Degenerate combos. Haven't you heard this one Sharuum?
I've found myself sitting across the table from insanely unfair combo decks many a time. This is my response. This is what I built if I'm going to be up against Hermit Druid or niv-mizzet.
Sharuum, as is commonly known, is a Combo Deck. This is my first combo deck, and it is built to be unmerciful, unrelenting, and unapologetic. Please, do not play this against fair decks, it's no fun. But hey, I love playing EDH at any power level, provided it's played on even terms.
At any rate, if you're familiar with Sharuum a lot of these combos should be familiar. They're all over various Sharuum decks. If not, I'll explain the combos and interactions below, if only because I struggled to figure out how some of these worked. This won't be a primer per se, but it'll be fairly extensive.
For those of you unfamiliar with
Sharuum the Hegemon
here's how the main combo enabler works:
-Find a way to drop
Phyrexian Metamorph
or Sculpting Steel in your graveyard.
-Cast Sharuum, recur the metamorph or sculpting steel with her.
-The legend rule kicks in, stack the triggers so the dying Sharuum recurs itself, repeat as needed (typically, infinitely).
I'll get into how this is useful later.
If the combo deck is allowed to live long enough, sooner or later it will win. With that in mind, you need three things to win:
-Survive
-Mana. Plenty of it.
-Combo pieces.
Basically, you want to spend your first turns ramping hard, you'll need to mana to combo, hence the heavy tapped mana rocks (don't worry about these, between Tezzeret the Seeker , Voltaic Key, Unwinding Clock and the various ways to tutor for them, you're unlikely to ever need to pay the untap cost).
Second, until you can actually win, try to be as NICE as possible. Be political. Make friends, answer things that nobody else can. Avoid attracting attention to how dangerous you are. Political savvy will be a big key to your survival.
Lastly, dig for your combo pieces. The deck is full of tutoring effects for your combo pieces, sac outlets and stuff like Windfall to help drop Sword of the Meek,
Phyrexian Metamorph
or Sculpting Steel in the grave where you need them to be.
Here is the list of game winning combos. Because you need to know where you're going.
Infinite Damage:
-Trigger the Sharuum loop with Disciple of the Vault in play for infinite damage. Easy, but a little fragile because it implies a non artifact you can't recur if disrupted.
-You'll need
Salvaging Station
in play, alongside Thopter Foundry, Blasting Station, and either Lotus Bloom or Lotus Petal plus you'll need Sword of the Meek. Basically, sac the lotus, and the sword to produce a thopter, recurring sword of the meek. Sac the thopter to Blasting Station to do one damage, triggering the salvaging station's untap. Repeat infinitely. Difficult to set up, but that makes it underestimated and less hated out.
Insta-Kill:
-Trigger a Sharuum loop, then drop
Bitter Ordeal
to exile all opposing libraries. People who know Sharuum will have died to this a few times and will be expecting it. Watch the timing.
-Trigger a Sharuum loop with Altar of the Brood in play to mill out all opposing libraries. Less played and more surprise value. The down side is Eldrazi shufflers make this a conditional win. A Tormod's Crypt or Nihil Spellbomb in play here is safest.
Infinite Turns: While not a win per se, if you can't win with infinite turns, what are you doing I ask?
-Drop Thopter Assembly while Time Sieve is in play, the next turn thopter bounces, sac the five tokens to time sieve, and re-drop thopter. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Profit.
-Similar to the blasting station infinite damage, here is an infinite turn variant. Sac a Lotus Bloom and tap two open mana, trigger the Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry
loop for five tokens, sac the tokens to Time Sieve. Recur Lotus Bloom with
Salvaging Station
. Keep em' coming.
So you're a mean combo deck, and sometimes politics just won't keep 'em off your back. Of course the sweepers come in here, such as Supreme Verdict and All Is Dust which leaves your artifacts intact. You'll only be casting sharuum to combo off anyways. Of course there's always the odd countermagic and spot removal to interrupt other people's abnoxious infinite combos. Kor Haven and Maze of Ith help take the edge off. Duplicant is recurrable answers to problem creatures. And Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry
with any decent amount of mana (or infinite mana) will gain you life to keep going.
That being said and done, here are some interactions that can help protect yourself via lockdown.
-Sensei's Divining Top paired with Counterbalance can counter a lot of stuff. It's nowhere near the hard lock it is in legacy, but it can be a life saver, and political leverage.
-Academy Ruins with Mindslaver can blank out the most problematic player at the table, or if you end up dueling for the win after a long grindy game, it's a hard lock.
A common combo even outside of EDH is as follows:
-Thopter Foundry with Sword of the Meek, I've mentioned it before, and it will produce thopters for as many blockers as you need, or as much life as you may need to gain, within the confines of your available mana.
Here's a combo that is in here mostly by accident, but hey, seeing as how it's here:-Trigger the Sharuum loop for infinite dying triggers with
Salvaging Station
and Lotus Bloom. Sharuum hitting the graveyard infinitely will infinitely untap your
Salvaging Station
allowing for infinite recursion of Lotus Bloom. This will work just as well with Lotus Petal. If you hadn't guessed, this is infinite mana. Thing is, I hadn't planned the combo, and thus, hadn't included anything to really abuse infinite mana. But it just so happens that the above mentioned Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry
combo turns into infinite attackers and infinite life with this.
Your main weakpoint here is your Graveyard. The combos all abuse the graveyard, the deck is built around recurring combo pieces. And as such, graveyard hate is your worst enemy, and expect it. The best way to play around it is to accept that it will happen. You have multiple combos. You can survive a combo piece being exiled. So figure out what you've got, decide what combo you actually want to resolve, then bait out the graveyard hate with any other combo piece.
Worse case scenario, you do poorly with planning out your combos, or your opponents do exceptionally well at hating you out. There's a backup plan.
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
is a recurrable beatstick. Magister Sphinx will take an opponent down into beatdown range. Myr Battlesphere will do the trick as well, and better yet if you can flicker it a couple times with Venser, the Sojourner. If all else fails you can try to ultimate
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
or Tezzeret the Seeker and hope for the best.
I hope you enjoyed the deck. That's pretty much it. Once again, I urge anyone who wants to run this to be mindful of the context. The deck runs a lot of what would typically be considered bad etiquette by many playgroups. Just make sure you're at the right table before pulling something like this out. Or you don't like friends.
Cheers, and thanks a lot if you actually read through this whole description. I'd love feedback. I'm rather new to playing all out combo, so if you see a combo that happens to be in there that I haven't mentioned, please point it out.
