Sheoldred, Whispering One Reanimator

Commander Overview

Sheoldred is a true machine, while they certainly aren’t as powerful as they once were since they do cost seven mana they are still a great commander, constant reanimation and sacrifice for our opponents can disrupt our opponents board state and make us a lot stronger, and that’s not even including cards like Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos further disrupting our opponents board. Sheoldred is an excellent support piece for the deck, but we are undoubtedly able to reanimate big creatures without them. While they are firmly in a support role and not something necessary, but Sheoldred is still a great asset for us to have.

This is without a doubt a low bracket three deck, because of the inclusion of Tergrid, God of Fright and Demonic Tutor, we are technically bracket 3. We can hang with a lot of the decks in the format but may struggle with some high bracket threes.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is quite straightforward: fill our graveyard up and bring as many of our big creatures back as we can. This deck is perfect for any intermediate player; you certainly don’t need years of experience to play this, but having a good understanding of more complex interactions and game rules is key for this one.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck synergizes very well, as to be expected since we are fully focused on filling our graveyard and reanimating. I love how many sources of filling our graveyard with cards like Entomb and Buried Alive in the deck we can fill our graveyard very quickly, which interacts very nicely with cards like Siegfried, Famed Swordsman, which can be a strong attacker/blocker for our deck and can get big, crazy fast. Sheoldred is a big piece of synergy because we have a lot of ways to ruin our opponents board like Grave Pact, since we have so much reanimation, we can have a lot of creatures going in and out of our battlefield in the turn, and with Grave Pact out, we can easily devastate our opponents boards. The synergies in our deck are powerful.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: We don’t do a ton during the early-game, but do have some early game cards that can be helpful to the overall gameplan, like Stitcher’s Supplier, which is cheap, a good early-game blocker, and we will never say no to more cards in our graveyard. Like for most decks, this is an establishing phase for us; we don’t need to do anything too crazy. It is worth noting we have Reanimate, so if we mill early or don’t play a land and discard, we can reanimate something like It That Betrays on turn two, which is quite strong.

Mid-Game: The game starts to get a little better for us when we hit the mid-game, since we are in mono-black we have a lot of great options to ramp with cards like Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power and Crypt Ghast and we can easily have either Sheoldred or other big creatures like Valgavoth, Terror Eater on the field very early which can totally flip the game for us. Outside of big splashy plays, we get consistently stronger in the mid-game, even if it’s just setting up our board and getting out some good cards; we are perfectly ok with that. We typically get better as the game goes on.

Late-Game: We love the late game! Now I know that isn’t a controversial take among EDH, but in this deck, we especially do. The longer the game goes on, the better we get. We welcome our opponents to fill up their graveyard so we can resolve Rise of the Dark Realms and put everyone’s graveyard on our battlefield. We also have a very strong board presence in the late game. While our only win condition is combat, our reanimated creatures can make quick work of our opponents.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

You may not think we have a lot of ramp in this deck, but we actually do! While it’s certainly not the traditional ramp, we certainly won’t be casting any Cultivates, but we do have some strong ramp in Crypt Ghast, Extraplanar Lens, and Gauntlet of Power. Being in mono-color feels oh so good right now since we effectively have a bunch of mana doublers. Sheoldred being seven mana doesn’t even feel that bad at this point. While our ramp isn’t traditional, these cards are extremely effective at ramping out our game plan and letting us do broken things quickly.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

It’s pretty much a crime to build a mono-black deck and not include Phyrexian Arena. We will never complain about extra draws, and one life is absolutely worth it. This is an amazing card at any stage of the game, but it is especially good if it’s in our starting hand. We are just generally good at drawing cards, and some of these spells even help the overall gameplan like Deadly Dispute. Sacrificing a creature in our deck is pretty much always good for us, and getting some cards and treasure for only two is a deal we will take any time.

