The reason I go into all this, again, is because I feel EDH has gotten out of touch with what it was created to be: a casual format that allows for crazy plays in a context of an awesome, flavorful, interactive format. The banned list, as it currently is, doesn't reflect that, and in fact sends the opposite message: seeing Sol Ring, Tutors, and all the infinite combos that are legal and consistent sends the message that EDH is just "Vintage-lite, with this guy who sits outside the game and tells you what colors your decks is."
The thing is, you cannot use rules to force players to bring a casual attitude to the format. If someone wants to build decks optimized to have the highest win-rate possible, they're going to do that regardless of how restrictive the banlist is. You could ban over 100 of the most obnoxious cards in the format, and still have players quietly and uninteractively digging for combo pieces, finished with a 10-minute turn that ends the game in a way only satisfying to them.
The banlist is not the place to police that. It's up to players to be good natured and bring decks that interact, and don't win out of nowhere, and it's up to playgroups to make such playstyles unwelcome at their table. Trying to use the banlist to force spikes to stop being spiky will be unsuccessful, and remove a bunch of interesting cards from the format, that casual players may want to tinker with in casual ways.
The banlist, as it currently stands, is just a record of cards that often end up being unfun, even when used with good intent. Nobody's pretending biorhythm is overpowered, but it appeals to casual players because it looks big and timmy-rific and yet ends up being really lame in practice. "I lost because I didn't get a turn in between the guy who wrathed and the guy who biorhythmed" doesn't sound like fun magic to me. Every card currently on the ban list can be justified with this mentality. They look fun, but aren't in practice, even if you aren't trying to build a dirty spike deck with them.
Lets be honest with ourselves. Most competitive players have no intention of using any of the cards "honestly" or "fairly". That is the entire point of playing Magic Heck, players will try to break Goblin Piker if able. Most players will seek to break a card, be it for winning the game, fulfilling some devious combo, etc.
EDH is supposed to be a multiplayer format filled with interaction. Combos aren't interactive, the banlist is supposed to discourage that. Cards that are clearly terrible UNLESS you combo-win with them are ideal candidates for banlisting.
Now, it is true that Palinchron is generally used for some less-than-honest purposes but even when it is used to fulfil infinite combos, there is one huge safety valve which could stop a Palinchron combo dead in its tracks -- spot removal in response to its activated ability. Granted, that player is probably running some countermagic suite but we are talking about a check and balance consisting of an entire table.
Its activated ability is self-bounce....spot removal only works if they don't have enough mana to activate again in response (and if they're about to go infinite, that implies they have enough to re-cast palinchron)....so no, that's not a good solution at all.
I disagree actually...there are plenty of decks that would love protean hulk as an honest card. For example, kresh, savra, teneb, etc. Some of them (like kresh) aren't even in the right colors for hulk to combo-win. Being able to sac it to greater good, draw a bunch, and replace it with a titan/duplicant/deadwood treefolk/whatever is a pretty juicy option.
Lion's eye diamond is a safe ban. No one ever uses this card 'honestly' - it's purely for unfair things like storm decks and auriok salvager recursion. So even if it isn't format warping or crucial to certain types of unfun decks....it's not like anyone's going to miss it. Cards like worldgorger dragon and staff of domination work the same way. No one uses those for face value, they use them to combo out.
Cards like power artifact on the other hand, do have legitimate applications. You can't just ban everything that is part of an infinite combo...there are hundreds, maybe thousands of such cards.
I don't want to see library unbanned. It's just so damned expensive and rare, and good enough to belong in EVERY edh deck ever. It should stay banned for the same reason as the P9 - it creates a barrier to entry. And yes, I know workshop, bazaar, etc cost more and are legal, but there are very few EDH decks that actually want to run workshop or bazaar. Every deck wants moxen, every blue deck wants ancestral and time walk, and every deck wants library.
In my mind, protean hulk, kokusho, panoptic mirror, and sway of the stars warrant unban consideration. And I wouldn't object to necro, sol ring, and mana crypt getting the axe.
Then keep swinging with every turn, and fill the deck with NOTHING but counterspells and lands
It's not fun, but that's how you can easily win
Ew, no. Don't waste 2 successful attacks just to ensure you have more successful attacks. And don't use daybreak coronet "to lifelink", steel of the godhead already does that.
Better plan: get necropotence asap, draw a billion cards (mostly countermagic), empyrial armor + steel of godhead when you think you can win.
