What Do You Want?

Urza's Saga: Carpe Diem Part 3: What do you want?

I've had an unusual request. A top pro tour player I respect, who I won't name, has asked me not to give away complete Type II information on Urza's Saga. He is upset about the Dojo effect, and the extent to which, although he can do well in Pro Tours, he can't consistently beat bad players with copied decks. I, too, find that Magic is most interesting in new, unexplored formats. Plus, far more importantly, PT:Rome is a huge problem. Most of the ideas that I think have potential in Type II also can work for Extended, and vica versa. If I talked about all but a few cards it would be obvious what I was hiding. So, I will NOT be doing a 100% complete analysis until after Rome and the state championships. After that, I plan to release the remainder of the analysis.

That doesn't mean I'm not writing on Urza's Saga. Far from it. In Part 3, I'll analyze what's NOT in Urza's Saga and reveal the watch list for the set. A card only makes this list if I think it has a good chance to fundamentally change the tournament environment or create a powerful new archetype. Solid cards don't count.

There are only two tutors in Urza's Saga, one is slow and it works only for creatures. I doubt it will replace Survival of the Fittest in many decks, but it could see use. The other is Gamble, but anyone depending on that isn't going to be establishing a Finkeltron, although using it to find Cursed Scroll or similar cards is worth looking into. Abundance isn't bad, but again it's slow at best it cuts your deck in half. The key is, it's not going to help combination decks. The only thing you can do in Urza's Saga to find the card you want is to draw extra cards. Cycling gives you that, and there are plenty of other ways. So suppose you need to find a sorcery called Spell of Mastery. If you're in Urza's Saga constructed, the only engines that have any chance at all are the Cycling deck (which is a one-trick concept), Greater Good and Stroke of Genius. None of those are good answers to this problem. That leaves Type II with only the Rath Cycle tutors, since fifth edition has some nice cantrip searching like Brainstorm but little else. So Intuition and Scroll Rack become the tools of combination players. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, though. I'd go so far as to say that if Mystical, Enlightened and Vampiric Tutors were still in the Type II, it would resemble Type I as much as the old Type II. But it means that there will be a lot of decks with the potential to do horrible things on turn 1, and gather insane card economy, but that will often look more Pilelicous than ProsperBloom after a Lobotomy. In particular, I think Intuition is a very bad tutor for many of the new concepts, although I like it in many decks.

There are also no duallands in the set. The only card in all of Urza's Saga that can generate more than one color of mana is Fertile Ground. The new land destruction spells make that card too dangerous for normal decks. Urza's Saga constructed will not see three color decks, period. Two color decks will be weaker than normal. In type two, the only cards from outside Rath Cycle are City of Brass, Birds of Paradise and Fellwar Stone. Fellwar Stone is pretty bad without Gemstone Mine and Undiscovered Paradise available for your opponent, unless you're using it for colorless mana. What should your mana base look like, if you're trying to play more than one color? If your main color isn't green, a two color deck gets from 4 to 8 duallands, City of Brass and Mox Diamond. Not bad. Three colors that are allied is workable, with Reflecting Pool, many Painlands, Mox Diamond and City of Brass. Four or more colors forces the play of City of Brass and Mox Diamond. After that, you have two choices. A mainly green deck can use Birds of Paradise, and possibly Fertile Ground, Rampant Growth and Harrow to have more than enough five color sources, although not without some inconvenience. A deck without a lot of green that has room for 22 land and 4 Mox Diamond can run 15 sources of each of four colors plus four reflecting pools, or 13 of each of five instead. With a main color, you can play seven basics, for example, plus 11 of each other color. The conclusion here is that you can play five colors, but you'll pay a high price in janky and vulnerable land. Another key question is if you need every mana source to give you one color, like in 5CW. Then, you get the Diamonds and Cities. After that, assuming you need 9 basic lands or so, that leaves nine total sources above eight for all remaining colors. That doesn't add up, at least not for main deck cards. And many people think for good reason that four City of Brass is too much pain, especially considering Mishra's Helix.

And now, here they are. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Watch List for Urza's Saga: Remembrance Serra Avatar Worship Arcane Laboratory (just don't panic, everyone) Barrin, Master Wizard Energy Field Great Whale Show and Tell Stroke of Genius Time Spiral Turnabout Veiled Crocodile Windfall Duress Flesh Reaver No Rest For The Wicked Acidic Soil Gamble Sneak Attack Abundance Argothian Enchantress Endless Wurm Greater Good Greener Pastures Citanul Flute Fluctuator Karn, Silver Golem Lifeline Mishra's Helix Noetic Scales Phyrexian Processor Smokestack Temporal Aperture Tolarian Academy

All other cards are cleared as looking more or less balanced right now. Stay tuned for part 4.