Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #896: Urza's Cards

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about the design of every card with "Urza" in its name. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm not putting on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so I'm almost 900 podcasts in, so I'm always looking on quirky podcast topics because I've done a lot of the low-hanging fruit. So today, I'm going to talk about all the cards that have Urza in its name, what I'm calling Urza's Cards. Okay, so we're going to start in Alpha. So this goes all the way to Alpha. In fact, Alpha had two cards. Had Glasses of Urza and Sunglasses of Urza. Glass of Urza, one mana.
Starting point is 00:00:34 You may look at opponent's hand. I'm reading you as it was written, not the Oracle text. And Sunglasses of Urza cost three. Instead of white mana in your mana pool, can be used either as white or red mana. So I think basically what's going on is Richard Garfield knew that he wanted to sort of get a sense of something larger.
Starting point is 00:00:55 And so while there's no story in Alpha, there are definitely names thrown out there, Urza being one of the names. I think Urza might be the only one that shows up in two cards. Ashnod, Mishra, there are a bunch of other ones that show up, but I think Urza being one of the names. I think Urza might be the only one that shows up in two cards. Ashnod, Mishra, there are a bunch of other ones that show up. But I think Urza, and they're both glasses. One of the running jokes in the early days was that Urza had two heads.
Starting point is 00:01:15 And that's why he had two sets of glasses. And Mishra had no head. But anyway, Glasses of Urza was a very simple, basically, like, I get to see your hand. We don't actually do this effect much anymore, just because hidden information makes the game a lot more interesting. And so just always being able to know what your opponent has in their hand, which just makes it less fun gameplay. Sunglasses of Urza was just sort of, Richard definitely made a bunch of different cards that sort of let you combine different colors in different ways. This is a card that lets you sort of play red cards in your white deck.
Starting point is 00:01:48 So it's a quirky card. But anyway, and it's kind of cute that they're connective. As you will see, there's a card coming up where I make fun of the glasses and sunglasses on another card. Okay, so next we get to Antiquities. So Antiquities
Starting point is 00:02:04 is about the Brothers' War. So I think Antiquities has the highest density of Urza cards. There's seven. There's Urza's Avenger, Urza's Chalice, Urza's Miter, Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower. Oh, so I'm sorry, that's not seven, that's six. I can't count. But I think 6, we'll check. I think 6 is the record. Anyway, okay, so Urza's Avenger was a pretty cool card. It cost 6 for a 4-4 Artifact Creature.
Starting point is 00:02:34 Back then, Artifact Creatures didn't have creature types. 0, Avenger loses minus 1, minus 1, and gains 1 of your choice of Flying, Banding, First Record, Trample, until end of turn. Attribute loses and ability gains are cumulative. So once again, I'm reading you as the card was printed. So basically the idea is it's a 4-4, but you can make it a 3-3 and give it either Flying, Banding, First Strike, or Trample. Or make it a 2-2 and get
Starting point is 00:02:55 two of those abilities. This was a pretty cool card, and it's a neat sort of cost. We don't really do 0 colon anymore, but it is a neat idea of that I can sort of gain abilities, but I shrink as I gain them. And I think this was a cool card. This is definitely a card, this has inspired, there are some cards that R&D likes and we keep
Starting point is 00:03:15 sort of riffing off of. This is one of the cards we've riffed off a number of times. Urza's Chalice, one mana, one, any artifact cast by any player gives you one life. Can only give you one life each time an artifact is cast. So there were what we call the Lucky Charms, is their nicknames, in Alpha, which when you, they're artifacts, thrown a bone,
Starting point is 00:03:36 when you cast a spell, Ivory Chalice, when you cast a certain color spell, you gain the life for casting that spell. Because Antiquities had an artifact theme, they decided to make an artifact version of that. And Urza's Chalice is the sort of artifact lucky charm, if you will. Urza's Miter. Three mana. Poly artifact.
Starting point is 00:04:01 I love... It means you can activate as many times as you want. Three colon. Draw one card from your library every time an artifact of yours goes to the graveyard, can only let you draw one card per artifact destruction, may not be used when you destroy an artifact to gain benefits from another card. So, by the way, modern text of that card is,
Starting point is 00:04:18 whenever an artifact you control is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it wasn't sacrificed, you may pay three if you do draw a card. So now it's a triggered ability. Anyway, this is one of those very forgetful cards. If I asked you to name all the Urza's cards, Urza's Miter is one of the ones I expect people might forget.
