Commander Deck Tech: Urza, Lord Protector
As this article releases so will The Brothers Wars, and with it comes some new (old) Legendary Creatures! Aside from the Legends, I really like all the mythic artifacts that can be cast with alternate casting costs and colors. After looking over the set Urza, Lord Protector was the clear Legend that stood out most to me. It's a cheap Commander and could also be used as a tiny leader at only three converted mana. Urza lets you cast Artifact, Instants, and Sorceries for one colorless less. Then for seven colorless you can also meld him with The Mightstone and Weakstone to turn him into Urza, Planeswalker.
The goal of this deck is to get both your Commander and The Mightstone and Weakstone into play. You also need to have quite a bit of extra mana in order to pay to meld them together. However the reward is pretty amazing. It's a Planeswalker that gets two activations per turn. It also comes into play with seven loyalty which is a ton.
You can see that he has one ability similar to Karn Liberated, as well as a huge board wipe effect that protects your Artifacts and Planeswalkers. Most likely if you get the ultimate off the game will soon be over. Let's not forget that if you get to meld Urza, Planeswalker you most likely are going to be the biggest target on the table. We are running a Teferi's Protection as well as six counterspells to help protect him. This deck also has the ability to run Time Walk effects and possibly an infinite turn version. I opted to go on a more control and artifact based version to use new cards from The Brothers War. It doesn't help that I already have an infinite turn based deck, and having multiple decks that do similar stuff does not sound like a lot of fun.
The deck is going to rely a lot on the ability to have lots of mana as well as the ability to find The Mightstone and Weakstone. Because of this the deck does run seven different cards to help tutor up an artifact. Some of them have conditions to meet, and some of them are just get an artifact from your library. The seven cards consist of: Fabricate, Reshape, Whir of Invention, Transmute Artifact, Tezzeret the Seeker, Arcum Dagsson, and Oswald Fiddlebender.
We also have several other cards that search your library for artifacts like Tribute Mage, Trinket Mage, and Spellseeker. These are mainly for value, but also to search up mana acceleration. Trinket Mage can get you a Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Expedition Map, Sensei's Divining Top, or Esper Sentinel. Tribute Mage can get you an Arcane Signet, Azorius Signet, Sapphire Medallion, Winter Orb, Etherium Sculptor, Ethersworn Canonist, Lion Sash, or The Reality Chip. Spellseeker can get you Transmute Artifact, Counterspell, Mana Drain, March of Otherworldly Light, Swords to Plowshares, or Cyclonic Rift.
The mana base runs all of the tron lands which also fits the Urza and artifact theme. It can also potentially allow you to play Karn Liberated on turn 3, but that will not happen very often. They are in there to hopefully be in play later in the game to activate your planeswalkers meld ability cheaper. There are also several toolbox lands like: Academy Ruins, Buried Ruin, Inventors' Fair, and Urza's Saga.
Your biggest win condition other than your commander meld are going to be attacking with a Blightsteel Colossus, Wurmcoil Engine, or copying a hoard of artifact with Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. We can also assemble a hoard of big artifact constructs with Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Urza Prince of Kroog, and Displacer Kitten flickering.
I'm also anxious to be playing Karn's Sylex, and Urza's Sylex. They are both very powerful, but you're going to need to play your spells around them so you don't overextend and blow up a lot of your own permanents in the process. We also have the ability to lock out a game with the winter's orb and tons of artifact's and mana rocks that will still untap for us. Overall this deck has a bunch of different things going on, but will make you very happy if you love playing control builds. I listed most of the things you'll tutor for to help in the future because that will be one of the hardest things when playing a deck similar to this. You're going to want to know what to get depending on the game state. After you get that down, playing this deck will be a breeze.
I'm excited for The Brothers War, and am going to try and collect a set of Transformers just to have, they all look cool and bring back lots of other nerd nostalgia we all enjoy and love.
I hope this Urza, Lord Protector deck gives you some fun ideas on how to build your own version of this deck!
Until Next Time,
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