Shirei, the Power 9÷9

Commander / EDH Combo Infinite Combo Mono-Black Multiplayer Stax

baea1996

Creature (35)

• 1x Abyssal Gatekeeper
• 1x Basal Thrull
• 1x Big Game Hunter
• 1x Bile Urchin
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Blood Pet
• 1x Bone Shredder
• 1x Burglar Rat
• 1x Cadaver Imp
• 1x Cauldron Familiar
• 1x Death Cultist
• 1x Deathgreeter
• 1x Dusk Legion Zealot
• 1x Fume Spitter
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Junk Diver
• 1x Krav, the Unredeemed
• 1x Mindless Automaton
• 1x Myr Sire
• 1x Nether Traitor
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Perilous Myr
• 1x Pilgrim's Eye
• 1x Pitiless Plunderer
• 1x Priest of Forgotten Gods
• 1x Serrated Scorpion
• 1x Skyscanner
• 1x Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Soldevi Adnate
• 1x Thoughtpicker Witch
• 1x Triskelion
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Yarok's Fenlurker
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x High Market
• 1x Mortuary Mire
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 21x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Witch's Cottage

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Attrition
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Exquisite Blood
• 1x Gate to Phyrexia
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Haunted Crossroads
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Sanguine Bond

Instant (3)

• 1x Grim Harvest
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General

Commander (1)

Artifact (11)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Desecrated Tomb
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Meekstone
• 1x Mindslaver
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Spawning Pit

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Damnation
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Reanimate

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Maybeboard

Artifact (3)

• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Witch's Oven

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Revel in Riches

Land (3)

• 1x Desert of the Glorified
• 1x Polluted Mire
• 1x Temple of the False God

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Beseech the Queen

Creature (1)

• 1x Bottle Gnomes

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Overview

Welcome to the Power 9÷9! Shirei is a super fun commander centered around a ton of recursion. He's all about playing 1 and 0 power creatures with extremely powerful effects, sacrificing them, and bringing them all back at the end of each turn.

TLDR Stats

Tier: 4 (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/list-multiplayer-edh-generals-by-tier/)

Archetype: Stax

Theme: Sacrifice; Recursion; Life Drain

Win Cons: Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond +Life drainer

Theme

The deck is centered around low power creatures with various ETB and sacrifice abilities. As a result, we are looking for high value creatures with low CMC that do things when they ETB or LTB. With Shirei, we are able to recur these creatures each turn to consistently activate these effects.

Deck Tech

Sacrifice

First thing we need to discuss are our outlets for sacrificing our things. Unfortunately, Shirei is not an outlet himself, and thus needs help in that regard. Viscera Seer is our only true creature outlet, allowing us to Scry every time we do so. This gets insane when we have Shirei out and are doing this every turn. The deck becomes much more consistent and we see only the cards that we want to see.

Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar give us mana in exchange for the sacrificed creature. These are fantastic since we are not running a ton of lands, and will need mana in the late game.

Altar of Dementia will mill our opponents. While a big combo piece in other decks, it serves as a nice sacrifice outlet with some value.

Spawning Pit is an interesting outlet as we can combo it with Ashnod's if we have an excess of creatures available.

Next are our creatures. I won't go into every creature in the deck as that would take forever, and honestly not be worth your time reading and my time writing. Instead, I'll focus on the main creatures you'll want to get on the field every game.

Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat are our late game finishers when we have our combo pieces set up.

Blood Pet is fantastic in the early game and can be sacrificed for mana every turn.

Dusk Legion Zealot is excellent card draw when we have Shirei out. Life loss, while can be an issue, is mitigated by other Lifegain effects such as Bottle Gnomes and Deathgreeter .

Mindless Automaton is an alternate card draw engine that is able to kill itself while netting us a card.

Draw

As with any deck, keeping our hand full is essential to our game winning strategy. We briefly touched on creature draw engines, but we have so much more to cover in our deck.

