After another day of testing I have learned that I am
really not a fan of that Satoru/Unearth Oculus deck that Dack_Fayden07 built. I really hate how it plays and it just was not putting up very good results.
As a consequence of this, and trying REALLY hard to not cave and sell my playset of Oculus before the prices crash (they are up to 51 tix a piece right now...I bought them at 14) I decided to try out the card as less of a "combo" piece and more of a Murktide stand-in for more creature oriented decks.
Where my main gxs Death's Shadow list runs 3 Detective's Phoenix, this experimental version runs 1 phoenix and 2 Oculus. It is really,
really good in this build. The rapid cycling of the deck through Death's Shadow staples like Street Wraith and Bauble ensure that I have 6 cards in the gy almost every single time by turn 3. hell, this is the same deck that basically ensures early game delirium in like 80% of cases.
I think this is the future of Oculus, not as a 4-of "combo" piece, but a 2 to 3-of finisher in creature decks to fill the type of role that Murktide would in his deck. People are trying so hard to weasel it out right now but for straight tempo it is NOT bad. I know plenty of Death's Shadow builds run Murktide, and they suffer for it by having to run much less critters. Unless you are playing straight dimir with counters etc., having oculus is 10x better for the zoo strat. It's surprisingly good in Shadow. The amount of times I have manifested dread and flipped a game-winning Frog or Shadow the next turn is pretty significant. The list can probably even run less spells, but I like having at least 1 drown in the loch and at least 2 bolts, which are probably the ones I'd cut first.