In anticipation of the new Urza's Saga I've been working on an iteration of Painter.
I wanted to try a version that was very heavy on tutors for redundancy and could also use Lurrus as a means to recur your combo pieces. I have found that the painter variants in more of a grixis shell end up being worse at comboing and not good enough at interacting to justify the blue.
In testing this I've found that the true control/tempo decks like Jeskai, BUG and Standstill are easier to beat by presenting a lot of threats, rather than trying to fight their coutermagic or even stop their card advantage.
I have really disliked Pyroblast in this shell for that reason.
Here is one of this lists I've been playing:
Vintage Lurrus Painter
23 Artifact
4 Grindstone
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Black Lotus
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
1 Pithing Needle
1 Mox Opal
1 Chromatic Star
9 Creature
3 Painter's Servant
4 Goblin Engineer
2 Goblin Welder
5 Instant
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Punishing Fire
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
15 Land
3 Prismatic Vista
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
3 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Nurturing Peatland
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Graven Cairns
8 Sorcery
1 Life from the Loam
1 Gamble
3 Living Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Unearth
1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
Sideboard
6 Creature
1 Painter's Servant
1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp
1 Goblin Welder
1 Plague Engineer
2 Instant
2 Mindbreak Trap
7 Land
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Blast Zone
1 Karakas
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Strip Mine
The manabase is a Basic/Snow build to support Arcum's Astrolabe and be immune to most land hate. Grove of the Burnwillow's does a nice job as a dual as well as enabling Punishing Fire as an answer to Ouphe. The other nonbasics round out the colors and provide either utility or acceleration. Graven Cairns gets the nod because double black/red can be crucial and after some testing I was unhappy with the Badlands in that slot. Missing from this iteration is a main deck Strip Mine effect, I've had one in the past but found that I wanted a Tomb to provide a little more acceleration and that I was able to handle a lot of the problem lands with the Strip Mine out of the Wishboard or with the main deck Pithing Needle.
Since the combo itself is colorless I've been pretty happy with the manabase, as you can find the colors you need to cast your tutors but when it comes time to actually deploy the combo you don't really care which colors you have. Red is the most important color and I don't worry about having double black for Lurrus until later in the game. That said to not run into problems with your colors you need to plan quite far ahead and use Astrolabe well.
I am running 3/4 Painter's in the main with the final on in the SB to fetch with Living Wish, the full playset of Goblin Engineer which has been far and away the stand out card in this build. The tutor effect + ability to weld things out of your yard is exactly what this deck wants. In past versions I've had one in the Wishboard so that Living Wish could, albeit slowly fetch Grindstone/Vault-Key. After testing I found that this was too slow a plan and I was happier with all four Engineers in the main. The final creatures are two Goblin Welders, these have been situationally great, but I found myself not wanting the full set as they don't help find any combo pieces. That said they are a huge part of winning some matchups and great to have in play as the game goes longer, they also do very well in multiples. Using them as disruption is more important than I had first considered and they go up in value when facing Tinker. The third Welder in the Wishboard has felt like a necessary evil, not great but in situations where I have wanted to wish for it, no other card would have worked.
The tutor package is maybe the most significant part of this build. The three black, restricted tutors are all solid, with Demonic Consultation often being the best and Vamp. usually the weakest. The red tutors (I include Engineer in this) are slower but usually easier to resolve being creatures in the case of Engineer and a seemingly dubious card in the case of Gamble. Gamble has been good for me, you are comfortable recurring most cards for the yard, it is cheap, red and there is also a small package of spells that you don't mind Gambling directly to the yard (Punishing Fire, Life from the Loam and, Ancient Grudge). It can be a poor topdeck, and you might be forced to get a loam or pfire rather than the combo piece you wanted. The green tutors mostly interact with the Wishboard, the simplest is getting a Painter to combo with. The board also has answers to most problem cards for us, Bonecrusher has been an all star way to deal with annoying creatures, Plague is a newer addition that has helped with the Witch infestation in Vintage, Yixlid is a nice way to shut off dredge and Welder is a great way to stay relevant in a longer game when no single card wins. The lands in the Wishboard also mostly answer a specific problem, Karakas is usually going to bounce a Lavinia or Marit Lage, Strip can take out a bazaar or is a good opportunistic target when you have a good hand and were casting Wish to bait a counter. Blast Zone has been a solid out to a wide range of things, it might be unneeded and is one of the first cards I am looking to cut for the new Saga. I run two copies of Tab. so that when I face Dredge/Hollowvine I can have one main and one side pretty much guaranteeing that I will find it in time. Finally, the two Tombs are my latest attempt to improve the PO/dedicated combo matchup by going faster. I also will occasionally fetch one when facing Shops to help my own mana. Finally, the Traverse is a nice topdeck for us as it will often be on in the mid to late game and can get either half of the combo fairly easily (Painter directly or an Engineer for grindstone).
The density of the tutors is to ensure that we can threaten to combo over and over, through removal and counters as well as to give the deck game vrs. a lot of different hateful permanents an opposing strategies. Casting them correctly is difficult, as you need to consider the counterspells you are facing and how they line up with your tutors/combo pieces. Often times figuring out if you want to bait with a tutor or not will determine the game. Also while this is a Painter-Grindstone deck it is also a really good Vault-Key deck, which is a less mana intensive combo to execute, don't forget to look at lines that win with infinite turns rather than milling them out.
All of the Artifacts are pretty standard, we play all the restricted mana and our combo pieces. We also have a playset of Astrolabes for fixing and some card draw + to act as fodder for our Welders. Finally, there is a single Chromatic Star for a little more fixing and as a good Lurrus/Welder target for a little card advantage.
As I mentioned earlier, the true control matchups have been pretty good with this build and I've had a very easy time vrs. Jeskai in particular. Doomsday is a little worse, but Grindstone itself is a pretty decent disruptive card vrs. them and I have run into a number of situations where the Doomsdays pilot over values countering my spells and ends up without the resources to combo themselves. I think that it is in reality a bad matchup if the opponent recognizes that they simple need to goldfish. Similarly, PO is a poor matchup, really the only times I've won have been when they keep a disruptive hand or we keep a very fast one. BUG has been fairly good, as we deal with Ouphe quite well and deal with removal/disruption without too much difficulty. I have had good results vrs. Bazaar decks by having access to a lot of hate in g1 and able hold off on combing myself until they have expended all their resources. Workshops decks have been unfavorable but not wildly so, a needle on Ballista and an active Welder often is plenty to secure a win.
All told fun, different and not terrible. Needs a better way to handle faster combo and I am interested to see if the new Saga gives it a meaningful push. As always suggestions, questions, comments are all welcome. And forgive spelling/grammar errors, I'll fix em as I see them.