I've got a backlog of Lord of the Rings columns already written but I've decided I can't just ignore Commander Masters. The latter is a reprint set with a bunch of commander precon decks that has been put on shelves at a price point that is off-putting at best. I've read and heard complaints about how these overpriced boosters are a huge gamble for local game stores. If they drop thousands of dollars on product and it doesn't sell, small town brick and mortar card shops will probably feel it first and feel it hardest.

I'm not saying Commander Masters is going to be responsible for shutting down a single LGS that is already close to the edge of having to shut down. I do know lots of game stores in our post-pandemic Magic landscape are still struggling to get back to where they were before Covid hit. What that means for me is that my original decision to not buy any CMM boosters didn't last long. I wanted to help my "home" LGS so I decided to pick up a set booster or two. At just under $20 a pop it wasn't an easy decision, but I figured I might open a legendary creature or two that I could build around and write about.

I've been interested in the new "portrait style" alternate art cards in Commander Masters. I like novel card designs and knew that if I opened one of them I would be sorely tempted to build around it. I bought a pack on the Saturday after the set dropped and again on the following Tuesday. My Saturday afternoon booster didn't have anything that exciting, but in my Tuesday night pack I came across this handsome fellow.

I've opened Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker more than a few times over the years. He was originally printed as a rare in Betrayers of Kamigawa, but was an uncommon in Ultimate Masters. Shirei is a 2/2 legendary Spirit with a pretty neat party trick. Whenever a creature with power 1 or less is put into my graveyard from play, I may return that creature card to play under my control at end of turn if Shirei is still on the battlefield.

This deck wants sacrifice outlets, it wants cards that give me some benefit when they enter or leave the battlefield, and it wants some sort of payoff for looping creatures in and out of the graveyard.

I've played against Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker decks and I'm pretty sure I've been beaten by at least a few of them. That said, my sense is that Shirei has a fairly low ceiling in terms of power levels. It can be built well, but isn't easy to push up into high powered play or fringe cEDH. That doesn't mean it can't be fun, and I happened to have not one but two great excuses to build this deck in paper. One was to write this column, but the other is the latest trend in my local meta - $30 decks!

I built a Cirdan the Shipwright budget deck last month, and the challenge of building on a budget was a really fun experience. I found myself choosing "bad" cards that I'd never ordinarily play and I was encouraged by the fact that I'd likely be playing against other budget decks. Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker seems like a great commander for another budget build, as it will be relying on a low power, creature-heavy strategy that should play fairly well at low powered tables.

Building on a Budget

My first step was to go through my commons and uncommons and look for cards that might fit into an "aristocrats" strategy and would cost well under a dollar. This part was fun, and I found myself thinking about possible themes I could use to make the deck more interesting.

Could mono-Black budget Elves be viable under Shirei? Would a Rat, Zombie or Vampire deck make sense? Most of my ideas fell apart once I looked at how many of the creatures would actually have 0 or 1 power and I ended up leaning on a fairly sensible theme: card draw.

I had somewhere around a hundred cards set aside and my first step was to sort through them and make a pile of cards that would have me draw cards. Some of these were instants and sorceries that required the sacrifice of a creature, but in a Shirei deck that's no big deal. Those creatures should come back at the end of the turn. I had twenty-three cards in my card draw pile, so I put Shirei on top and turned it into three 8-card stacks. I made another 8-card stack devoted to ramp and land fetching and turned my attention to building the other half of the deck.

Building in an 8x8 pattern helps me to focus my thoughts and attend to things that shouldn't be ignored, like draw, ramp and interaction. Normally I would almost never devote three "slots" to one theme, but in this build it felt like a good decision and if you're going to lean into anything, leaning into card draw is probably the best thing to prioritize in an EDH deck.

My remaining cards were a mishmash of stuff and it was an easy decision to next make an 8-card stack of sacrifice outlets. Shirei dearly wants you to sacrifice your 0 and 1 power creatures every turn. Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar and Altar of Dementia were all a bit more expensive than I wanted for this deck, so I found myself leaning on creatures that could serve as sacrifice outlets. I started with Viscera Seer, a 1-mana Vampire Wizard who lets you sacrifice a creature to scry 1. It's pretty well-known, but some of my choices may not be familiar to you.

Skullport Merchant will reward me with card draw. Paying mana to sacrifice creatures is terrible, but we're on a budget here so I had to build with some pretty dicey cards. Consecrated by Blood will let me send my creatures to the graveyard in pairs. Sacrificing two other creatures to regenerate this creature might not seem great, but I'm betting that I'll usually have enough sac fodder to make this usable. Fallen Angel lets me sacrifice a creature to give it +2/+1 until end of turn. I don't love buffs that expire at end of turn, and five mana is a lot, but I'm optimistic this could both serve as a legitimate threat and as a late game sacrifice outlet quite nicely.

