One of the reasons to play Commander is to get to play cards you otherwise wouldn’t.

Here’s one reason to do just that.

I started to brew this after I somehow stumbled on the idea that [scryfall]Pitiless Plunderer[/scryfall] might be great here. Apparently, I wasn’t the first to have this idea, as it’s the top card for Shirei on EDHREC, somehow beating out [scryfall]Viscera Seer[/scryfall], which is actually only eighth. I’m guessing the algorithm takes into account how often a certain card is played in other decks as well, and Plunderer might not see that much play outside of very specific commanders.

But, as I was reading through all the creatures applicable to Shirei, I came across this one:

Of course, once I came up with this idea, I went back to EDHREC to see that, of course, I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea either, as it was the top creature for the commander. Still, supposing this is where we want to be, how many Apostles do we need? Probably around 50, but that wouldn’t leave much room for anything else, so I’ll go with 40. We also need around 40 mana sources to be able to cast our commander at some point, so that leaves us with room for 19 other spells. Mostly demons.

However, before we get to the demons, we’ll put in these:

That leaves us with room for 13 different demons.

Okay, that’s 11. So, we’ll put in two extra Apostles. Meaning that we’re done here. That was easy. It won’t do much and is easily disrupted, as well as way too consistent for my tastes (the games would be quite similar from this decks point of view, which shouldn’t be your goal with Commander).