Shorikai, Genesis Engine Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on June 25, 2024

Shorikai, Genesis Engine | Illustration by Wisnu Tan

Shorikai, Genesis Engine is a popular and powerful card that has the unique claim to fame of being the only vehicle you can play as your commander (minus Transformers!). This made it an instant hit in the Commander community as shown by its popularity on EDHREC. Its popularity exceeds its ally and competitor Kotori, Pilot Prodigy, whose precon Shorikai comes from, a fact I attribute to a few things:

• Shorikai’s novelty factor as a vehicle commander is quite unique.
• Shorikai is an efficient card advantage engine entirely on its own while Kotori decks have to rely on the 99 to keep a steady stream of cards flowing.
• Shorikai is rarely a creature (Crew 8 is no joke!) so it enjoys protection from EDH staples like Vanquish the Horde, Wrath of God, and Swords to Plowshares.
• Shorikai plays well with vehicles thanks to free Pilots but also performs fine without them.
• Kotori, Pilot Prodigy’s main advantage over Shorikai is that it’s the better commander for quickly pressuring the table with a fleet of massive beaters, but it’s much more narrow.

Today I’ll be going over a Shorikai list I threw together and discuss all kinds of options and synergies for building the perfect Shorikai deck for your EDH nights. Let’s get started!

The Deck

Brotherhood Vertibird | Illustration by Daarken

The Commander: Shorikai, Genesis Engine

Shorikai, Genesis Engine is a versatile commander that provides ready access to cards and Pilot tokens as well as easy graveyard synergy with looting. Its main weakness is also one of its strengths: It’s seldom a creature thanks to its obscene crew cost and how easily chump blocked it is. Tapping it to attack also means you’re skipping a turn of activating it.

With all this in mind, some themes that make sense to incorporate and build around in your Shorikai deck include:

• Attrition/interaction (sweepers, counterspells, Disenchant effects, hate cards for graveyard/combo).
• Far fewer creatures needed thanks to constant stream of free tokens.
• Vehicles, and artifacts in general.
• Untapping artifacts.
• Reanimator (niche, but Shorikai is an easy setup for this).

One framework I’ve really liked for building EDH decks (credit to Saffron Olive and his EDH upgrade articles) is:

• 50 mana sources: Lands and ramp, usually a 37/13 split.
• 10 card draw: Cards that net you 2+ cards in hand.
• 8 targeted removal: Split between creature/artifact/enchantment removal and counterspells.
• 3 board wipes: Creature-light decks might want one more, creature-heavy decks might want one less.
• 2 graveyard recursion.
• 2 flexible tutors: For higher budgets, I recommend more tutors.
• 1 graveyard hate: Since you need to keep graveyard decks honest.
• 1 finisher: Something that can win games the turn you cast it without too much setup.

Mana Rocks

I want to start this Shorikai, Genesis Engine build with mana rocks. Lots of rocks in fact!

While mana rocks are general Commander staples (especially for decks without access to green), they’re particularly good with Shorikai because of its powerful card draw ability. This dramatically reduces the risk you’ll flood out by playing too many rocks. They also play great with both artifact/untap synergies just like Shorikai!

You should aim for 15 to 20 rocks and mana creatures plus 35 to 40 lands since Shorikai will keep you from flooding out too badly; I highly value the consistency that comes with such high numbers.

Most of these are fairly self-explanatory, but if you want to trim the more budget ones I’d suggest the ETB tapped ones first. Ebony Fly seems nifty for giving Shorikai flying so expect to activate the ability more than Guardian Idol even if both are going to be rocks 99% of the time.

None of these are necessary but they’re fantastic if you can afford them or already own them. Between talismans, signets, and diamonds, find a 2-mana rock that fits your budget. Jeweled Lotus fits nicely in Shorikai since you can easily discard it if you draw it after casting Shorikai, the card’s main drawback.

Another interesting inclusion for this deck that you should add if you have it is Simulacrum Synthesizer. In a heavy artifact deck like this one, you’ll make a lot of Construct tokens along the way. Besides your commander, the deck has many ways to enable it, and you can even switch some 2-mana rocks and vehicles for more expensive ones.

Vehicles

While I don’t want to play every vehicle imaginable, having easy access to a lot of Pilot tokens makes good vehicles great. These also offer a simple way to pressure other players or even win games if your opponents don’t blow up your flying vehicles. This is also a great segment from the precon, which includes most of the vehicles you’d want to play in Shorikai (and a few I wouldn’t).

Cultivator's Caravan is a personal favorite given that it’s a mana rock on wheels, perfect for Shorikai! The rest of the vehicles in this list either fly, animate vehicles, or generate card advantage (Imposter Mech being the lone exception as a unique clone effect). Sonic Screwdriver does interesting things at various points of the game, like scrying, untapping your commander or granting some evasion when needed.

If you modify your precon to fit this build, this means cutting Colossal Plow, Imperial Recovery Unit, Prodigy's Prototype, and Raiders' Karve. Moving away from Kotori, Pilot Prodigy makes vehicle density and very large crew costs less appealing, and big ground beaters frequently get walled off or chumped in EDH.

Sweepers

Shorikai works well with sweepers for several reasons. It’s a vehicle, it gives you lots of card advantage and selection and free chump blockers, it plays well with other vehicles, and it’s in no hurry to accomplish anything. This is a great deck for your Wrath of God and Day of Judgment and similar cards.

This deck plays eight sweepers to really slow down games and get time to activate Shorikai over and over. That’s a lot, but keep in mind that you can also pitch sweepers when they aren’t useful if you don’t mind overdoing it a bit to make sure you always have the option.

