Sharuum Oath

[Qube]

4 Orchard
4 Fetches
3 Trops
3 Underground
1 Island
1 Tolarian Acad

5 Mox
2 Solring, Lotus

4 Oaths
3 Sharuums
1 Tinker
2 Bridges
1 Portal
2 Timevault, Key

4 Force
4 Drain
4 Thirst
2 Intution
3 Cabal Therepy
3 DT, Vamp, Yawg
3 Timewalk, Recall, Brainstorm
1 Regrowth

I would like to change a few things in this list:

- 3 Cabal Therapy
+ Gifts Ungiven
+ Mana Crypt
+ Mystical Tutor

Gifts Ungiven:
If we now play with 4 Drains, Vault-Key, Regrowth and Will, that is a really broken pile. Also it's an alternative way to win. And that's one of the most important thing in oath to can win without any Oath-activation.

Mana Crypt:
If we now play 2 Intuiton, 4 Thirsts, Gifts, Vault-Key and 3 Sharuum I think we also should add the manasource #24. Mana Crypt is much one of the best acceleration in such decks. It allows to play first turn Crypt, Land, go to play EOT Intuiton or Thirst. Also pitchable to Thirsts and much easier to hardcast a Sharuum.

Mystical Tutor:
To play 3 Tutors. As Tinker is very important in this deck I would like to find this easier. That allows more flexibility. And make Intuition more stronger with piles like Mystical, Vampiric, Demonic if you really want a card. Also in Gifts-piles.

Peace
-Qube

[astre]

isn't mindslaver a mutch better target than portal?

just here come sharun, find slaver, pop it (ok, that's the difficult point, find 4 mana).
time walk effect + other goodies
here come sharun number 2, make 1 M Zombie pop mindslaver again
time walk effect + other goodies
attack for 2M+5

isn't just better?

[Qube]

I think Slaver is good from the effect, but the  is a problem. Also with Null Rod, it's not such good as Portal.
But I can see this in the SB. against the combodecks. But I don't think it's better as other options in this arttype of dec.

[Troy_Costisick]

I've found very little utility in a sideboard.  Except against Ichorid, I don't feel like there's anything I'd actually want to cut....
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Gilded Drake
1 Eternal Witness
1 Plagued Rusalka
4 Leyline

Might want some enchantment kill in your sideboard incase someone plays Leyline against you.

[Qube]

Might want some enchantment kill in your sideboard incase someone plays Leyline against you.

Does Leyline is over Sharuum-trigger? In wich order they go to the stack?

[LordHomerCat]

Might want some enchantment kill in your sideboard incase someone plays Leyline against you.

Does Leyline is over Sharuum-trigger? In wich order they go to the stack?

Nothing ever hits the yard with leyline in play.  Nothing.  Ever.  At all.  There's no stacking to speak of.  When Sharuum hits, you try to put his ability on the stack, and then there are no targets and so it just leaves the stack and does nothing.

[Qube]

Right it's another wording than Planair Void. sorry about this.

[toor]

To clarify the the zombies can be stopped as long as the opponent has the ability to sacrifice a creature.
So welder (assuming they have a dude to weld), fanatic, a removal spell that doesnt rfg etc.. all stop the zombies plan.

[Mantis]

Against Ichorid, Tormod's Crypt would be better than Leyline. If you get Oath active you can recur a Crypt with Sharuum and remove their yard. Perhaps Blazing Archon is even better.

Not sure if Living Wish is actually worth it in Vintage, it's even weak in Legacy and wasn't even that strong in Extended but perhaps I am wrong.

[AmbivalentDuck]

So...  I think there are two ways this deck can go:

1.  Combo Oath.  You assume that Oath is 'good enough' for this meta if you can consistently get an activation by turn X.  Then you build the deck so that our first activation is so much better than Hellkite-Oath (which isn't exactly tier 1 itself) that we have a compelling reason to play Sharuum despite the annoyingly large footprint.  I think Harl's last posted build fits in here.  Relying on Zombies means a large footprint (he's already at 3 Sharuums, + 3 dead cards main).

2.  Control Oath.  You assume that we have some super-good draw engine that nobody else really has access to (colors, extraneous and annoying cards for other builds, etc), and build around it.  You then play Sharuum because 1G is a truly reasonable cost for an unrestricted finisher, even in this meta.


IF we instead head down on variation on the control Oath route, what's the 'right way' to truly make LftL a deck engine?

First, you need it to do something to the opponent that justifies the mana this eats up.  Being forced to tap mana each turn, you need to be disrupting the opponent since this is actually disrupting you.
+1x Strip, maybe some Wastes.

