jaymc1130 Thank you very much for such a concise and respective response. I understand the importance of Paradox Engine in the top tier EDH lists as well as with Crystal Shard for Urza. But you're right that many people think that PE works the same way as with Thrasios but he gets around the land drops, Urza does not. Through a combination of Mana Severance and Selective Memory you could then hit the cards you want, but that is extremely inefficient and the cards on their own are subpar. I think the best two engines for Urza are either infinite colorless with him on the battlefield or infinite blue with him on the battlefield or in the command zone. Getting to those engines while protecting our pieces and/or disrupting our opponent's plans through interaction and stax, is to my belief, the whole strategy to the deck

@ rphill82 So far in my testing I've been finding that the imminent threat of infinite mana and the necessity for opponents to prevent it usually leads to simple combat damage wins from having multiple constructs that aren't dealt with when resources are prioritized towards the infinite combo pieces. Unfortunately the quality of individual cards available to Urza simply isn't as good as the quality of individual cards available to multi color decks and the ability to grind out of the command zone for many of these decks is also superior to Urza. Eventually, against the top decks in the format, the attrition tends to take a toll, and against many of the faster decks in tier 2 Urza can't consistently keep pace and must rely on a reactive denial strategy putting the deck in an awkward position of trying to win after using resources to stop fast decks but before better grinding decks acquire enough resources to easily deny Urza.

Mana Severence is actually fairly effective at accomplishing it's purpose and allowing an Urza deck to combo off without having already generated infinite mana, but it comes with a high risk factor as a very "all in" style approach that is less well protected. I wouldn't opt into that choice personally as the risk is too high to be as effective as it needs to be against quality competition, but it is an option for players to consider in certain metas that could be viable.

At this point in my testing I am convinced the correct approach to take is to find ways to improve Urza's ability to grind out wins via attrition and make better use of it's lock pieces in order to win more consistently per 100 games played. How to do this I haven't yet figured out, but I do have some concepts that I will be trying. Ultimately I do not ever expect mono colored decks to be top tier competitive simply because the options available with access to more colors are just too good and the commanders available are also just too good, but I do think Urza can take a rightful spot at the top of tier 2 decks if properly constructed and compete with or even supplant decks like Flash Hulk, Zur, or Kess.

I don't agree at all, I've played this deck serveral times, and I've never had a problem winning off lean mana. Granted I'm not a cEDH player and I play in an Optimized/Tuned pod but I almost always win by T5. I will say Crystal Shard , does seem like a very effective card, but I just think it's not something I've needed.

@ DrkNinja I suspect this list would perform just fine against lower power level decks and lower quality players, liable even to win significantly more consistently than the decks and players opposing it. There's no question you've brewed up a very powerful and potent deck that looks like a ton of fun to play. I merely mention things from a cEDH perspective for those looking to transition an Urza list to that power level and the types of considerations that must be taken into account to reach that level and play at that level.

Just as an example of the type of competitiveness I experience regularly, most games in my play group will go 10-15 turns. Every player will attempt to go off 3-5 times before some one manages to successfully go off, and a third of most player's decks will wind up in exile from cEDH's newest staple menace, Ashiok, Dream Render , all while she's also denying everyone from being able to tutor effectively because every player that can is running her. Top tier cEDH is crazy at the moment and many historically standardized concepts aren't as relevant as they were even 3 months ago, all of which makes tuning an Urza list for that level an incredibly complicated process.

Palinchron is still a mana engine. Not as fast as Paradox Engine , but will still make infinite mana.

I just added Tidespout Tyrant to a similar deck. Now just having ANY two zero drop artifacts gives you infinite blue. Just tap, cast, return, cast, etc. You can also do this with a zero drop and a sol ring.

Welding Jar isn't the biggest need, Lightning Greaves probably also not as much as Crystal Shard is honestly even more effective at protecting Urza while also generating value from replaying him. Torpor Orb doesn't jive with that concept though and should also come out if Crystal Shard is in. Walking Ballista still isn't useful, any time it could do something relevant you can win the game in a half dozen other fashions. Springleaf Drum performs better than Paradise Mantle in that slot. Spellbook should be a pretty easy cut, it's almost never impactful.

Mystic Forge is a tutorable version of what Future Sight offers with Top. Swap or run in addition to according to preference. Verity Circle has proven rather effective at generating grind card advantage over time, Memory Jar is better at giving you a reload. Mirrodin Beseiged plus Skullclamp can help supplement what Sai does in storm turns and lead to some explosive card draw although this isn't the most efficient or consistent set up to assemble. Helm of Awakening as a second cost reducer is nice, and Cloud Key as well as Foundry Inspector also fit that bill.

Sphinx's Tutelage doesn't go infinite with Painter's Servant because it says "nonland."

@jaymc1130 I like your cuts and have made them. I also liked a lot of your suggestions with the exception of Verity Circle as I'm not really sure what it offers in my meta, maybe some insight there? Also you have caused me to now have MORE cards to cut lol!

@Rambolicious_0 Yea I guess but it should be able to do some work, I'll playtest it and see.

@ DrkNinja Happy to help mate. Verity Circle might not be worth including unless you regularly face decks with a quantity of mana dorks. It's a pretty solid inclusion against the meta at large most of the time, but in specific metas it might be useless so use your best judgement with that one.

@jaymc1130 do you think I should cut the Retract effects? Or at least cut back on them? I have 4 or 5 now.

@ DrkNinja That may be a bit too many, but it all kind of depends on the decks game plan focus. If you have a lot of other ways to profit from replaying artifacts like generating a bunch of tokens and drawing a bunch of cards then the deck is doing what it wants to do by repeatedly casting these artifacts for value generation and resource accumulation. I've found that these lines are certainly less effective than they would be in a deck helmed by the likes of Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain for example, but in mono blue you rather have to work with what's available. I've had some moderate success with the storm oriented lines in playtesting that was pretty nice, but definitely also not spectacular. I tried some Tidespout Tyrant stuff with Polymorph that felt pretty awful and switched over to attempting similar things with Proteus Staff which feels slightly better but I haven't had many games with that set up so its tough to say much about it.

No matter what if you're employing a Grindstone + Painter's Servant combo line then being able to hit all three opponents in one turn is nice, which is important to consider.