My companions and I attended the Coldsnap prerelease last weekend. During one of his various matches, one of my friends was stomped by a green/black deck running Allasaurus Rider (“Godzilla”) and Herald of Leshrac (“Lex Luther,” since he steals real estate at the expense of your opponent’s resources). When all was said and done, we began to divvy up our haul for the day. I was given all our Allasaurus and Heralds and assigned to build Lexilla.

 

The deck is to be casual Type 2 (including Cold Snap, obviously). I have access to most Type 2 cards for this deck, so budget isn’t an issue. However, I must run all four Godzillas and at least 3 Luthers.

 

The initial idea was to use Uzratron for acceleration. This led to the idea of adding Dark Depths as well because what’s the point in having all this mana if I’m not going to use it.

 

The main problem with type two Urzatron is I have no direct way in the current card pool to search my deck for the specific land I need (well, other than Diabolic Tutor which is slow and doesn’t splash well at 2 black mana). The solution I stumbled across is dredge. I’ll use the dredge cards to hasten my library into my graveyard, then Life from Loam the land I need to complete the combo. I also added Ohran Viper. He can help control my opponent’s onslaught as well as net a card or two (although, that presents the double mana cost issue again).

 

Other possible solutions I’ve been considering are as follows. Divining Top could help. Phyrexian Arena is also an option. It costs two black, but I’m more concerned with the life drain. This brought up another possibility. The Herald’s are the most likely to get stuck in my hand until I hit that 7 mana threshold, so perhaps I should invest in Soul Spikes.

 

Beyond that, if Urzatron is too unreliable, I could possibly forgo that option and change my mana base to White/Green/Black. This opens up more options card wise (Wraths, Heirarchs, etc) and might be a more solid deck. At this point however, I’m not willing to give up on Urza just yet.

 

 

Core Deck (60):

 

Creatures (20)

3 Herald of Leshrac

4 Allasaurus Rider

2 Indrik Stomphowler

4 Stinkweed Imp

3 Ohran Viper

4 Birds of Paradise

 

Spells (14)

4 Putrify

2 Crime/Punishment

2 Darkblast

3 Zombify

2 Life from Loam

1 Naturalize

 

Artifact (4):

4 Golgari Signet

 

Land (22)

4 Urza’s Mine

4 Urza’s Power Plant

4 Urza’s Tower

4 Overgrown Tomb

4 Llanowar Wastes

2 Dark Depths

This looks like a fun deck to play, and it should be a fun deck to fix as well.  I like how Allosaurus Rider and Herald of Leshrac have some synergy with each other in that the Rider gets +1/+1 for all the lands that the Herald steals.  However, one problem does stick out at me pretty badly.  You have 22 lands in this deck, and only 8 of them produce colored mana.  Granted, those eight each produce both colors of mana that you need, and you also have Birds of Paradise and Golgari Signet, but that's still a shaky mana base.  To help smooth things out, replace Ohran Viper with Wood Elves.  Not only does this remove the double-mana requirement, it lets you search for a Forest.  And every Forest in your deck is also a Swamp.