Starting point is 00:04:37 Other than being a silly-looking hat, it didn't end up seeing a lot of play. In contrast, Urza's Mind, Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Tower, the Urza-t Plant, Urza's Tower, the Urzatron, if you will. So the idea is tap one to add one cost mana to your pool. If you have all three, the Mine and the Power Plant tap for two, and the Urza's Tower taps for three. So if you have all three out, you can tap them
Starting point is 00:04:57 for seven mana combined. This was a very popular It actually got printed at the Core set at one point. So this is a very popular. It gets got printed in the corset at one point. So this is very popular. It gets used in a lot of artifact decks and is one of the more powerful of the Urza named things. But anyway, I think the reason Richard did 223 was...
Starting point is 00:05:19 Or not Richard, sorry, this was Scaf. I think I asked Scaf about this. I think they just wanted to have some variety in it. In fact, I did a podcast where I talked to Scaf about antiquity. So he and I talked a bit about this, if you want more detail on how those came to be. The Urza Tron is another one of those things that definitely has influenced design down the path.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Okay, next we get to Ice Age. Ice Age had one Urza card. Urza's Bauble, zero. Tap card. Urza's Bauble. Zero. Tap. Sacrifice Urza's Bauble to choose a card at random from target player's hand. Look at that card. Ignore this ability if that player has no cards left in hand. Draw a card at the beginning of your next turn upkeep.
Starting point is 00:05:56 So, in Ice Age, they introduced Cantrips. But Cantrips, at the time, you didn't draw the card right away. You drew at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep. And it is Urza's Bauble's fault that it wasn't just draw a card, it was delayed. They were worried that Urza Bobble, because it cost zero, would let you do unnecessary deck thinning and stuff. And so
Starting point is 00:06:16 all the cantrips were delayed because of the existence of Urza's Bobble. And it also has a very small effect, basically, as I look at a random card from my opponent's hand. So it definitely was... There weren't a lot of zero-cost artifacts. I mean, there was...
Starting point is 00:06:32 Ornithopter was in Antiquities. But anyway, they were trying something and making sure that it wasn't too dangerous. Next up is Alliances. Urza's Engine. Five mana for an artifact creature. Trample. Three, banding until end of turn. Three, all creatures banded with Urza's Engine gain Five mana for Artifact Creature. Trample. Three. Banding until end of turn.
Starting point is 00:06:46 Three. All creatures banded with Urza's Engine gain Trample until end of turn. So basically, you could gain a band that people could sort of join up with Urza's Engine. Banding isn't too much long for the world when this comes out. I think banding would leave a year or two later.
Starting point is 00:07:02 This is one of those cards that's just kind of expensive. If it just had banding, maybe it'd be good, but having to spend three mana to band it and three mana to give things a trample, it just was a little bit over-costed,
Starting point is 00:07:14 and so it didn't see much play. Next, we get to Unglute, that has two Urza cards. Urza's Contact Lenses and Urza's Science Fair Project. So Urza's Contact Lenses cost zero. It's an artifact. Urza's Contact Lenses come Urza's Science Fair Project. So Urza's Contact Lenses cost zero. It's an artifact.
Starting point is 00:07:26 Urza's Contact Lenses come into play tapped and does not untap during its control's untap phase. All players play with their hands face up. Clap your hands twice. Tap or untap Urza's Contact Lenses. So this is a riff. It's making fun of Urza's Glasses of Urza's. So the idea is it does what Glasses of Urza's does,
Starting point is 00:07:42 except instead of just looking at your opponent's hand, it shows all players' hands. But it has a clapper technology. There's an advice called the clapper, that you clap twice to turn the lights on and clap twice to turn the lights off. So the idea is you can sort of turn this ability on and off by clapping. And we named it Urza's Contact Lens
Starting point is 00:08:02 just because it was connected to Urza's glasses. Urza's Science Fair Project costs 6 mana, 4, 4 Artifact Breacher. 2. Roll a 6-sided die for Urza's Science Fair Project. 1. It gets minus 2, minus 2 until end of turn. 2. It deals no combat damage this turn. 3. Attacking doesn't cause this to tap this turn, basically Vigilance.
