True, but casting a random card from your library for 5 mana is not banworthy, nor is it even particularly strong.
The card as a whole is obviously strong, but that line of play isn't.
Except that's more or less Urza's fail state. Rofellos's best starts will be better than Urza's best but Rofellos's worst starts will be significantly worse than Urza's worst. That fact that Urza always has a decent fallback option if there's nothing better in hand to ramp out makes him particularly dangerous, seeing as how that overcomes one of ramp's traditional weaknesses: drawing either all ramp and no payoffs or all payoffs and no ramp. Urza pretty neatly bypasses that by being his own ramp and his own (admittedly moderate) payoff.
True, but casting a random card from your library for 5 mana is not banworthy, nor is it even particularly strong.
The card as a whole is obviously strong, but that line of play isn't.
Except that's more or less Urza's fail state. Rofellos's best starts will be better than Urza's best but Rofellos's worst starts will be significantly worse than Urza's worst. That fact that Urza always has a decent fallback option if there's nothing better in hand to ramp out makes him particularly dangerous, seeing as how that overcomes one of ramp's traditional weaknesses: drawing either all ramp and no payoffs or all payoffs and no ramp. Urza pretty neatly bypasses that by being his own ramp and his own (admittedly moderate) payoff.
Can you map out for us the kind of start that would be problematic? Because if your worry is Urza tapping artifacts to activate his ability, I feel like you are just going to get a lot of 2-3 mana artifacts when you activate him.
That is why Rofellos is better. You don't need to put a ton of enablers in the deck. Just lands and spells. Urza is going to have a lot of duds if you just plan to play a million artifacts.
It is like Maelstrom Wanderer. If you always hit your great 7 drops, the card would be unfair. But you have the same odds of hitting Cultivate as you do Blatant Thievery.
There are only 2 artifact lands he can pay. There are only so many 1-3 mana artifacts you want to play that are not ramp.
The only problem Urza will have is the Orbs... and I just think people will tire of that the same way they tired of Derevi.
I think it's more likely that Urza causes Paradox to go than to go himself. Granted, neither will probably happen (nor should they).
We disagree on paradox engine
That card is a disaster that makes the game worse in its existence. If it goes infinite, it's a lame combo that takes away from the game's buildup, and if it doesn't go infinite, it makes turns long.
And on urza's fail state being worse than rofellos' fail state:
A two mana creature that you always have on turn 2 and always taps for its mana cost or more is way better than urza playing a random card from your library every turn.
Can you map out for us the kind of start that would be problematic? Because if your worry is Urza tapping artifacts to activate his ability, I feel like you are just going to get a lot of 2-3 mana artifacts when you activate him.
That is why Rofellos is better. You don't need to put a ton of enablers in the deck. Just lands and spells. Urza is going to have a lot of duds if you just plan to play a million artifacts.
It is like Maelstrom Wanderer. If you always hit your great 7 drops, the card would be unfair. But you have the same odds of hitting Cultivate as you do Blatant Thievery.
There are only 2 artifact lands he can pay. There are only so many 1-3 mana artifacts you want to play that are not ramp.
The only problem Urza will have is the Orbs... and I just think people will tire of that the same way they tired of Derevi.
I don't think there is any particular start from Urza that is the de facto "problematic" one. Just like I don't think there's a certain sequence of cards that makes Tolarian Academy problematic. As has already been touched upon in this thread, the primary problem is how well these cards (Urza and Academy) synergize with what is already the strongest subset of cards in EDH: the artifacts. If you're playing Urza you're obviously playing the big three (Ring, Vault, and Crypt) because of course you are, he encourages you to play artifacts. Then once you're playing so many artifacts, might as well throw in Sai, so playing artifacts gets you more artifacts. Add a few ways to keep the value train going (Paradox Engine, Riddlesmith, Vedalken Archmage) and you've created a fast and resilient engine that snowballs out of control faster than I think a lot of groups will be comfortable with. And that's all without mentioning the cards that Urza in particular works well with, like the Orbs (of both the Static and Winter variety) or Howling Mine because of his ability to make them one-sided.
The comparison between Urza and Rofellos wasn't so much to say "hey look, Urza is better!" as much as it was to point out that Urza is uniquely stronger in that he is both ramp and a ramp payoff at the same time, and that he easily slides into what is already one of the stronger deck archetypes in the format (artifacts.dec). My guess is that Urza is too strong and they only reason he'll stay unbanned is because he'll see less play than he otherwise would due to social stigma.
I haven't played more than 2 games using him myself, but I've done 12 games against Urza decks in the competitive scene now. Here's my updated takes:
1) He is absolutely faster than Teferi in both combo and lockdown, albeit slightly more vulnerable in being a creature to efficient removal. I didn't win either of my matches due to my inexperience with the deck, but of the 12 games 5 were easy wins and 4 were very centered around Urza about to go off first, even after repeated thrashings.
