Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Urza, Chief Artificer!

Urza is a six mana 4/5 with affinity for artifact creatures, artifact creatures you control have menace and at the beginning of your end step you make a 0/0 Construct artifact creature token with “This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control.”

This iteration of Urza isn’t the broken combo enabler of the mono blue Urza, but there is a solid strategy for this Urza in going wide with a ton of artifact creatures.

We also have the benefit of not being too fussed with our mana since the affinity for artifact creatures does make it more manageable to deal with Urza dying. We don’t want that to happen often, but it is a bit of a safety valve.

So we need cheap artifact creatures, ways to get a ton of artifacts, and ways to get those artifact creatures stronger.

We need to start things off by have a suite of cheap artifact creatures that we can cast to get Urza’s casting cost lower, so this is effectively a pseudo-ramp package if you thing about it.

Memnite and Ornithopter are the most well known options in this regard because they are zero mana artifact creatures that most people will know about.

There is also Phyrexian Walker, another vanilla zero mana artifact creature and Shield Sphere is a zero mana Wall that gets smaller as it blocks.

We now get into X and 1 cost artifact creatures, of which there are plenty to choose from. Hangerback Walker being a preferred pick because it replaces itself if it dies with more artifact creature tokens.

Stonecoil Serpent is also a solid option as an early threat with hexproof from multicolored, reach, and trample, and of course there is also Walking Ballista to deal with small creatures or get some small damage in to clean things up.

Cogwork Wrestler is a little guy that can shrink an opponent at instant speed, Gingerbrute can start swinging for early damage, Signal Pest to Battle Cry your creatures into some damage when we have a wider board, and Skrelv, Defector Mite to give toxic 1 and hexproof from a color you choose and preventing creatures of that color to block that creature.

Ideally we have a bunch of artifact creatures that will have menace when we get Urza, out, now we need ways to make sure that we can guarantee that we get damage through.

Cyberdrive Awakener is great in this aspect because it gives all of our artifact creatures flying and if we happen to have some other noncreature artifacts like mana rocks or Clues or Treasures then we have a way to swing for a bunch of damage in the air for a turn.

There is also Urza, Prince of Kroog which is an lord for artifact creatures for +2/+2 and we can create a token copy of a creature except its a Soldier artifact creature that is a 1/1 in addition to its other types. Do note that if you copy one of the tokens that Urza, Chief artificer makes then those tokens get one additional power and toughness because of how their ability is worded.

With that in mind, if you happen to have a decently sized Construct token and you cast Saw in Half, then the two replacement tokens will have half of that Constructs base power and toughness plus the bonus they get from their ability.

Illustrious Wanderglyph becomes +2/+2 lord for artifact creatures when you have the city’s blessing and makes 1/1 Gnomes, Thopter Spy Network makes Thopters and draws you cards when you deal battle damage, and Digsite Engineer makes even more Constructs when you cast an artifact spell for an additional two mana.

As far as how we win, there are a couple of ways we can achieve this.

Mechanized Production is the quick way to win, especially since it only checks if you control eight or more artifacts with the same name, and not just the name of the enchanted artifact. We can have an army of Construct tokens, enchant a Darksteel Citadel and win the game that way.

Aggro is the more likely way we’ll win because of us getting a huge number of artifact tokens that have some evasion, so we can make them even bigger with something like March of Progress, which if we Overload it then our massive army of Constructs get bigger for each copy of artifact creatures we make.

To make even more Construct tokens there is Thousand Moons Smithy which makes a Construct token when it enters and at the beginning of your precombat main phase if you tap five creatures or artifacts you get the land Barracks of the Thousand.

If you cast an artifact or a creature spell with the Barracks then you get another Construct token, and the army of tokens just keeps coming.

Urza is a value Commander where if you manage to get him to stick and protected, then you can snowball yourself into a win. Even if he dies, affinity makes it easier for you to get him back onto the battlefield.

Now board wipes make this harder, but that tends to be the issue with any go wide deck. In any case, Urza should be able to be able to win the game if not dealt with.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual