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Hi all, this is a 99% power control/combo deck centered around a few infinite combos possible with Sharuum the Hegemon. I'd say the deck's power level is at the tipping point between "regular" and competitive, hence the 99%. This deck will stomp most playgroups and regularly holds its own against competitive pods, but if your opponents are very serious about cEDH and you want to stay in Esper and artifacts, I'd opt for this build instead: Silas/Tymna cEDH [100%]. It's basically the same deck albeit with a much higher consistency and different kill combo.
Gameplan and General Deck Info
Please note this is a control deck. The objective here is to nut on your opponent's face, but only after you've made sure you've stopped your opponents and can protect yourself, if necessary.
The kill combo is: Sharuum the Hegemon + Sculpting Steel/Phyrexian Metamorph/Copy Artifact + Disciple of the Vault/Altar of the Brood/Bitter Ordeal.
Don't be afraid to use your copiers to copy your opponents (or your own) powerful stuff, but make sure you save one for the wombo-combo.
There are a whole slew of cards that function well as budget replacements for more expensive cards in the main. I played this list for a long time without it being at the power level it's at now and it performed extremely well against "tier one" decks. You don't need to spend $1,000 to make a good deck.
One of those cards is Buried Alive. I'm not playing it because there isn't mass creature reanimation, but it's a valid inclusion if you don't have Intuition. Intuition is much better because you can choose ANY card rather than just creatures and it's available at instant speed. Generally it'll be finding Phyrexian Metamorph, Sculpting Steel and Altar of the Brood. Your other graveyard tutor, Entomb, will probably be going after the Metamorph and Sculpting. Putting a win-con in the yard can expose it to hate pieces, so be careful when entombing!
The maybeboard contains cards that you could switch in if you feel like it. Instant speed Whir of Invention for Phyrexian Revoker or Sorcerous Spyglass in addition to Pithing Needle is cool if you want more hate.
For players with an unlimited budget, final upgrades to the deck include the original dual lands. I can't really think of anything else that would make this deck more powerful, apart from fine-tuning the list for your meta.
Card Selection
I'm going to talk about cards that you might question at first, skipping over general cantrips and tutors that are fairly self explanatory, like Brainstorm and Demonic Tutor.
Draw/Filtering
Notion Thief: Note the interactions that Cephalid Coliseum and Windfall have with this card.
Combo
Altar of the Brood: Slamming this early occasionally leads to your opponents milling something critical, but I wouldn’t unless you know your opponents can’t remove it or you’re ready to go off. It's annoying to get rid of once it's out, as you can recur it very easily and it feels bad blowing up a one mana "do nothing" artifact. Players that are unaware of the interaction it has with the Sharuum combo will generally ignore it too. A slight downside to this wincon is if your opponent has a graveyard shuffle effect in their deck, such as Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Gaea's Blessing. You can win through it by explaining the non-deterministic loop that will occur. Don't physically do this as it would take hours, days or even weeks to achieve, but explain that this is what happens: you repeat the shuffle-loop enough times so that the shuffler is the last card to be milled, as it will eventually happen but not in a reasonable amount of time, and stop the combo before that card is put into the graveyard. You can do this because the mill happens one at a time, meaning you'll see their entire deck and know that the shuffler(s) is the last remaining card(s). However, this means that opponent will have X draws, where X is the number of shufflers in their library, to try and win before they're milled out. You can alternatively play Scarab Feast or have Nihil Spellbomb out and respond to the shuffle triggers, then repeat the loop and deck the opponent.
Disciple of the Vault: Funnily enough, this stops opposing artifact combo decks from comboing off sometimes (Arcum Dagsson).
Bitter Ordeal: You can also use this to surgically remove a few key cards from your opponent's libraries after you crack a few fetches or sacrifice a few permanents.
Tutors
Lim-Dul's Vault: Don’t use the Vault to sculpt your next five draws, use it as a tutor that “scries” incidentally. It’ll make your usage of it much stronger than just digging through your deck.
Transmute Artifact: Transmute can be used to put an artifact directly from your library into your yard, in addition to plopping it onto the battlefield. Example: sacrifice your Mana Crypt and pay no extra mana so that Phyrexian Metamorph heads directly to the graveyard, then cast Sharuum to retrieve it.
Tezzeret the Seeker: Despite being used primarily for his tutoring ability, don't forget he's got the untap ability too! I always forget. Anyways, what's nice about his tutor is that it's X or less, meaning if an opponent responds with something that'll hamper your game plan you can leave your original target in your library and find a hate piece or something else to get out of what they're doing.
Whir of Invention: Absolute HOUSE of a card. Instant speed Whir for Cursed Totem or Nihil Spellbomb (or Sorcerous Spyglass/Phyrexian Revoker) in response to something scary is AWESOME. Or just get your combo piece and win.
Maybeboard Cards
Necropotence: Triple black can be hard to get to sometimes, so I'd put in Dark Ritual (and potentially Dark Petition) if you're going to play Necropotence. Additionally, the anti-discard makes it harder to put combo pieces into the yard, so you'll be relying upon Intuition and Entomb to do so.
Hurkyl's Recall: I found this to be "meh". If it's great against your opponents I'd throw it back in, but you don't really abuse it much when it's targeting yourself. Good against artifact destruction, but generally you should have a counterspell available to stop it.
Wasteland/Strip Mine: Three colors requires a good amount of fixing to maintain deck consistency. Additionally, lands like Maze of Ith and Glacial Chasm don't stop this deck from winning, so I would NOT include them.
Seat of the Synod, Vault of Whispers and Ancient Den: I'm not playing these because I feel like they're a liability more than a bonus. I don't have synergy with large amounts of artifacts, despite them being able to be fetched by Whir of Invention and Trinket Mage. They're vulnerable to mass artifact destruction as well.
Anguished Unmaking: Three CMC is a lot for cEDH, but if you play against planeswalker Teferi, or similar decks that rely on a single, key piece of a combo (such as The Chain Veil) I'd put it back in. In four-player it's pretty bad though, much better in 1v1.
Enjoy!