2) Urza feels very solved, despite not even being released yet. Maybe this is just the pattern we need to get used to with hype and brewing done so much earlier, but the most efficient cards perform exactly as expected. This seems to directly contrast with Niv Mizzet Reborn, who I've yet to see consistently put up the same results Tazri or Najeela has in 5 colour.
3) Due to the power level of most of these artifacts, killing Urza repeatedly is by no means a clean way to shut the deck down. Urza accelerates your game plan and provides a Thrasios-esque outlet, but ultimately you're still running Paradox Engine + Dramatic Scepter and a ton on mana rocks anyway to generate the mana needed to cast Urza and win. The quality of most of these artifacts tends to be higher overall than Arcum decks too, requiring less combo-specific chaff.
Not a large sample size obviously, but the fact he can hang with the big boys this easily speaks wonders for his power level. Whilst I'm still uncertain about how ban worthy he'll end up (that is more defined by casual play), I do find the dynamic he creates a tad dull in competitive. In those games I mentioned where Urza didn't win, but came very close, he required a great deal of interaction. Not only to stop combos, but because almost every artifact hitting play outside of rocks was going to hamper one of the other players, which sadly just let other combos win without opposition. Its like a faster, more consistent Brago stax deck in how it will affect the table, but Urza also doubles down on this by winning at the same time. To sum the experience of playing against this deck in one card on the ban list, its like Sylvan Primordial: Ramp yourself ahead whilst putting everyone else behind, now with added counterspell backup!
Being himself an outlet for infinite mana instead of requiring you to get a chain veil out is a pretty big differentiating element from Teferi. Teferi plays a lot of the junk you would for various infinite mana combos but then doesn't really do anything with them without veil (other than untap them, of course, which is surely powerful). So it's no surprise to me that the build is quite a bit more efficient.
Can you map out for us the kind of start that would be problematic? Because if your worry is Urza tapping artifacts to activate his ability, I feel like you are just going to get a lot of 2-3 mana artifacts when you activate him.
That is why Rofellos is better. You don't need to put a ton of enablers in the deck. Just lands and spells. Urza is going to have a lot of duds if you just plan to play a million artifacts.
It is like Maelstrom Wanderer. If you always hit your great 7 drops, the card would be unfair. But you have the same odds of hitting Cultivate as you do Blatant Thievery.
There are only 2 artifact lands he can pay. There are only so many 1-3 mana artifacts you want to play that are not ramp.
The only problem Urza will have is the Orbs... and I just think people will tire of that the same way they tired of Derevi.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
We disagree on paradox engine
That card is a disaster that makes the game worse in its existence. If it goes infinite, it's a lame combo that takes away from the game's buildup, and if it doesn't go infinite, it makes turns long.
And on urza's fail state being worse than rofellos' fail state:
A two mana creature that you always have on turn 2 and always taps for its mana cost or more is way better than urza playing a random card from your library every turn.
The comparison between Urza and Rofellos wasn't so much to say "hey look, Urza is better!" as much as it was to point out that Urza is uniquely stronger in that he is both ramp and a ramp payoff at the same time, and that he easily slides into what is already one of the stronger deck archetypes in the format (artifacts.dec). My guess is that Urza is too strong and they only reason he'll stay unbanned is because he'll see less play than he otherwise would due to social stigma.
1) He is absolutely faster than Teferi in both combo and lockdown, albeit slightly more vulnerable in being a creature to efficient removal. I didn't win either of my matches due to my inexperience with the deck, but of the 12 games 5 were easy wins and 4 were very centered around Urza about to go off first, even after repeated thrashings.
2) Urza feels very solved, despite not even being released yet. Maybe this is just the pattern we need to get used to with hype and brewing done so much earlier, but the most efficient cards perform exactly as expected. This seems to directly contrast with Niv Mizzet Reborn, who I've yet to see consistently put up the same results Tazri or Najeela has in 5 colour.
3) Due to the power level of most of these artifacts, killing Urza repeatedly is by no means a clean way to shut the deck down. Urza accelerates your game plan and provides a Thrasios-esque outlet, but ultimately you're still running Paradox Engine + Dramatic Scepter and a ton on mana rocks anyway to generate the mana needed to cast Urza and win. The quality of most of these artifacts tends to be higher overall than Arcum decks too, requiring less combo-specific chaff.
Not a large sample size obviously, but the fact he can hang with the big boys this easily speaks wonders for his power level. Whilst I'm still uncertain about how ban worthy he'll end up (that is more defined by casual play), I do find the dynamic he creates a tad dull in competitive. In those games I mentioned where Urza didn't win, but came very close, he required a great deal of interaction. Not only to stop combos, but because almost every artifact hitting play outside of rocks was going to hamper one of the other players, which sadly just let other combos win without opposition. Its like a faster, more consistent Brago stax deck in how it will affect the table, but Urza also doubles down on this by winning at the same time. To sum the experience of playing against this deck in one card on the ban list, its like Sylvan Primordial: Ramp yourself ahead whilst putting everyone else behind, now with added counterspell backup!
And he's quite a bit better at enabling orb stax.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall