Deck Description
Shorikai, Genesis Engine?? More like Shorikai, Value Engine! This is an awesome commander, it's very flavorful, plus it's ability is great and helps all the kinda bad vehicles in this deck become not quite as bad since they'll be much easier to crew with an army of pilots (colorless 1/1 that crews as if it's power were +2). Shorikai is very inefficient to crew and turn sideways, but it's activated ability provides a ton of value in the form of card advantage, a discard outlet, and good bodies (when paired with your vehicles). This means the deck can attack from several angles at once; grinding opponents out with cards and a constantly growing board, binning and then reanimating big bomb finishers, or simply facilitating the ability to attack with consistently above-rate vehicles, many of which have good effects, and are naturally resistant to wraths.
Much of the deck is the proven-to-be-strong mono blue artifacts shell that's packed with value, card draw and ways to consistently get your big, useful artifacts into play. White mostly adds an extra layer of interaction in the form of wraths and targeted removal and you could even add more protection (Teferi's Protection or Bronze Guardian) if you find your counterspells aren't quite cutting it against your opponents' artifact destruction.
Card Choices
I've broken this down into several categories/archetypes of cards that make up this deck's specific gameplan. I'm not including categories like ramp, card draw, counters, removal etc. since they're pretty universal.
I'll first mention the Pilots: Kotori, Pilot Prodigy, Prodigy's Prototype, Hotshot Mechanic, Reckoner Bankbuster and Shorikai itself should make crewing big vehicles a non-issue.
There's also the option to use an Animator on those big vehicles so they can drive themselves. This is possible with cards like Peacewalker Colossus, Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh (that -2 animates the artifact foever[!]), Mobilizer Mech, Katsumasa, the Animator, Mech Hangar, a late game Dance of the Manse (which is also a good reanimator to offset Shorikai's discard clause) or the ults on Tezzeret the Seeker and The Antiquities War. It's important to note that some of the animators allow the vehicles to keep their original statline, and some don't. Obviously whether that's a good or bad thing depends on the vehicle but I won't be complaining about a "free crew" either way.
There is a pretty small set of Discarders that I'm going to mention just because we do take advantage of the graveyard a bit. Shorikai is going to do most of the work here but I wanted to fluff the numbers for consistency's sake. While Emry, Lurker of the Loch technically doesn't discard she does put things into the bin, more on her later. Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh's +1, Thirst for Knowledge and Smuggler's Copter are great since they filter/give straight up card advantage, and you only have to discard the one fatty you actually want in the bin.
The deck runs a lot of Recursion/Reanimation (because of the discard elements), which I've combined into one grouping for simplicity. These are cards such as the aforementioned Dance of the Manse and Emry, Lurker of the Loch (we're not running any combos based around her, she's just here for the value), as well as Tameshi, Reality Architect, Brilliant Restoration (this might be way too tough to cast but I want an effect like it, and Wylie Beckert is a top 5 artist for me), Trading Post, Buried Ruin, Academy Ruins, Junk Diver and Myr Retriever. Those last two synergize very well with Oswald Fiddlebender who also likes to sacrifice Ichor Wellspring, Solemn Simulacrum and Spine of Ish Sah at the top end, or even a thopter you have laying around to fetch up something strong at 1 MV like Skullclamp.
Oswald brings me to the next section of cards I'm including, which is a combination of overlapping categories again, the Tutors/Cheaters. These cards help you find specific artifacts from the deck and either put them into your hand or onto the battlefield. Some of the cheaters are more limited than others, such as only cheating an artifact from x cards on top of your deck, or from your hand but they often have a discounted price and/or they are repeatable. Whir of Invention, Fabricate, Tezzeret the Seeker, Inventors' Fair and Anchor to Reality (plus Oswald) make up the tutors (some of them "cheat" as well which is just gravy). Arcum Dagsson and Master Transmuter strictly just cheat cards out without tutoring. The bounce on Transmuter could be a benefit in some cases, or you could use it as a way to protect an artifact from removal.
Finally we reach the most important set of cards; the Vehicles! I'll only touch on ones that haven't been mentioned already, or are actually worth talking about. The Omenkeel can be ramp and it scales up with the numbers of vehicles we hit with. Surgehacker Mech and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship are removal, while Parhelion II and Mechtitan Core end games fast (assuming you can activate the latter). Weatherlight provides nice card advantage since this deck is mostly historic.
