Shrine decks: can't live with 'em, can't stab their owners.

[RxPhantom]

I was playing at my shop last week (with masks and social distance, of course), and one of my opponents was playing Sisay, Weatherlight Captain. I remark that I hope it's not a shrine deck. He kind of gives me a look, which means of course, that it's a shrine deck. Internally, I'm very annoyed at the possibility of playing against a deck that passively gains insane value from a hard-to-remove permanent type. I keep things polite, though, because I'm an adult and he was an amiable guy.

The first game was a non-starter for the shrine player. He managed only four lands for the entire game (more on that here), never cast a shrine, or much of anything really. The second game, though, resulted in a turn 2 shrine and from that point, my crosshairs were trained solely on him. Next shrine? I hit it with a Reclamation Sage. The next? Arcane Denial. And then, what does he have the unmitigated nerve to cast, you ask? Golos, Ruiner Of This Format. I kill Golos, and then kill the player a few turns later.

Again, all four players were polite throughout, but I could tell he was annoyed. I feel totally justified. The other two players weren't doing much of anything themselves when shrines started dropping, so in terms of threat assessment, I believe I was correct. To be honest, I had yet to play against a dedicated shrine deck in commander, but simply understanding how they work was enough.

What say you, Nexus? Have you played against a shrine deck yet? Have you built one? Am I dickhead? Am I dickhead for other reasons and you want to get it off your chest? Let's hear it.

[WizardMN]

I have played against a couple Shrine decks online with Sisay always being the general. They suck to play against. As you said, the amount of value they get and the fact that enchantments are one of the hardest permanents to get rid of (only White and Green can reliably do it right now) makes the deck annoying at best and seemingly oppressive at worst. Depending on what else is going on obviously.

So, no, focusing on that player was not a dick move. You are a dickhead for other reasons, but this isn't it

Arguably though, I would say any sort of complaint about this type of deck really starts to lead into a discussion of these 5-Color generals that do nothing but make the game worse. I do think Golos is worse but "tutor on a stick" isn't exactly helping things either. Perhaps that is a discussion for another thread though.

[ilovesaprolings]

Again, all four players were polite throughout, but I could tell he was annoyed. I feel totally justified. The other two players weren't doing much of anything themselves when shrines started dropping, so in terms of threat assessment, I believe I was correct.

Did you win? If so, it was the correct threat assessment.

[void_nothing]

Did you win? If so, it was the correct threat assessment.

Put this on my tombstone.

[RxPhantom]

Again, all four players were polite throughout, but I could tell he was annoyed. I feel totally justified. The other two players weren't doing much of anything themselves when shrines started dropping, so in terms of threat assessment, I believe I was correct.

Did you win? If so, it was the correct threat assessment.

I can't remember, honestly. I played several games that night. I tend to remember games in which my deck mattered, not necessarily the ones I won. I know I won one game that night, and I'm pretty sure that was the one. My deck at least mattered though.

[darrenhabib]

Yes I play against a Shrine Sisay deck almost on the daily on MTGO. They are rubbish, very slow and easy to beat and thus their owners will get tired and annoyed that their decks don't perform and in 6 months they'll be as dead-as-the-dodo.

[DirkGently]

Did you win? If so, it was the correct threat assessment.

As pithy as this is, I don't agree with it. It's a bad move to buy a lottery ticket, and even if you win that doesn't change the fact that with the information you had at the time, it was a bad move. Sometimes the wrong move wins the game and sometimes the right move loses the game, but that doesn't mean they were the wrong move given the information that was available at that time.

Plus there's always the possibility that he was going to win regardless of who he targeted first because he was the most powerful deck - can't rule that out.

I haven't played against any shrine decks yet (and we're locked down again in NZ atm), but just from looking at them they don't LOOK insane. There's only 11 of them total afaik, and there are plenty of cards available to all CIs that can blow them all up (ugin, o-stone, disk...the one that exiles everything...probably other stuff). Gradual value from my opponents is almost never how I lose games personally (though ofc that doesn't mean I don't target them - it's just that gradual value makes it easy to see who should be targeted compared to bursty value).

That said, this doesn't strike me a shrine-specific problem, but more of a problem with 2 things:

-power level imbalance (allegedly).
-decks that have a binary state of success (it's either on, and unstoppable, or off, and does almost nothing, both of which aren't very fun except the "on" state strictly for the person playing it).

Personally I'll try to explain to people why I'm targeting them based on one of those two reasons, but you can't really expect someone to make a whole new deck just because you don't like theirs. You have to just play correctly, explain your reasoning, and hope they eventually see the light.

