Against the Odds: 36 Sheoldreds
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! Sheoldred, the Apocalypse has dominated Standard almost since the day it was first printed in Dominaria United. It's been a year, Wilds of Eldraine has been released, and the four-drop is still in over 40% of Standard decks. There's no debate that Sheoldred is good—it's clearly one of the best cards in Standard—which should mean the more Sheoldreds we add to our deck, the better our deck will be, right? That's what we are going to find out today as we play some Wilds of Eldraine Standard, but every single one of our cards is actually Sheoldred! Is it possible to play too many Sheoldreds? What are the odds of winning with an all-Sheoldred deck? Let's find out on today's Against the Odds!
Against the Odds: 36 Sheoldreds
The Deck
I'm not going to bother explaining what Sheoldred does or why it is good. Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure you are familiar with the Praetor's power. But I will say that it is—by far—our most important card because many of our other Sheoldreds depend on us first finding an actual Sheoldred.
Our second most important card is Mirror Box, which is a Sheoldred because it lets us keep more than one Sheoldred on the battlefield. I initially tried playing the deck without Mirror Box, but it wasn't all that fun because no matter how many Sheoldreds we drew, we could only every have one on the battlefield at the same time since Sheoldred is legendary. Thanks to Mirror Box, we can stack up as many copies of Sheoldred as possible on the battlefield!
We have two other creatures in our deck—Likeness Looter and Ludevic, Necrogenius—but both are actually just Sheoldreds since they can copy Sheoldred from our graveyard. Likeness Looter is especially strong because even as a Sheoldred, it keeps flying. Like Sheoldred needed to be even better...
The Irencrag might look like a ramp spell, and while we do sometimes use it to ramp into Sheoldred, it actually is a Sheoldred since we can bargain it away to Beseech the Mirror I'm order to tutor a Sheoldred directly to the battlefield. Between literal Sheoldred and Beseech, we have eight copies of Sheoldred that can hit the battlefield on Turn 3 thanks to The Irencrag!
Likewise, Candy Grapple might look like a removal spell, but really, it's a Sheoldred in conjunction with The Apprentice's Folly. The saga is super strong, making a hasty Sheoldred for just four mana and possibly two Sheoldreds if we can also copy a Likeness Looter or Ludevic, Necrogenius. But it has a drawback: once it hits the third lore counter, we lose all of our Reflection Sheoldreds. Candy Grapple lets us keep our Sheoldeds forever by sacrificing The Apprentice's Folly before it gets to the third lore counter, which technically makes it a Sheoldred.
Virtue of Persistence is similar. Yes, it kills a creature in the early game, which is nice, but it's in our deck because, in the late game, it is a Sheoldred every turn thanks to its repeatable reanimation. It can even steal our opponent's Sheoldreds from their graveyard, which is more relevant than it might seem considering that more than 40% of decks play the four-drop.
Speaking of reanimation, the rest of our Sheoldreds are powered by the graveyard. Invasion of Amonkhet fills the graveyard and draws us a card, and then we can attack it with a Sheoldred to flip it into another Sheoldred. Back for Seconds is two Sheoldreds, one directly on the battlefield and one in our hand. Finally, The Cruelty of Gix can both tutor up a Sheoldred and reanimate a Sheoldred, which, much like Back for Seconds, makes it two Sheoldreds for the price of one!
The Odds
So, did we break it? Not exactly. The good news is that playing all Sheoldreds seems to actually make Sheoldred less powerful. All in all, we only won 33% of the time with our 36-Sheoldred deck, which I guess is proof that Standard is fine and Sheoldred is a fair, finely tuned Magic card.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
