Much Abrew: Jeskai Urza-facts (Standard)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. We haven't been playing much Standard lately as we wait for Phyrexia to be released and shake up the format. But a little while ago, a weird Jeskai ramp deck built around Urza, Lord Protector caught my eye. The plan is to use cards like Thran Spider, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, and The Mightstone and Weakstone to ramp into big artifact finishers like Cityscape Leveler and Skitterbeam Battalion. Plus, since we're playing a full set of The Mightstone and Weakstone, we can also just meld Urza, Lord Protector into Urza, Planeswalker, which is incredibly powerful! How good is Urza-facts in Standard? Is ramping with Powerstones a fun way to fill our time as we wait for Phyrexia: All Will Be One to be released? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Urza-facts
The Deck
- Record-wise, we finished 3-1 with Jeskai Urza-facts, with our one loss coming in a tough three-game match against Mardu Angels. In general, the deck felt solid enough to keep up with the top tiers of the Standard meta, considering we beat two different builds of Grixis while also sneaking our way past GW Enchantments.
- The plan is simple: spend the early game ramping with Thran Spider, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, and The Mightstone and Weakstone to get to our big finishers—Cityscape Leveler and Skitterbeam Battalion—as fast as possible. Cityscape Leveler specifically is super strong. We had a couple of games where things were looking grim only for us to draw a Cityscape Leveler, which swung the game in our favor pretty much by itself. I'm not sure why the eight-drop isn't seeing more play in Standard—it's really powerful!
- Maybe my favorite part of the deck is that it's really good at melding Urza, Lord Protector and The Mightstone and Weakstone into Urza, Planeswalker. Thanks to all of our ramp, we can often wait until we have 10 mana, wait until our opponent taps down, play Urza, Lord Protector, and meld all in one turn to take over the game.
- Playing four copies of Brotherhood's End in the main deck might look weird, but it felt pretty great. The Anger of the Gods mode is good against decks like Solders and Mono-Red, and in matchups where that mode is bad, the opponent will often have artifacts worth blowing up, like Reckoner Bankbuster, Unlicensed Hearse, or various artifact tokens like Blood or Treasures. This flex ability makes Brotherhood's End good in enough matchups that it deserves to be in the main deck, especially since we can always discard it to Fable of the Mirror-Breaker in matchups where it's bad.
- So, should you play Jeskai Urza-facts in Standard? I'll say that I really enjoyed playing the deck. I had been a bit bored with Standard while waiting for Phyrexia, but this deck drew me back in, and I don't regret it at all. The deck felt like it had a decent shot against aggro thanks to Brotherhood's End while also being able to grind with all of the powerful midrange decks in the format thanks to Reckoner Bankbuster, The Mightstone and Weakstone, and the possibility of melding into Urza, Planeswalker. While Standard will hopefully get a fresh start when Phyrexia: All Will Be One comes out in a few weeks, if you're looking for something to mess around with in the meantime, Jeskai Urza-facts is a ton of fun!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
