My take on the engine build of Sharuum; aiming to control the battlefield with "cogs", the cheap artifacts which can be recurred, easily tutored for and offer a wide variety of effects, until it can assemble one of various combos and/or the value engines that will help you assemble the combos or let you play a game of attrition.
The deck includes a higher number of interactive spells than an average artifact combo deck, due to the nature of the most of our combo pieces having value-oriented play capacity.
Combos in the Deck
Sharuum the Hegemon
+
Sculpting Steel
/
Phyrexian Metamorph
+
Altar of the Brood
/
Bitter Ordeal
With this combo, we take advantage of the copying effects and the legend rule. When we copy Sharuum with one of these cards, legendary permanent ruling takes effect as a state-based action, and we sacrifice one of our permanents before the ETB ability resolves. This allows us to loop the Sharuum and the copying card from the graveyard over and over, giving us infinite ETB and death triggers. If Altar is out, we mill all our opponents - if we have Bitter Ordeal in our hand, we exile all the cards from our opponents' libraries.
Bolas's Citadel
+
Aetherflux Reservoir
+
Sensei's Divining Top
Bolas's Citadel is an amazing addition to the deck, and it has quickly become the main strategy we have. Even when we are not comboing, it gives an insane amount of value so we can take over the game quickly. It helps us get back into the game after a board-wipe; and it doesn't cost A LOT of life, since the deck has many low-cost artifacts and spells.
Together with Citadel,
Sensei's Divining Top
becomes "Pay 1 Life: Draw a Card". This helps us dig down our deck very quickly and either find
Aetherflux Reservoir
for infinite life and infinite damage; find tutors; or find pieces for one of the other possible combos.
Thopter Foundry
+
Sword of the Meek
+
Time Sieve
/
Urza, Lord High Artificer
Once we have enough mana to create 5 thopters, we can take infinite number of extra turns.
Thopter/Sword combo is great even without Time Sieve combo - giving us flying blockers and extra life; both of which have become pretty important once
Bolas's Citadel
has pretty much become the main strategy of the deck, as opposed to the previous iterations.
Urza, on the other hand, lets all the thopters tap for blue mana and acts as your inifite mana sink.
Cogs
The low-cost artifact suite is very effective in controlling the boardstate, finding the cards we need, and the recursion. All the 0-cost and 1-cost artifacts are easily tutorable via
Artificer's Intuition
and
Trinket Mage
; and they are a very small burden on
Tezzeret the Seeker
, and our life total via
Bolas's Citadel
. Additionally, they can be used over and over again, thanks to
Salvaging Station
.
Nihil Spellbomb
gives us much needed graveyard hate, while it also acts as a cantrip. If your meta requires you to include an additional piece, you can consider
Tormod's Crypt
or
Soul-Guide Lantern
.
Aether Spellbomb
is a good way to bounce problematic creatures and tokens, while having extra value as a cantrip.
Dispeller's Capsule
gives us a decent chance to fight against other artifact-based strategies, and can be used as a silver bullet against possible stax cards.
Elixir of Immortality
can be used against graveyard hate, it is a nice way to gain some life for
Bolas's Citadel
, while also acting as an instant-speed shuffle effect.
Executioner's Capsule
is a somewhat restricted form of removal, but it has a huge number of relevant targets. Once we land a
Salvaging Station
it becomes insanely good.
Expedition Map
helps us with land drops early game; finds
Ancient Tomb
for ramp; finds
Inventors' Fair
for tutoring; finds
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
in case we need more black mana to cast
Bolas's Citadel
. It's pretty good.
Mana Ramp
Being an artifact deck, we take advantage of artifact-based ramp thanks to many tutors and recursions we have. Furthermore, having bunch of artifact-based ramp cards on the field will have additional benefits through cards like
Urza, Lord High Artificer
and
Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge
.
Smothering Tithe
is amazing throughout the game and it's particularly powerful with cards like
Urza, Lord High Artificer
, and
Windfall
/
Whispering Madness
or any other possible wheel effects.
If you have the budget, or have them already, adding
Lion's Eye Diamond
and
Mox Diamond
will speed up your combo lines.
Tutors
Aside from the obvious inclusions like
Demonic Tutor
,
Vampiric Tutor
,
Mystical Tutor
and
Enlightened Tutor
, we run a number of cards that can directly find the artifacts we need to control the battlefield and/or go for a combo.
Artificer's Intuition
: Gives us easy access to mana ramp, one of the cogs, or even an artifact-land. At the same time, we use it to discard an artifact that'll be recurred for value or a combo.
Intuition
: When we use it, the aim is to create a lose-lose situation for your opponents. We use it to put combo pieces to the graveyard, while making our opponents put another card that will help us go for a combo, into our hand. For example, if you already have 6 mana open for either
Sharuum the Hegemon
or
Bolas's Citadel
, one of the cards chosen with
Intuition
will be the Citadel, to guarantee that it will land.
Kuldotha Forgemaster
: It will put ANY artifact from your deck, directly onto the battlefield. The deck has a great amount of artifact recursion, which helps us to use this effect over and over again.
Tokens from
Thopter Foundry
+
Sword of the Meek
combo, tokens of
Myr Battlesphere
, or the treasure tokens from
Smothering Tithe
are the easy ways to get artifacts to sacrifice.
Entomb
: We can put any combo piece we're missing directly into the graveyard at instant speed. It gives an easy access to
Bolas's Citadel
, so it can be brought back with
Sharuum the Hegemon
. It can even put
Unburial Rites
to use on our commander. Sky is the limit!
Tezzeret the Seeker
: Plus ability is a great way to ramp; as our combo can be a little mana-hungry when we try to go for it early on. However, his main strenght is his minus ability. We can downtick for zero or one, and find one of many mana rocks we have, or one of the artifact lands. We can use it to find a specific cog for any given situation. We can use it to find one of the cheap combo pieces. He's very flexible, and can be used multiple times effectively.
Inventors' Fair
: Land based, instant speed tutor for artifacts is very powerful. Also, the life gain is not irrelevant.
Whir of Invention
: Amazing instant speed tutor that can be fired for a big artifact fairly quickly, thanks to Improvise ability.