I don't like O-ring in Zur. 90% of the time you play it, you'll be tutoring it into play with Zur, and since you're selectively tutoring, its versatility really doesn't matter. If you need to handle an artifact or enchantment, you've got aura of silence (and possible seal of cleansing). If you need to handle a creature, there's prison term (and possibly seal of doom). If you need to handle a planeswalker, there's steel of the godhead to bash away their loyalty.
Actually, I don't like O-ring in the format at all. Suppose an opponent gets something nasty out and you O-ring it. Later, someone uses disk, O-stone, austere, akroma's vengeance, jokulhaups, whatever...and presto the board is wiped except that one opponent now has the advantage of a nasty threat already in play. You've just invested a card and some tempo into protecting an opponent's threat for him/her. In multiplayer EDH, thanks to the heavy use of sweepers, all non-land permanents have limited life-span (and in some metas, lands too). That means O-ring is sort of like boomerang, or delay...it just stalls for time, which isn't as good as the wicked hard removal white already has (plow, path, return to dust, etc).
I suppose it's justifiable in some 1v1 decks.
I heavily advocate for empyrial armor and steel of the godhead as your eventual finisher plan. Just get necro if your hand size is small. Being empty handed is a problem for far bigger reasons than dimished pump potential, and is something you'll likely want to address before going for the throat anyway.
I think the best way to do this is just to chain draw 7s. With enough tutors and density of both mana generation and other draw 7s, it may be possible to keep drawing into more mana and more cards until you find a storm wincon, or just get megrim in play. You only need 3 more draw 7s after resolving megrim to win. Or you can end with a storm spell, obviously.
Mind over matter or channel should solve all (or nearly all) mana issues, as long as you can keep finding draw-7s.
I run fabricate.
My current build runs 12 artifact dudes and 7 non-dude artifacts that are game changing by using them on a reanimate.
I told you why the cuts/adds you suggested didnt work/fit my play style, and you repeated yourself as a rebuttal.
Things like playing 1 reanimation spell and 8 ways to pitch cards, is pointless.
Yes, you have valid points, kind of.
But you're not going to convince me, and repeating yourself is pointless.
It's NOT pointless though. You're just not listening.
Saying 1 reanimation spell and 8 pitch spells is misleading. Really, you should be looking at it in these terms: in the first 5 turns of the game you have a 100% chance of having a reanimation spell available, but only a 66% chance of finding a pitch spell. If anything, you want more than 8 pitch spells, not less.
If you have advice to offer, that keeps the deck the same basic angel , without just repeating how you think it should be built because it's more competitive that way and thats you're play style, let me know, if not, dont bother reposting the same thing again.
Er..
You came here. You made a post titled "I has a problem". You said:
"the thing is if I keep it combo, I'm going to continue seeing those cards, but if I take it back to a control deck and/or midrange I don't want it to completely blow monkey gonads."
and
"I don't want people upset just because of the deck I'm playing, but I don't want to auto loose as well because their decks are simply better, so can someone point me in the direction of a really good sharuum deck geared for multi player"
You're elaborate explanation as to why other cards are not as good as sharuum because it's replayable, etc. is a moot point.
fair enough. My point was that running added redundancy isn't helping your chances of being able to reanimate by much, and isn't all that great an alternative anyway.
I will never have enough mana in 1 turn to tutor/draw for a 1% of my deck card, and play it.
Er...You'll never have 7 mana? Or 8 mana? And who said you had to cast sharuum the same turn you tutor anyway? It's perfectly valid to cast sphinx summoner just to get sharuum online again, without playing her immediately.
Playing a 3 mana card to net -1 mana is redundant.
Except that you just double time-walked your mana development....If you go turn 2 signet, turn 3 trinket+sol ring, you have 7 mana available on turn 4. That's huge.
Top is good but most of the time Crypt or Killing something in play is more prevalent.
Depends what it is...Most things your opponents play won't damage your chances of winning by more than filtering your draws for the rest of the game help them. Especially things played in the first few turns.
I guess if you've skimped on fetchlands, top goes down in power level a bit...but it's still awesome.
By playing it, I won, without it, I would not have won.
In a situation like that, where you have lethal damage on the board, there are many other cards that could allow you to win. There are plenty of scenarios where profane isn't able to win, so isn't a 1-card win condition...it just helps press an advantage if you're in a position to do so. You still have to 'combo' it with other cards to get yourself into that position in the first place.
