Welcome back Jason! Glad to see The Jester rebuilt. I miss talking with you and Evenpence about the deck on the BZK forums and on instant messenger.
Some general thoughts:
The last time I played the deck (2nd Gush era with a heavy Dredge component with lesser amounts of shop pseudo-mirrors, oath, and fish lists), we needed Powder Kegs to handle the combination of Dredge and the permanent-based mirrors (fish and shops). I'm unsure how well Ratchet Bomb would do these days, given that our main token-producing enemy was Empty the Warrens, which didn't really refill, but it has the possibility of killing Oaths (and as always it's something to do vs spirit tokens, although unexciting) as well as Jace (albeit super slowly). Being cheap, it does offer to bridge the gap to an Ensnaring Bridge, and given that we no longer have multiple Chalices, it may be of tactical importance to kill moxen to make Smokestack effective.
4x Bridge was important then, and I can't see it being less important now. The only matchup where it is actively bad is Storm, and even then, we've always made good use of spare permanents and spare cards in hand. Not drawing one against Mentor or the shops mirror seems more catastrophic than a dead permanent vs Storm. Both Cap and Smokestack seem less important as 4-ofs than Bridge, although I'd lean towards Cap being slightly more important to draw early (early Smokestack is negated more often now due to our lack of Chalice @ 0).
The Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale was a 1-of main, with multiple other copies in the sb (up to 3 IIRC), and it seems very good at controlling token populations, although I suspect that 1-3 monks is still a major problem. I don't know if this card is still good enough, but it's worth considering in depth.
Pithing Needle was strategically important in 2007 against Bazaar and opportunistically against workshop mirrors (where we'd needle something that they had that we didn't yet, and be able to smokestack it away in the future if we drew our copies). I'd suspect that we need copies of the effect against Planeswalkers, although Revoker being able to pressure walkers might be stronger these days than Needle on Bazaar from 2007.
Without Chalices to constrict mana and options at 1cc, Sphere of Resistance seems important as a sideboard option for making the most out of Smokestack. I vividly remember assembling a Smokestack/Crucible lock but being unable to close out games where I didn't have Trinisphere.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth helped smooth the manabase some (letting Bazaar tap for mana and letting us cast Leyline of the Void ). We might not have the space for it now, but I remember this being very useful.
In general, I worry that Crucible isn't strong enough with more Barbarian Rings or Factories.
Regarding Uba Mask vs planeswalkers:
- Uba Mask is decent at slowing down Jace, although it's a disaster if Jace stays around long enough to get them to an empty hand. Jace is already a disaster, so I don't know if this is worth worrying about.
- Dack Fayden isn't very good against our deck, and the targetting looting shouldn't be more than a mill against us. For them, it provides the same obstacle as Jace does if they can empty their hand.
- Both of these are similar, although I think less problematic than Brainstorm was in the first era. Brainstorm, if we did not lay Chalice @ 1, served as 4 spare copies of Ancestral Recall. While not repeatable like a planeswalker, it was far more dangerous as we had little in the way of options to interact with it (Factory, Barbarian Ring, Revoker, and Needle are all options now) AND they tended to have mana left over with which to cast spells.