You need to be able to recover dredged combo pieces.
+1x Academy Ruins (being able to recover key-vault components may actually be meaningfully strong...this also serves as an insurance policy against decking)

You need to continue drawing control pieces that aren't just land kill.
+1x Lonely Sandbar

We've already decided that Intuition is good in Sharuum.dec for graveyard manipulation, and for just finding pieces.  With Ruins and LftL, it can now set up Vault-key, too.
+4 Intuition

So, let's look at control Sharuum, and *please* suggest anything that belongs in the Intuition-Land toolbox.  Oh, and you're now so graveyard dependent that you have to be able to board into Hellkite or Empyrial Archangels.

// Lands
    4 Forbidden Orchard
    1 Island
    3 Tropical Island
    1 Underground Sea
    2 Polluted Delta
    1 Strip Mine
    2 Flooded Strand
    1 Academy Ruins
    1 Lonely Sandbar

// Creatures
    2  Sharuum the Hegemon

// Spells
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Black Lotus
    3 Duress
    4 Mana Drain
    4 Force of Will
    1 Misdirection
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Ponder
    1 Brainstorm
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    1 Mystical Tutor
    4 Intuition
    1 Time Walk
    4 Oath of Druids
    1 Tinker
    1 Time Vault
    1 Voltaic Key
    2 Life from the Loam
    2 Possessed Portal
    1  Raven's Crime

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Energy Flux
SB: 2  Empyrial Archangel
SB: 2 Oxidize

The sideboard is heavily anti-Ichorid since that deck is annoyingly resistance to everything we're doing here.  It's also *very* hard to find meaningful improvements on the list against particular strategies since you always end up cutting something that weakens the overall game plan.  Stax is very resistant to the lock/Sharuum strategy, so we board in huge amounts of hate.  The Oxidizes might want to be Krosan grips as insurance against Tezz strategies.  It's a tough call.  I've been doing fairly well against Tezz, and fairly bad against Stax.  But low sample sizes and a continually changing deck make that hard to quantify.

[Mantis]

I seriously fail to see why you don't just run a Bridge from Below or maybe two, at least in the sideboard. That way you can just get 12 million zombie tokens and then Stax can scoop up it's cards.

Otherwise I would like to recommend a couple of Ancient Grudges and a Volcanic Island maybe for the sideboard to combat Stax.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Most intelligent Stax players will slap down a Chalice for 2 against Oath ASAP.  I'd rather not run answers that their proactive answers shut off.  That's the reason for Oxidize or Grip.  Honestly, I'd love to run a Volcanic main and Flame Jab over Raven's Crime.  The trick is...what land do you cut?

I don't like needing a second Oath for the bridges.  Without Sharuum or Bridge already in the grave, there's no Intuition stack that will give you a first Oath zombie swarm and bringing in the very necessary artifact hate greatly diminishes the possibility of swinging in for the kill with Sharuum.  Also, you wiff an unacceptable % of the time without bringing in multiple Bridges.  Either you hit it early and they sac a token to one of your effects (or theirs) or it's below Sharuum number #2 66% of the time.  Why need the Oath when you can just bring in hate that doesn't require an active Oath?


Oh, and if we don't mind bad combos from Olde extended and an enormous footprint, there's always Time Stretch, Spellweaver Helix, and Raven's Crime/LftL.  Actually...not much bigger than what we have now...just way more conditional.  You'd run like...2 Time Stretch, 2 Helix, and 4 Raven's Crime/LftL.  Sharuum brings back Helix imprinting Time Stretch (or Walk) and Raven's Crime.  Now, all Raven's Crime activations give you a free turn or two.  Compare this footprint to the size of 3x Sharuum, 2x Bridge, and 1x Portal.  Compare the number of dead cards, too.  And if you use Time Warp instead of Time Stretch, you could theoretically hardcast the crappiest card in the combo.  Why would we ever want to wait 2 Oaths for zombies when we could have just Oathed up a SSS, Hellkite, or Angel?

Why bother typing this out?  Because it kills with more inevitability than Portal: your opponent doesn't get to untap or attack with that strategy and it's no more vulnerable to hate than Portal or Bridge.  The footprint is just enormous.  In fact, it's less vulnerable to hate because you don't care *at all* if they StP your Sharuum.  You have infi turns: you'll find something to kill with.  Heck, you could even just lock them down with recurring Strip and Raven's Crime and force them to draw out their deck if you have a Scroll Rack in your deck. (Between Ruins and Rack, you can put two cards on top of your library each turn).  Actually...you can Intuition for the whole thing and hardcast it...  Point is, there's *no reason* to pass the turn without a locked opponent other than wiffing.  And there's no reason should be able to truly wiff twice.  Zombies just become kill more except in the corner case that there's a Smokestack on the table.

