Last updated on April 1, 2024
Urza's Power Plant | Illustration by Brian Snoddy
Magic certainly has its fair share of nonbasic lands across all formats. You probably know about the common ones already, like the original duals, utility lands, or creature lands. But one powerful nonbasic that often goes under the radar are the Urza lands, specifically the Tron variants.
Today I’m going to do a deep dive on everything you need to know about the Urza Lands. So let’s get started!
What Are Urza Lands in MTG?
Urza's Saga | Illustration by Titus Lunter
The Urza lands, often referred to as “Tron lands,” are Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower, which each tap for colorless mana. The catch is that you’ll get more than double that amount (seven!) if you assemble all three in play. This is great for colorless or gimmicky decks that like to assemble all three as quickly as possible to play expensive and powerful colorless spells early on.
The lands also aren’t legendary, so you can have multiple copies of each in play to accumulate well over a dozen colorless mana. This is especially strong in decks that run powerful but expensive colorless spells like Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and Wurmcoil Engine.In terms of “other” Urza lands outside of the Tron lands, you have Urza's Saga and Urza's Factory.
List of Urza Lands
There are five Urza lands, with three being specifically used in Tron. The Tron-enabling lands are Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower. The other two are Urza's Saga and Urza's Factory.
What Sets Are Urza Lands From?
Urza lands, specifically the Tron lands, have always been printed together because they obviously have little use on their own. The three lands have been printed in a number of sets, from all the way back in Antiquities to as recently as Double Masters. But Urza's Saga stands apart because it was only printed in Modern Horizons 2 and has yet to receive a reprint.
Other than that outlier, here’s a complete list of each set you can find them in:
- Double Masters
- Masters Edition IV
- Ninth Edition
- Eighth Edition
- Fifth Edition
- Chronicles
- Antiquities
Are Urza Lands Good?
The Urza lands are as good as you make them. The main thing holding them back is that they’re strictly worse basics if you don’t have all three at once. This means you not only need to build a deck around using their mana efficiently, but also so that you can tutor out and have all three lands consistently early on.
Most decks that use the Urza lands, called Tron decks, play cards like Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, and Ancient Stirrings to make sure they always get their lands in play.
Tron: The Best Decks for Urza Lands
The best way to play Tron is the mono-green variant in Modern. Green gives you access to some great land tutors, like Ancient Stirrings and Sylvan Scrying, as well as some sweet tech like Boseiju, Who Endures and Thragtusk.
Where to Find Urza Lands
Urza lands are pretty cheap on the secondary markets. They’re always printed at common or uncommon, which means thousands of them are printed every set they’re in. The cheapest versions, typically the white-bordered ones from Chronicles, go for less than $1 per card. This means you can pick up a full playset of each for less than 10$ on TCGPlayer.
But you better be ready to spend a pretty penny if you’re looking for Urza's Saga. This land isn’t used in Tron, but it is used in just about every aggro deck in eternal formats because it provides incredibly utility and creatures to attack with.
Do Urza’s Lands Have a Special Land Type?
There’s nothing special about the Urza lands when it comes to their card types. They’re nonbasic lands, but they’re also not legendary or special in any other way. Most notable is that they’re entirely colorless and don’t have any basic land types, meaning they can’t be found with fetch lands.
Urza's Saga, the non-Tron Urza land, is an enchantment saga, which means that it doesn’t last forever and you can actually destroy it very easily.
What Non-Tron Urza Lands Are There?
There are two other Urza lands that aren’t specifically the Tron variant. The first is Urza's Saga, a saga printed in Modern Horizons 2 that taps for a colorless, can create Construct tokens, and fetches a 0- or 1-mana value artifact from your deck when it completes.
The other is Urza's Factory, which taps for just one colorless and can create a 2/2 Assembly-Worker for seven mana.
Are There Foil Versions of Urza Lands?
There are foil versions of every single Urza land out there.
- The Tron Lands have foil variants in Double Masters, Masters Edition IV, and the Magic Online promo.
- For Urza's Factory, you’re looking at foil versions in Time Spiral Remastered, Time Spiral, Commander 2013, and the Magic Online promo.
- Urza's Saga has two foil variants. The first is the normal foiling of the regular card, and the second is the foil version of the showcase art.
Does the Urza Land Art Make a Panorama?
Urza Lands & Karn Liberated Panorama | Illustration by Mark Tedin
The Urza Tron lands from Double Masters got a special edition in which the three lands form a beautiful panorama when lined up horizontally. These are the only Urza lands that do this, and each version is significantly more expensive than its regular counterpart.
Are There Ways to Make Urza Lands Work in EDH?
The Urza lands work in Commander, but they’re a lot worse for a few reasons. Your deck will be far less consistent since you can only have a single copy of each land in your deck. This also means that you can’t get more value by playing a second or third copy to generate more mana, even if you do assemble all three lands.
They’re only particularly good in already mono-brown or mono-colorless decks where they’re just strictly better Wastes.
Are Urza Lands Legal in Modern?
Urza lands are legal in Modern. Despite their apparent strength, the decks are still limited by their ability to have all three lands in play early on. This makes them significantly more balanced.
Are Urza Lands Legendary?
Urza lands aren’t legendary. This is very important because having the lands be legendary would seriously erase their power level. The best part about Tron is having multiple copies of the lands, not to mention getting more mana than you can handle!
Are Urza Lands Basic?
The Urza lands are nonbasics that don’t have any of the basic land types.
Are Urza Lands Artifacts?
The Urza lands are just nonbasic lands, they don’t have any other subtypes, including artifact, on top of their other types. That said, Urza's Saga is also an enchantment, which means it can easily be destroyed by enchantment removal.
Wrap Up
Urza's Tower | Illustration by Brian Snoddy
That wraps up everything you need to know about the different Urza lands in Magic! I’ve always been a big artifact and colorless player, which means I’ve had my fair share of playing the Tron lands.
What do you think of the Tron lands, or Urza's Saga? Are they super underrated and powerful thanks to their inability to be destroyed by most cards, or are they too hindered by the fact that you need all three? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or over in the official Draftsim Discord.
Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!
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