A four-color Soulherder deck that aims to generate value blinking strong creatures with ETBs, winning through combat and rhino drains.
Arcum's Astrolabe is obviously an all-star here, replacing itself in our hand and causing any color generating problems that we may have to disappear.
Teferi, Time Raveler needs no introduction, stopping our opponent from interacting with the stack, protecting our creatures from instant speed removal, as well as fog effects like Cryptic Command. Also very synergistic with Astolabe, as we can return it to our hand to dig for answers or potentially find more rhinos.
A new addition from Throne of Eldraine is Charming Prince. Not only does the card make the burn matchup a joke, there are several interesting interactions here, and I feel it is important to explain the reasoning for dropping Coiling Oracle from this slot. While Teferi offers protection from instant speed problems, the Prince protects valuable creature permanents from sorcery speed answers if we also control Soulherder. Since the herder triggers at the beginning of our end step, if we target the Price with its ability, the creature that we then target with the prince will not come back into play until the end of our opponent's turn, with the benefit of giving our otherwordly sheppard an additional counter. Very powerful.
Force of Negation is JUST playable here, I like only to include it in decks that run at least 15 blue cards, including the other copies of Negation. It is our last line of defense against unfair strategies, stopping Finale of Devastation, Neoform, ad nauseum, large tron planeswalkers, Whir of Invention, Irencrag Feat or similar spell ramp, and Temur Battle Rage (the latter not unfair, but still full of death). The deck both consistently hits its land drops thanks to all the card advantage and Prince's scrying, and holds up plenty of other instant speed spells, so hard casting the card isn't unreasonable.
Ephemerate. Then Ephemerate again.
I'm not sold on Yarok, the Desecrator here as we have to untap for it to begin to be useful, but I love the card and if there was ever a modern list to try it out, it would be this one.
For the sideboard, I've come up with something interesting that I haven't actually brought to my LGS yet, so I can't attest to its effectiveness. Single copies of different hate creatures, as well as three copies of Eladamri's Call. The idea is that one or more of these options will be relevant in any given matchup, and we have the capability to have a "playset" of each of them in the library. The goal is then to do what this deck does best -- protect its creature presence. Force of Vigor comes in against relevant decks, and does well to replace Force of Negation in our 60. Worth noting that the card also frees us from the hard lock of Karn, the Great Creator and Mycosynth Lattice.
That's the list, it has preformed well thus far and I'm quite happy with its power and consistency, but suggestions are welcome and appreciated.
