Magic: The Gathering — Sheoldred, The Apocalypse Commander Deck Guide

Commander is the most popular format to play Magic: The Gathering. It's a casual format focused more on having fun with your friends than on winning. But if you want to take your game to the next level, there are several powerful legendary creatures to choose as your commander that will give you a big advantage over your friends.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is one of the most popular mono-black commanders. By rewarding you and punishing your opponents for normal game actions, she shifts the game in your favor, regardless of what you include in the rest of the deck.

Sample Decklist

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse rewards you for drawing cards and punishes your opponents for the same, but doesn't have other significant abilities. As such, you can build a deck that leverages her abilities to draw a lot of cards, offsetting the normal life loss associated with black draw spells and turning forced draw into a win condition.

Alternatively, she makes an excellent commander for a generic mono-black deck, which wants to draw a lot of cards anyway.

The Commander

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is a mono-black Phyrexian Praetor that costs two generic and two black mana to cast. She's a 4/5 with deathtouch, but while she's a decent blocker, you aren't going to want to make attacking with her a priority. Instead, take advantage of her other two abilities.

While Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is in play, you'll gain two life each time you draw a card. This is significant because black has a ton of effects that allow you to pay one life to draw a card, so having Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in play means that you'll start gaining instead of losing life in exchange for more cards.

While rewarding you for drawing more cards, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse also punishes your opponents, causing them to lose two life each time they draw a card. This puts them on a soft timer before their normal beginning phase draw kills them, while making symmetrical draw enablers like Howling Mine attractive options.

A lot of popular commanders have unique abilities that players build around, turning them into combo pieces or creating a deck that relies on having them in play. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse can be built the same way to turn draw engines into win conditions, but she can also accelerate decks that work perfectly well without her.

How To Build The Deck

Since Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is incredibly versatile and works so well with a variety of decks, you could simply throw together a pile of your best mono-black cards and some swamps and hold your own at a lower power level table.

Instead of listing the best black cards, we'll focus on cards that synergize well with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and continue to function in her absence.

Ramp

Black has access to an excellent ramp package, although it usually comes at a cost. Rituals demonstrate this cost by trading cards in your hand for immediate mana acceleration, like how Dark Ritual gives you a two-mana boost out of your hand.

Cabal Ritual works similarly, although it only provides one mana on top of the two you pay into it. If you're lucky enough to get both in your starting hand, though, you can cast Sheoldred, the Apocalypse on turn one!

Mono-colored decks have access to Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, which rewards you with mana equal to your devotion to your color of choice. Black benefits in particular thanks to the tendency to have permanents with multiple black mana symbols in order to make them more difficult to splash into other decks.

Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold offer similar acceleration in mono-black decks, but these two nonbasic lands look for Swamps, not devotion. Cabal Coffers is the clear winner: For two mana you get one black mana for every Swamp you control, while Cabal Stronghold requires three colorless mana to get the same mana, except that it only gives you mana for basic Swamps.

By including a lot of basic Swamps as your mana base, you can get big bonuses.

There are several nonbasic Swamps that add utility while accelerating Cabal Coffers, such as Witch's Cottage. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, also turns all lands into Swamps.

Magus of the Coffers offers redundancy by providing the same ability as Cabal Coffers on a 4/4 body. It costs five mana to play, but black's access to reanimation effects means that you can cheat it in from your graveyard if you need it earlier.

Artifacts like Wayfarer's Bauble and Bunished Hart can tutor basic Swamps into play, providing some of the land ramp usually restricted to green and further empowering Cabal Coffers' effects.

Extraplanar Lens is a powerful mana accelerant for mono-colored decks: when you play it, you imprint a land you already control, and then, as long as it remains in play, all lands with the same name will produce one extra mana. This means that your opponents' Swamps will also produce double mana, but there's a way to make it asymmetrical: only use Snow-Covered Swamps.

Since the Extraplanar Lens only cares about the land's name, your opponents won't benefit from it unless they're also running Snow-Covered Swamps for some reason.

Jet Medallion isn't strictly mana acceleration, but it does decrease the cost of all of your black spells by one generic mana. This doesn't affect abilities or black mana symbols in the mana cost, but the more spells you cast in a turn, the more of an effective mana boost this represents.

It also counts as an extra mana whenever you cast a spell with X in the casting cost.