[BeneTleilax]

Shrines seem to occupy the same space as Slivers, that being a derpy, extremely linear, 5C deck. I think they'll follow the same cycle of showing up whenever they get a new splashy thing, then largely being forgotten, only to surge back again. They're also around the same power level, where they drop a bunch of wacky linear permanents, kill someone, then promptly get ganged up on and die.

On the whole, I like Shrines because they provide another non-creature strategy that nonetheless plays to the board. I like seeing more options open up outside of creatures in casual EDH, and I know many others are as well. Furthermore, I think playing to the board is important to enable threat assessment and interaction, as well as keeping the game legible for all players. Yes, we have Red Elemental Blast and Mana Tithe, but stack interaction is almost the sole province of a subset of blue decks, and so abrupt wins on the stack tend to have far less give and take. My last reason for favoring archetypes that play to visible zones is that I like to see how other people's strategies work. I find more satisfying to watch someone's plans, course corrections and decisions develop across the game than watch them sit there holding up interaction and slowly sculpting their hand until they can safely go off, regardless of the power level or pilot skill.

I'll note that I'm talking about decks that play their Shrines slowly across several turns, rather than those that try to flash in a Replenish before their turn. The latter are just another obnoxious "oops I win" Replenish setup, of which there is already a glut.

[Myllior]

Without knowing the other decks you were playing against or the general power level you play at, it's near impossible to tell you if your threat assessment was correct. However, I do run my own Sisay Shrines deck and can tell you that Shrines are one of the weaker ways to build Sisay, which leads into a necessary distinction: Shrines aren't the primary problem here, Sisay is. The ability to repeatedly tutor (to the field, no less) in the command zone is exceedingly powerful and Shrine decks would be wildly more inconsistent if Sisay didn't exist.

To elucidate further, my own deck has two game plans: One using a select group of legendary creatures for beatdown, and the second being the Shrines. The first game plan uses the infamous Jegantha-Derevi-Samut combo (Najeela is intentionally omitted to avoid going infinite), which allows for a large number of Sisay activations per turn. (Most of my games will have 6 activations on the 'combo' turn and about a dozen the turn after, with an extra turn to follow). This feeds directly into the Shrines plan but, as I've played more games, I've noticed that advancing my creature-based game plan is almost always the correct play. Considering the number of Sisay activations I usually get, removing the Shrines in favour of more legendary creatures would be a decent power bump.

Now I'm aware that this split is but one flavour of Shrines deck; I've seen lists where they're paired with superfriends, cEDH-style support shells or enchantress shells. Regardless, except for the most dedicated Shrine decks, it's still apparent that the Shrines are the weaker game plan of those available to the deck, be it helmed by Sisay or Golos.

That all being said, maybe it's not so impossible to tell if your threat assessment was correct. If Shrines as a game plan presents a solid threat in your meta, then there are two possibilities. The first is that you're facing a dedicated Shrines deck, in which case you're facing a deck that needs to be shut down, by the definition that it's a solid threat in your meta. The second is that you're facing a split-style deck, in which case Shrines likely represent the weaker game plan the deck has and you have a greater need to shut them down. However this is all one big "if", which is the best I can do for now.

Short version: Shrines aren't strong, but are enabled by busted commanders and are often run alongside stronger game plans, making them a decent default target unless more obvious threats (of which there are many) present themselves or you're playing at a higher power level.

[ilovesaprolings]

Plus there's always the possibility that he was going to win regardless of who he targeted first because he was the most powerful deck - can't rule that out.

Sorry but then it's the other 2 other players' fault. I'm not a "you should win at any cost" guy, but if you focus on taking down one player and then lose, it shows that you wasted resources on the wrong deck. If you win, you identified the biggest threat and acted accordingly.
If your deck is powerful enough to eliminate anyone no matter the order, then the weaker players should team up against you.

[Rumpy5897]

You ever watch one of PleasantKenobi's meme deck gameplays? Particularly the legacy ones? Essentially what happens is he takes an established shell and peppers in an impractical win condition. Show and Tell with a Didgeridoo + Artificial Evolution splash equals mono blue minotaurs. Jam Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded into mono red prison and you get legacy Tibalt. It's amusing in a way, but it crutches on a proven, purring engine to seal the game first. The meme is just a needlessly convoluted and inefficient way to cross the finish line.

Shrines are the same exact story. You establish an insane mana engine that wins you the game, and then rather than actually win the game you go out of the way and delay proceedings by setting up shrines. Look at all the Sisay activations, think about what they could accomplish if they were not trying to shrine meme. Yeah.