Starting point is 00:08:19 4. It gains 1st strike until end of turn. 5. It gains 5 until end of turn. 6. It gains plus 2, plus 2 until end of turn. So one of the problems with this is one of the mistakes I made in Unglued with die rolling is I put negative things in the die rolling, as if, like, you need to have negative consequences. So 1 and 2 are bad. Like, you know, 1 shrinks it, and 2 keeps it from doing damage. And in fact, if you shrink it with 1, you're scary to roll the die again,
Starting point is 00:08:42 because if you roll a second one, it dies. What we've seen with die rolling is is just have a variety of effects. Losing is getting the smaller effect. Not getting the best effect is losing, but you don't need to actually have it be negative. And I think because of that, a lot of the die rolling on Unglue, where we had negative consequences, just weren't that fun for people. And the big lesson that we took away from that is, look, just do all upside abilities and scale them so losing is getting the small upscale ability, not getting a downside ability. Okay, next up was an Urza's Saga.
Starting point is 00:09:16 Urza's Armor. Six mana. Whenever a source deals damage to you, that damage is reduced by one. I made this card. I liked the idea. This was a riff off of Forcefield, which was a card in
Starting point is 00:09:29 Alpha. And anyway, I just liked the idea that if you're wearing your armor, just everything does one less damage to you. It was flavored as armor. I think we made it Urza's armor because it was Urza's Saga, and why not? Okay, next up in Urza's Legacy, we have Urza's Blueprints.
Starting point is 00:09:46 Six mana, Echo. During your next upkeep after this permit comes under your control, pay its casting cost or sacrifice it. Tap, draw a card. So the idea is you have to play six this turn and six next turn, but then every turn you can tap to draw a card. This is probably a little bit over-costed. I think 12 mana total to get a card every turn is a bit much.
Starting point is 00:10:09 Then we get to Urza's Legacy. So in the Urza block, there's an Urza card in each of the three sets. Urza's Incubator costs 3 mana, Artifact. When Urza's Incubator comes into play, choose a creature type. Creature spells of the chosen type cost 2 less to play. I made this card because I got a lot of people begging us to help their... I want to make a tribal deck of whatever, so I'm just trying to make a reward that most tribal
Starting point is 00:10:32 decks might want. Interestingly, it works better for larger decks than smaller decks, because decks with little tiny creatures like elves often don't have two mana in their generic mana in their cost. So it's a little bit better on helping you play a giant deck or something that was a little bit better on helping you play, like, a giant deck or something that was a little bit bigger.
Starting point is 00:10:47 Okay, next up is in Invasion. So there are two cards in Invasion. There's Urza's Rage and Urza's Filter. Urza's Rage was a little more famous. So Urza's Rage is two and a red. Kicker, eight and a red. So you can pay an additional eight and a red. Urza's Rage is 2 and a red, Kicker 8 and a red, so you can pay an additional 8 and a red. Urza's Rage can't be countered by spells or
Starting point is 00:11:07 abilities. Urza's Rage deals 3 damage to a target creature or player. If you pay the Kicker instead, it deals 10 damage, and that damage can't be prevented. So the idea is, basically, it's a lightning bolt that can't be countered. So it's for
Starting point is 00:11:23 3 mana. But if you're able to spend twelve mana on it, it's ten mana, and not only can it be countered, but it can't be prevented. And so, like, late game, it turns into a very valuable, often a win condition. And this card definitely saw a whole bunch of play.
Starting point is 00:11:41 Urza's Filter. Four mana artifact. Multicolor spells cost up to two less to play. This was in Invasion because Invasion was a multicolor set. It turns out that just multicolor is a theme. When you play nothing but multicolor
Starting point is 00:11:56 it's kind of tricky to do. Like, what this is asking you to do is hard. And it only wants to be on expensive multicolor spells because you need two generic mana to really optimize. So this card didn't see much play. Okay, the next card shows up in Plane Shift. It's called Urza's Guilt. He feels bad.
Starting point is 00:12:14 Two blue-black sorcery. Each player draws two cards and discards three cards from his or her hand, then loses four life. So the idea here is you're drawing cards but losing more than you draw and then you're losing life. So this isn't not particularly a good... This card didn't see a lot of play because it's just
Starting point is 00:12:32 not very good. Okay, next. We get to Unhinge. There's two. There is Erase, not the Urza's Legacy one, and Urza's Hot Tub. So Erase, not the Urza's Legacy one, is two and a white. Instant. Sorry, I have hiccups. If you control
Starting point is 00:12:48 two or more white permanents that share an artist, you may play erase not the Urza's Legacy 1 without paying its mana cost. Remove target enchantment from the game. So basically it's a common that gets rid of an enchantment. The funny thing about it is we, so the art shows somebody
Starting point is 00:13:04 with an eraser literally erasing the art. And I think we had the art in when I realized we couldn't call it Erase because the name had been used in Urza's Legacy. But then I embraced that, uh, and so we ended up calling it Erase, not the Urza's Legacy one, which, to be honest, is a way funnier name than Erase. So, uh, it was a happy accident that got us there. This is part of the Artist Matters theme. There's an Artist Matters theme in Unhinged. Basically, there's
Starting point is 00:13:34 a whole bunch of cards that want you to play a deck all of the same artists, and this is one of those. Hold on a second. I'm going to take a sip of water here so I can try to get rid of these hiccups. Okay, hopefully that will get rid of them. Okay, next is one of my favorite cards from Unhinge. Urza's Hot Tub. So it costs two mana.
Starting point is 00:13:52 For two and discard a card, search your library for a card that shares a complete word in its name with a discarded card. Reveal it and put it in your hand, then shuffle your library. The only thing I worry about this card is I kind of wish I had not let you use articles,
Starting point is 00:14:06 because one of the best ways to use this card is like Thaw and stuff, which is kind of lame. But this is a lot of fun card of sort of letting you have access to your deck. So if you sort of build your deck with an interlected lacework, it'll allow you to trade cards for cards. I think it's pretty cool. Next, Urza's Factory.
Starting point is 00:14:23 This was from Time Spiral. so I think it's pretty cool. Next, Urza's Factory. This was from Time Spiral. So Urza's Factory is a land. Tap, add one manager manipule. Seven and tap, put a 2-2 assembly worker artifact creature token into play. So this was, okay, so we were doing Time Spiral. It had a huge Okay, so we were doing Time Spiral. It had a huge nostalgia theme. And so we were trying to figure out how to... Oh, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:14:52 The card says... Oh, no, I said what the card did. So anyway, we were trying to figure out how... We wanted to have another land that was Urza's. Oh, so let me tell you this story real quick. So when we made Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Tower, they were just lands. There were no
Starting point is 00:15:07 subtypes. Later, in order to make them work, we had to give them subtypes. So, the way it ended up working is each one got the subtype Urzas and the subtype either Mine, Power Plant hyphenated, or Tower. So, it turned out that Urzas ended up being a land
Starting point is 00:15:24 subtype. So we were in a time spiral. We're like, okay, we can have some fun here. Can we do something that really will play into this? So we loved the idea. Mishra had a factory. Mishra's factory is a very powerful card in Antiquities that sees a lot of play. So we thought it'd be fun to have
Starting point is 00:15:39 Urza's factory. And we wanted to connect to the Urzatron. And so we really were having a lot of trouble. So we went in knowing we wanted to call it Urza's Factory and wanted to call it and land Urza, Urza subtype. So we're like, okay, probably
Starting point is 00:15:55 tapster colorless, that's what those kind of cards do. But then we came up with a brilliant idea of what if it had an activated ability that costs 7 mana. Why 7 mana? Because the Urzatron, when it's all put together, produces seven mana. Okay, well, what can it do? And that's when we thought of,
Starting point is 00:16:12 there was a card in Antiquities called Mistress Factory that made an Assembly Worker. And Assembly Worker ended up being something that we've used a couple different times as something that is sort of a... I think we had it called Assembly Worker because that was the word that was used on Mishra's Factory.
