I think there's a better way to play Urza in Modern
Modern forum
Posted on Oct. 6, 2019, 12:29 p.m. by jaymc1130
I've been testing with the Whirza meta builds the last 2 days and I honestly think that deck isn't living up to it's full potential. The best combo in the deck felt like it was under utilized in favor of a clunkier, slower, easier to disrupt concept that had some serious difficulties against disruptive opposing decks.
I got to brewing and worked up this doozy: Kurza Lattice. It's a take that's much more focused on a streamlined deployment of the Karn+Lattice combo to lock out the game and significantly faster about deploying the combo both in ideal circumstances and on average thus far in testing. The current Whirza lists seem a bit outclassed by the performance of Kurza (particularly in the mirror where Whirza doesn't really stand a chance). I've got plenty more Modern testing to do but this felt like a really potent way to play Karn and Urza in the same deck that might be interesting to the community at large.
Thoughts, concerns, improvements, additions, comments, welcome and encouraged. Particularly in regards to the sideboard as Urza brews in Modern are new to me and I have not done significant testing of post sideboard matchups thus far.
Ironworks isn't showing up as banned for multiple sites, but at least Gatherer has it right. Shoulda checked with Gatherer instead of relying just on Tapped Out and Mana Stack.
The thing I dislike about Whirza lists as they are in the meta at the moment is just how vulnerable they are to disruptive decks and just how little the deck is able to interact with other decks. If one is going to be playing a combo deck in Modern it'd likely be best to do it as fast as possible if the deck isn't going to be able to interact favorably in certain matchups. The Whirza meta lists have serious trouble competing against Eldrazi Tron (which does what it does, but faster and with a much better, much more disruptive and reliable midrange game plan to boot), Jund, Burn, most control style decks, particularly Grixis, and even finds itself outpaced by Dredge. It's a deck that is powerful, but the lists prevalent in the meta don't have ideal matchups against the most common decks in the format when these opposing decks are piloted skillfully.
The problem with trying the Thopter route is that the combo is slow to deploy and difficult to defend. I rarely ever found this to lead to game winning lines and the wins I was acquiring with meta Whirza lists were coming almost exclusively from hands where I managed to deploy the Karn combo extremely quickly with lucky openers. The entire Thopter/Sword route that is enabled by Whir and Goblin Engineer simply isn't effective enough to warrant a place in the deck if it's looking to be competitive with the Top Tier stuff in the format that also happen to be the most common opposing decks in the format. Or so the last 2 days and 100 some odd games of testing Whirza seemed to prove.
This Karn focused iteration is a lot better against many of these matchups in testing so far. It certainly is much more consistent about winning games outright on turns 3 and 4, albeit in a significantly smaller sample size of games than I've had with Whirza.
October 6, 2019 1:35 p.m.
Yeah, after about 40 more games of testing the Kurza variant it's significantly better in terms of performance against the overall meta than Whirza. It doesn't get shut down super hard by Spell Snare , has much better tools to deal with decks like Jund and Burn, has an outright favorable matchup against Eldrazi Tron pre and post board where Whirza really tends to struggle against that deck and generally just has fewer weaknesses against the format meta at large. I'm still tweaking pieces of it to tune it as best as I can and some matchups can be difficult but the overall performance speaks for itself the way the meta landscape is changing and Whirza is clearly going to be in a rougher spot than Kurza.
Oloro_Magic says... #2
This has actually been done some by other people in the Whirza community; I recommended that you check out Kannister's stream over on twitch where he is always testing out new variants on Urza. The Karn version is certainly powerful but really it shows what has always been the weakest part of the Urza deck, and that is that it really doesn't do anything amazing.
Kannister explained this once much better than I ever could, but essentially the Urza decks, at least the dominant versions, fall into two categories (I don't include Paradoxical Outcome Urza as I find that to be a very different kind of deck): Stoneforge Mystic Urza and Goblin Engineer Urza. We will start with the Engineer versions first as those have had more success up to this posting. As Kannister explained these builds kind of bridge the line between prison and combo, Goblin Engineer playing particularly well with Ensnaring Bridge . However, when you really look at these lists the deck is at best an average prison deck, it doesn't fully commit to the plan and isn't wholly concerned with locking its opponent; it really only plays a few silver bullets and bridge to slow down the game in most cases. Likewise the combo aspect of the deck is far from optimal as the deck does not have a very streamlined way to consistently end the game turn 3 as its potential is, for this reason it is an average combo deck. The genius behind the list comes when you put those two together, as the combo pieces, particularly Urza, and Thopter Foundry do a lot in the way of slowing down the game and generating continued value. And Goblin Engineer feeds perfectly into the combo being able to fetch either piece. Those two average parts make the deck incredibly complete and difficult to play against.
The stoneforge versions are essentially the same, but instead of the prison aspect, they have a midrange plan that can simply steal games, stoneforge also able to fetch up half the combo if needed.
The Karn versions of the deck represent the most powerful thing that can be done likely, but they come at a great cost, as your list reflects, and as Kannister has noted, playing Karn likely means you can't really play Whir of Invention and because of that you have to make a choice. Do you want the flexibility of Whir and the instant speed, or do you want to go all in on Karn and play a very toolbox approach to the deck. Most chose the former, yet Urza is good enough that the Karn route remains a fine option.
I should also note that in your list you have a Krark-Clan Ironworks in the sideboard. That card is very banned, in fact if it were not banned, myself and many others would likely still be playing Ironworks combo and Urza likely would have a home there somehow.
October 6, 2019 1:12 p.m.