Dominaria United’s new trump card Sheoldred, The Apocalypse has been a very staple part of Black-based decks not only in Standard but also in older formats like Pioneer and Modern. The triggered ability makes a difference in most of the situations wherein opponents’ card draw will work against them and yours making additional benefit on the life gain. In effect, most deck build has become wary of this threat and they make sure that they have geared efficient cards against it in the main decklist.

It is actually very helpful to go with a game plan on how your deck will answer Sheoldred. The deck build is usually equipped with solid spot removals such as Infernal Grasp, Soul Transfer, Riveteers Charm, and Destroy Evil.

Enchantments with exile effects also work like Leyline Binding but make sure though that you’d put your board open to Invoke Despair as it can get rid of the Leyline if it is the only enchantment in play.

However, these decks also have ways to return Sheoldred back from the dead. Black’s utility land card, Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, has a Channel ability that can return a creature or planeswalker from the graveyard to hand. The mentioned spot removal Soul Transfer also has an option to do that same effect. If ever you have access to spells that can exile Sheoldred, please do so and add it to your board. You would not want to be left wondering how it returned to play and with all those efforts destroying put to waste.

The next question is: Will you hold your spot removal for Sheoldred despite the opponent having another threat? I’d say it depends. You’d determine how many answers to the card you have boarded in on Game 2 so you can estimate the chances of drawing another copy at the time the Sheoldred threat comes into play. In my case, I would usually have 4 in total and just draw into them or have my Bankbuster’s card draw ability help dig through the deck. For Blue-based midrange decks in the format, you have cards like Memory Deluge and the Connive ability to help get your spot removal as soon as possible.

Overall, I can say that a better-prepared sideboard plan is a way to deal with that threat in the Standard metagame, at the same time the increased expectation of the card whenever you faced a Rakdos, Esper, or even Orzhov kind of decks. Of course, frequent playtesting online also helps.

That is a wrap for now, until the next blog post.