Urza's Saga Magic The Gathering Cards
Urza's Saga is the 15th expert level set, a 350-card Magic: The
Gathering expansion set that debuted in October 1998. It is widely
regarded as one of the most powerful sets ever released.The expansion
symbol features a pair of gears from an Urza machine.
Many players believed that the Urza block was another group of
artifact sets like Antiquities because of Urza's association with
artifacts and the fact that the block contained many powerful
artifacts. This is also the official claim of Wizards of the Coast,
even calling the Urza Block the Artifacts Cycle much like how Tempest
Block was called the Rath Cycle. However, it was much closer to being
an "enchantment-driven" block the same way that Mirrodin was created as
an "artifact-driven" block than anything else.[citation needed] The
block was initially intended to be enchantment driven in the design
stages, but thematically from a storyline point of view Wizards
maintains that this block is centered around artifacts. This can be
seen according to Wizards of the Coast's "Card of the Day" for June 30,
2005, and in artifacts like Fluctuator and other cards like the
devastating Tolarian Academy.
The Urza block ushered in an a new era of combo decks. With Urza's
Saga released in the fall, the period before many of the banning and
restrictions of many of the overpowered cards in the set is referred to
as Combo Winter by both players and Wizards staff.[citation needed]
Standard (Type-2) and Saga Block constructed decks were so fast that
they could often win by turn three if not by turn one. There are
several articles on the Wizards of the Coast website
MagicTheGathering.com that discuss various tournaments in which players
would mulligan down to half their starting hand size just for the
perfect initial hand. Many games were simply decided by the flip of the
coin to see who would go first.[citation needed] In all, Urza's Saga
has had more cards banned from it than any other Block in the history
of the game, with cards banned or restricted across all game formats in
which the set has been legal for play. Urza's Legacy contains the first
card to be 'emergency banned' before it made it to print (Memory Jar).
This trend was later continued with Chrome Mox from Mirrodin and Mind's
Desire from Scourge which were pre-emptively restricted. Mirrodin,
which produced nine cards banned across the Block, Standard, Extended
and Legacy formats, and two restricted in Vintage, is the only block
that comes close to the sheer power and speed of Urza's Saga.
Examination of the block shows, even with banned cards set aside, an
astonishingly high number of constructed playable or near-degenerate
cards.
Whereas other sets have all five colors of cards referencing the
same story, Urza's Saga has each of the five colors showing a different
part of the storyline.
Green cards detail the conflict on Argoth, which would lead to the
events of the Ice Age expansion. Black cards reveal Urza's failed
attack on Phyrexia itself. White cards document Urza's period of
recuperation in Serra's Realm. Blue cards explain Urza's founding of an
academy on Tolaria and his temporal experiments. Red cards show Urza's
alliance with Shiv.
Shiv, Phyrexia, Tolaria, and Serra's Realm are some of the most
iconic settings in Magic. Most of the story of this set is written in
the book Planeswalker, though the battle of Argoth is from the end of
The Brothers' War and the founding of Tolaria and alliance with Shiv
are found in Time Streams.
Cycling cards allow a player to pay a small cost to discard that
card and to draw another to replace it. In this expansion set, the cost
for cycling is always two colorless mana. When the mechanic appeared
again in the Onslaught expansion, the costs varied to fit the card.
Echo is a mechanic that requires the player to pay the casting cost
for a permanent again on his/her next turn, or it must be sacrificed.
Echo cards have lower mana costs than comparable non-echo cards, in
exchange for the double payment.All are creatures in Saga and almost
all cards with echo are green or red.
Free Spells were a mechanic exclusively featured in blue cards. A
powerful group of cards are the Free Spells from this block. These
spells allow the player to untap the same number of lands as the card's
converted mana cost upon resolution, freeing land for other use. This
was abused by decks that use lands that produce more than one mana, and
Sapphire Medallion from Tempest. Doing this can produce great
quantities of mana and the ability to utilize cards from the Scourge
expansion with the Storm mechanic.
Urza's Saga had several "Sleeping" Enchantments, enchantments that
would change into a creature when an opponent triggers a condition,
usually by playing a certain type of spell.
Saga also contained a cycle of three Legendary Lands, which
produced colored mana for each permanent of a given type controlled:
enchantments for white, creatures for green, and artifacts for blue.
These would prove to be popular cards and so powerful that all are
banned in the Urza's Saga Constructed format.
The Rancors, got their name from an enchantment that would be
released in Urza's Legacy. They are auras that return to your hand if
destroyed or sacrificed. The embraces were a cycle of auras that could
turn a regular 2/2 creature into a huge threat.
As a side note, the rules for the Trample ability were simplified in Urza's Saga.
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