Starting point is 00:16:32 But we've definitely, over the years, we've made a bunch of different ones. And so it just became a thing associated with the brothers. And so we thought it was funny. So the idea was, okay, Assembly Workers are always 2-2. Or I'm sorry, the tokens,
Starting point is 00:16:47 the Mishra's Factory one was 2-2. I guess we've made ones of different sizes, but the Mishra's Factory one was 2-2. So we thought it was sort of funny that Urza's Factory makes Assembly Workers and it costs seven because it ties Urza's. So anyway, this is one of those cards that we did a lot of work
Starting point is 00:17:01 to sort of get the overall flavor and I'm very happy with sort of the finished feel of it, which that's pretty cool. Okay, next up. Urza's Academy Headmaster. White, blue, black, red, green. Legendary Planeswalker Urza. Loyalty of four. Plus one.
Starting point is 00:17:20 Head to askurza.com and click plus one. Minus one. Head to askurza.com and click minus one. Minus one. Head to askurza.com and click minus one. Minus six. Head to askurza.com and click minus six. So the idea for this card was we wanted to mess around with making you go to something that had a variable to it. And so the idea is if you go to askurza.com, there is
Starting point is 00:17:48 literally there's the card Urza's Academy Headmaster, and you can click on the plus one, on the minus one, or the minus six. And when you do, what we've done is we've put a whole bunch of Planeswalker abilities in each of them appropriately, like small plus abilities, small minus abilities, and
Starting point is 00:18:03 ultimates, basically. And so when you click it, you don't, like, it's going to small minus abilities, and ultimates, basically. And so when you click it, you don't, like, it's going to be, usually it's some sort of Planeswalker ability, but it's random. You don't know which one it's going to get. People have been asking for Urza's forever. People have been asking for a five-color Planeswalker forever.
Starting point is 00:18:20 I saw the opportunity to do it. The reason it's Urza Academy Headmaster, by the way, is in the invasion storyline, Urza gets his head chopped off, but he stays alive for a while. And so I thought it was funny that in the alternate version of... In fact, if you look at... In Urza's hot tub in Unhinged,
Starting point is 00:18:43 Urza is there as a separated head sitting in an inner tube. And the idea being, we sort of established that in the universe, the multiverse that is where the unset takes place, a parallel multiverse, that Urza is alive and he's a head. And we decided that he'd be teaching
Starting point is 00:19:01 because, you know, he's a teacher at heart. So anyway, he's a disembodied head that teaches, and so it gave us a chance to do a five-color planeswalker and an Urza planeswalker, and just some stuff that people have been asking for forever, and it gave us a chance to sort of mess around with something that was sort of fun, that seemed like a very un-thing to do,
Starting point is 00:19:20 of, you know, the abilities are random, and you have to go see what he does. We have changed what Urza does a couple times. The one I remember is during War of the Spark, we changed it to have some of the abilities from the War of the Spark ones. I think we then said that only, that lasted for maybe two months and then we went back.
Starting point is 00:19:40 So his base abilities are, like we have default abilities and then every once in a while for a little while we'll put in some other abilities but it's designed so that we can change it up so we have changed it from time to time when you go there's a whole I think there's
Starting point is 00:19:53 I think by default there's 20 abilities in each like the 20 plus 1 ability 20 minus 1 abilities and 20 minus 6 abilities but anyway we do change it from time to time so you never know when you go whether it'll be... The other thing, if you go to askurza.com, by the way, you can actually hit download now,
Starting point is 00:20:10 and it'll download all the abilities that's in Urza at the time you downloaded it. So if you want to, if you don't have the computer handy, you can download it and print it up and carry it around with you if you want to play Urza's Academy Headmaster without having access to the internet near you.
Starting point is 00:20:26 Okay, next up is three cards from Dominaria. So, for the trivia question I asked earlier, I think Antiquities wins for the most Urza cards. And then tied in second place
Starting point is 00:20:41 is Urza's um... Where is it? Invasion. No, Invasion is two. Maybe second place just is Dominaria. Okay, so first place is Antiquities. Second place is Dominaria. I guess that makes sense.
Starting point is 00:20:57 In third place with two is Alpha and Unglued and Invasion and Unhinged. Yeah, I think that's... Okay. Karn's Cyan Aversa. Costs 4 mana. Legendary Planeswalker Karn. Loyalty of 5.