Draw

Black is excellent at trading life to draw cards. In a format where you start with 20 life, one life per card is a fair deal. In commander, it's a great rate. With Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, there's no downside, since you'll gain more life than you pay each turn.

Phyrexian Arena is the classic black accelerant, giving you an extra card for one life at the beginning of each of your upkeeps. Seizan, Perverter of Truth offers twice as many cards at the same cost each, but provides them to each player. For you, with your commander in play, that means drawing two cards and gaining two life. For your opponents, they'll draw two and lose six life.

Whenever you gain life, Well of Lost Dreams allows you to pay mana up to the amount of life you gained, and then draw that many cards. Since drawing cards will give you life, this will turn into a draw engine limited only by how much mana you have available.

Howling Mine used to be a commander staple, but has fallen out of use as Wizards of the Coast has produced better asynchronous draw options. It works well with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, though, because she punishes each of your opponents for the additional card draw every turn.

Font of Mythos is almost like two Howling Mines rolled into one: it costs twice as much as Howling Mine, but forces each player to draw two extra cards instead of one during their draw step.

Temple Bell can be tapped to force all players to draw a card, which allows for some strategic plays. You can activate it to turn off a Rakdos player's hellbent abilities, force a player to draw an eighth card before their own cleanup phase so that they need to discard, or interfere with Flubs, the Fool's card replacement mechanic.

The One Ring is a powerful draw engine in itself, but each time you use it not only do you draw more cards, you also lose more life. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse turns that around, so while you'll still lose life every upkeep, you'll gain much more back each time you use it to draw an ever-increasing number of cards.

Draw More

Once Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is in play, you can really punish your opponents by forcing them to draw a ton of cards.

Wheel of Fortune may not be available in mono-black, but Dark Deal has a wheel-like effect, forcing each player to discard their hand and then draw the same number of cards minus one.

This can have tricky timing, since you'll want your opponents' hands to be full when you cast it, but they may also respond by casting as many instants or discarding to other effects in response to reduce their life loss.

Teferi's Puzzle Box has a wheel effect in each draw phase, cycling each player's hand to the bottom of their library and drawing them that many fresh cards each turn. The damage and life gain from this can add up quickly, and can force players to play impulsively, since they won't have the same cards available on their next turn.

Damnable Pact acts almost like a Fireball in black. For two black and X mana, you can force any player to draw X cards and lose X life. With Sheoldred in play, you triple the life loss if you use it to target an opponent, or watch it become "target player draws X cards and gains X life" if you target yourself.

Peer into the Abyss can just kill an opponent if their deck is thick enough. Ignoring the "lose half their life, rounded up" effect, this can force an opponent to draw twenty or thirty cards, causing them to die to card draw. Or you can use it on yourself to draw a ton of cards, gain a ton of life, and blast your opponents with your Psychosis Crawler.

Redundancy

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse can be a win condition on her own if you include enough card draw, but that makes her a monolith commander. Including lots of ways to help your opponents draw more cards won't help you if they target her as soon as she enters, but including some other options with similar effects to punish your opponents for drawing cards will make the deck far more consistent.

Underworld Dreams and Fate Unraveler both have similar effects, where they punish each opponent by dealing one damage any time that player draws a card. While this isn't likely to win you the game outright, combining them with big draw bombs like Peer into the Abyss will likely one-shot an opponent.

Price of Knowledge takes a different approach, dealing damage to each opponent equal to the number of cards in their hand during their upkeep. While this punishes players for hoarding a lot of cards and for drawing on other players' turns, it doesn't get as much benefit from effects like Howling Mine.

Orcish Bowmasters is an incredible card in every format where it's legal, but does especially well in decks that allow or encourage players to draw a lot of cards. After the first card in the draw step, Orcish Bowmasters will deal one damage to any target and create or grow an Orc Army token each time an opponent draws a card.

This damage can be used to remove creatures and planeswalkers, or to ping down opponents. You get to select the target each time, so if an opponent plays a Wheel of Fortune, you can go ahead and direct all 28 damage to the player of your choice.

Psychosis Crawler takes a different approach, growing along with your hand while pinging each opponent every time you draw a card. With Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in play, you might want to target an opponent with big draw effects like Damnable Pact, but Psychosis Crawler makes you a better target.

Combine it with cards that eliminate your hand size limit and some kind of evasion for maximum effect.