Liliana, Dreadhorde General is crazy good in this deck as she nets us draw, and we can easily protect her with the plethora of creatures we control.

Skullclamp essentially becomes a 1 mana draw 2.

Necropotence : Doesn't really need any other words. The card is crazy powerful and its dominance is written in history.

Phyrexian Arena isn't nearly as good as Necropotence, but is still nice card draw early game.

Smothering Abomination is one of the few creatures that can't be recurred by Shirei. But it doesn't matter when it's allowing us to draw a card every time a creature dies.

Protection

This deck does nothing when Shirei is chilling in the Command Zone or in the yard. As a result, protecting him is crucial for our deck to work. And even when he does die, we need to have ways of getting him back.

Apprentice Necromancer , Cadaver Imp , and Hell's Caretaker all allow us to fish Shirei out of our graveyard should he ever be put there.

Haunted Crossroads allows us to move Shirei on top of our library for easy access.

Grim Harvest is a repeatable recursion spell that works amazingly in this deck.

Removal

We're in black so we are not short on removal (except for enchantments but that's neither here nor there).

We have a ton of creatures that kill something when they ETB or LTB/die. Just look through the list to find those cards.

Attrition combos very well with Blood Pet and another recurable creature.

Hero's Downfall has worked really well now that a ton of people are running the C18 Planeswalker commanders.

Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos both force our opponents to sacrifice a creature whenever one of ours dies (which will be almost every turn).

Gate to Phyrexia is important as it is our only source of artifact removal. It's not efficient but it gets the job done.

And of course, we run the classic Damnation for our board wipe.

Win Cons

Infinite damage

The combo is centered around the generic Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond pairing. Both can be tutored for, and the lifegain starts with the help of either Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat .

Life Drain

While we do have Sanguine Exquisite in the deck, it's not going to be your go-to win condition since it's extremely mana intensive. Rather, you'll tend to find the deck wins by just draining everyone's life down bit by bit, typically with the creatures coming back and being sacrificed each turn.

Pros and Cons

Positives

*Playing at instant speed: Playing on your opponents' turns is extremely powerful, and Shirei's ability allows you to do that. Sacrificing your creatures for value, only to have them come back at the end of each turn is nothing to scoff at.

*Has the potential to turn on the gas: This deck can, at times, win as soon as Shirei hits the board. I have won games in the blink of an eye, due to Shirei's explosive combo potential.

*Extremely Consistent: With the number of tutors and scry/draw effects we have, this deck is incredibly consistent and will very rarely brick. Obviously it will brick from time to time (what deck doesn't do that) but it's extremely rare for this deck to do so.

Negatives

*Hard loses to GY hate: Should be an obvious point, but is a weakness nonetheless. Shirei gets very unhappy when Rest in Peace, or anything like it, is on the field. The deck literally can't function. And relying on your opponent's not running those cards can be pretty tough at times.

*Centered around the general: As the nature of a deck revolving around the general, the deck is garbage without Shirei. If he's not on the battlefield, the deck doesn't do anything. This will put a huge target on Shirei, since your deck turns off without him.

*Can struggle Early Game: At 5 CMC, Shirei does take quite a bit of mana to get out. This means a lot of the early game is trying to ramp into him. And unfortunately, the deck can struggle to keep up in this phase. Sure, the deck immediately turns on as soon as Shirei hits the field. But until then, it can be a struggle.

Notable Inclusions

Notable Exclusions

Shadowborn Apostle : An extremely popular card to include for most Shirei builds, and I did have it in myself for my first iteration. Have since taken them out since I prefer having a ton of low CMC creatures that do stuff immediately, rather than a ton of 1 mana do nothing until we have 6 creatures.

Lightning Greaves Great card to protect Shirei. Though it has been taken out for more card draw and consistency.

Date added	5 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 25 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 24 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.57
Tokens	2/2 C Artifact Creature Spawn, Bat 1/1 B, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Goblin 1/1 R, Morph 2/2 C, Phyrexian Myr 1/1 C, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	test later, Decks