5c Shrines is a meme deck that was made possible thanks to Core set 21 and the release of Historic Anthology bringing the original Kamigawa Shrines. We want all the Shrines, all the time so today we will be trying our best to put together a completive build of the deck. This article is also an attempt to lure a good friend onto Arena, who loves the Kamigawa block. So hopefully you're reading this Connie I hope to see you on Arena soon, possibly with this sweet Shrines deck.
Sanctum of All
The landscape of Historic is a wild place with Ramp and Midrange decks with Uro running around, and very synergistic decks like Jund Sacrifice. Sanctum of All is a powerful value engine that snowballs the game in your favor by putting out any Shrine from your deck or graveyard onto the battlefield on our upkeep. By the time we hit the late game, we should have a board full of Shrines and doubling their triggers once we have six of them. The way we go about setting this up is ramping early into Sanctum of All and then keeping the opponent's side of the board empty. First, let's look at the other Shrines.
All the Shrines, all the Time
The real joy of the deck is the diverse utilities of our Shrine package. Sanctum of Tranquil Light is our cheapest Shrine and gives us a way to lock down a massive creature that is too big burn with Sanctum of Shattered Heights or Honden of Infinite Rage, which we have for targeted removal. Sanctum of Shattered Heights answers both creatures and planeswalkers and synergizes well with our ramp package by chucking extra lands. Honden of Infinite Rage can hit any target which gives us a way to take out the opponent's life total. We also have Sanctum of Stone Fangs to pressure the opponent's life total with the added bonus of gaining us life. For card advantage, we have Sanctum of Calm Waters to draw tons of cards once we have Sanctum of All popping off. To finish off our Shrine package we have Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest for some extra ramp and single copies of Honden of Cleansing Fire for life gain and Honden of Night's Reach to empty put the opponent on top decking.
Ramping
Arboreal Grazer and Cultivate are a well-tested ramp package and suit the deck just fine. Grazer gets that extra land into play on turn one so we can Cultivate on turn two. It also has three toughness to let us block early aggro and has reach which everyone seems to forget about. Cultivate supplies our Sanctum of Shattered Heights with ammunition and most importantly lets us put out a turn three Sanctum of All if we opened with Arboreal Grazer for the nut draw. I have seen some lists with Thirst for Meaning as a way to stock up the hand for Sanctum of Shattered Heights and as card advantage. I believe Cultivate is the way to go as our most explosive start doesn't exist without it. I did throw in a couple of copies of Omen of the Sea to help dig through the deck a bit.
Board Wipes
Taking our time to ramp early or putting out Shrines doesn't really impact the board so we have some board wipes to control the battlefield. For low to the ground aggro decks, we have Deafening Clarion to clean up early so that we can stem the bleeding. Wrath of God is our catch-all for when we need a reset button. Nothing too fancy but these are exactly what we need to let us set up our Shrines to lock down the game.
Fae of Wishes
Sanctum of All lets us tutor up answers for any situation and Fae of Wishes gives us that same flexibility from our sideboard. Fetching out extra copies of Shrines we have in the sideboard is huge and we have solid hate cards to get in game one.
Sideboard
Setessan Champion is a card we bring in for control and other grindy matches as an insane threat and source of card advantage. Champion should be free to run wild if the opponent boards out all of their dead removal from game one. Archon of Sun's Grace is for midrange matches and allows us to dominate the board with tokens. Yasharn, Implacable Earth can be another threat out of the sideboard but also has excellent hate abilities by shutting down a lot of abilities out of the Jund Sacrifice decks. It even fetches out lands to ramp us or pitch our Shrine abilities. We also have another Deafening Clarion, and Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage for graveyard hate. We also have another Honden of Cleansing Fire and Honden of Night's Reach to get with Fae of Wishes, and we have a single copy of Honden of Life's Web to flood the board with tokens.
That has been my attempt and making this meme archetype into something competitive and I hope you enjoyed it. Specifically you, Connie, I'd better see you on Arena soon. Thanks for reading and if you want to see more of Fellowship Games then head over to our YouTube and Twitch Channels. If you're looking to talk about Magic then consider hopping into our Discord where we also play Among Us and talk about other games. Follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on everything we're going and join The Fellowship.
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