If you're using Sharuum, it's to lock your opponent out *now.*  Hellkite is the better 2nd Oath kill since it doesn't care about grave hate.

Edit:
Actually, what if you don't bother running 'bad' targets, and just use Demonic Tutor, Tinker, Time Walk, Yawg Will, and Regrowth?  Intuition for Helix, Helix, Time Walk (or maybe Regrowth, Helix, Time Walk) is then basically game.  Two Tinker activations gives you Vault-Key, Yawg Will really ought to win immediatley almost every time, etc.  Spellweaver Helix is infi more hardcastable than Possessed Portal.

[Zieby]

So, let's look at control Sharuum, and *please* suggest anything that belongs in the Intuition-Land toolbox.  Oh, and you're now so graveyard dependent that you have to be able to board into Hellkite or Empyrial Archangels.

Why do you not run Loa, With lftl you are up at 7 cards in a sec.

[AmbivalentDuck]

@LoA
Hmm, win more?  I dunno...if I can find room for it, I probably will add it.  Is it straight-up better than Sandbar?

This is a *vast* improvement in testing thus far.  No dead cards, everything is hardcastable.  Also, and very important, Spellweaver Helix can hit your opponent.  If they have, say, Demonic and Duress in their yard, they won't be Duressing again that game.  At the very worst, it's a bad colorless Meddling Mage, and it's typically been reasonable or easy to work around.  The sb contains a few tweeks...and it's intentionally missing a card: tech I promised I wouldn't leak.

The one issue I've seen is that I can lock someone down for say...20 turns...and fail to kill them before they assemble a hand of 'the nuts.'  I board out the Helixes and Scroll Rack against Stax and that may be a grievous error.  Also, the sb may want a Tabernacle.

Oh, and does anyone know who wins in a tournament if you have Vault-key active, Academy Ruins -> Lotus active, and no way to kill?  Ie. You're taking infinite turns but cannot kill.

// Lands
    4 Forbidden Orchard
    1 Island
    3 Tropical Island
    1 Underground Sea
    2 Polluted Delta
    1 Strip Mine
    2 Flooded Strand
    1 Academy Ruins
    1 Lonely Sandbar

// Creatures
    2  Sharuum the Hegemon

// Spells
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Black Lotus
    4 Mana Drain
    4 Force of Will
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Ponder
    1 Brainstorm
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    1 Mystical Tutor
    4 Intuition
    1 Time Walk
    4 Oath of Druids
    1 Tinker
    1 Time Vault
    1 Voltaic Key
    4 Life from the Loam
    2 Spellweaver Helix
    1 Scroll Rack
    1 Regrowth
    1 Yawgmoth's Will

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Energy Flux
SB: 1  Empyrial Archangel
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Oxidize
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge

[Darkenslight]

Could you have thew 'weaker' kill in the main, and then board into the Helix/Archangel kill, or is that detrimental to the deck's aims?

[AmbivalentDuck]

It would eat a lot of slots that are currently stabilizing the Ichorid and Stax matchups.  The nice thing about Angel is that it's just 1 card.


Also: just an update to bring opinions in line with current testing. 

-The Tezz control, generalized aggro (workshop and otherwise), mirror, Stax, and Ichorid matchups are fine in online testing.  That said, I lean very heavily on my SB to get games 2 and 3 in the latter examples.  Ad Nauseam combo rocks me, and I'm kinda tempted to hope to only see it once per tourney and accept a shitty matchup.

-This deck mulls too much and I guessing that's due to low colored mana availability.  I've typically had to lean hard on Orchards to get LftL online.  Thing is...an Orchard can deal you 5-10 damage over the course of a long game for each time you tapped it.  Threat quality in a given hand is usually fine, the mana situation is usually not.  Even with hands that result in a win, I often wind up with Orchard/Trop, Mox, Oath as the sum of my board unless I quickly start using LftL.

-Lacking Duress hurts against Ad Nauseam.  I can't effectively disrupt a deck that explosive.  Certainly not with LftL-Strip.  Certainly not starting turn 3.  I'm running threats in place of a proactive answer.  Working at least a few Duresses back in is probably a good idea.

Anyways, every time I've brought back a Helix, I've won, which simply wasn't true of Portal.  I'm going to call it an improvement.