Excluded Cards
Consulate Dreadnought. This card is probably too bad right? Crew 6 is enormous, and it has no form of evasion. Aeronaut Admiral has a terribly small body and does too little for too much I think; Manifold Key can just make a big vehicle unblockable anyway, and does other useful things besides. Giant Ox is worse than Hotshot Mechanic since crewing for 4 is the real breakpoint in this deck, plus hotshot only costs 1 and is an artifact to boot. I don't think we're so starved for good ways to crew that we need a worse, redundant effect but I could change my mind.
Rise and Shine could definitely make the cut, but at the moment I think I'd never want to cast it for 2 mana with all the pilots and repeatable animation effects I have running around, and so it looks a little vestigial at this point in spoiler season. I'm very open to being wrong on this though.
Karn, the Great Creator... kinda cringe. Honestly, Karn would be good to pad the limited artifact hate in the deck and to serve as another repeatable animator, but I don't want to play that card. In all seriousness, if your group is down with pseudo-Armageddon and Stone Rain, or Stony Silence effects, then include Karn, the deck will be better for it.
I'll just leave this here so I feel like I've mentioned all the other garbage but cool vehicles in existence: Sorry bud, you didn't make the cut. I want to look cool AND win every once in a while.
Maybeboard
I'll just include this here to not clutter the list, and to give a brief explanation as to why I'd only ever maybe think about playing these.
Voltaic Key, Basalt Monolith, Retrofitter Foundry, Thran Dynamo, Unwinding Clock, Clock of Omens and Gilded Lotus synergize really well with Shorikai (not to mention Manifold Key and really both Tezz's) since the Genesis Engine benefits a lot from being untapped, and having other artifacts with repeatable tap effects for when you don't have your commander out is good too. I'm worried that they could dilute the vehicle flavor of the deck however, since these cards would likely replace a couple of the worse vehicles, plus foundry is just way out of my current budget. I own all the expensive lands already or else the manabase would be much more budget friendly as well. And so, without foundry which is likely the best untapper target, it just feels unnecessary to include that much support for the category, plus c'mon, we're trying to win with big vehicles anyway.
Spine of Ish Sah is very expensive removal but it can sort of recur itself and is tutorable with a bunch of cards, I don't know if there are enough ways to sacrifice it currently to warrant including it though.
Digsite Engineer makes a ton of big dudes, maybe it deserves a spot
Vedalken Archmage is easily repeated draw, but I'm playing The Reality Chip over it and Riddlesmith since it is flavorful and once it is attached to something, I don't have to meet any conditions to "draw" the card on top of my deck.
I mentioned effects like Teferi's Protection and Bronze Guardian earlier, but I'll touch on that again. These cards (one, both, or some combination of other cards like them) will likely make their way into the deck eventually but I'm gonna start off being as greedy as I feel is possible.
New Cards that are on the maybeboard:
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Imperial Recovery Unit
- This is kind of a bad card given that it can only recur mv 2 or less, but it is a vehicle and it is repeatable.
The final two cards that get an honorable mention are cards that I can't really evaluate for certain, but I'm intrigued by:
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Inventive Iteration
- The "ult" on this saga is wild in a 4 player game, but it's expensive and the first two abilities are pretty slow. I think I'd like to try it, because wow, but I'm skeptical considering how clunky it starts out.
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Mindlink Mech
- This is kind of a crazy card, and it's inclusion incentives playing small things that benefit from having bigger power like Cephalid Constable or Covert Technician but at it's worst it is still a pretty chunky flyer. There aren't that many nonlegendary creatures in UW that get an attack/or damage benefit that scales with power.
Conclusion
My vision for this Shorikai brew was to make a mostly budget friendly EDH deck that brings a lot of fun and value to the table. You get to play a very flavorful and unique strategy that has always seemed to lack the support to actually function. The deck has so many avenues of attack that I think you'll find games playing out in a huge variety of ways, and you'll likely have your skill tested figuring out the best angle to choose in each match.
Autobots, roll out.
