Summary
Urza is aMagic: The Gatheringcharacter who’s beena significant player in the game’s loresince day one, though he didn’t receive a proper card until Modern Horizons. People were aware of Urza’s power well before that, though, mostly due to the Urza’s lands from Antiquities, which combine together to form what players affectionately refer to as ‘Tron.’
The original Urza’s lands have since gone on to receive multiple support pieces, some in the form of in-game jokes, and some being actual tournament-level, meta-defining cards. Urza himself might be a newer addition to the card game, but his lands have been menacing Magic since the early 1990s.
8Urza’s Fun House
Fun Doesn’t Mean Legal
The acorn stampon Urza’s Fun House means it’s not legal in casual or competitive play, though you might be able to pitch the idea or running it amongst friends. It’s actually comprehensible unlike some Un-set cards, but tapping for infinity mana’s clearly reason enough to keep it safe and tucked away on the banlist.
It earns points for an amusing gimmick, redirecting you toaskurza.com, a website that spits out random effects when you activate the land’s last ability. It’s a fun bit, but the card’s clearly in a different category than actual tournament-legal Urza’s lands.
7Urza’s Factory
Just Barely Still In Business
Urza’s Factory is wholly unimpressive. Functionally eight mana to pump out a 2/2 is a laughably bad deal, and hardly justifies running a colorless land over just about any other utility land, and there are plenty to choose from.
There are a couple in-jokes to keep the card relevant though. First is the interaction with Assembly-Workers, which was a gimmick creature type at the time of printing but has since grown a bit. Second is the precise fact that it costs seven mana to activate, the exact amount of mana produced by the original three Tron lands.
6Planar Nexus
And Urza’s Land In Disguise
Planar Nexus isn’t technically an Urza’s land, since that card type doesn’t appear in its typeline. However, it counts as an Urza’s land while on the battlefield, in addition to beinga cave, a desert, and so on. That’s good enough to add an additional mana with your Urza’s Workshop.
Funnily enough, Planar Nexus is an adaptation of an Unfinity card named Nearby Planet. That one was a little more tongue-in-cheek with its card text, and the ability works a little differently, but it was definitely the inspiration for Planar Nexus.
Planar Nexus includes all land types from among Mine, Power Plant, and Tower, and has all those types simultaneously, so it completes Tron on its own.
5Urza’s Workshop
The Land You Might Not Know About
Urza’s Workshop slipped by many players, given that it was exclusive toSet Boosters and Collector Boostersfrom The Brothers' War. If all you ever did was draft, you’d miss this land entirely until someone played it against you in Commander or Constructed.
Urza’s Workshop has a metalcraft requirement before it does anything interesting, but Urza’s lands and artifacts go hand-in-robot-hand, so it’s not a huge hurdle to overcome. Achieve metalcraft and you unlock an explosive amount of mana with the Workshop.
4Urza’s Mine And Power Plant
The Interchangable Tron Lands
You’d think all three of the original ‘Urza-Tron’ lands would be exactly equal, but that’s not actually true. They’re all identical in the sense that you need one copy of each on the battlefield before they actually do anything of note, but all three of these lands were not created equal.
Urza’s Mine and Urza’s Power Plant are functionally identical though, and there’s no reason to think one’s ever more important than the other. If your goal is to ‘assemble Tron,’ you’ll need all three pieces, and you’ll just try to fill in whichever one you’re missing.
3Urza’s Tower
One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others
Despite being just as equally important as the Mine and Power Plant, Urza’s Tower is the most powerful of the three simply because it taps for an additional mana once all three are assembled. That’s a no-brainer analysis, but recognizing this gives you a small edge when you’re playing with or against a Tron deck.
If you’re against Tron and you havea way to destroy lands, the Tower should be your priority. If you’re piloting a Tron deck and you’ve already assembled all three pieces, the redundant copies of Urza’s Tower are more valuable than the others.
2Urza’s Cave
The Urza’s Land For Every Deck
Urza’s Cave takes a huge leap above other Urza’s lands by nature of being a completely generic, powerful utility land that you can run in just about any deck. It bolsters any archetype specifically built around Urza’s lands, but doesn’t require any to do its own thing.
And its ‘thing’ is tagging out for any other land in your library. That land could be anything from Field of the Dead to Dark Depths, or even one of the missing Tron lands if you are running it in an actual Urza’s land deck.
1Urza’s Saga
Card Type: Urza’s Saga
Urza’s Saga is part joke, part powerhouse. It was designed as a clever nod to the Urza’s Saga set from 1998, but also combines the Urza’sand Saga subtypesin a way that makes for an incredibly flavorful and clever card design. Power-wise, it’s approaching mistake territory.
Saga reshapedthe Modern format, and heavily influences deckbuilding in Eternal formats like Legacy and Commander. It gives life to one-mana artifacts that would otherwise see no play at all, its second chapter can be an entirely self-contained win condition on its own, and it demands sideboard answers in 60-card Constructed formats.