Starting point is 00:21:15 Plus 1. Reveal the top 2 cards in your library. An opponent chooses one of them. Put that card into your hand and exile the other with a silver counter on it. Karn's made of silver
Starting point is 00:21:23 for those that didn't know. Minus 1. Put a card you own with a silver counter on it from exile into your hand. Minus two, create a zero, zero, call this construct artifact token. With this, you get plus one, plus one for each artifact you control. So we got to revisit Karn. We went back to Dominaria. We were just trying to tap into a bunch of different things. This one, Karn definitely has been studying and learning stuff
Starting point is 00:21:48 there's some crises in the multiverse he's trying to deal with and anyway the tricky part of making Karn planeswalkers is that they're colorless, they're generic mana and so you have to make something that is narrow in a way that just any
Starting point is 00:22:06 deck can't just play it uh and so this one was made very much to sort of play into the space of an artifact deck like obviously his last ability i wouldn't really call it an ultimate at minus two but uh it is something that like it gets better the more artifacts you get um and so this definitely lets you sort of play around with drawing cards, but the big ability wants you to have artifacts, so it pushes you a little bit more into wanting to play this into an artifact deck. Next,
Starting point is 00:22:33 also from Dominaria, Urza's Ruinous Blast. Four in a white, legendary sorcery. You may cast a legendary sorcery only if you control a legendary creature or planeswalker. Exile non-land permanents that aren't legendary. So this was part of a cycle, a legendary cycle, in which each one has the name of a character from the past and is talking about a big moment in time.
Starting point is 00:22:57 This represents the end of the Brothers' War when he uses the Psylics to sort of blow everything up, the Golthian Psylics. Anyway, and this is that moment of destruction. So it's a legendary sorcery. The legendary... Dominaria was a pretty popular set. The legendary sorcerers were probably the ones that went over the least
Starting point is 00:23:17 well. I think it was a little bit harder to have a legendary in play than we thought. Although Urza's Rune is Blast, I think that's a little bit of play. Anyway, the final card in Dominaria was Urza's Tome. Two artifacts, three in tap, draw a card, then discard a card unless you exile
Starting point is 00:23:38 a historic card from your graveyard. Historic cards are artifacts, Legendary, and Sagas. This was a card I made because I was trying to demonstrate how to use the Historic cards are artifacts, legendary, and sagas. This was a card I made because I was trying to demonstrate how to use the historic mechanic. And the neat idea of this card was that it lets you loot, meaning you draw and discard,
Starting point is 00:23:56 but for every historic card in your graveyard, instead of discarding, you can get rid of a card from your graveyard. So it really sort of was playing in the space of, hey, you want to play a historic deck, which artifacts, legendaries, and sagas. And so this was playing into the historic theme. This is one of the cards I made when I was trying to prove
Starting point is 00:24:14 the concept of historic. I don't know if people remember the story, but Bill was not a fan and wanted me to take it out, and I went through a lot of rework figuring out how to do it. And this is where I figured out how to batch them so that historic was a word that meant something, and then it meant artifacts, legendaries,
Starting point is 00:24:29 and sagas. Anyway, this was one of the cards I made during that proof-of-concept purchase, proof-of-concept time. But anyway, it got made, and Urza's done. Next up, this one is from Commander 2018. Taunos, Urza is from Commander2018.
Starting point is 00:24:45 Taunos, Urza's apprentice. Blue-red for a 1-3 Legendary Creature Human Artificer. Haste. Blue-red tap. Copy target artifact or triggered ability you control from artifact source. May choose new targets for the copy. So Taunos was the apprentice to Urza. He had showed up in the Brothers' War.
