pie chart

SHARUUM, THE TEMPLE OF FILIGREE 【Article&Primer】

Commander / EDH Artifact Battlecruiser Casual Combo Multiplayer Reanimator Sphinx WUB (Esper)

BRAZATO


Maybeboard



My Sharuum the Hegemon EDH Multiplayer deck.

Art by Izzy Medrano, Check his DeviantArt and ArtStation accounts!!!

BASIC DATA
Construction date: 05/10/2017 (constantly updating it)
Power level: 7,5
Format: Multiplayer EDH, non competitive
Budget: Mid (with some foil and promos)
Build restrictions: Reduced number of combos, some pet cards (sphinxes and cool artifacts)

Artifacts, graveyard recursion, some sweet combos... Sharuum the Hegemon offers an awesome base for a great artifact deck in Esper combination. I also love sphinxes, being one of my favourite mythological creatures, so I found Sharuum a great opportunity to show it.


A FORGOTTEN COMMANDER

Many years had passed since there where only 3 or 4 esper legends to pick on EDH, and noyadays Sharuum the Hegemon it's clearly a forgotten commander, but I kinda love this. Thank to this, when your commander isn't one of the top popular one, it's more easy to have an unique deck in your playgroup.

But, why is she so underplayed? Well, I have lots of theories, maybe neither of them are the real cause or just they all complement each other. Sharuum is a 6 cmc commander in a color combination without green, this can be something that discourages people who don't control non-green mana bases. She is also an already old legend that appeared in 2008 long before Commander/EDH became the popular game we all know today. Talking about esper commanders, Sen Triplets had become much more famous due to their powerful and polarizing player control ability, Zur the Enchanter for being a Top Tier competitive commander. In 2013, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic and Sydri, Galvanic Genius became two very accesible commanders coming from the Eternal Bargain Preconstructed deck. And more awesome esper commanders have been released... evrey new one more and more EDH foccused than their predecessors.
And talking about artifact commanders, well, many powerful and beloved ones have been released until now: Breya, Etherium Shaper combining Esper artifact domain with Mono Red artifact scraps, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain giving a destructive artifact combo engine in Izzet, Urza, Lord High Artificer being one of the most important characters of MTG lore with a powerful stax deck, Emry, Lurker of the Loch as a mono blue artifact reanimator, Daretti, Scrap Savant demonstrating the skill of Mono Red with artifact sacrifice and recursion.... and more.

Despite all those options, Sharuum has many reasons to be reconsidered as a remarkable commander:

- Good Esper artifact commander, being Esper one of the best color combinations for artifact strategies, control, graveyard recursion and control.
- She is a reanimation ETB creature spell in the command zone, this can give you the opportunity to use her as a recovery tool for key artifacts, or just as a reanimator for the biggest and more powerful machines you can imagine.
- She can be played as a powerful combo piece: Sharuum can easily combo with many artifacts that can copy her (For example Sculpting Steel or Phyrexian Metamorph) creating ETB-Death triggers reanimation loops (due to the legend rule and her ETB artifact reanimation effect) giving a solid wincon.
- She is an awesome sphinx, the Hegemon leader of the Esper shard from Alara, with two stunning artistic depictions in her two cards: Sharuum the Hegemon and Sharuum the Hegemon.
- She was one of the original Esper legend options back when WotC started to officialy support commander in 2011, making this deck somewhat classic.


EDH is the best format to really play whatever you love. If you like Sharuum art, lore, and mechanical possibilities, don't get influenced by her stats in the net about being less played than other legends!... I've been playing her during many years, acumulating many wins and awesome games, so I can assure you Sharuum can fulfill all your needs and offer you a ver efficient, flexible and fun artifact EDH deck (in a non cEDH enviroment), with a solid strategy, many tools and many viable wincons!!!



HOW TO PLAY SHARUUM
Sharuum the Hegemon is a value artifact deck with access to some interesting comboes (thanks to Sharuum reanimation ETB effect). Your gameplan is start building board by playing ramp artifacts and mana rocks, creating a value engine thanks to artifact matters card draw and defending yourself thanks to some control and removal cards. Thanks to your reanimation spells you will be able to recover your best artifacts that were destroyed and keep assembling synergies and value. Then, two possible paths can lead Sharuum to victory: The first one consists on assemble one of the deck infinite combos via looting, tutoring or reanimating all the pieces (Exlained below); and the second one consists on outvalue your opponents thanks to a mass reanimation spell or assymetric non-artifact mass destruction (Exlained below). The deck also has some powerful artifact creatures that can kill weackened opponents if no other victory path is avaiable.

RESOURCES
SHaruum is a clear artifact matters commander, and as you are playing in Esper colors, you'll have to rely on mana rocks and other artifact resources to build a solid mana base and card advantage.