[timp]

hey seems like the sharuum deck is looking for optimal artifacts to win with
(i admire the innovation with the spellweaver helix thing)
so my two cents is the helm of obedience leyline of the void kill
it is also a kill apart from oathing sharuum
plus if you feel like merging it with the bridge zombie kill the synergy with the leyline is already on the up and up
just a thought in case no one has explored that route
hope it sparks something else if it is not optimal build

[nataz]

I know everyone seems all excited about the intution piles and what not, but what about strategic planning? It lets you dig 3 cards deep looking for either oath or orchard, its blue for the FOW count, and dumps cards in the GY pre-oath (bridge/portal/etc and sharuuuum - im looking at you). 3 Mana for me is less of a set-up card, and more of an engine card. I want more ways to find oath/orchard in the deck rather then more ways to pre-set the combo kill.

[sundering jerk]

Damn! I guess it's back to SBing leylines. If the extra dead cards wasn't bad enough, I the fact that this deck is succeptible to grave hate. A lucky extripate can be GG.

[Troy_Costisick]

I know everyone seems all excited about the intution piles and what not, but what about strategic planning? It lets you dig 3 cards deep looking for either oath or orchard, its blue for the FOW count, and dumps cards in the GY pre-oath (bridge/portal/etc and sharuuuum - im looking at you). 3 Mana for me is less of a set-up card, and more of an engine card. I want more ways to find oath/orchard in the deck rather then more ways to pre-set the combo kill.

It's a two mana sorcery which really sucks for this deck.

[AmbivalentDuck]

@Leyline-Helm
Helm is my 15th sideboard card.  I've run into test versions of Sharuum-Oath running that combo main during online testing.  Honestly, they may be better than the LftL-Helix variant I've been testing.  I'm 100% sure that once you have a compelling reason to bring in grave hate, Leyline-Helm should be used.  I'm not sure maindeck Leyline has enough utility to make this the primary kill.

@Strategic Planning
You'd play Impulse over this. Impulse lets you keep Drain mana up and digs deeper.  That said, Intuition 100% will snag the piece you're missing for one colorless more.

In the end, we have to answer two questions:
#1.   Is a 1st-Oath kill with no additional footprint even good enough in this meta?  (Ie.  Wizards prints a 20/20 with flying and haste)
#2.   IF a 1st-Oath kill is even good enough, do we want to pack it in control or combo elements?

[c dizzle]

This deck is bad. Horrible. And this isn't coming from a guy who looked at the list and started hating on anything new. I've tested it and played it in a tournament. Too often I would draw a dead piece like Portal or Bridge when I needed business. Plus, needing to have certain card get in and stay in the graveyard is asking too much. A deck that can, but doesn't have to win using graveyard conditions is better, IMO.

[AmbivalentDuck]

That's what makes the Helix and Leyline-Helm versions much better.   In both, the full combo can be hardcast (easily) and you don't need extensive setup to win or assure a win after the first Oath.  Wiffing still happens (and blows), but you're seldom stuck with anything truly dead in hand.

[Suicideking]

I think this deck has a problem that a lot of decks do.  It has too many moving pieces.  Rather then focusing on resolving oath, which can be a task in itself, and just winning you have to deal with all sorts of other cards that aren't particularly strong, and hope they come together for the win. 

You are going to have to deal with so many sideboard hate cards as well.  Instead of just boarding in oath hate, they will board in artifact hate, graveyard hate, and oath hate. 

[SiegeX]

This deck is bad. Horrible. And this isn't coming from a guy who looked at the list and started hating on anything new. I've tested it and played it in a tournament.

I'm curious, did you play this with blessing?  Blessing alleviates the vulnerability of having your win condition stay in the GY for longer than it needs to. It also allows you to wiff the bridge kill with a portal out for as long as it takes to flip that bridge over.  Drawing bridge is no big deal since you just discard it to portal. Drawing shaarum is more of an issue but if you have blessing, you can try to get portal out with the remaining shaarum (your odds are better with a single shaarum). If you succeed, you just bought yourself as many timewalks as you need to discard shaarum to portal, oath again to shuffle your GY, then flip over a bridge on the next turn.  Portal, and to a lesser extent Blessing, are the two cards you really don't want to see in your hand. Blessing shores up a lot of the weaknesses this deck comes with. I truely believe not playing it is a mistake. There have been some rumors that bstorm might make it's way off the restricted list come Friday. If that's true, that would be huge for this deck and oath in general.