There were three shrine decks brewed in my social network within 12 hours of the M21 spoiler. All of them are dead now. Including the one that had the guy buying foil honden immediately after hearing about the preview. If this isn't a testament to the future of the deck in the format, I don't know what is

[Dunharrow]

It can be rough when you get singled-out. But that's what happens when you play decks like that.
If someone shows up with Derevi and they tell me it is isn't a stax/combo deck, just a flyers deck, I am still targeting them first.
There is something to be said about having a less threatening general.

Anyway, tough breaks for the shrine player. When you play a deck that needs multiple pieces to go off, people are going to use targeted removal to stop that. And then your deck just sits there.
So either make a different deck or improve your deck to resist interaction.

[onering]

I built a shrine/curses enchantress deck and avoided sisay as the commander because despite her being unquestionably the best option for getting the shrines out she paints too big a target on a fairly crappy deck. I went with Sliver Queen pillow fort instead and have to rely on draw and tutors to get shrines. Its not good, but it's a fun low powered deck for more casual durdle games, and it doesn't immediately get hated out like Sisay. Sisay is just busted nonsense, and you can't just assume she's going to slowly tutor out shrines and not just combo off or do something else degenerate. That deck forcing shrines was the least of your worries.

[Sinis]

What say you, Nexus? Have you played against a shrine deck yet? Have you built one? Am I dickhead? Am I dickhead for other reasons and you want to get it off your chest? Let's hear it.

Haven't played against it, thinking of building it.

I'll be honest, it looks really bad. I don't believe for a second shrines win games at casual tables. Sisay shrines seems even worse; then you're playing Sisay but with the worst legendary cards possible, so you're presenting yourself to be a real threat, but aren't actually capable of following through.

[DirkGently]

Plus there's always the possibility that he was going to win regardless of who he targeted first because he was the most powerful deck - can't rule that out.

Sorry but then it's the other 2 other players' fault. I'm not a "you should win at any cost" guy, but if you focus on taking down one player and then lose, it shows that you wasted resources on the wrong deck. If you win, you identified the biggest threat and acted accordingly.
If your deck is powerful enough to eliminate anyone no matter the order, then the weaker players should team up against you.

I don't follow why it would be his opponents fault - he doesn't say anything about their threat assessment. Maybe they did, or didn't have anything with which to effectively gang up.

I definitely disagree that focusing someone and then losing means you made a mistake. Magic is a game of imperfect knowledge, you have to make the right play based on the information you have (not that you shouldn't learn from the results of the game, but sometimes you make a good gamble and it doesn't pay off).

But even if you had near-perfect information, that doesn't preclude focusing a player and losing being the correct play. Say you're playing aggro with no interaction against 2 combo decks (also with no interaction). One wins, based on past experience, fully-concealed around turn 6, the other on turn 8. You focus the first player and kill them, but lack the firepower to outrace the second in time.

You lost, but that doesn't mean you made a mistake by focusing the first player. You were going to lose either way, making a different decision would have simply cost you the game sooner.

Of course, this is a simplified example, but similar, albeit messier, situations happen in real games all the time.

Edit: here's another, perhaps more realistic example:

Your opponents are both playing combo decks. One goes out fully-concealed, the other needs some permanents to stick. This turn you can kill one of them. The First player hasn't tutored but has drawn a decent number of cards, the second player has played 2 of his 3 combo pieces and will win Immediately if they get the third. Based on this information, you kill the second player, who reveals they didn't have the third piece and weren't close to drawing it. The first player takes their turn, comboing off with the cards they drew naturally. In this case killing player 1 was the right call with perfect information, but based on the information you had killing player 2 was probably the right call.

[NZB2323]

It depends on what power level the other decks at the table were, but you should always target the most powerful deck.

[RxPhantom]

What say you, Nexus? Have you played against a shrine deck yet? Have you built one? Am I dickhead? Am I dickhead for other reasons and you want to get it off your chest? Let's hear it.

Haven't played against it, thinking of building it.

I'll be honest, it looks really bad. I don't believe for a second shrines win games at casual tables. Sisay shrines seems even worse; then you're playing Sisay but with the worst legendary cards possible, so you're presenting yourself to be a real threat, but aren't actually capable of following through.

I feel like it could be pretty good if built properly, and it doesn't seem too tough to do. Build the best five-color manabase you can, 5C enchantress shell, tutors, and then throw in some shrines. This is why I think I'm going to make a habit out of targeting (or at least be wary of) shrine decks.

