(Rule 0) Urza/Mishra - Apprentice Artificers v1.0

Commander: Rule 0 Artifact Artificer Construct Discard UR (Izzet)

KBK7101

Artifacts (31)

Discard Synergy (11)

Card Draw (9)

Removal (7)

Finishers (6)

Lands (37)

Graveyard Synergy (12)

Artifact Synergy (10)

Recovery (9)

Card Draw Synergy (6)

Board Wipe (1)

1x Incendiary Sabotage

Protection (1)

1x Wondrous Crucible

Commanders (2)

Commander: foil Mishra, Excavation Prodigy

Commander: foil Urza, Powerstone Prodigy

Artifact Creatures (16)

Ramp/Reduction (10)

Tokens (9)

Discard (6)

Maybeboard

Maybe (33)

Upgrades (10)

Sent by their noble parents to toughen up and learn something of the world’s past, Urza and Mishra instead uncovered Terisiare’s future.

Updated - 12/12/22

Hello and welcome to a Rule 0 partner deck featuring the pairing of young Urza, Powerstone Prodigy and Mishra, Excavation Prodigy!

This deck is currently a WIP so please forgive the empty primer template for the moment. I will be routinely updating it over the next few weeks until it is complete.

The general idea of this deck came from seeing the young versions of Urza and Mishra (and their connecting artwork!) during The Brother's War spoiler season. I thought to myself "Man, what cool partners they would be..." so here we are! Since this deck features the brothers in their childhood/teenage years before their inevitable split, I thought it would be cool if I limited this deck to a roughly pre-con power level. I haven't made a deck with such a limitation before so if anything looks out of place, please let me know!

Using MTGGoldfish's precon upgrade guides for C21's Lorehold and Prismari decks, both of the Brother's War precons and C18's Saheeli deck as my points of reference, I came up with the following breakdowns:

Mythic: 5-7
Rare: 33-36
Uncommon: 20-23
Common: 17-20
Mana: 48-52
Card draw: 6-10
Targeted removal: 8-11
Board wipes: 2-3
Graveyard recursion: 5-8
Graveyard hate: 1
Finisher: 2-4

Using these stats as a guideline, I came up with this deck. I've done a decent amount of playtesting on here to try and gauge this deck's power level and it doesn't seem too bad. It can explode over the course of turns 5-10 but can also stall out somewhat frequently, which doesn't seem too far off for a precon, though I admit that I may not be the best judge of that metric. Any thoughts or recommendations are greatly appreciated! Thank you!!

WHAT'S RULE 0?

Before we go any further, some clarification on what Rule 0 is/means.

Rule 0 is a conversation all tables should have before starting a game regarding a handful of different topics so that all players can get on the same page about what to expect in the upcoming game(s) and that no one is set up to have a bad time. Questions about general power level (high/mid/precon. The number system makes things a bit ambiguous), opinions on infinite combos/alternate wincons, any potential time limits, or just general game preferences (ask before looking through my graveyard etc), that kind of thing. The most important question for this deck, though, is "Would everyone be okay if I use two commanders that don't have partner?". This primer is built on the fact that everyone answers "yes" to that question. If not, that's cool, too. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain could work well enough as an alternate commander and if I'm not feeling like playing that, I'll use something else. It's all good.

So, again, this primer operates under the assumption that the table is cool with you using two commanders that don't have partner. It is still not technically "legal" in the official/traditional sense.

POWER LEVEL/COMMANDERS/GAMEPLAN

Neither Urza nor Mishra would admit it, but it was their similarities, rather than their differences, that drove their obsessive rivalry.

Like I mentioned above, my goal with this deck was to make a roughly precon power level deck for a Rule 0 partner deck featuring Urza and Mishra's young versions. Urza, Powerstone Prodigy and Mishra, Excavation Prodigy are very similar cards. They both cost and one mana of their respective color, one ability keyword, a + draw/discard effect and a "Whenever you discard one or more artifacts" effect, which is neutered by being limited to a once per turn effect. As similar as they are, the are very different, as well.

Mishra, being as red as red can get, has haste, discards his card first before drawing and will net you two mana for discarding an artifact. He has a statline of 2/1. Mishra doesn't care much about long term planning. He wants mana and he wants it NOW.

Urza, on the other hand, is much more patient. He has vigilance, has a draw and then discard effect and will create a tapped Powerstone token upon discarding an artifact. His base statline is 1/3 (meaning that he can defeat his brother in combat at his young age. Neat little easter egg there, Wizards!).

When both brothers are working in tandem, they can power up our current turn with Mishra's burst of mana, fuel each other's abilities with said mana or powerstones (which can be used to pay for abilities!) and set up later turns to be more powerful with Urza's powerstones. Our main gameplan here is going to be a mix of second card card draw per turn/discard synergy, sort of like a cycling deck, the typical artifacts synergies and some graveyard interaction for all those artifacts that we discard for the brothers.