Talking about mana, I recommend to play both classic mana rocks (Like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, Azorius Signet, Talisman of Hierarchy, Gilded Lotus, etc) and some artifacts that are land-fetchers (like Solemn Simulacrum, Wayfarer's Bauble, Expedition Map, Pilgrim's Eye, etc) because in this way you diversify your mana sources and you will toletare better artifact removal. Remember the deck also has cards that reduces the costs of artifacts you play, like Etherium Sculptor, Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge and Bolas's Citadel, and sacrifice altars that additionally of being combo parts, can recycle artifacts or tokens to generate mana: Ashnod's Altar and Krark-Clan Ironworks.

About lands, I recomend to add some of the artifact lands that can be included in Esper: Seat of the Synod, Vault of Whispers, Ancient Den, Darksteel Citadel and the new Modern Horizon's bridges (indestructible artifact tap-lands) Mistvault Bridge, Razortide Bridge, Goldmire Bridge, love them. All these artifact land have many advantages in this deck: Can be recovered from the graveyard, sacrified, fetched with artifact tutors, count as artifacts in many effects...

Moving to card advantage, the deck will have to exploit it's abundance of artifacts to use appropriate synergistic advantage cards.

COMBOS
Sharuum the Hegemon + Phyrexian Metamorph / Sculpting Steel = Infinite ETB-Death Artifact/Creature triggers. Using them you can deal infinite life loss with Disciple of the Vault, infinite mill with Altar of the Brood, creating a giant unblockable Glassdust Hulk to one-shot one opponent or at least infinite mana with Krark-Clan Ironworks or Ashnod's Altar.

Sharuum the Hegemon + Nim Deathmantle + Krark-Clan Ironworks = Infinite ETB-Death Artifact/Creature triggers. Then yu can use them in the same ways the first combo does.

Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek can generate 1/1 thopters tokens and gain you life until you have no mana. With Krark-Clan Ironworks or Ashnod's Altar, you'll generate infinite colorless mana and thopters, and also infinite ETB-Death Artifact/Creature triggers, using them to win or generate big advantages as the other combos.

Aetherflux Reservoir + Bolas's Citadel + Sensei's Divining Top: This combination will allow you to play all your deck free, accumulate insane amounts of life and then use them to nuke your opponents. Thanks to Bolas's Citadel, you will be able to play the top card of your library free, and thanks to Aetherflux Reservoir you'll eventually gain much more life than you pay with every spell. And if you crash with a land in the top of your library, Sensei's Divining Top will remove it.

Much more combos with Sharuum and other Esper artifacts exist, but in my personal case, I prefered to not include more of them, due to this deck is designed for more casual enviroments, and I also wanted to play some pet cards and casual cards, specially big artifacts to recur with Sharuum and some fun sphinxes.

OTHER WINCONS

Mirrodin Besieged can make an opponent lose the game if you filled your graveyard enough.

Aetherflux Reservoir can also blow up opponents when you gain enough life even if you haven't the Bolas's Citadel + Sensei's Divining Top combo. This deck can generate enough life gain through cards like Filigree Angel, and playing lots of spells with Bolas's Citadel or Mystic Forge.

Open the Vaults with a filled graveyard can also be gamechanging, although it doesn't sequre you the victory unless you obtain powerful combinations of artifacts or combos.

This deck can also win through board superiority and combat, thanks to the biggest artifact creatures of the deck: Wurmcoil Engine, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Magister Sphinx, Enigma Sphinx or Steel Hellkite, swarm your opponents with tokens thanks to Thopter Foundry, Myr Battlesphere or Pentavus or just other powerful artifacts like Conjurer's Closet, Memnarch or Darksteel Forge that can radically change your position in the game. Many of those cards have horribly high CMCs, but thanks to our reanimation engines (Sharuum, Open the Vaults), big collection of mana rocks and cost-reducing cards (Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge, Etherium Sculptor or Bolas's Citadel) we'll be able to play them eventually. In fact, one of the main goals of our deck is to make our opponents waste their resources on all these attention-dragging battlecruiser/hipervalue cards, to let open a secure way to assemble our real combos, or viceversa, distract our opponents playing an evident combo and later crush them in a more classic stompy way.


*I'm still working on this article, hope you enjoy it! Feel free to let your opinion or give ideas, all are welcomed! :)

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!


Important! Formatting tipsComment Tutorialmarkdown syntax

Please login to comment

99% Casual

Competitive

Revision 3 See all

(1 year ago)

-1 All is Dust main
+1 All is Dust main
Date added 3 years
Last updated 1 year
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

41 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

17 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.71
Tokens Goat 0/1 W, Myr 1/1 C, Pentavite 1/1 C, Thopter 1/1 U, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink
Folders 1- BRAZATO EDH DECKS
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views