Alternate Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
Alternate version of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that allows opponents to opt out of life loss. Stats, costs, colors, and types are the same except the oracle is replaced with the following:
"Deathtouch
Whenever you draw a card, you gain 2 life.
Whenever an opponent draws a card, they lose 2 life unless they exile a card from their hand"
The intent behind this is to mitigate the life advantage Apocalypse Sheoldred generates, in Alchemy especially. Forcing the afflicted player to exile the card prevents them from gaining life or creature advantage from leveraging pseudo-madness triggers or regeneration effects. Apocalypse Sheoldred is supposed to be strong, she's a Phyrexian Mythic Rare, but as the afflicted player when I draw a card that does not noticeably improve the board state for me I feel hurt. Especially if I draw additional card draw.
I'll get into a longer tirade later.
Giving the afflicted player the ability to opt out of their draw triggers can give them time to find options to contend with the board full of Nazgûl and Orcish Bowmasters. Then, if a A-Apocalypse Sheoldred user wants to force life loss on their opponents they might have to introduce Painful Quandary into their deck. Which would likely flatten the deck's mana curve.
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Kpsla#37203 commented
Bloodletter of Aclozatz says "during your turn." Sheoldred will only deal double damage if the opponent draws a card during your turn, not their normal draw step.
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[Deleted User] commented
“When an opponent loses life during your turn”
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Wyndfury#72226 commented
During play, when Sheoldred, The Apocalypse is on the board with Bloodletter of Aclozatz, the opposing player is only losing 2 life when they draw a card. I feel this is not working properly. Sheoldred says "loses 2 life" and Bloodletter says "would lose life".
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PC laptop running windows...see the *.png attached for platform details. -
PortalPoster#01415 commented
I had a new idea for A-Sheoldred, the Apocalypse:
"Deathtouch
Whenever you draw a card, you gain 2 life.
As long as A-Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is untapped: whenever an opponent draws a card, they lose 2 life."
The wording obviously needs some work, but it plays into a lot of recent set releases. It also forces the controller to choose between attacking and passing the turn to accost their opponent. -
[Deleted User] commented
Or they could just ban Sheoldred, the Apocalypse since it's one of those cards where if your opponent has any source of black mana you know they have it in their deck.
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PortalPoster#01415 commented
Obviously my issue stems from the One Ring + Apocalypse Sheoldred combination. I feel like MTG is intended to be a 5-sided game of rochambeau. One Ring + Apocalypse Sheoldred makes me feel like a kid on the playground getting challenged to rock-paper-scissors and getting hit with atomic-bomb. I don't have the imagination to come up with something to counter an atomic-bomb! especially not in Standard/Alchemy. In more spacious formats Draw-to-death strategies probably have some competition. But in alchemy it seems like very few deck strategies can contend with Sheoldred's uncaring wrath and the One Ring's unchecked ambition.
Yesterday I played against a red-white goblin conjuring deck. It was really neat seeing all the unique goblins from MTG's history. Unfortunately One Ring + apocalypse Sheoldred wouldve simply destroyed/exiled their Impassioned Orators, allowing them to out heal and out pain the red-white deck. Between them and my deck (I'll define later) all three matches were extremely close.
This morning I played against a blue-white counterspell deck that made me count every mana and hang on every card drawn the entire time. I noticed that they relied so heavily on card draw that even if they countered all the One Rings and Apocalypse Sheoldreds in a deck, AND made them more expensive in the process, an Orcish Bowmaster or two would've been more than enough to do them in. I hope they have a healthy number of Stone Brains on their sideboard.
All week I have been playing a blue-green saga/stun/proliferate deck I made with the intent to cripple my nemesis deck with the very thing they hold most dear. I wanted to lock the One Ring tapped with something like Weakstone's Subjugation and load it up with omen counters. Obviously my counter-strategy us utterly obliterated whenever my opponent plays another copy of The One Ring. Even if it's not and my opponent is suffering 9 omen counters on a locked-up ring. They're not sweating much as they have 37 life to my 8, and I likely have nothing better to do than chump block.
I will say. I DID face a mono-black deck that I enjoyed playing. It had an Apocalypse Sheoldred and a One Ring no less! It was pretty familiar for the most part, but there were two card's I didn't expect to see. Gixiaon Recycler and Painful Quandary. Maybe they to want to build a more aggressive style that attacked more, or they simply didn't have the cards to build something more oppressive. But it interacted with my stunning and proliferating beautifully. I had freedom to dig up a creature in time for them to blow it up. In the final turns had to be careful to draw extra to accommodate Painful Quandry, which I had the freedom to do as Sheoldred had ended up in the graveyard somehow. And mp opponent had to be weary of their Ring as I might buff it enough to kill them. I could feel us both hanging on baited breath as they were frustratingly waiting for their creatures to untap, and I was frantically eyeing my deck HOPING for card draw so I could act. In the end I misplayed, not noticing they had two Quandarys causing the one and only time I payed the 5 to lose me the third round. Being probably the only time I will feel that a mono-black One Ring + Sheoldred, the Apocalypse ever won fair and square.
Which is a feeling I want people to share by encouraging Sheoldred abusers to investigate the myriad of other ways to torture their opponents.
An Alternate seemed like the most efficient way do accomplish that as once she rotates out of Alchemy you could say "Upon further review we realized Sheoldred, the Apocalypse isn't actually broken so we're removing A-Sheoldred, the Apocalypse from the game." and Sheoldred can go back to being competitive in draw-to-death decks in Historic and Historic Brawl.