Typical gameplay end up going something like this:

Ramp with some artifacts to cast either Mishra and/or Urza, whichever suits the situation better
Discard an artifact for either Urza or Mishra (or both!) for either immediate or long term profit
Benefit from the second card draw per turn with synergistic cards like Irencrag Pyromancer and Minn, Wily Illusionist
Recover said discarded artifact using something like Emry, Lurker of the Loch or Reconstruction or maybe just play it straight from the graveyard because it has Unearth like Scrapwork Mutt or by using Feldon of the Third Path's reanimating/copy ability
Build up a board state of artifacts and then swing in for the win using Cyberdrive Awakener, Artificer's Dragon or Master of Etherium!

LORE

“The brothers are brilliant, but their quarreling will be the death of me.”

—Tocasia, journal entry

Before their rivalry broke out into full scale war that changed the face of Dominaria for millennia, Urza and Mishra were just two boys born to Argivian nobility on the first and last days of the same calendar year. At the age of 10, their father grew ill and sent the boys abroad to study with his old friend Tocasia, and archeologist studying the remnants of the Thran empire in the desert. After some years of apprenticeship, the boys both grew into young prodigies under the guidance of their mentor. Urza developed an inclination for study and would much rather stay at camp and examine the recovered Thran artifacts. Mishra, on the other hand, much preferred the camaraderie of the dig sites and would be present for much, if not all, of the digs that their teams would embark on.

After discovering what was arguably their most important find, the Thran ornithopter, the boys began to argue more frequently. Using the newly reconstructed ornithopter, Urza, Mishra and Tocasia flew to a nearby location discovered by Urza's research related to the Thran relics... a location that would later be named the Caves of Koilos. Inside the caves were multitudes of Thran artifacts, and in the center of one of the largest caverns, was a enigmatic machine powered by a large Powerstone. In their haste to claim the stone before the other brother, Urza and Mishra caused the machine to explode and the stone broke into two halves, the Mightstone and the Weakstone. Eventually, their mutual jealousy and desire for their other brother's stone... combined with Mishra's haunted dreams since discovering the caves and their ever-escalating sibling rivalry, the brothers finally had enough and fought each other over the stones. After inadvertently causing the death of their beloved mentor Tocasia, Mishra fled into the desert and the seeds of The Brother's War had been planted.

The next time the brothers met... Dominaria would be changed forever.

The rest of the story can be found in Jeff Grubb's The Brothers' War novel. I highly recommend reading this one due to it's importance in Magic's history and also because it's actually a really good book! Physical copies can be a bit pricey these days but the eBook version is pretty easily available.

This deck is partially a lore/theme deck featuring Urza and Mishra during their apprenticeship. Because of this, I've tried to focus on the happy times the boys shared with their mentor and have exluded cards like Splitting the Powerstone, Brotherhood's End, The Antiquities War and The Brothers' War. The art for the card Tocasia's Welcome is the kind of vibe I'm going for with this deck and the art card for that one and Take Flight are sleeved up and used as dividers in the deck box. (The best use for art cards, if you ask me!)

PLANESWALKERS

“Raw energy contains infinite possibility.”

—Urza

This deck contains only one planeswalker, the powerful Daretti, Scrap Savant. His +2 can let us trigger Urza and Mishra without needing to pay for their abilities and potentially fills our graveyard with artifacts that are ready to be recurred. His -2 lets us recur said artifacts that we discarded (preferably something big like Combustible Gearhulk). Finally, his ultimate ability grants us an emblem that returns destroyed artifacts from the grave straight back to the field. With three abilities that will almost all be relevant, it should be pretty easy to see why Daretti was one of the first cards I added to this deck. With most precons having only a single planeswalker in them, this was a bit of an obvious choice!

CREATURES

“Though their ideals are leagues apart, Urza’s and Mishra’s creations have a surprising harmony with one another.”

—Tocasia, journal entry

As this is supposed to be a precon-like deck, it has a few different strategies wrapped up in one and could easily be upgraded to focus on one more than the others.

Sorted by category:

Artifact creatures/artifact synergy

Archeomender, Scarecrone, Scrap Trawler and Emry, Lurker of the Loch are both for recovering any discarded artifacts. Emry and Scarecrone are both really powerful in this deck!

Duplicant and Meteor Golem are classic pieces of removal.

Similarly, Solemn Simulacrum is a classic piece of ramp with an additional benefit of drawing a card upon death.

Phyrexian Triniform, Triplicate Titan and Metalwork Colossus are big, heavy hitting creatures that all have some sort of graveyard synergy. (It should be noted that Triniform's Encore cost can be paid for using powerstone tokens!)