The next big thing for this list would be my payoffs. By that I mean a way to make all this sacrificing and returning from the graveyard profitable or even game-winning.

Since we're playing multiplayer EDH my focus was on cards that would cause each of my opponents to lose life, and if possible for me to also gain life. Ayara, First of Locthwain will do that for each black creature that enters the battlefield under my control. Zulaport Cutthroat and Bastion of Remembrance do the same thing whenever a creature I control dies.

I'm running a few oddballs that can either be looped or can attack and do the same life loss / life gain trick. Serrated Scorpion will do 2 damage to each opponent and I'll gain 2 life when it dies. Night Market Lookout triggers when it becomes tapped, causing each opponent to lose 1 life and I gain 1 life. Vicious Conquistador triggers when he attacks, causing each opponent to lose 1 life. I'll just attack with them and they'll come back if they die so I can do it again next turn.

With my deck loaded up with creatures, and with a very big focus on card draw, I needed to turn my attention to fun stuff. In Black that means one familiar face staple some less familiar cards.

Desecrated Tomb will have me create a 1/1 Black Bat creature token with flying every time one or more creature cards leaves my graveyard. Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker gives each of my dying nontoken creatures a delayed trigger that will kick in at the end of the turn. Those triggers each get put in the stack, in any order I want, resulting in each of them coming back separately and triggering Desecrated Tomb. You might think that Shrei bringing back 5 creatures would only give me a single Bat token, but the way the delayed trigger works it will give me a Bat token for each creature.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel is a staple and a fantastic finisher in a deck that could realistically have a ton of Black pips on the cards on my battlefield. Decks with lots of small creatures will do that for you, and while this deck isn't built to recur "Gary" again and again, I do have a little recursion and it's quite possible a single hit from this powerful black staple could put me in a position to be able to close out the game.

Feaster of Fools has devour 2, meaning that I can sacrifice any number of creatures as it enters the battlefield and it will get two +1/+1 counters for each creature I sacrifice. It's also got convoke, so that six mana casting cost will likely be much lower if I tap creatures to help pay for its mana cost. With six zero or one power creatures on the field alongside Shirei, I could end up getting a free 15/15 flyer and then see Shirei bring back the creatures I sacrifice at the end of the turn.

I rounded out this ridiculously creature-heavy list with a suite of creatures that force players to sacrifice a creature. I don't know how I didn't stumble across Merciless Executioner when I was going through my commons and uncommons, but I did include Demon's Disciple, Fleshbag Marauder, and Plaguecrafter in this list. I should have an easy time sacrificing a creature, so their cost is pretty easy for this deck to pay.

Shoestring Shirei

I've never intentionally built on a shoestring budget until this past month, but I have to admit that it's enlightening and a lot of fun. The caveat of course is that it helps to know you'll be playing against other decks that are also built on a budget. It's no fun to be crushed by a deck that costs a hundred times as much as yours, though my budget Cirdan got lucky and managed to take down some very expensive decks in its very first game.

This list is an experiment, and it's really a shame that I wasn't able to fit Mortal Combat into the mix. That old enchantment isn't even that expensive, but it pushed me up past my $30 limit by enough that I decided to leave it out. I was going by TCG Market Price, as that's what the guys at the LGS said they were using, but this list may be a hair over $30 at the time this column goes up. I decided not to lose any sleep over being a tiny bit over budget, as this isn't for a league or tournament. It's just for fun.

Shoestring Shirei Budget | Commander | Stephen Johson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

• Creatures (48)
• 1 Ayara, First of Locthwain
• 1 Bloodthrone Vampire
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Bushmeat Poacher
• 1 Cadaver Imp
• 1 Clattering Augur
• 1 Demon's Disciple
• 1 Dockside Chef
• 1 Doomed Dissenter
• 1 Dusk Legion Zealot
• 1 Dutiful Attendant
• 1 Fallen Angel
• 1 Farfinder
• 1 Feaster of Fools
• 1 Fell Stinger
• 1 Fleshbag Marauder
• 1 Gibbering Barricade
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Lampad of Death's Vigil
• 1 Leaden Myr
• 1 Marionette Master
• 1 Midnight Reaper
• 1 Mindless Automaton
• 1 Nested Shambler
• 1 Night Market Lookout
• 1 Novice Occultist
• 1 Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1 Orzhov Enforcer
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Pit Keeper
• 1 Plaguecrafter
• 1 Serrated Scorpion
• 1 Skittering Surveyor
• 1 Skullport Merchant
• 1 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1 Smothering Abomination
• 1 Soulreaper of Mogis
• 1 Spark Reaper
• 1 Stirge
• 1 Thorn of the Black Rose
• 1 Undercity Scrounger
• 1 Vampire Aristocrat
• 1 Vicious Conquistador
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Vulturous Aven
• 1 Weaponcraft Enthusiast
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat

