Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

[jorael]

Anyone made some decks with this creature? 5 mana is a lot for a 2/2, but this spirit just screams to abuse all the 1-powered creatures that you can sac or have good 'come into play' abilities. The fact that it's a creature means it makes it more easier to remove for opponent's, which I can understand, because the card is already cool enough.

My current Shirei deck:

"I'll take care of that"
14 Forest
10 Swamps

4 Disturbed Burial

4 Elvish Lyrist
4 Elvish Scrapper
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Boneshredder
4 Spike Feeder
4 Mindless Automaton
4 Triskelion
4 Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

The deck has 32 creatures and Disturbed Burial to return any one of them. The creatures provide mana acceleration, removal (artifact, enchantment, creature), lifegain and card drawing. With Shirei in play every creature can be used over and over again. Only the elves need to lose their summoning sickness, the rest can be used during each players turn. That means gaining 4 life, dealing 2 damage (with triskelion, dealing the last one damage to itself), searching for a land, drawing a card. Nasty!

The deck is easy to disrupt (killing Shirei) but that's why I included the Disturbed Burials, so you can always recover (barring graveyard removal). You can also use Spike Feeder to boost Shirei when he is about to he Shocked or Bolted.


Did anyone had some other ideas to abuse Shirei?

 

[YoungBeard]

Maybe all that, plus a Panoptic Mirror with Forbidden Ritual imprinted on it. Mwhahahah.

 

[jackal_pup]

How about scrapping the Disturbed Burials for Animate Dead's/Dance of the Dead's/Necromancy's? And how about adding at least 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse in place of a Swamp and 1x Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers in place of a Forest to make the Caretaker a bit of a more formidable force.

 

[jorael]

Forbidden Ritual + Panoptic Mirror sounds a bit too far fetched to me. That would mean adding 8 cards, which have no direct synergy with the rest of the deck. Cool idea, but I'd make a deck based around it, without Shirei. Infernal Tribute, Myr Servitor and Myr Retriever come to mind.



Playing one vs. one cheaper graveyard recursion, like Animate Dead, is probably a good idea. In a multiplayer battle I prefer the reusable Disturbed Burial. The legendary lands are certainly a good idea, I don't have them however.

 

[YoungBeard]

Just tossing some random ideas out there (I've wanted to make a Forbidden Ritual/Shirei deck for a while now...)

How about a couple Abyssal Gatekeepers so you have something that will kill untargetables and hold off black and artifact creatures until Triskelion can come out? Fun in Multiplayer, too, since each player has to sacrifice...

 

[Crackdown]

Bile Urchin . . . Hmmmm . . .

 

[jorael]

Yeah, I first made a W/B Kamigawa-block version that ran Bile Urchin and also Kami of False Hope (plus Moonlit Strider as Shirei protection and spirits like Waxmane Baku & Thief of hope). That worked well enough.

The G/B casual deck has no problem ramping up 6 mana and then Triskelion is just better. Triskelion can deal 2 damage, also to creatures. You can even shoot down your own Boneshredder and reuse te comes into play effect when Shirei is in play (did it once to stop a green beatdown deck). Bile Urchin is only taking away 1 life each round. The lose life may be relevant, but Worship doesn't see that much play in out playgroup. Even if it would appear at the other side of the table, Elvish Lyrist can answer that.

Bile Urchin is good, but it doesn't do enough for the current deck, I think. The Elves aren't that good, but in this deck they are my preferred one drops.