Sheoldredg

Ok, so this post is geared for my bros that play magic the gathering, so if your not one of them, you will find very little in this post.

With that out of the way, lets get onto the real article.

With all the cards from New Phyrexia finally in the greasy palms of deck builders the net has exploded with ideas, way more then there was from just the early leak. I had been mulling a deck idea that revolved around Sheoldred, Whispering One since the leak of the god book, and I think now it's to the place that I would like it to be to take it to Friday Night Magic at my local shop.

So, before getting to this deck, lets take a look at what Whats big in standard.
Birds
Annoying little hawks have been hovering over standard for quite some time wrecking face with a few swords in their talons. What makes the birds so amazing is that they thin your deck, fetch a bunch of flyers, can attack in the almost void air, oh yeah, they have flying. How to deal with birds? take care of them before they get their swords and their protection. cards that easily deal with these guys are cheap removal in all colors. Black offers a few ways to take care of all of the menacing birds in the form of cheap board wipes. Black Sun's Zenith is able able to eradicate many birds and friends at only 3 mana. Shrivel is also a verry good choice as for 2 mana you get to -1/-1 everything, the happy part about this is the sheer number of creatures with 1 toughness are boundless in the fragile standard format right now.

Valakut
Easy to deal with, black and blue have land disruption, and red has land destruction. plus the fragile creatures that power the win-mill can be taken out with black sun's zenith or shrivel.

Titans
really, there are quite a few 6/6 creatures with awesome effects for 6 mana. all can be dealt with easy enough with a doom blade(go for the throat if it's the wurmcoil or massacre wurm). the onyl downside is that once they enter the battlefield they do some epic shenanigans, blue has counters for this, and a mana leak is plenty good considering most players wanna drop these come turn 5 or 6, they won't have the 3 to pay.

Planewalkers
theres a few of these guys around right now, though the Hex Mage has been the black answer to them for a while, things just got better. Hex Parasite lets me rip all the counters off of your planeswalker and buff the bugger. it won't stop you from brainstorming once with JTMS, but it will get the worry of him off of my chest.

Board wipes
There are a lot of these right now, day of judgment, phyrexian rebirth, life's finale, black sun zenith, pyroclasm, slagstorm. i'm probably even missing a few in that list but it happens, and it happens a lot. when your in need of a little extra time you do a board wipe. not much you can do about this. unless you have creatures that benifit from being in the grave yard, such as Bloodgast, Reassembling Skeletons, Vengevine, or the pheonix's.

Weenies
1 toughness seems to be the mantra of creatures right now. Shrivel shuts down elves and kuldotha, black sun is a good sweep on turn 3 to take care of elves and goblins, but great turn 4 to take care of knights, vampires and elves once they have an arch druid out.


Playing off of the weaknesses of the main decks we can see that being able to attack and block in the air is important because of flyers and the lack thereof. Being able to survive and recover from board wipes are very important due to the number of them.

here goes nothing, i give to you Sholdredge.
Sheoldredge, V1
TheWillRogers Type II

Main Deck:
4 Enclave Cryptologist
2 Grave Titan
1 Massacre Wurm
4 Reassembling Skeleton
3 Sheoldred, Whispering One
4 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Wurmcoil Engine

4 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Diabolic Tutor
4 Doom Blade
1 Elixir of Immortality
3 Rise from the Grave
4 See Beyond
1 Traumatize

4 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacomb
3 Island
4 Jwar Isle Refuge
4 Swamp

Sideboard:
3 Evil Presence
4 Hex Parasite
4 Shrivel
4 Surgical Extraction

Let's explain some things.
I'm not using Jace The Wallet Burner, nor am i using Duress/Inquisistion/Dispise, Jace is out of my price range, and the discard spells did more  to slow this deck down than to help it survive.

The Engine
The engine of this deck is to get creatures into your graveyard, and to then dredge them back with something like Sheoldred or Rise from the Grave. Enclave Cryptologist is very effective at this. Something nice about this build is that this only takes 1 level counter for the fish-lady to be the most effective. Rise is aimed to get Sheoldred to the battlefield, She then works to slowly thin the herd on the other side of the field, while bringing back things like Grave Titans and Wurmcoil or Massacre Wurm. If it comes to not having enough dudes in the graveyard, you can always traumatize yourself for epic confusion and rises.

The Toolbox
Reassembling skeleton is the ultimate chump blocker, it's a perfect card to toss to the grave with the Cryptologist as it will eventually find it's way to the battlefield. To deal with flyers Nighthawk is in the mix, not to mention the life gain and ability to destroy the biggest baddy that can be thrown at it. See beyond gets cards you don't need in your hand back into your library, plus you get to draw 2 cards for 2 mana, pretty sweet if you ask me. Diabolic tutor is tossed in just to fetch anything that you need, be it an Elixir of Immortality to save yourself from accidentally traumatizing yourself to death, or just to get some of the sorceries and stuff back into the draw pool. Massacre Wurm is nice for a wipe, not to mention the eventual death of their dudes, which will cause them to loose life. Wurmcoil is amazing because of it's ability to split into 2 equally annoying 3/3 wurms upon death. Grave titan is a fun card to play at all times, to get a 6/6 deathtouch and 2 2/2 zombies at the beginning of your upkeep with sheoldred is really cute.

The lands.
Every dual land possible for standard, with some basics to make drowned catacomb worth while. it's pretty amazing how much 1 life from Jwar Ilse Refuge can help.  if only there were a Blue/Black fetch land :(.

The Sideboard
Evil presence is the card designed to deal with valakut. Nice volcano bro, it's a Swamp. Then they cry; one could use spreading seas instead so that they could draw a card. but I would like to make use of more of my mana on my turn, and i believe the draw engine is pretty solid here.

Hex Parasite is used for lulz against plainswalkers, thats it. One could use Hex Mage if they wanted, because that is sacrifice to kill i chose against it, even though i could easily sheoldred it back when a walker gets dropped again.

Shrivel, this just shuts down alot of the aggro decks and alot of creatures in general. well underplayed.

Surgical Extraction, oh god i love this card, perfect for getting rid of annoyances from the opponent.




I believe this deck will do well, it has the answers and the power and the recurrence, although a Bojuka Bog will become the bane of my existence