I dream of sweeping the board and then activating Peacewalker Colossus/Mobilizer Mech to immediately crunch for a bunch of damage with Shorikai and the gang.

Counterspells

No attrition deck makes sense without ways to stop your opponents from doing whatever they want. While I wouldn’t go totally crazy with counterspells (you aren’t a Nymris, Oona's Trickster or Talrand deck), you want to play a good number of them to stop combos and haymakers at the table and keep people honest. Keep in mind that a lot of the best counterspells are rather pricey, so this deck only includes ones that won’t hurt your wallet too much.

There’s a nice mix of counterspells here, but sadly a couple of the better cheap ones are out of the budget. If you want more counterspells there are endless Cancel variants you could consider. I tend to avoid most “unless you pay X” counterspells in EDH since they can go dead very quickly. But Shorikai mitigates that problem so this list plays No More Lies and Spell Pierce since you can pitch them if they go dead late.

Spot Removal

Not too much spot removal here since you can lean on sweepers to kill a lot of things at once and counterspells for gigantic spells. But having the option to just get rid of one individually problematic thing is always good so you’re playing a handful of staples plus Dispatch, which works well with your many artifacts.

Tutors

One of the main cards is Muddle the Mixture, which is a serviceable counterspell that can find either of your combo pieces. You’ll want more so there are a couple of tutors that can each find one of the pieces. All these tutors have viable backup hits if you already have the corresponding piece or failed to combo out earlier.

Solve the Equation and Merchant Scroll are the tutors you want to get Dramatic Reversal.

If you’re looking to tutor Isochron Scepter then you want Tribute Mage and Fabricate.

Other Cards

You’ve got a bit more card draw to help supplement Shorikai, Genesis Engine to finish the deck. Thirst for Knowledge and Thoughtcast are good picks for this since both are quite efficient with artifacts.

There’s also Release to Memory from the preconstructed deck in order to hate on graveyards, and it plays well with your mass of sweepers.

Cyberdrive Awakener and Katsumasa, the Animator are in the deck as potential finishers so that games don’t go forever.

The Mana Base

This is a healthy number of lands for sure, but this deck is very interested in accumulating quite a bit of mana so you don’t mind a bit of flood. You could play up to 41 lands in a deck like this.

If you have the mana base from the precon and feel lazy just add another cheap dual land and you’re good to go.

The mana base is somewhat self-explanatory. This list has all the cheap dual lands you could want (cheap defined as cheaper than Hallowed Fountain, at least). There are a bunch of basics and some great utility lands. Modern Horizons 3 gave us a free spell to add in Suppression Ray, which can help us close a game or simply be another tapped dual.

Mech Hangar works well with all your vehicles, Inventors' Fair is free lifegain and a tutor on a land, Command Tower is a freeroll staple, and Command Beacon seems useful given how much this deck is built around Shorikai. If your threat level is high enough it'll occasionally be targeted by Shatter effects and Beacon can be an out to the most egregious cases of this.

The Strategy

You’re basically here to durdle. Make Pilots, crew some vehicles, counter some spells, and sweep the board tons of times while building up your mana towards a big end game. Eventually you can set up Scepter and Reversal or just win with giant vehicles, Cyberdrive Awakener, or Katsumasa, the Animator.

Try not to attract too much attention to yourself early since losing Shorikai, Genesis Engine too many times really slows this deck down.

Combos and Interactions

This is where the fun begins! The simplest combination of cards you can run in Shorikai, Genesis Engine to draw groans from your table is Isochron Scepter plus Dramatic Reversal. Assembling this combo with Shorikai and mana rocks gives you infinite mana, draws your deck, and creates as many 1/1s as you can make before you deck out.

One thing worth mentioning is that having fail cases for Isochron Scepter makes sense from a deckbuilding perspective. Thankfully you have quite a few decent backup options with counterspells and spot removal.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck does feature the Isochron Scepter/Dramatic Reversal infinite, as well as a higher-than-average number of board wipes. These can be points of contention with some playgroups. Otherwise this decklist is pretty casual vehicle fair, which shouldn't be an issue at casual tables.

Budget Options

The second thing to figure out when building a deck is what your budget is. EDH decks can cost $50 or several thousand depending on how much you’re willing to put in and pimp out.

Shorikai, Genesis Engine gets you off to a good start by coming from a precon with a lot of useful cards in it. The end list for this build is fairly budget-conscious, but there are a lot of cards worth shelling out for if you’re willing to pay a pretty penny.

Mystical Tutor and Enlightened Tutor are both great if you can afford them, especially because Shorikai lets you draw whatever card you tutor immediately.

These counterspells would drive up your deck's price, and for good reason.

There’s some real power here, particularly Fierce Guardianship which is a genuinely broken EDH card. Negate for 0 mana is just completely messed up, but it's quite the price to pay for a single card. Mana Drain is an even more comically overpowered, and hard to justify acquiring.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but you can add some more expensive duals and utility lands if you want. Nothing essential, but it’s good to be aware of:

Other Builds

Whether or not you include this combo (and the tutors to find it) should depend on your power level, but it’s in this deck since my local game stores are full of similar combos. You could try Laboratory Maniac if you want to convert the Scepter/Reversal combo into a win on the spot.

A very fair approach is to use the pilots that Shorikai produces to operate strong vehicles and overrun players.

Commanding Conclusion

Render Silent | Illustration by Matt Stewart

Whew, that was quite the writeup! Hopefully, you enjoyed it and now find yourself in possession of a sweet new deck built around a sweet new ride.

What do you think of this list? Do you prefer the budget version, or do you like to go all out with your cardboard? Let me know in the comments or over on the Draftsim Twitter.

I wish you the best of luck in driving your opponents to Durdle Town, USA. Until next time, may your draws always be gas!