Removal

Another hugge strength of mono-black is our removal, whether its reanimating Massacre Wurm or Noxious Gearhulk a bunch of times we are pretty good at removing creatures, and if that doesnt work we have Damnation and Toxic Deluge which are extremely strong backups, and if that still doesnt work we have some single target removal like Doom Blade and Infernal Grasp. The fact of the matter is, if it exists on the board, we can remove it. Our removal package is a major strength of our deck.

Protection

We are purposely low on protection; this could be considered a weakness in our deck, but we just don’t care if any of our stuff dies, between Sheoldred and our various other reanimation effects we can get back pretty much anything we want, so if an opponent kills a strong creature of our that’s with cool with us they will be back. While not strictly protection, I do love No Mercy in the deck, it can be devastating to creature-heavy decks and de-incentivize people from attacking us.

Utility / Support

Let’s go over some of the coolest cards in our deck! Since we self-mill quite a bit in this deck, Abyssal Harvester is an awesome way to cheat out a huge creature early. While it is a drawback that we can only have one nightmare at a time, being able to grab something like It That Betrays can be truly insane, especially if we do it early. Angel of Suffering is a card that works extremely well with Abyssal Harvester since we can mill a ton with it. This is also perfect if we have Living Death in hand and we are bringing everything back! Speaking of bringing everything back, I did want to highlight Gray Merchant of Asphodel, an effective way to drain and gain our opponents, or just simply kill them when using something like Living Death or a mass reanimation spell. We have a lot of black pips in this deck, and our devotion can get crazy high.

Mana Base

We have a really cool mana base, pretty much any deck I can run Cabal Coffers always feels good, and with a ton of swamps in the deck, this can be a mana-producing machine in the mid-late game. Along the same lines as Cabal Coffers, we also have Crypt of Agadeem, which is basically just another Cabal Coffers to us since we typically have a very full graveyard. Our mana base is simple but very functional for the deck.

Win Conditions

Combat is our primary win condition; we are pretty good at keeping our opponents’ boards empty, and we can reanimate a lot, so combat is pretty good for us. Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Lotleth Giant can be great damage dealers and can technically be finishers, but are more just ways to whittle down our opponents.

Strengths of the Deck

We can fight through opponents’ removal very easily; we don’t care if our stuff goes to the graveyard.

Having so many ways to wipe our opponents’ board allows us to have great matchups against creature decks.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Graveyard hate is extremely good against us, and we have no way to stop it!

Sheoldred draws a ton of attention from our opponents, we are ok with that, but be prepared, you may not have Sheoldred on the field a lot.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Raffine, Scheming Seer. Matchup Record: 2-2

This was a split matchup, but it was pretty tough, I will admit. We don’t care that much about a lot of what they do, but since they are in Esper, they have access to counters and removal in abundance, so it can be quite tough for us to fight through them. It can be hard to resolve Sheoldred and a lot of our strong spells in this one. We also have almost no ways to block flying. Targeting them is the best way to handle them; keeping Raffine off the field is great too.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
No Mercy, Damnation and Noxious Gearhulk.

Game 2: Vs Krenko, Mob Boss. Matchup Record: 4-0

There really isn’t a better feeling in the world than playing Massacre Wurm against this deck, but we are just truly set up to beat them. We are great at killing small stuff, and most of their stuff doesn’t go to the graveyard since they are tokens, great matchup for our deck.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Toxic Deluge, Black Sun’s Twilight and Siegfried, Famed Swordsman.

Game 3: Vs Caesar, Legion’s Emperor. Matchup Record: 3-1

Just like Krenko, another great matchup for our deck, we truly feast against token decks, and this is no exception. They do have a little more protection than Krenko since they are Mardu. Still, I didn’t have much trouble with this deck, outside of one game where I missed three land drops and got truly run over. This is a great matchup for us. Gray Merchant of Asphodel shines in this matchup because the life-gain can be game-changing.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Darkness, Kokusho, the Evening Star and Valgavoth, Terror Eater.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! While Sheoldred certainly isn’t as strong as they were many years ago, they are still a very fun option and hold up quite well. This deck won’t change the world but can be a blast to play, and my testing group and I had fun with this one, let’s be real, who doesn’t love some classic reanimator fun!