In terms of Magic flavor and lore, The Brothers War is a masterpiece. The novel containing the nitty gritty didn't come out until 4 whole years after the set was released (just imagine that today), and it didn't even matter.
If you read a fraction of the cards in Antiquities, you get the gist: brothers Urza and Mishra had a falling out that resulted in them becoming mortal enemies, with each building an army and consolidating their forces such that the entire land was ruined, and their mutually assured destruction at the end ensured that only ancient relics remained. Simple, easy, surprisingly deep, and doesn't require any of the hoops that today's story stuff has to jump through.
I was a big fan, especially because of the Weatherlight stuff that came later. And since Karn, Scion of Urza was created by one of the Brothers, and I'm trying to make the deck colorless because of the project's EDH-esque deckbuilding requirements, a flavorful tie-in to the Antiquities epic seemed like a pretty easy connection.
Like Artifacts? Then boy, do I have a deck for you:
Magic: The Gathering TCG Deck - Karn, Scion of Urza by Andy Hurst
'Karn, Scion of Urza' - constructed deck list and prices for the Magic: The Gathering Trading Card Game from TCGplayer Infinite!
Created By: Andy Hurst
Event:
Rank:
Freeform (Casual)
Market Price: $47.61
Mishra's Bauble
Market Price: $2.55
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{T}, Sacrifice Mishra's Bauble: Look at the top card of target player's library. Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.
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Karn, Scion of Urza
Market Price: $6.09
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+1: Reveal the top two cards of your library. An opponent chooses one of them. Put that card into your hand and exile the other with a silver counter on it. −1: Put a card you own with a silver counter on it from exile into your hand. −2: Create a 0/0 colorless Construct artifact creature token with "This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control."
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Mishra's Self-Replicator
Market Price: $0.21
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Whenever you cast a historic spell, you may pay {1}. If you do, create a token that's a copy of Mishra's Self-Replicator. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
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Universal Solvent
Market Price: $0.01
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{7}, {T}, Sacrifice Universal Solvent: Destroy target permanent.
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Archaeological Dig
Market Price: $0.32
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{T}: Add {C}. {T}, Sacrifice Archaeological Dig: Add one mana of any color.
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Juju Bubble
Market Price: $0.17
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Cumulative upkeep {1} (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.) When you play a card, sacrifice Juju Bubble. {2}: You gain 1 life.
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Serum Tank
Market Price: $0.19
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Whenever Serum Tank or another artifact enters the battlefield, put a charge counter on Serum Tank. {3}, {T}, Remove a charge counter from Serum Tank: Draw a card.
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Aysen Abbey
Color Identity:G,U,W
Market Price: $0.18
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}: Add {W}. {2}, {T}: Add {G} or {U}.
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Wall of Junk
Market Price: $1.75
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Defender (This creature can't attack.) When Wall of Junk blocks, return it to its owner's hand at end of combat. (Return it only if it's on the battlefield.)
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Scour from Existence
Market Price: $0.19
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Exile target permanent.
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An-Havva Township
Color Identity:G,R,W
Market Price: $0.18
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}: Add {G}. {2}, {T}: Add {R} or {W}.
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Crystal Vein
Market Price: $1.61
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{T}: Add {C}. {T}, Sacrifice Crystal Vein: Add {C}{C}.
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Self-Assembler
Market Price: $0.03
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When Self-Assembler enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an Assembly-Worker creature card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
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Buried Ruin
Market Price: $0.49
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{T}: Add {C}. {2}, {T}, Sacrifice Buried Ruin: Return target artifact card from your graveyard to your hand.
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Teeka's Dragon
Market Price: $8.29
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Flying; trample; rampage 4 (Whenever this creature becomes blocked, it gets +4/+4 until end of turn for each creature blocking it beyond the first.)
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Puppet Strings
Market Price: $1.70
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{2}, {T}: You may tap or untap target creature.
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Alchemist's Vial
Market Price: $0.25
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When Alchemist's Vial enters the battlefield, draw a card. {1}, {T}, Sacrifice Alchemist's Vial: Target creature can't attack or block this turn.
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Urza's Armor
Market Price: $0.24
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If a source would deal damage to you, prevent 1 of that damage.
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Jhoira's Toolbox
Market Price: $0.23
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{2}: Regenerate target artifact creature.
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Juggernaut
Market Price: $0.11
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Juggernaut attacks each combat if able. Juggernaut can't be blocked by Walls.
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Koskun Keep
Color Identity:B,G,R
Market Price: $0.14
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}: Add {R}. {2}, {T}: Add {B} or {G}.
