Legendary Enchantment Creature — Shrine

Go-Shintai of Hidden Cruelty

Mana value4EDHREC#5,390

Build with Wyrm Build manually Card details

The Commander

Deathtouch

At the beginning of your end step, you may pay {1} . When you do, destroy target creature with toughness X or less, where X is the number of Shrines you control.

Guide

Gameplan

You ramp into a critical mass of Shrines, using Go-Shintai of Hidden Cruelty's end-step removal to pick off creatures while your enchantment engine accrues value each upkeep. The deck plays a grindy attrition game, controlling the board with edicts and Shrine triggers until you assemble enough Shrines to drain or beat the table down.

Strengths

Built-in repeatable removal that scales with your Shrine count and ignores indestructible-style toughness checks
Deathtouch makes Go-Shintai a strong blocker and combat deterrent
Enchantment-based engines are resilient and hard to disrupt with creature removal
Mono-black gives access to tutors, recursion, and powerful card advantage

Weaknesses

Slow to come online and reliant on amassing multiple Shrines
Vulnerable to enchantment hate and board wipes that hit your Shrine package
The end-step removal only kills one creature per turn and requires extra mana
Mono-color means no access to counterspells or off-color enchantress effects

Key Cards

Sanctum of Stone Fangs — A black Shrine that drains each opponent, adding to your Shrine count and your damage output.
Honden of Night's Reach — Forces discard each upkeep, fueling attrition while boosting your Shrine total.
Go-Shintai of Life's Origin — Reanimates Shrines from the graveyard each turn, providing massive recursion and resilience.
Sanctum of Fragile Roots — Off-color identity—skip; instead run black ramp to fuel multiple end-step activations.
Sphere of Safety — Taxes attackers based on your enchantment count, protecting you while you grind.

Upgrade Path

Add the cycle of Go-Shintai creatures and a Shrine reanimation package for resilience, plus enchantment tutors like Enlightened Tutor (note: white—use black tutors such as Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor instead). Improve mana with fast rocks and rituals to enable multiple end-step activations, and include protection like Sphere of Safety and recursion such as Phyrexian Reclamation to weather board wipes.

Core Cards

The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.

Win Conditions

▸Incremental drain from Sanctum of Stone Fangs and other black Shrines
▸Grinding the table out of resources then closing with creatures or commander beats
▸Big mana sinks and overwhelming board state after stabilizing

Archetypes

Shrines (Enchantress) — The commander is a Shrine that rewards stacking Shrines, the core tribal payoff.
Control — Repeatable removal plus drain and discard Shrines let you grind opponents out of resources.
Attrition/Midrange — Black's recursion and edicts pair with Shrine value engines for a long-game plan.