You have valid points that won't change my mind. Yes, searching for top is good, but having only 1-2 (plus art. lands) as targets makes him worse, and might as well be another tutor instead of TMage.
You should be running those other tutors already. AND Tmage.
Entomb, Burried (hits 3), Connisuer, etc. What if: Sharuum is in play?
Just beat your opponents down with sharuum and whatever she animated when came into play, until you either win or have her answered so you can re-cast her.
And keep in mind, with a few blink effects and a handful of tutors, you shouldn't have to wait very long to find a way to re-trigger sharuum.
In a pinch, you can entomb momentary blink to get something else in your yard
Sharuum is in my deck?
Cast your entomb/buried alive/intuition/whatever, putting sharuum into the yard. Then choose to exile her instead, and play her for 8 mana.
You keep acting like having her in your deck is horrible and puts her completely out of reach, yet your solution is to put other animate effects in the exact same place.
As I explained above, you already have 6 tutors + sharuum herself, plus digging spells to find any one of those 7 ways to gain access to her again. Adding body double and mannequin doesn't impact your chances of finding reanimation by very much, and are a vastly inferior backup plan anyway.
My graveyard gets RFG before I get 6 mana on my main phase?
Is this a trick question? After your yard is emptied, cast your friggin entomb at EOT, untap and sharuum. Or are you trying to say that because there's a silver bullet answer to something that it's not worth playing? I mean there are counterspells in existence and sometimes they get played, maybe we shouldn't be playing spells in our decks....
It gets countered and I don't hit 8 mana fast enough, etc.
If you're consistently missing land drops before you hit 8 mana, you should be running more draw effects/engines. Or you can try to get pact/force of will in your hand before attempting sharuum.
Needs more impulse, telling time, sleight of hand, careful study, opt type cards. Like, you should have a good portion of your deck as cheap cantrips both to help you flip Erayo, and to help you dig for arcane lab.
Having Necropotence in your deck is a good way to get yourself killed if you get hit by Mindslaver (a common inclusion in some of the toughest decks for you to beat), and there's really no reason but greed to go through the hassle of Necropotence.
Wait, wait....you're going to not run the most powerful unbanned card in the format...in a deck whose general can tutor it directly into play....because...you might get mindslavered? Seriously???
To tailor our control repertoire, we need a few tutors and there are many to choose from in Zur's colors. My selection criteria is 1) no more than 2 mana (excludes Mystical Teachings, Intuition among others), as I think 3+ mana risks being too much when combined with the tutor target 2) no sorcery speed card disadvantage tutors (such as Personal Tutor), since you'll often have to wait too long for the target
Your selection criteria is pretty arbitrary...There's no need to exclude teachings, for example; it's an instant! You can pass the turn without spending any mana, counter something if needed, and if not, then tutor away right before untapping. Anything that can get force of will in your hand will help you stick zur, which is what this deck lives or dies on. Ditto on what Khymera said about imperial seal et al.
The ideal way to play this deck isn't just to run zur out turn 3 and hope your opponents have nothing. It's to use tutors and/or luck to get force of will, misdirection, pact, daze (yes, even daze) into your hand, and then play him with protection. How many removal spells (playable by turn 4) do you think each opponent is playing in their decks? Maybe 5 cards per deck on average? Giving 3 such opponents 1 extra draw before casting zur only only offers a 16% chance that an opponent has drawn a removal spell they didn't have before. Even taking 2 extra turns has a 71% chance of them drawing blanks. If you counter one removal spell and a second opponent has another, congrats, you've got one less removal spell to contend with the next time you cast zur.
and the concept of countering is itself weak in multiplayer.
ugh, this logic is so bad I don't even want to argue it right now. But I'll try.
I assume you're basing that statement on the following logic: In a multiplayer game with, say, 5 players, your opponents collectively draw 4 cards every turn while you only draw one, so trading one of yours for one of your opponents still leaves 3 unanswered. You're trading your entire turn's worth of resources for 1/4th of your collective opposition's resources for the turn. Thus, 1 for 1s are bad, right?
Here's the thing. Every card played only has a 1 in 4 chance of victimizing you more than the caster's other opponents. You don't have to answer every card drawn by an opponent! Only the ones they're going to use against you. The "1-for-1=bad" logic is applicable to discard effects, but with counterspells you get to see who the victim is before choosing whether or not you want to counter it. Do you want to counter swords to plowshares? If it's targetting your zur, then yes...if it's targetting that other dude's kiki-jiki, then hellz no.