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Urza's Mine
Market Price: $0.94
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{T}: Add {C}. If you control an Urza's Power-Plant and an Urza's Tower, add {C}{C} instead.
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Urza's Tower
Market Price: $0.74
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{T}: Add {C}. If you control an Urza's Mine and an Urza's Power-Plant, add {C}{C}{C} instead.
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Castle Sengir
Color Identity:B,R,U
Market Price: $0.25
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}: Add {B}. {2}, {T}: Add {U} or {R}.
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Soul-Guide Lantern
Market Price: $2.66
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When Soul-Guide Lantern enters the battlefield, exile target card from a graveyard. {T}, Sacrifice Soul-Guide Lantern: Exile each opponent's graveyard. {1}, {T}, Sacrifice Soul-Guide Lantern: Draw a card.
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Assembly-Worker
Market Price: $0.04
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{T}: Target Assembly-Worker creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
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Emergence Zone
Market Price: $0.33
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}, Sacrifice Emergence Zone: You may cast spells this turn as though they had flash.
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Serrated Arrows
Market Price: $0.93
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Serrated Arrows enters the battlefield with three arrowhead counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are no arrowhead counters on Serrated Arrows, sacrifice it. {T}, Remove an arrowhead counter from Serrated Arrows: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
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Stalking Stones
Market Price: $0.16
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{T}: Add {C}. {6}: Stalking Stones becomes a 3/3 Elemental artifact creature that's still a land. (This effect lasts indefinitely.)
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School of the Unseen
Market Price: $0.21
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{T}: Add {C}. {2}, {T}: Add one mana of any color.
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Leonin Bladetrap
Market Price: $0.08
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Flash (You may cast this spell any time you could cast an instant.) {2}, Sacrifice Leonin Bladetrap: It deals 2 damage to each attacking creature without flying.
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Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
Market Price: $0.72
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{T}: Add {C}. {2}, {T}: You gain 1 life for each colorless creature you control.
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Guardians of Koilos
Market Price: $0.02
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When Guardians of Koilos enters the battlefield, you may return another target historic permanent you control to its owner's hand. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
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Cogwork Assembler
Market Price: $0.06
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{7}: Create a token that's a copy of target artifact. That token gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.
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Mishra's Factory
Market Price: $0.20
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}: Mishra's Factory becomes a 2/2 Assembly-Worker artifact creature until end of turn. It's still a land. {T}: Target Assembly-Worker creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
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Warping Wail
Market Price: $0.51
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({C} represents colorless mana.) Choose one — • Exile target creature with power or toughness 1 or less. • Counter target sorcery spell. • Create a 1/1 colorless Eldrazi Scion creature token. It has "Sacrifice this creature: Add {C}."
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Manifold Key
Market Price: $0.58
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{1}, {T}: Untap another target artifact. {3}, {T}: Target creature can't be blocked this turn.
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Jhoira's Familiar
Market Price: $0.34
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Flying Historic spells you cast cost {1} less to cast. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
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Wizards' School
Color Identity:B,U,W
Market Price: $0.20
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{T}: Add {C}. {1}, {T}: Add {U}. {2}, {T}: Add {W} or {B}.
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Battering Ram
Market Price: $0.10
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At the beginning of combat on your turn, Battering Ram gains banding until end of combat. (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's blocking.) Whenever Battering Ram becomes blocked by a Wall, destroy that Wall at end of combat.
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Desert
Market Price: $1.90
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{T}: Add {C}. {T}: Desert deals 1 damage to target attacking creature. Activate this ability only during the end of combat step.
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Spatial Contortion
Market Price: $0.26
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({C} represents colorless mana.) Target creature gets +3/-3 until end of turn.
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Urza's Factory
Market Price: $0.25
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{T}: Add {C}. {7}, {T}: Create a 2/2 colorless Assembly-Worker artifact creature token.
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Yotian Soldier
Market Price: $0.02
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Vigilance
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Urza's Tome
Market Price: $0.07
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{3}, {T}: Draw a card. Then discard a card unless you exile a historic card from your graveyard. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
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Urza's Power Plant
Market Price: $0.66
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{T}: Add {C}. If you control an Urza's Mine and an Urza's Tower, add {C}{C} instead.
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Talon of Pain
Market Price: $0.12
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Whenever a source you control other than Talon of Pain deals damage to an opponent, put a charge counter on Talon of Pain. {X}, {T}, Remove X charge counters from Talon of Pain: It deals X damage to any target.
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Onulet
Market Price: $0.36
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When Onulet dies, you gain 2 life.
