riches is a cute alternative win-con that I think of more as a less restrictive Black Market than a card I'm going to use to win the game with, though sometimes you get there, especially in conjunction with Pitiless Plunderer.

Card Choices

Ramp

I've tried to include the best artifact ramp available to mono-b in this list. The deck isn't terribly greedy when it comes to mana, but you can never have too much of it. Outside of our mana rocks, we've got Pitiless Plunderer, Pawn of Ulamog, Ashnod's Altar and Revel in Riches to give us bursts of mana when we need it.

Card Draw

Drawing cards is the best thing in magic, and this deck does a LOT of it.

Scarecrone is a really strong engine with Shirei that doubles as some recursion in a pinch.

Dark Prophecy offers insane card draw at a pretty significant cost. We need to find a Deathgreeter effect in order to be sure this card doesn't kill us.

Harvester of Souls/Smothering Abomination are both similar to dark prophecy, but on bodies, and without the drawbacks.

Infernal Tribute has survived countless revisions of this deck, despite the fact that it's not a very good card, for one simple reason: we can sac Dark Prophecy and Spine of Ish Sah to it. Otherwise, it's a pretty mediocre card.

Vampiric Rites Is probably a card that'll get cut once I find something to replace it with. two mana+sac to draw 1 and gain 1 might be fine in order to draw into better card draw and get our engine started, but otherwise it's not great.

Mindless Automaton is effectively a free Scarecrone with added flexibility.

Trading Post is not really a card draw card and is namely in the list for its synergy with Spine, but it does allow you to draw for a small investment when you need to.

Phyrexian Arena is always super solid, if not slow.

Minions' Murmurs is an underrated card. Sometimes it's totally dead, but usually you'll be able to draw 4-5 cards off of it.

Reprocess is an old gem that fits very well into this deck. Being as it was initially printed before WotC had any idea what they were doing, it actually asks you to sac on resolution rather than as part of an additional cost, which makes the risk of getting blown out while casting it lower than say something like Momentous Fall.

Disruption

While we're far from a stax deck, we do have a suite of cards meant to stop your opponents from doing their thing before you're allowed to do yours.

Heap Doll is amazing with Shirei. Allows you to exile things from graveyards every turn.

Bitter Ordeal was discussed above, but I'll mention it again here. Removing the best couple cards from each players deck can be really powerful, especially against combo decks. Don't hesitate to fire this off after gravestorm count reaches 6-7, which will happen quite frequently.

Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos/Butcher of Malakir These effects are very strong against fair decks, or decks that run few creatures, and can keep decks meant to go wide in check pretty effectively, especially in multiples.

Mind Slash allows us to gather information as to what our opponents are doing, and let us get disruptive or key cards out of their hands.

Thoughtpicker Witch is similar to mind slash, but gives us the ability to virtually fateseal our opponents. It's very good against to-the-top tutors as well.

Disclaimer The two cards above aren't very nice, especially in a casual atmosphere, so I typically refrain from going crazy with them. Upsetting your opponents, while also being rude, and in violation of the spirit of the format, is typically incorrect in a deck as fragile as this. Incurring the wrath of a player whom has just had their whole hand shredded, especially when you're in a mid-game situation where you aren't extraordinarily far in the lead is a bad move.

Spine of Ish Sah is our only real way of dealing with problematic noncreature permanents, and is usually worth tutoring up just to have in case.

Big Game Hunter and Bone Shredder are our one-shot spot removal critters, while Fume Spitter, Perilous Myr, Phyrexian Plaguelord and Triskelion are more narrow and accumulative.

Hex Parasite can deal with pesky planeswalkers or other permanents with counters.

Hope of Ghirapur is a cute lil dude who can buy you turns against spellslinger decks or allow you to go off through heavy control decks.

Imp's Mischief is a really flexible card that can be used both defensively and offensively. Initially, I put it in the deck to redirect spot removal, but it's proven time and time again that it's so much more. Being able to redirect a Time Stretch is huge, and it also serves as a means of making sure your opponents use their artifact/enchantment removal on exactly the target you need them to.

Damnation the sole board wipe in this deck is your emergency reset button in case creature decks get out of hand. I find I often don't need to cast it, but it remains in the list because I always want the option to tutor it out if need be.

Sac Outlets

Having access to ways of saccing your dudes is imperative to your plan. Without sac outlets, your creatures dying depends solely on your opponents, which is no bueno.

Ashnod's Altar is probably the best in the deck, for obvious reasons. The ability to accelerate your mana should never be overlooked. Being as we're not a dedicated combo deck, we don't need to fret when our opponents (rightfully) destroy it.

Phyrexian Plaguelord is probably my absolute favorite piece of tech for this deck. Obviously it's a free sac outlet that can kill our opponents creatures, but it also provides us a means of shrinking our creatures with more than 1 power down so that Shirei can bring them back! You can even turn it into a 1/1 if someone tries to kill it. The card is absurdly good in this deck.

Spawning Pit is pretty generic. The tokens it generates are artifact creatures, which matter to Marionette Master (and Disciple of the Vault if he ever finds his way back into the list, which is probable.)

Viscera Seer for B, this dude is the cheapest sac outlet we've got. He's also a 1/1 and comes back to Shirei, which is awesome. The scry is almost negligible, but occasionally allows us to sift for key cards.

Thoughtpicker Witch I've already discussed how powerful this card is above, but it's worth noting that she's also a sac outlet.

High Market lands that do things other than tap for mana are always great.

Vampiric Rites/Infernal Tribute/Mind Slash/Trading Post/Reprocess all have already been addressed.

Recursion

Occasionally, you'll need to reset after your plan gets disrupted, and there are a few cards in the deck which allow you to do this.

Phyrexian Reclamation is an amazing card. Our aristocrats help offset the life cost to activate it, and two mana is a relatively small investment.

Wake the Dead is an awesome piece of tech in this deck. The timing restrictions on it are really weird, but it'll allow you to reset if Shirei eats a removal spell.

Thrilling Encore is a card I'm really excited to play with. I'm a huge fan of Faith's Reward and this is a black equivalent. I see it being easily applied both offensively and defensively.

Living Death can be used as a boardwipe in a pinch, otherwise it's a pretty standard black staple that lives up to its reputation.

Elixir of Immortality isn't quite recursion, but it does allow us some play against the threat of milling ourselves out, or random graveyard hate.

Token Generators

Being as the deck wants lots of things to die, all the time, we've got to include some token generators to make sure there's plenty of things for Last Laugh to blow up.

Weaponcraft Enthusiast is a terrific creature which gives us three bodies for 3 mana, two of which are artifacts.

Marionette Master I've already talked extensively about her as a wincon, but more often than not, you'll be using her to generate servos right up until the turn you think you can go off and win, when you'll want to take the +1/+1 counter option for her fabricate.

Pawn of Ulamog is a great way to continue generating bodies while you do your thing.

Genesis Chamber is a symmetrical effect, so be wary of dropping it too early and allowing your opponents to generate too much value off of it. More often than not, you'll be generating a lot more bodies than your opponents as your critters die and return at the end of each player's turn by the time the game reaches the midgame phase. You can goad your opponents into overextending and then drop Last Laugh when the board is filled with myr for a much less elegant but nonetheless effective win.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Key combos	Spine of Ish Sah + Trading Post
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 39 - 0 Rares 27 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.98
Tokens	2/2 C Artifact Creature Spawn, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Goat 0/1 W, Myr 1/1 C, Servo 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker, Deck Ideas