Basement Ghost Singing (The Retired)

I'm not certain if this deck should become one of The Retired or not.

3 Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker
3 Forked-Branch Garami
3 Bile Urchin
4 Thief of Hope
4 Dripping-Tongue Zubera
4 Hana Kami
2 Phantom Tiger
2 Nether Traitor

4 Rend Flesh
3 Soulless Revival
2 Wear Away

4 Overgrown Tomb
7 Swamp
7 Forest
1 Llanowar Wastes
4 Darkbore Pathway

3 Devouring Greed

Named after an Armor for Sleep song (which...that takes me back), the premise behind the deck is pretty simple: use Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker to keep all my tiny creatures in play, until I can cast a Devouring Greed. Then all the spirits come back, so if the Greed doesn't finish the job, I still have creatures to do the work!

"Isn't this just a slow-motion storm deck?"

Well...

"Do you have problems keeping creatures like Hana Kami alive until a 5 mana value creature can appear?"

Sure but-

"Aren't there way better removal suites than spells that insist on having 'Arcane' as the subtype?"

...

"Isn't this just a bad Standard deck from 2005"

So it's like that, is it?

And yeah I suppose it is. It's not easy to get excited about casting 1/x's for two mana. It might just be that the spirit limitation is too much. This needs to either be a Shirei deck OR it needs to be a Devouring Greed deck. As a Shirei deck, I can then utilize any number of 1/x creatures that might have utility, while building a curve that gives me plays into the late game. I can utilize the Aristocrats builds for a starting point. However, Red is probably a better partner for that strategy: Green doesn't really offer me much here.

As a pure spirits deck, I can lean into a board state that clogs everything up until I cast a card like Duress to clear the way for the Greed. Shirei gets cut here, because a 2/2 for five is bad. 

But if I'm going to play a spirits deck, Blue is a better support color. 

So I think I've argued myself into putting this one in the bin. Ah well.