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Steel Overseer
Market Price: $1.82
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{T}: Put a +1/+1 counter on each artifact creature you control.
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Traxos, Scourge of Kroog
Market Price: $0.45
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Trample Traxos, Scourge of Kroog enters the battlefield tapped and doesn't untap during your untap step. Whenever you cast a historic spell, untap Traxos. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
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Urza's Bauble
Market Price: $2.66
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{T}, Sacrifice Urza's Bauble: Look at a card at random in target player's hand. You draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.
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Mishra's Groundbreaker
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{T}, Sacrifice Mishra's Groundbreaker: Target land becomes a 3/3 artifact creature that's still a land. (This effect lasts indefinitely.)
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Get ready to construct artificial monstrosities and lay siege to the opponent with the metal behemoths. Because of a minor rule I was using with these decks, I was a little short on suitable basics, so I tried to construct the manabase without them. The Urza Tron package gets a chance for some degeneracy here. Tomb of the Spirit Dragon also shines as a land that can swing a game. All your creatures are colorless, so you could stand to gain quite the pile of life.
The creature base is filled with artifacts, and due to the Brothers War flavor, I tried to lean as heavily as I could on various Assembly-Workers. Juggernaut was another icon that deserved some love, as well as ancient throwbacks Onulet and Yotian Soldier.
The spell base has a couple heavy hitters...and some steaming piles. Juju Bubble is a nod to my buddy Jay, who even today criticizes me for taking it out of my Weatherlight-flavored casual deck. In my defense, the card is really bad. However, the art is fantastic, it's got some flavor implications, and it does provide an additional means to pad the life total. Both Urza's and Mishra's Baubles get some play here, Puppet Strings allows us to have some say over the attack step, and Urza's Armor keeps off the riff-raff. We are cheating on the flavor juuuuust a bit with Eldrazi-themed removal spells Spatial Distortion, Warping Wail, and Scour from Existence...but c'mon. It's a colorless deck and they're colorless spells. I'm a (deck) doctor, not a miracle worker!
Pop Quiz Hotshot: who would have built the Overseer? Urza or Mishra? Holler at me and let me know! Winning guesses will earn a valuable prize*. We're playing a ton of artifacts here, so it only makes sense that we play an artifact creature lord. Give this an activation or two, and our forces will be out of control.
Magic Design has come a long way! If this monstrosity was printed in Antiquities I'm sure we would have had to Armageddon ourselves or some such. As it is, we get an undercosted smasher. If you get a chance to think about historic triggers for a second, you'll realize that artifacts are included! And boy are we playing an awful lot of those. So we will not have to worry about Sir Traxos staying tapped. We just get to the smashing.
Ah, finally something for our Urza Tron to do! Although Urza would never sanction helping out Mishra's contraptions for realzies, in this deck the two will work together harmoniously. It only takes a couple spells for us to have an enormous pile of 2/2s, Traxos might be the hammer that the opponent struggles to deal with, but the Self-Replicator here can run away with a game just as easily.
Nostalgia alert! For a long time, this was my white whale. Back in the mid/late 90's, I wanted this card more than anything. I'm sure that the money I spent on Mirage packs trying to crack one of these dopes probably could have gotten me a couple Dual Lands back then (remember, dual lands were only equivalent to like 1.75 starter packs back then) but that didn't stop me. It just looked so cool, and I decided I had to have one. My local store didn't have one, and there was no way my parents were going to let me give their credit card information to some random company that advertised selling singles in Scrye Magazine. Eventually, my buddy got hold of one and traded it to me for the meager sum of a Mox Diamond, then just gave me back the Mox Diamond because he felt guilty about ripping me off. Teeka's Dragon might win us some games here, it's a 5/5 flyer and god help the opponent if they're silly enough to double block it. But it's really here because, like the Brothers War itself, it's a fun reminder of how Magic used to be.
There are a lot of incredible nonbasic lands today, and creature lands have come a long way as well. But back in the day, there was only Mishra's Factory. And it was a format-defining house. Ever want to see how powerful it is? Check out the Old School format for just a short time and see how warping the land is. It can easily stop most of the other powerful efficient threats of the day. White Knight, Black Knight, Good Night—who cares? It ain't stopping the Factory. Whirling Dervish? Don't be silly. Factory is an amazing defensive creature, a fine offensive creature in the right circumstances, and since we're actually playing a ton of Assembly-Workers (guess what Mishra's Self-Replicator and all of its copies are?), it doesn't even have to animate. It can just sit there and threaten to ruin combats.