• Instants (5)
• 1 Altar's Reap
• 1 Corrupted Conviction
• 1 Costly Plunder
• 1 Reckoner's Bargain
• 1 Village Rites

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Sign in Blood

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Bastion of Remembrance
• 1 Consecrated by Blood

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Desecrated Tomb
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (38)
• 33 Swamp
• 1 Blighted Fen
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Witch's Cottage

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Normally I would discuss ways to tune this list up or down in power. I'm not sure there's a way to tune this down because it's already scraping the bottom of the barrel. I expect it would do fine in budget games with tweaking to fit your meta. Deathtouch blockers might be worth adding. If I see a lot of removal, Mask of Avacyn could offer more protection, but Lightning Greaves is probably out of budget. More ways to tutor up lands could help but I'm betting the amount of card draw in this list will help to keep me hitting my land drops.

Rather than give you a couple of sentences on how to tune this list up, I'm going to devote a few more words to the subject. This can be a powerful deck even if it has some real vulnerabilities. Don't get me talking about Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. She'd give Shirei about as miserable of a non-game as you could possibly ask for.

Tuning Shirei Up

Any tune-up would start with the mana base and artifact ramp. Any mono-Black deck benefits from cards like Cabal Stronghold and Cabal Coffers. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and High Market might fit in nicely as well. Jet Medallion and Extraplanar Lens would help a lot, but I would leave Caged Sun out, as it pumps your creatures +1/+1 and that might interfere with Shirei's ability to bring creatures back from the graveyard. True fast mana like Mana Crypt and Moxen are an option, but I don't know if Shirei has a high enough power ceiling to be worth throwing them in.

Running Mortal Combat would leave me wanting to run tutors and cards like Peer into the Abyss and Morality Shift to let me load up the bin more quickly. I would also want to upgrade my sacrifice outlets by including the trio of Altars I mentioned earlier.

A real risk with this kind of tune-up is that you can end up shifting your focus away from what your commander wants you to do.

If you load up the deck with big mana producers, you might be tempted to run more big mana outlets like Torment of Hailfire and Exsanguinate. If you do that and those cards win you games, you might start wondering why you're bothering with the slow recursion you get from Shirei. You could easily find yourself looking at better options in the command zone and the next thing you know, you're running a different deck designed to win in a different way.

If you think that an aristocrats strategy is fun, you might look at all your sacrifice outlets and all of your sac fodder and realize that Nim Deathmantle combo could win you a lot of games. Marionette Master and Sling-Gang Lieutenant are already in the list and are perfect for Nim Deathmantle. I've won plenty of games with that delightful piece of equipment, but you'll probably see your games focus less on Shirei and incremental life loss and more on the cards that will win the game right then and there.

I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't tune a Shirei deck up so it can win games out of nowhere with combos that have little to no involvement from your commander.

Maybe you love the art or the design of the card. Maybe you love Spirits and always wanted a Spirit type commander to lead a deck. Maybe your high school crush was named Shirei because of a hilarious birth certificate misspelling of Sherri.

I just think there are better choices than Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker if you want to build a high-powered deck or a combo deck.

I do think it's OK to play a combo in a deck that might not seem like a natural fit for that combo. Sometimes a commander wants certain combo pieces to do what it wants to do. Some of us - myself included - have a hard time resisting the lure of having that extra wincon in the mix. Sometimes it's just fun to mix things up and make a wacky deck with some mismatched strategies. Shirei might not work with many combo lines - or any that I can think of - but if your focus is on the destination, not the journey, you may well win more games by shifting your focus away from incremental recursion.

Final Thoughts

One of my favorite things about this format is the incredible variety of strategies, decks and even power levels that you can play at. Lots of readers might look at this first draft of a budget $30 Shirei deck and think I'm crazy to even consider running a list with 48 creatures. You're right. It is crazy. I think this is the kind of experiment that might backfire on me and might not win a single game, but it's also an experiment worth running.

I've built this list in paper and plan to play it at my LGS a few times. At a budget table can I hang out, stay alive, and slowly whittle my tablemates down until I emerge the victor? I'll be trying to find out, though probably not in time to add an "Early Results" section to this column.

I'll probably play this list a few times and then shift it towards that Mortal Combat deck I've been wanting to build. I might even find a way to keep it under $30 but it's more likely that I'll push the budget up a bit. It'll still probably end up in the low-to-mid power range.

I'll also be opening more CMM boosters in the coming weeks, though not many. If I open any more "portrait" style commanders I may well give you another "Look What I Found" column. I enjoy letting the fates decide what I write about next, and I'll also have some more LoTR columns for you in the weeks to come.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!