Building a Hei Bai, Forest Guardian Commander Deck... Without Shrines?

Hei Bai, Forest Guardian | Art by TAPIOCA

Hei Bai, Forest Guardian is the centerpiece of the Avatar: The Last Airbender iteration of Shrines, a fan-favorite enchantment cycle that care about controlling as many different Shrines as possible.

At this point, we've received four different cycles of Shrines, bringing our total number to twenty-two, a critical mass that now has some serious power and consistency.

What Does Hei Bai, Forest Guardian Do?

Hei Bai has some tough competition to be the go-to commander for Shrines decks, however, as Go-Shintai of Life's Origin can produce multiple extra Shrine tokens to supercharge the strategy, which normally is impossible due to all Shrines being legendary. Hei Bai's ability to put a Shrine into play when it enters is powerful, but its activated ability is only a payoff for controlling legendary enchantments, whereas Go-Shintai can also act as a further enabler for the strategy.

In fact, Hei Bai's enters trigger paradoxically might reward us for running fewer Shrines rather than more. If we include them all, then each one we hit will probably do more, but if we only include one, then we're guaranteed to get it onto the battlefield as soon as we can cast our commander.

We can play a very fair imitation of Vintage Oath of Druids decks that only run Atraxa, Grand Unifier for creatures to make sure they hit her every time. Imagine Hei Bai if it just had the text of Honden of Seeing Winds tacked onto it for free. Pretty sweet, right?

Now, this is certainly a crux in the deckbuilding process. I'm choosing to focus on a build around Hei Bai's second ability that cares about legendary enchantments, but Hei Bai can also be, and will most commonly be, a powerful Shrines commander. I've included a deck list for that take on Hei Bai below.

Hei Bai, Forest Guardian Shrines Commander Deck List

Key Legendary Enchantments

If we're building around Hei Bai, Forest Guardian's second ability, then we'll need to play a ton of legendary enchantments. Luckily, there are plenty of powerful ones out there, as well as a few that work especially well with Hei Bai's token-making ability.

The first class of legendary enchantments we'll be taking advantage of is the Backgrounds. From the Battle for Baldur's Gate set, these enchantments grant abilities to our commander.

Inspiring Leader and Haunted One can each act as a double anthem for our Spirit tokens, and Master Chef can boost their power by one. None of the Spirits can be blocked except by other Spirits, so that represents a lot of damage. Meanwhile, Street Urchin threatens to convert our tokens into damage directly, removing creatures or burning out opponents.

Beyond the Backgrounds, there's another handful of legendary enchantments that love Hei Bai's tokens. Flowering of the White Tree gives our tokens a static buff while also providing additional perks for the (spoiler) many legendary creatures in our deck.

Oath of Ajani may look funny in a deck with zero planeswalkers, but it's plenty good on rate and to up our legendary count. Purphoros, God of the Forge is great anywhere, but in this deck he can threaten to take out the entire table in only one or two Hei Bai activations.

On the topic of Gods, we also get to run a small The World Tree package, since that land is great just for fixing our mana in a regular game. Esika, God of the Tree grants mana-fixing abilities to all of our legends, or comes down flipped as a value engine that can take over a game.

Klothys, God of Destiny can ramp early on while incidentally exiling scary cards from graveyards. Ephara, God of the Polis will draw us some serious cards since Hei Bai can make tokens at instant speed, and Heliod, the Radiant Dawn is a two-for-one that can flip into a crazy cost-reducer.

We're running plenty of legendary creatures (that happen to be enchantments), so some of the more typical legendary payoffs work great in this deck.

Annie Joins Up can take out a threat when it enters, and afterwards it passively doubles all of our legendary triggers, from Arasta of the Endless Web to Sythis, Harvest's Hand. Sisay, Weatherlight Captain will grow quickly in a deck full of such varied cards, and can find a wide swath of permanents from our deck.

Reki, the History of Kamigawa will give a steady stream of cards to keep us going. And Jodah, the Unifier is a huge threat as always, but outside of the command zone he can be more of a fun surprise than a game-warping force.

There are a few more cards that I'm so excited to be playing in this deck, mostly because I haven't found a home for them before. The newly banned-in-Standard Proft's Eidetic Memory is a role player here, as a cheap legendary enchantment that replaces itself, but once we have our secret commander Honden of Seeing Winds out, it can distribute a counter every turn at the least.

The Sixth Doctor can copy one spell a turn, which can end a game super quickly. Two copies of Purphoros, God of the Forge or Inspiring Leader will mean lights out for our opponents.

And The Kenriths' Royal Funeral is both massive card draw and the cost reduction to enable us to play the cards we draw.

Winning the Game with Hei Bai, Forest Guardian

Our plan A is to make an army of nigh-unblockable tokens with our commander, buff them up, and swing in. Many of the cards in our deck use resources to power this plan, so for our backup plans we'll want to find parallel engines that work with our token payoffs, rather than try to set up a completely separate plan B.

If our commander gets removed too many times, we can use Sigil of the Empty Throne or Hallowed Haunting to flood the board with massive tokens. Hallowed Haunting is especially crazy here since whatever Spirits Hei Bai has been able to produce will also make our new tokens huge. Arasta of the Endless Web can also build a sizeable board as long as our opponents keep casting spells.

If we do have our commander active, there's one incidental synergy that's worth looking out for. Vraska Joins Up puts a deathtouch counter on all of our legendary creatures, and Street Urchin gives our commander the ability to deal damage. If we have both, we've built our own Attrition, and can sacrifice our tokens to kill any size of creature.

There are a number of tutors in our deck that can get either half of this combo if we happen to draw one piece, and it's often worth it to stop our opponents in their tracks. Search for Glory can find any legendary card, and Sisay, Weatherlight Captain could conceivably find us both if we can make enough mana.

Zur the Enchanter can also fill in the gaps, though most opponents will kill him well before he can attack twice.

Hei Bai, Forest Guardian Non-Shrine Commander Deck List

Conclusion

Hei Bai, Forest Guardian is a blast to play. Our opponents will 100% expect to be playing against Shrines.dek, and will be shocked when Hei Bai enters and we look through half our deck to find a single Shrine. And no one will ever expect to play against Oath of Nissa into Street Urchin into Proft's Eidetic Memory.

Legendary enchantments tend to have plenty of words on them, and if we can play enough together, then those words are bound to overlap somehow. This is what five-color decks should be: an excuse to build around the most specific strategy you can think of.

Getting a free Honden of Seeing Winds along with Hei Bai subsidizes a lot of goofiness, and this deck can keep up with the table into the long game.

Having so many passive enchantments also means we're less vulnerable to creature board wipes, and can play tons of cheap interaction, like Leyline Binding and Chained to the Rocks. The core strategy of playing enchantments that care about enchantments is tried and true, and we can substitute out the format staples for our own brand of fun without sacrificing too much power.

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