RE: Spellweaver Helix. It's an interesting twist on a shaarum list but it just strikes me as even more conditional than portal. Just to make sure I'm clear, we need to get oath to stick, then flip over not only helix but also raven/lftl and some timewalk-like card on the same activation? I realize you can steal your opp's spells or imprint tinker or whatnot, but I truely believe if the combo to lock your opponent out is that situational, the hellkite plan has to be a superior list.   

[Nehptis]

Rather then focusing on resolving oath, which can be a task in itself...

^ QFT

There have been some rumors that bstorm might make it's way off the restricted list come Friday. If that's true, that would be huge for this deck and oath in general.

If BStorm gets unrestricted then I think Tyrant Oath can be viable again. Even w/ Gush still restricted.  Also, King Oath gets way more powerful.  Sharuum Oath would be a far 3rd Oath choice.

[AmbivalentDuck]

There have been some rumors that bstorm might make it's way off the restricted list come Friday. If that's true, that would be huge for this deck and oath in general.

If BStorm gets unrestricted then I think Tyrant Oath can be viable again. Even w/ Gush still restricted.  Also, King Oath gets way more powerful.  Sharuum Oath would be a far 3rd Oath choice.

This strikes me as ridiculously unlikely given the restriction of Ponder and the extreme ease of finding and protecting the Vault-Key combo with unrestricted Ponder and Brainstorm.  Though I agree, Tyrant would again be the best choice for Oath target.

[Suicideking]

I've probably won as much as anyone with oath since the last restrictions, and the only way I could see myself playing oath was to eliminate as much crap as possible and just focus on getting oath active and winning.  I just can't see what the advantages of this deck are over running a creature kill.  By my count you have at least 9 cards in your deck that suck in your opener on their own.  Why not just try to keep it simple and efficient. 

If you only get one oath activation what are the chances you are going to win?  Akroma alone will usually get there in 3 turns maybe 4, Hellkite is 3.  Sharuum will take 5 if you dont get an artifact into your yard that allows you to win.  So the cure for that problem is to run more artifacts and you still will have games where you draw or dredge 1 sharuum and the second is near the top of your deck.  Plus you lack enough control and deck manipulation to stop your opponent from winning.  4 fow and 4 drains just isn't enough to keep tps or other control decks from winning. 

[Troy_Costisick]

I've probably won as much as anyone with oath since the last restrictions, and the only way I could see myself playing oath was to eliminate as much crap as possible and just focus on getting oath active and winning.  I just can't see what the advantages of this deck are over running a creature kill.  By my count you have at least 9 cards in your deck that suck in your opener on their own.  Why not just try to keep it simple and efficient. 

If you only get one oath activation what are the chances you are going to win?  Akroma alone will usually get there in 3 turns maybe 4, Hellkite is 3.  Sharuum will take 5 if you dont get an artifact into your yard that allows you to win.  So the cure for that problem is to run more artifacts and you still will have games where you draw or dredge 1 sharuum and the second is near the top of your deck.  Plus you lack enough control and deck manipulation to stop your opponent from winning.  4 fow and 4 drains just isn't enough to keep tps or other control decks from winning. 

I have to agree with this a lot, however, I think the Sharuum/Legend Rule thing has some possiblity.  Maybe not now, but perhaps in the future somehow.  It's a very interesting trick that has potential for abuse.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I don't think the legend rule/infi loop is the important trait.  Like I've said, if you're playing Sharuum it's because you want to cheat an artifact into play.

Suicideking's criticism is absolutely on target.  You are *not* as good an Oath deck as traditional builds have been.  Even if Wizards printed the ultimate in Sharuumy goodness (say... 16, artifact, you win at the end of each turn, you lose if this came into play from your library), you'd still be running 2+ completely useless cards.  In other words, you need a compelling reason to play combo Oath at all.   You need to consistently win immediately after Oathing.

Does this?  Not really.  The build I have up is a few days out of date for starters.  That actually puts it a generation behind current testing.  I'm also finding that Helix is typically playable out of hand.  Oathing is a cute way to set up the combo and have a 5/5 flying around ready to bash Tezz or block fishy attackers.  But if you rely on Oathing, you will lose.  Finding and sticking an Oath has always been challenging and you're trying to do it from a less than sturdy platform.  The current build has started going black to base itself around Leyline, Duress, Wasteland, etc so that you have a combination of proactive control and proactive combo.  Trying to play the defensive role with Drain and FoW while you find Oath will not win you the game.  Simply playing a proactive game until you find one of many very real threats (Helix, Oath, Tinker, Vault-Key, etc) is much better so far in testing.