Starting point is 00:25:04 There had been artifacts like Taunus' wand or Taunus' coffin that had referenced him, but we had not, until this point, actually seen a Taunus card. And, once again, this is a top-down design. We're trying to capture the idea of... And, so the cool
Starting point is 00:25:20 thing about this is he was made to more work with artifacts in a fun way. So the idea is, if you have him in play, he can copy activate and trigger abilities. So he can do whatever your artifacts can do. So he really wants, like, the more you surround Taunus with artifacts, the more cool things that Taunus can do. So that was a pretty fun card. Okay, next up, the final two cards, uh, I'm sorry, the next card was in uh, uh,
Starting point is 00:25:48 Modern Horizons, is Urza Lord High Artificer. So, finally, I mean, obviously, in Unhinge, not Unhinge, in Unstable, we made Urza Academy Headmaster, um, and technically, technically, there's a card called Blind Seer
Starting point is 00:26:03 that was in Urza Saga that represented a character that Urza was pretending to be, so one Blind Seer that was in Urza's saga that represented a character that Urza was pretending to be so one could argue that it was secretly Urza but it's not until here that we made a legendary creature of Urza one of the things of Modern Horizons was
Starting point is 00:26:19 they weren't doing a lot of legendary creatures because Commander Legends was coming out, and at the time they were closer together. But it was decided that they'd make a few iconic cards to be their legendary creatures. So Yawgmoth and Urza were the two I picked as the main iconic. So anyway, Urza, Lord High Artificer,
Starting point is 00:26:38 two blue blue, one four, legendary creature, human artificer. When Urza, Lord High Artificer, enters the battlefield, create a zero zero colors contract artifact token. With this creature it gets plus one, plus one for each artifact you control. Note the same thing that Karn makes. We've done a bunch of the contract artifacts and they have been tied to various inventors like Urza.
Starting point is 00:26:56 Tap an untapped artifact you control, add a blue. Five, shuffle your library, then exile the top card. Until the end of turn, you may play that card without paying its mana cost. So the idea essentially is he works with artifacts, he can sort of cast artifacts off the top of your deck.
Starting point is 00:27:13 Oh, in fact, he can play cards off the top of your deck. You just don't control what card you're getting, so he can do random effects off the top of your deck. And he also can generate mana from artifacts. That ability, by the way, is the biggest stretch. I'm not sure Blue is supposed to be doing that. When I look
Starting point is 00:27:27 at this card, the color pie guy, I'm like ahhh! We did... We have let Blue produce colorless mana, and sometimes we let Blue produce mana to cast artifacts. This one's a little more open-ended. I mean, you do have artifacts to generate it,
Starting point is 00:27:43 but that's not the biggest of asks so anyway, this is a very powerful card sees a lot of play people were happy to finally see Urza but that's Urza Lord High Irificer finally, the last card with Urza showed up in Modern Horizons 2, Urza's Saga
Starting point is 00:28:00 as the saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter chapter 1, Urza's Saga gains, tap, uh, the idea behind this card was, I think it was Allie that figured out that you can make an enchantment land that was both Urza's and Saga. Oh, one of the themes that happened in Modern Horizons was making cards that the name of the card was the name of a magic expansion. And I think that, like, it came together because of the realization that we can make a land called Urza's Saga that was enchantment land Urza's Saga. Now, it had to be an enchantment land because enchantment is a, sorry, Urza's is a land subtype.
Starting point is 00:28:54 Saga is an enchantment subtype. So in order to have Urza's land, it had to be an enchantment land. But the idea that's cool is making an Urza's Saga that was a saga. The reason it was a land and not just a general enchantment was the coolness of it being Urza saga seemed awesome. Now, it did make it a land, meaning you could play it as your land slots. I mean, it did a lot of quirky things.
Starting point is 00:29:13 And then it just did a lot of Urza things. Oh, well, Taps of Cullis. That's something a lot of Urza's lands do. It makes constructs. That's something Urza does. Searches library for artifact cards that are small. Zero one. So these are all things that Urza does. They had to be things that were minimized because it's a free spell, right?
Starting point is 00:29:29 I mean, it uses your land slot. Anyway, Urza Saga. Another Paul for Urza's card. Like you'll see, there's a number of Urza's cards that have gone on to be, to see a decent amount of play. I do believe there will be more Urza cards in the future. I mean, we are going to Brothers War, so I'd be surprised if the name, if there aren't cards with the name Urza cards in the future I mean we are going to Brothers War
Starting point is 00:29:45 so I'd be surprised if the name if there aren't cards with the name Urza in them in Brothers War, hint hint, that might be coming and that's my jaunt through all the cards with Urza's in his name like I said
Starting point is 00:30:02 some quirky topics, hopefully what I've found is people generally seem to like the card-by-card story, so I figure I'll do this from time to time, and I just keep coming up with quirkier and weirder themes to do that in. Also, being home makes it a lot easier. So, it is...
Starting point is 00:30:17 As I'm talking, I can look things up and stuff. I don't know if you can't tell that I'm doing that, but I am. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, but I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.
Starting point is 00:30:31 I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.

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