Urza's Saga
Encyclopedia
Urza's Saga is the 15th expert level set, a 350-card Magic: The Gathering
Magic: The Gathering
Magic: The Gathering , also known as Magic, is the first collectible trading card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011...

expansion set that debuted in October 1998. Some employees of Wizards consider it one of the most powerful sets ever released, with many cards now banned in tournament formats. The expansion symbol features a pair of gears from an Urza
Urza
Urza Planeswalker is a fictional character from the universe of Magic: The Gathering, best known for his millennia-long struggle with Yawgmoth and the plane of Phyrexia...

 machine.

Set history

Urza's Saga has a storyline and thematic feel that suggest an artifact-based set, although it contained many notable cards of each different card type. Among players, the Urza block is widely considered to be the most powerful block from top to bottom.

Urza's block ushered in a new era of combo decks (card decks where only a handful of cards are needed to win games). The period of play after the release of Urza's Saga is often referred to as "Combo Winter" by both players and Wizards staff. Standard (Type-2) and Saga Block constructed decks were so fast that they could often win before turn three. Several articles on the Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games...

 website MagicTheGathering.com discuss various tournaments in which players would mulligan down to half their starting hand size just for the perfect initial hand. A ban on several of the sets most powerful cards followed. The all-too-true joke of the era was that "the early game was the coin flip, the mid game was the mulligan, and the end game was the first turn."

In all, The Urza block has had more cards banned from it than any other card set. Over the course of the block's history, 16 different cards have at one point been banned in at least one DCI sanctioned format, nine of which debuted in Urza's Saga .

Storyline

The story of Urza's Saga and the later sets in the block are prequel
Prequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

s to the former Tempest
Tempest (Magic: The Gathering)
Tempest was the 20th Magic: The Gathering set and twelfth expert level set, and the first set in the Rath Block, released in October 1997. The release of Tempest represented a large jump in the power level of the card set, compared to the previous Mirage block. Many cards from Tempest instantly...

, Stronghold
Stronghold (Magic: The Gathering)
Stronghold was the 21st Magic: The Gathering set and thirteenth expert level set, and the second set in the Rath Block, released in March 1998. The block includes Tempest and Exodus. Stronghold contains 143 cards...

, and Exodus
Exodus (Magic: The Gathering)
Exodus was the 22nd Magic: The Gathering set, fourteenth expert level set, and the third and final set in the Rath Block, released on 15 June 1998. Its expansion symbol is a bridge...

sets, explaining the aftermath of the Brothers' War as seen in the Antiquities
Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering)
Antiquities was the fifth Magic: The Gathering set and the second expansion set. It was the first set to have an original backstory that explores the mythos of the Magic universe . The story is primarily about the brothers Urza and Mishra who are inseparable at first, but become sworn enemies over...

expansion.

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
Ice Age (Magic: The Gathering)
Ice Age is the eleventh Magic: The Gathering set and the sixth expansion set, released in June 1995. Set in the years from 450 to 2934 AR, the set describes a world set in perpetual winter due to the events in Antiquities...

expansion. Black cards reveal Urza's failed attack on the plane Phyrexia. 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.

Mechanics

  • 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
    Onslaught (Magic: The Gathering)
    Onslaught is the 27th Magic: The Gathering expert-level expansion set. It was released in October 2002. The set's main theme is creature types , and much of the game play concerns interactions between these "tribes". The story continues the saga of the Mirari from the previous block of expansion sets...

    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 generally 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. 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
    Tempest (Magic: The Gathering)
    Tempest was the 20th Magic: The Gathering set and twelfth expert level set, and the first set in the Rath Block, released in October 1997. The release of Tempest represented a large jump in the power level of the card set, compared to the previous Mirage block. Many cards from Tempest instantly...

    . Doing this can produce great quantities of mana and the ability to utilize cards from the Scourge
    Scourge (Magic: The Gathering)
    Scourge is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set. It is the third set of the Onslaught block. There are 143 cards overall. The expansion symbol is a dragon's skull.-Mechanics:...

    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.

  • Urza's 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.


As a side note, the rules for the Trample ability were simplified in Urza's Saga.

Notable cards

  • — Nicknamed "Superman
    Superman
    Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

    " for its wide range of abilities, Morphling was for years considered the best creature ever printed due to its abilities and chance to combine them. Morphling appeared in many decks making it one of the most useful and effective blue creatures available at the time.
  • - Often considered the most obviously overpowered card to come out of Urza's Saga, Academy was used to produce unprecedented amounts of blue mana in combo decks full of cheap artifacts. This mana was often used to draw many cards with Stroke of Genius, or to simply target the opponent with a very large Stroke of Genius, winning the game via decking. Urza's Saga contained many ways to profitably reuse Academy in a single turn, like Time Spiral and other blue "free spells". It is among over a dozen cards from the block to be featured on multiple ban lists
  • - Unspectacular at first, Goblin Lackey would become a serious threat in all competitive formats several years after the release of Urza's Saga. This is due to the high number of powerful Goblin cards released in the Onslaught
    Onslaught (Magic: The Gathering)
    Onslaught is the 27th Magic: The Gathering expert-level expansion set. It was released in October 2002. The set's main theme is creature types , and much of the game play concerns interactions between these "tribes". The story continues the saga of the Mirari from the previous block of expansion sets...

    block. Goblin decks would become a common and highly competitive deck in seemingly every format, with Goblin Lackey being a key card in the "Gobvantage" decks of the older formats (Extended, Legacy, and Vintage).
  • - When used in conjunction with mana-producing instants and cheap or zero-casting-cost cards, Yawgmoth's Will can allow a player to replay every card in his or her graveyard in one turn. It is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage for this reason. Wizards does not ban cards in the Vintage format, but noted Vintage writer Stephen Menendian once said that there should be an exception made for this card because of its extremely high power level.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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