Urza's Epiphany

"Centuries ago, one man's vengeance plunged the world into ice and darkness."

Behold my Urza-themed deck, which features his greatest creation, Karn! After being pummeled by the combo of Torrential Gearhulk and Sublime Epiphany, I decided to incorporate it into the deck as a win condition, along with a plethora of Urza-based cards. Though it struggles against fast aggro decks, it can lock down opponents and offers plenty of fun options with artifacts. I welcome any feedback or suggestions to make it even better!

The Creatures:

Stenn, Paranoid Partisan, who not only helps reduce the cost of other cards early in the game, but also serves as a great distraction for your opponent. With the added benefit of being a flickering blocker later in the game, Stenn can really mess with your opponent's plans.

Urza, Lord Protector, another cost reducer who is incredibly difficult to kill with his higher defense. And let's not forget about the threat of melding him into his Planeswalker form, which can force your opponent to make some tough decisions.

Torrential Gearhulk What's an Urza deck without artifact creatures? That's where our big boy comes in. With flash, you can bring him in at instant speed and utilize any instants in your graveyard, including the incredibly useful Sublime Epiphany. As a 5/6, this creature packs a serious punch and can force your opponent to play defensively.

The Spells:

Revitalize is an excellent opening play that offers a dual benefit of life gain and card draw, ensuring that its usefulness is never wasted and its cumulative value can be quite impactful over time.

Soul Partition serves as a savvy stalling tactic to temporarily remove a problematic creature from the board, opening up opportunities for your attacks and forcing your opponent to expend valuable resources to recover their board state, thereby granting you precious time to fortify your own battlefield.

Urza's Rebuff presents a versatile counter spell with a range of options. While tempted to increase its number in the deck over Sylex’s, its efficacy has been consistently solid and its fallback ability to tap two creatures holds strategic value in certain scenarios.

Urza's Command provides a hidden secondary win condition, wherein its base usage allows for strategic stalling by reducing enemy creatures’ strength by 2, while also enabling card draw. However, when employed in the right setup, the artifact creature it generates can be an unexpected powerhouse, rapidly amassing strength through the use of powerstones.

Urza's Ruinous Blast offers a crafty board wipe that minimizes collateral damage to your own forces, and while it may be considered replaceable, its potential for effective and entertaining plays justifies its inclusion in the deck.

Sublime Epiphany stands as the primary spell of the deck, possessing unparalleled versatility that ensures it can answer virtually any challenge. Its usage as a spell counter or ability negator is optimal, but its additional capacity to return a non-land permanent to its owner's hand, including your own, and draw a card, exponentially increases its value. Its most noteworthy application, however, lies in its ability to replicate a creature under your control, such as the formidable Torrential Gearhulk, which can create a cascade of further plays, depending on the number of these cards available in your graveyard, and potentially deliver a crushing victory. A secondary tactic entails copying the artifact creature generated by Urza's Command, resulting in a colossal entity capable of dominating the battlefield.

The Other Stuff:

Karn's Sylex serves as a highly effective board wipe that can significantly slow down your opponent, even simply by being present on the battlefield. While it may require a turn to activate, it can prove invaluable against aggressive decks. Moreover, due to the high casting cost of Torrential Gearhulk, this card can be an effective tool for clearing the board prior to a significant attack.

Urza's Sylex offers yet another excellent board wipe option, with the added bonus of being able to fetch a planeswalker (namely, our next card). Unlike Karn's Sylex, this card can be triggered immediately upon its arrival, provided enough mana is available. When combined with power stones, this card becomes even more efficient.

Karn, Living Legacy is our primary source of power stones, allowing us to cast our artifacts at an accelerated rate. When we don't have artifacts to cast, Karn's -1 ability enables us to use all available mana to sift through our deck and unearth crucial cards that complement our strategy for the game. Furthermore, Karn acts as a potent distraction for our opponents to attack, which can actually benefit us since we are only a turn or two away from full activation.

The Mightstone and Weakstone are excellent artifacts that can remove significant threats with their -5/-5 effect, or grant us card advantage through the draw 2 ability. Although the caveat is that the mana cannot be used to cast nonartifact spells, this limitation hardly affects us due to the presence of Karn and other artifacts. The second half of this card proves especially useful for Urza, Lord Protector's meld ability and can even assist in paying for it, ultimately resulting in the creation of Urza, Planeswalker who can serve as another win condition for us.

Urza, Planeswalker is the melded planeswalker that we can summon, and in most cases, can help us secure victory. With multiple abilities that allow for cheaper costs, the removal of threats, and even the creation of an instant army that pairs well with an Urza's Command artifact creature token, this card is a formidable addition to our arsenal.

The Gameplan:

At the outset of the game, it is advisable to open with a tap land, as you lack a first turn play. However, from the second turn onward, the game is all about stalling. Prepare to sacrifice any card with a converted mana cost of 5 or lower. By the time you reach 6 mana (although 5 may suffice), you ought to have established a strong position. Until then, attempt to draw out your opponent's removal and counter spells, and eliminate the board state if the opportunity presents itself. Once the Torrential Gearhulk enters the fray, the tables should turn in your favor. Be sure to play it at the end step, maximizing your chances of safeguarding it and securing the victory.

Feel free to comment if you would like to see more my decks and please link here and give me a shout out if you used this deck and had fun.