You can extend that logic. Any card that victimizes you will, almost by definition, already be costing you at least one card if it resolves. And usually, it's a card(s) you've already paid mana for, meaning you lose not only the card but also the tempo invested in it.
I mean really, if someone targets you with cruel ultimatum (meaning you're about to lose a creature and discard 3), are you going to argue that you should NOT counter it because that trade is 'merely a 1-for-1', and therefore not good enough for multiplayer?
Consider this too: if you have mana untapped, and people know you're packing countermagic, do you think that knowledge might impact the likelihood of them choosing you as the target for a spell like cruel ultimatum?
Counterspells are NOT bad in multiplayer. They're exactly the opposite of bad.
Nice post, Khymera. I disagree with trying to power down decks for multiplayer, but to each his own. Your technical analysis was spot-on except for one thing:
Quote from Khymera »
I don't think Standstill is worth running, even in duels. Even if you treat it as just automatically drawing you 3 cards when tutored with Zur, 3 cards isn't worth the Zur tutor
You don't run standstill as a zur tutor target. You run for the chance of top-decking ancestral recall.
I run Winds of Rath in my Zur deck and love it. After I attack and fetch vanishing, I don't even need to phase him out to make him bypass the sweeper. As not many people run auras these days, it is basically a wrath for everything but Zur.
If you have zur in play, and he survived long enough for you to untap, you don't need to wrath.
And as an aside, automatically getting vanishing first on zur everytime is not the correct play. In fact, the only time it is correct is if the only reason zur was able to attack was raw tempo (eg: people were tapped out and you gave him haste). Any situation where your opponents demonstrated that they don't have an immediate answer for zur, you should just get necropotence.
Finally, I personally like to run more creature based threats in case Zur gets hated to the point of being unplayable.
If that happens, you're going to lose anyway. You have invested deck-space in zur-related cards. Playing late-game bomb wars is going to heavily favor your opponents who've been able to commit their whole deck to that game-plan (or worse, game-plans of comparable power-level to zur that haven't been hated out of the game). You pretty much have to go all-in on zur.
The banlist is not the place to police that. It's up to players to be good natured and bring decks that interact, and don't win out of nowhere, and it's up to playgroups to make such playstyles unwelcome at their table. Trying to use the banlist to force spikes to stop being spiky will be unsuccessful, and remove a bunch of interesting cards from the format, that casual players may want to tinker with in casual ways.
The banlist, as it currently stands, is just a record of cards that often end up being unfun, even when used with good intent. Nobody's pretending biorhythm is overpowered, but it appeals to casual players because it looks big and timmy-rific and yet ends up being really lame in practice. "I lost because I didn't get a turn in between the guy who wrathed and the guy who biorhythmed" doesn't sound like fun magic to me. Every card currently on the ban list can be justified with this mentality. They look fun, but aren't in practice, even if you aren't trying to build a dirty spike deck with them.
EDH is supposed to be a multiplayer format filled with interaction. Combos aren't interactive, the banlist is supposed to discourage that. Cards that are clearly terrible UNLESS you combo-win with them are ideal candidates for banlisting.
Its activated ability is self-bounce....spot removal only works if they don't have enough mana to activate again in response (and if they're about to go infinite, that implies they have enough to re-cast palinchron)....so no, that's not a good solution at all.
palinchron I don't see anyone missing.
Cards like power artifact on the other hand, do have legitimate applications. You can't just ban everything that is part of an infinite combo...there are hundreds, maybe thousands of such cards.
I don't want to see library unbanned. It's just so damned expensive and rare, and good enough to belong in EVERY edh deck ever. It should stay banned for the same reason as the P9 - it creates a barrier to entry. And yes, I know workshop, bazaar, etc cost more and are legal, but there are very few EDH decks that actually want to run workshop or bazaar. Every deck wants moxen, every blue deck wants ancestral and time walk, and every deck wants library.
In my mind, protean hulk, kokusho, panoptic mirror, and sway of the stars warrant unban consideration. And I wouldn't object to necro, sol ring, and mana crypt getting the axe.
Ew, no. Don't waste 2 successful attacks just to ensure you have more successful attacks. And don't use daybreak coronet "to lifelink", steel of the godhead already does that.
Better plan: get necropotence asap, draw a billion cards (mostly countermagic), empyrial armor + steel of godhead when you think you can win.