Sokenzan Smelter lets you turn artifacts you don't need anymore into 3/1 construct tokens. Third Path Iconoclast is like this deck's version of Young Pyromancer and it even makes artifact creatures!

Cyberdrive Awakener, Artificer's Dragon and Master of Etherium are this deck's finishers. Pair Awakener with a board of powerstones or the Dragon or Master with a board of smaller creatures to close out games in style!

Combat Courier, Scrapwork Mutt and Mishra's Juggernaut are pure discard fodder. They both have Unearth, so discard them and then reanimate them later. The previously mentioned Artificer's Dragon also has Unearth! Another great piece of discard fodder is Scavenged Brawler. Resolving it's graveyard ability (which can, again, be paid for using powerstones!) on something beefy like Metalwork Colossus or Combustible Gearhulk is another way to possibly end games.

Riddlesmith lets you draw and discard upon artifact casts. Great way to mimic Urza's ability if he's unavailable for some reason.

Containment Construct is probably one of the best cards in this deck. Any way to let us cast the discarded artifacts from Urza/Mishra is a fantastic addition.

Combustible Gearhulk either draws you cards or fill up the graveyard for Feldon of the Third Path or something similar and does damage at the same time. It's a win/win kind of card that will never feel bad to cast.

Card draw synergy

Minn, Wily Illusionist, Ethereal Investigator and Mad Ratter all make tokens upon drawing your second card each turn. Using Urza and Mishra's abilities, you should be able to trigger these three on every one of your turns.

Faerie Vandal is just a flying creature with flash that gets a +1/+1 counter every time you draw your second card per turn. Definitely one of the weakest cards in the deck, but precons always have a few duds, right? Definitely one of the first cards to swap out when upgrading your own deck!

Irencrag Pyromancer lets you Lightning Bolt something when you draw your second card each turn.

Mercurial Chemister lets you trigger all of the above just by tapping him and paying a . The discard ability is also relevant, but I'd probably only recommend using it as removal or to dump something especially important into the graveyard. Similar to Faerie Vandal, probably a card to cut when upgrading.

Discard/graveyard synergy

One off my favorite cards of all time, Feldon of the Third Path works great in this deck when "reanimating" things like Meteor Golem, Phyrexian Triniform/Triplicate Titan and Combustible Gearhulk.

Conspiracy Theorist is another effect similar to Containment Construct. Again, anything that lets us cast your discarded artifacts somehow is very powerful.

Skyway Robber is a card to discard early and Escape later with a graveyard full of goodies. Try to hit stuff with the most expensive mana value with it's Escape ability for the most value!

Surly Badgersaur is removal and ramp in one. Very easy to trigger every turn, thanks to Urza and Mishra.

INSTANTS & SORCERIES

“Hah. Urza has underestimated my strength yet again.”

—Mishra

Because of it's focus on artifacts, this deck is fairly light on instants and sorceries and most of the ones that are included are fairly self explanatory. Removal, recovery and card draw. That's about it, really.

The most important ones are probably Trash for Treasure for it's reanimating ability (sacrifice a powerstone to get back something like Triplicate Titan? Yes, please!) and Scrap Mastery, which could be used to potentially close out games.

ENCHANTMENTS

“As usual, my brother’s maneuvers are brash and impulsive.”

—Urza

Again, the heavy focus on artifacts means that enchantments are fairly light in this deck, too. Improbable Alliance and Efficient Construction are two pretty reliable token generators and Artificer Class is mostly a flavor inclusion. Its still useful but it mostly just fit the theme. The same can be said for Mightstone's Animation and Weakstone's Subjugation. Flavor includes and nothing more. As I said earlier, precons do tend to have some duds that are obvious cuts when upgrading. That's basically what these two cards are.

ARTIFACTS

“It has been my honor to improve on the Thran’s original design. Perhaps history will remember me in some small part for my work.”

—Urza, in his apprenticeship

Most of the artifacts in this deck are creatures, but we do have a good handful of non-creature ones, too.

Five sources of ramp: Arcane Signet, Commander's Sphere, Sol Ring, Firemind's Vessel and Hedron Archive. Nothing too crazy here.

Bag of Holding and Currency Converter are fantastic cards for any deck that focuses on self-discard. the Bag literally holds the stuff you discard until you activate it and Converter exiles the discarded cards but can put them back in the graveyard with additional benefits (either treasure tokens or 2/2 creature tokens)

Wondrous Crucible gives our permanents Ward , which is a decent protection buff, but it also exile stuff from our graveyard (at random, sadly) and lets us cast a copy of the exiled card.

