Shirei's Bottomless Grave (EDH / Commander)

This deck is an absolute powerhouse. It's a mono-black monster with a lot of clever and unexpected plans. It can be modified to suit different play styles with relative ease, mainly by swapping out a handful of creatures.

With Shirei in play (and hopefully protected), all of our 1- or 0-power threats return to play from our graveyard at the end of the turn. At its simplest, the deck wins by sacrificing the creatures on our board every turn, taking advantage of effects like Grave Pact and Zulaport Cutthroat, getting the creatures back, and repeating the process on the next turn. Sometimes we are also able to abuse powerful "enter the battlefield" triggers when our board returns, such as Bone Shredder and Big Game Hunter. Even Dusk Legion Zealot is a powerhouse in this deck, since he can draw us a card on each turn - not just our own. Using the sacrifice/recursion plan, we can slowly grind out a win with our Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble Effects, but there are also some explosive combos which can power our a win.

Two subthemes support this deck, and both of them potentially have a combo payoff. The first is an artifact plan, in which Junk Diver and Myr Retriever can get back our protection pieces for Shirei, and Pitiless Plunderer can produce a ton of treasure tokens in a single turn rotation. The payoff here is Marionette Master, who can crate three artifact tokens every time she returns, then quickly burn out our opponents when we bring her back as a 4/4 and sacrifice our board of servos and our treasure tokens.

The second is a -1/-1 counters subtheme. Sacrificing Fume Spitter and Festering Mummy every turn can be very helpful in whittling down an indestructible threat, but the real blowout is getting to place a -1/-1 counter on Grey Merchant of Asphodel, reducing his power to 1 and getting to recur him every single turn. Necroskitter also lets us nab creatures on their way to the grave, so long as we have a means of placing -1/-1 counters.

Our board wipes are both based on toughness reduction. Effects like Toxic Deluge let us clear the board while keeping our creatures at 0 power. In an ideal world, Shirei would be equipped with Lashwrithe before we cast Mutilate to clear the board. Sometimes this can sneak out a voltron kill.

The rest is fairly straightforward - sacrifice outlets, draw-on-death triggers, card tutors, and some cards that check off more than one of these boxes! Here's looking at you, Infernal Tribute, Vampiric Rites, and Razaketh, the Foulblooded.

One combo worth mentioning is Insidious Dreams and Entreat the Dead. On the end step before your turn, cast Insidious Dreams and discard as many creatures as you'd like, then stack your deck with Entreat the Dead on top. Cast it for its miracle cost and get back all of the creatures you discarded and more! It's not the most powerful combo in magic, but it illustrates the kind of value-grinding that Shirei's horrible machine is all about.

Thank you, enjoy, and feel free to reach out with suggestions and comments!