Actually, I don't like O-ring in the format at all. Suppose an opponent gets something nasty out and you O-ring it. Later, someone uses disk, O-stone, austere, akroma's vengeance, jokulhaups, whatever...and presto the board is wiped except that one opponent now has the advantage of a nasty threat already in play. You've just invested a card and some tempo into protecting an opponent's threat for him/her. In multiplayer EDH, thanks to the heavy use of sweepers, all non-land permanents have limited life-span (and in some metas, lands too). That means O-ring is sort of like boomerang, or delay...it just stalls for time, which isn't as good as the wicked hard removal white already has (plow, path, return to dust, etc).
I suppose it's justifiable in some 1v1 decks.
I heavily advocate for empyrial armor and steel of the godhead as your eventual finisher plan. Just get necro if your hand size is small. Being empty handed is a problem for far bigger reasons than dimished pump potential, and is something you'll likely want to address before going for the throat anyway.
Why pongify over say, path to exile?
As far as currently-legal ones go, I'm a fan of Balthor.
wincons:
megrim
protection:
xanthid swarm
misdirection
mana:
channel (!!!)
turnabout
rite of flame
lotus petal
simian spirit guide
elvish spirit guide
seething song
desperate ritual
mind over matter
mox diamond
(fixing)
channel the suns
chromatic star
chromatic sphere
pentad prism
Draw:
wheel of fate
wheel of fortune
magus of the jar
temporal cascade
Mana OR draw:
fork
twincast
reiterate
I think the best way to do this is just to chain draw 7s. With enough tutors and density of both mana generation and other draw 7s, it may be possible to keep drawing into more mana and more cards until you find a storm wincon, or just get megrim in play. You only need 3 more draw 7s after resolving megrim to win. Or you can end with a storm spell, obviously.
Mind over matter or channel should solve all (or nearly all) mana issues, as long as you can keep finding draw-7s.
The manabase will be hellish, of course.
It's NOT pointless though. You're just not listening.
Saying 1 reanimation spell and 8 pitch spells is misleading. Really, you should be looking at it in these terms: in the first 5 turns of the game you have a 100% chance of having a reanimation spell available, but only a 66% chance of finding a pitch spell. If anything, you want more than 8 pitch spells, not less.
Er..
You came here. You made a post titled "I has a problem". You said:
"the thing is if I keep it combo, I'm going to continue seeing those cards, but if I take it back to a control deck and/or midrange I don't want it to completely blow monkey gonads."
and
"I don't want people upset just because of the deck I'm playing, but I don't want to auto loose as well because their decks are simply better, so can someone point me in the direction of a really good sharuum deck geared for multi player"
I gave you exactly what you asked for.
fair enough. My point was that running added redundancy isn't helping your chances of being able to reanimate by much, and isn't all that great an alternative anyway.
Er...You'll never have 7 mana? Or 8 mana? And who said you had to cast sharuum the same turn you tutor anyway? It's perfectly valid to cast sphinx summoner just to get sharuum online again, without playing her immediately.
Except that you just double time-walked your mana development....If you go turn 2 signet, turn 3 trinket+sol ring, you have 7 mana available on turn 4. That's huge.
Depends what it is...Most things your opponents play won't damage your chances of winning by more than filtering your draws for the rest of the game help them. Especially things played in the first few turns.
I guess if you've skimped on fetchlands, top goes down in power level a bit...but it's still awesome.
In a situation like that, where you have lethal damage on the board, there are many other cards that could allow you to win. There are plenty of scenarios where profane isn't able to win, so isn't a 1-card win condition...it just helps press an advantage if you're in a position to do so. You still have to 'combo' it with other cards to get yourself into that position in the first place.
You should be running those other tutors already. AND Tmage.
Just beat your opponents down with sharuum and whatever she animated when came into play, until you either win or have her answered so you can re-cast her.
And keep in mind, with a few blink effects and a handful of tutors, you shouldn't have to wait very long to find a way to re-trigger sharuum.
In a pinch, you can entomb momentary blink to get something else in your yard
Cast your entomb/buried alive/intuition/whatever, putting sharuum into the yard. Then choose to exile her instead, and play her for 8 mana.
You keep acting like having her in your deck is horrible and puts her completely out of reach, yet your solution is to put other animate effects in the exact same place.