Finally, our two big pieces of graveyard synergy. God-Pharaoh's Gift and Dollhouse of Horrors. Being a *huge fan of Amonkhet, I'm super thrilled whenever I find a good place for cards from that block. Gift exiles a creature from our graveyard at the start of combat and makes a 4/4 zombie copy of it (with haste). Dollhouse does something similar, but we control the activation (still only at sorcery speed) and the exiled creature becomes an artifact that gets buffed for each construct creature we have (of which the deck only has seven, so be sure to pick creatures that have additional abilities!). With all the targeted self-discard this deck has going on, it should be easy to see why both of these cards are really powerful!

LANDS

While Urza read books, Mishra learned to read the desert itself.

The landbase is, what I hope to be, a fairly faithful recreation of a precon's manabase. Using the decks I listed at the beginning of the primer as my points of research, the average precon manabase looks something like this:

Total : 36-41
Gold : 1-3
Two color : 3-5
Mono color nonbasic : 3-5 total
Colorless : 4-6
Basic : 8-10 of each color
Untapped ETB gold/two color : Half of gold/two color total
Tapped ETB gold/two color : Half of gold/two color total

We can adjust the numbers slightly here or there, but that's the basic layout of it.

Lands were chosen for either function or flavor. Nothing too out of the ordinary. The artifact synergistic ones, Power Depot, Spire of Industry, Silverbluff Bridge, Seat of the Synod, Great Furnace and Darksteel Citadel are particularly good here. Same with Tocasia's Dig Site and Buried Ruin for self-mill and recovery.

The basic land art for my decks is always something that I take very seriously. As such, this Mountain from The Brothers' War, showcasing what looks to be some ruins and this Island from the first Jumpstart set, from the archeology packets, are the most flavorful choices I could find. They look great together!

KEY CARDS

This deck could be built or upgraded with any number of artifacts. The ones that are currently in the deck that I think are standouts are:

Cards that can let you save or cast cards you have discarded, like Bag of Holding, Currency Converter and Conspiracy Theorist
Second card draw per turn payoffs like Irencrag Pyromancer, Improbable Alliance and Minn, Wily Illusionist
Artifact synergistic cards like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, Efficient Construction and One with the Machine.
Discard and graveyard synergies with cards like Feldon of the Third Path, Daretii, Scrap Savant, Dollhouse of Horrors and God-Pharaoh's Gift
Some elements of recovery from cards like Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Reconstruction type effects
Some game enders like Cyberdrive Awakener and Scrap Mastery

GAMES PLAYED

This deck hasn't seen any games yet but has been playtested quite a bit, both in paper and on here. This deck is meant to be roughly precon level and is meant to be played with other precons, of which I don't have too many of at the moment.

If anyone does build/play this deck, please let me know how it goes!

SUPPLIES

Proxies - 0

Sleeves - Dragon Shield Matte (Silver)

Deck Box - Ultra Pro 2-Piece 150

Playmat - Ultra Pro: The Brothers' War - The Brothers' War holofoil playmat (which isn't nearly as cool as it sounds, sadly.)

UPGRADING THIS PRECON

One of the best things about precons is playing them for a few games, getting a feel for what they are and want to do... and then upgrading them to your liking! Since this deck is supposed to be a precon-like deck, there are a handful of cards that range from "okay" to "kinda bad" like all precons tend to have. If you like this deck and plan on upgrading it, some recommendations on potential cuts and upgrades are listed below.

Suggested cuts:

Suggested upgrades:

And with that... this primer is finally complete!

If anyone has any advice on potential cuts, additions, or general deck composition that makes it more precon like, please leave comments below!

Thanks!!

Suggestions

Updates Add

2023, 15 upvotes and #1 on the site?! — Jan. 1, 2023

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Achieved #1 position overall 2 weeks ago

How did I miss this?! Crazy! Thanks everyone for all the upvotes and support!!

Oh, and happy new year, everybody!

Completed primer/10 upvotes/top 5 on site! — Dec. 12, 2022

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95% Casual

Competitive

Revision 4 See all

(1 year ago)

-1

Steel Hellkite

maybe

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 1 year ago
Date added	1 year
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander: Rule 0 legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 33 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.71
Tokens	Bird 1/1 U, Clue, Construct 3/1 R, Copy Clone, Emblem Daretti, Scrap Savant, Faerie 1/1 U, Foretell, Golem 3/3 C w/ Flying, Golem 3/3 C w/ Trample, Golem 3/3 C w/ Vigilance, Illusion 1/1 U w/ Illusion Tribal, Manifest 2/2 C, Phyrexian Golem 3/3 C, Powerstone, Rat 1/1 B, Rogue 2/2 B, Soldier, Spirit 1/1 W, Spirit 3/2 RW, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	All Decks, Dominaria - The Brother's War, Deck inspirations/Favorites
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