[pokken]

Have played against it and did not like it. Did not help that I was golos and he had multiple MLD spells and most wins involved dropping a bunch of shrines and casting jokukhaups or obliterate for free.

It's a real unpleasant deck in both incarnations(sissy and golos). Kinda reminds me of a less annoying super friends deck more than anything. Drop a bunch of value engines monopolize game time be difficult to interact with blah blah.

[BeneTleilax]

That seems to be far more a problem with Golos than with shrines. I think in a month this archetype will only be remembered as a slight uptick in the price of Austere Command, at least until they print more shrines. It's another cute, linear, 5c archetype, and I don't see a reason why it won't go the way of every other cute, linear, 5c archetype.

[Sinis]

I feel like it could be pretty good if built properly, and it doesn't seem too tough to do. Build the best five-color manabase you can, 5C enchantress shell, tutors, and then throw in some shrines. This is why I think I'm going to make a habit out of targeting (or at least be wary of) shrine decks.

I feel like I might be making a 'dies to removal' argument, but, IME, decks that rely heavily on one permanent type often get blown out by sweepers for that one thing. Merciless Eviction, Bane of Progress, etc. They just kind of get blown out by commonly played cards, and Enchantress decks in particular don't have the same way of recovering as creatures or even artifacts; there's only Replenish and Open the Vaults. For Shrines in particular, I suppose you can use Primevals' Glorious Rebirth.

I agree that shrines, if left untouched, will provide tons of value, protection, and wincons, but I have trouble believing it will ever remain unanswered, even if enchantments are traditionally hard to interact with.

It's another cute, linear, 5c archetype, and I don't see a reason why it won't go the way of every other cute, linear, 5c archetype.

This is pretty much my feeling on it.

[onering]

The only thing that could give it more staying power is the presence of Sisay and Golos. Sisay allows you to just throw shrines into super friends. That lets the deck become less linear and have a plan b of shrines if super friends starts getting handled. Sisay being able to just grab the 5 color shrine then focus on other legendary permanents allows shrines to be less of a deck and more of a package in a larger deck, one card you grab that then gives you access to other cards and value. That's no longer a shrines deck, but a deck that happens to run shrines. Golos is the other issue because he's Golos and makes it easy to just end up flipping shrines or ways to get them, searches up heliods hall and serra's sanctum, and is himself a threat that must constantly be answered. As has been said, that's just a problem with Golos being a broken card that should be banned because he ruins everything.

[BeneTleilax]

All my homies hate Golos.

[Dragoon]

All my homies hate Golos.

Just run Darksteel Mutation, Song of the Dryads, Imprisoned in the Moon and the like :p

[schweinefett]

I probably would have done the same.

If my opponent plays a card (i don't generally care too much about the card type) that says "draw 2 cards, and gain 5 life every turn", it has def got to go. Even if the deck itself is super durdly and doesn't do anything (exception being if the deck is a bunch of draft chaff), you're bound to get overwhelmed by cards at some point.

It's probably possible for the others in the game to then see how the shrine deck plays afterwards; just watch the value durdle do its thing and get out of hand. I mean, only if you feel like you want to be vindicated,

Its important not to be results oriented. sometimes, the best play you can do will always lead to a loss. I did a legacy bash with some mates recently, and against a lands player, the lands player played the tightest plays and took what i can only tell as the best lines given what he knew. But there's only so much you can do against a deck that deliberately punishes non-basic lands.

One last thing though; EDH isn't legacy. I keep a clearer mind and try to crunch more lines when playing legacy, cuz it's the win thats important. In EDH, it's the misplays that lead to interesting games ('cuz its the experience that counts). So i dunno.. there's misplay (e.g. not counterspelling a lethal fireball aimed at you), and there's "misplay" (forgetting to attack into a tapped out opponent).

[Candlemane]

I haven't played against a Shrine deck that didn't end with the player losing / leaving on MTGO. I look forward to playing against my friend's version when I can get back out into the world, as I can assume with a great amount of certainly it will be an awesome deck. We do not condone MLD though, so no worries there, and I haven't run into any online.

Your experience must be different OP, but I've never had to fear a Shrine deck yet.

As far as being a jerk, that's not something I can say for certain. If you felt justified based on your experiences beforehand, then that's that, and if everyone involved was polite, then all the better. I would suggest however that you maybe play that person or like others said just watch a game with it. Maybe it's not to fear as much as your think from that particular player, as different players do builds differently and have access to different cards.