As I explained above, you already have 6 tutors + sharuum herself, plus digging spells to find any one of those 7 ways to gain access to her again. Adding body double and mannequin doesn't impact your chances of finding reanimation by very much, and are a vastly inferior backup plan anyway.
Is this a trick question? After your yard is emptied, cast your friggin entomb at EOT, untap and sharuum. Or are you trying to say that because there's a silver bullet answer to something that it's not worth playing? I mean there are counterspells in existence and sometimes they get played, maybe we shouldn't be playing spells in our decks....
If you're consistently missing land drops before you hit 8 mana, you should be running more draw effects/engines. Or you can try to get pact/force of will in your hand before attempting sharuum.
And with necro in play, you'll have no trouble upkeeping solitary confinement, which makes you immune to slaver.
Also, drift of phantasms and maybe planar portal to seek the lab.
meh...
Wait, wait....you're going to not run the most powerful unbanned card in the format...in a deck whose general can tutor it directly into play....because...you might get mindslavered? Seriously???
Your selection criteria is pretty arbitrary...There's no need to exclude teachings, for example; it's an instant! You can pass the turn without spending any mana, counter something if needed, and if not, then tutor away right before untapping. Anything that can get force of will in your hand will help you stick zur, which is what this deck lives or dies on. Ditto on what Khymera said about imperial seal et al.
The ideal way to play this deck isn't just to run zur out turn 3 and hope your opponents have nothing. It's to use tutors and/or luck to get force of will, misdirection, pact, daze (yes, even daze) into your hand, and then play him with protection. How many removal spells (playable by turn 4) do you think each opponent is playing in their decks? Maybe 5 cards per deck on average? Giving 3 such opponents 1 extra draw before casting zur only only offers a 16% chance that an opponent has drawn a removal spell they didn't have before. Even taking 2 extra turns has a 71% chance of them drawing blanks. If you counter one removal spell and a second opponent has another, congrats, you've got one less removal spell to contend with the next time you cast zur.
ugh, this logic is so bad I don't even want to argue it right now. But I'll try.
I assume you're basing that statement on the following logic: In a multiplayer game with, say, 5 players, your opponents collectively draw 4 cards every turn while you only draw one, so trading one of yours for one of your opponents still leaves 3 unanswered. You're trading your entire turn's worth of resources for 1/4th of your collective opposition's resources for the turn. Thus, 1 for 1s are bad, right?
Here's the thing. Every card played only has a 1 in 4 chance of victimizing you more than the caster's other opponents. You don't have to answer every card drawn by an opponent! Only the ones they're going to use against you. The "1-for-1=bad" logic is applicable to discard effects, but with counterspells you get to see who the victim is before choosing whether or not you want to counter it. Do you want to counter swords to plowshares? If it's targetting your zur, then yes...if it's targetting that other dude's kiki-jiki, then hellz no.
You can extend that logic. Any card that victimizes you will, almost by definition, already be costing you at least one card if it resolves. And usually, it's a card(s) you've already paid mana for, meaning you lose not only the card but also the tempo invested in it.
I mean really, if someone targets you with cruel ultimatum (meaning you're about to lose a creature and discard 3), are you going to argue that you should NOT counter it because that trade is 'merely a 1-for-1', and therefore not good enough for multiplayer?
Consider this too: if you have mana untapped, and people know you're packing countermagic, do you think that knowledge might impact the likelihood of them choosing you as the target for a spell like cruel ultimatum?
Counterspells are NOT bad in multiplayer. They're exactly the opposite of bad.
Nice post, Khymera. I disagree with trying to power down decks for multiplayer, but to each his own. Your technical analysis was spot-on except for one thing:
You don't run standstill as a zur tutor target. You run for the chance of top-decking ancestral recall.
If you have zur in play, and he survived long enough for you to untap, you don't need to wrath.
And as an aside, automatically getting vanishing first on zur everytime is not the correct play. In fact, the only time it is correct is if the only reason zur was able to attack was raw tempo (eg: people were tapped out and you gave him haste). Any situation where your opponents demonstrated that they don't have an immediate answer for zur, you should just get necropotence.
Agreed. Except you misspelled 'Necropotence'.
If that happens, you're going to lose anyway. You have invested deck-space in zur-related cards. Playing late-game bomb wars is going to heavily favor your opponents who've been able to commit their whole deck to that game-plan (or worse, game-plans of comparable power-level to zur that haven't been hated out of the game). You pretty much have to go all-in on zur.