Have you ever look at the Tron lands and wonder “Who is this Urza guy about?” Well, there’s no better time to find out than now. Well the actual reason this set come to be is to teach you how evil the Phyrexians are, after they have compleated like just… 2 characters, how scary. Also it’s certainly an idea to be tried to make a Magic set that sets place in the actual past, not a past constructed to relate to two futures (you know that’s Fate Reforged).
It’s one ancient Magic set, like back when booster packs had just 8 cards and your other options were either Unlimited or Arabian Nights. Basically, the rundown of it goes something like: At Rare (technically just appears less on the uncommon sheet than a normal uncommon would, so like mythics nowadays), there’s one monocolor card of each color, 14 colorless artifacts (well all of them are colorless back in these days), 3 different arts of Mishra’s Factory, 1 art of Mishra’s Workshop (which turned out to be the broken one out of all these), and 3 different arts of Strip Mine, they’re barely distinct from one another. At Uncommon, there’re 3 cards for each monocolor, 20 artifacts, one Mishra’s Factory, one Strip Mine (weird I know), 2 different arts for Urza’s Mine and Power Plant and 3 different arts of Urza’s Tower. And lastly at common there’re just as much monocolored cards, just 10 artifacts and two of each Urza’s Mine and Power Plant and one last Urza’s Tower. So 15/30 commons, 29/44 uncommons and 21/26 rares are colorless. And you may be curious, the old pack ratio were 6 commons to 2 uncommons and/or rares and rares were 2-3 (yes they had different print counts as the same rarity) times rarer than the uncommons in the uncommon sheet and uncommons were 2-4 times rarer than the commons in the common sheet.
Did I bore you? Well the better reason to come here is because this is the first try at showing the Brothers’ Wars, you know Mishra and Urza whose names got put on these lands. Frankly these stories are way better told in the ancient novels, this was very much in the era of flavor texts really blending with rule texts and most artworks feeling abstract to say the least. Which means it’s certainly very poised for a remake much like those old school video games people have nostalgia over. One that can just make a proper design for a lot of these characters instead of whatever chaotic blob on those Vanguard cards, or just print a power creep versions of the old cards like Modern Horizons did.
Did I really wrote a terrible intro to this set? Well, let’s just get to the main problem at hand.
This is a set focusing on all three distinct stages of these two brothers’ growth toward the war. In the war, they used a lot of artifacts, specifically colorless ones. Which has proven problematic on two previous artifact heavy planes. They used to be kept in check by the mentality of “artifacts do things outside of the color pie so their uniqueness keep them balanced” but well turns out just a little bit off the balance and every deck regardless of color can play it, and especially regardless of whether that color should really have viable access to these effects. So NotC finally wisen up and make colored artifacts, and so far our biggest try at that is in Neon Dynasty, where last time I remember they lose to the enchantments. Wanting to do another artifact set this soon, we have a problem: These things has to be colorless because Dominaria defined artifacts as so, but they has to be colored so that they can be balanced. So turns out the solution is to make them kickers, just like the previous set used kicker to turn a monocolored into a dual colored one. Well this time we don’t quite use kicker, we use 2 different variants of it:
One of them is Unearth, which came from Grixis of the plane Alara that’s really due for a return. The context really changes, where now it’s the war sides taking their effort to unearth the ancient artifacts rather than in Alara’s hellscape where frankly the creatures just come out of the earth themselves. Unearth costs in this set are cheaper to compensate for the need of colored mana, not so much the obvious fact that they only live in one turn. And this set also gives way to the first noncreature unearths, frankly now you think about it, any permanent really can have unearth.
The other is Prototype, this one you knows more because the color is more in your face. The choice is between the colored mana, cheaper but smaller creature, or the colorless, more expensive and bigger creature. I remember reading some ZNR design lore that had basically this as a kicker variant for that set “to reference the Eldrazi”, glad that didn’t make in because Zendikar is totally fine after such massive creatures damaging it. Back to Prototype, probably the big thing to say about it is how crammed the frame is. It has to cut its own wide but short box that sits right below the typeline, but not so right below that both things can share a line, much like Omens we see in Tarkir now. The mana cost only has the left cylinder because it can’t break out of the box for the right cylinder. And the power and toughness is actually bigger for both sides to have cylinder, it breaks the box, and it also doesn’t touch the mana cost box, leaving this stupid gap. The text box between the two versions don’t change, just that it may give you an ability that scales with the creature’s power.
Well, with such a density of colorless artifacts, how do you get them out? Certainly not Tron lands, we don’t want them in Pioneer let alone Standard. Certainly not Mishra’s new set of Tron lands, personally I think I would have it work like Tron lands but for all instances of 2 colorless replaced with one mana of any color. Well, we’re in current day Magic, so the actual solution is to make artifact tokens. But not like most of those that you sacrifice once to get the value, you get to keep these arounds. So they’re mana rocks. But well, if you let them to pay for everything, that would be really broken. So we just restrict colorless mana’s most common use, to pay for most normal cards (one or more colors)’s generic part of their costs (which due to the current day design’s afraid to use insane devotions, is a lot). Everything else is fair game, casting artifact (especially colorless), activate abilities, paying for triggered ability (cough cough rhystic studies). Or is it?
Because yes, we’re whining about the powerstones’ templating. It’s right, it isn’t wrong, but you have to think to get there. Otherwise you’re gonna think you can only cast artifacts with these things. A distinction between prowess and magecraft makes sense because they are both limited in the set of casting spells, so now you focus on which types is allowed and which aren’t. What mana can be spent, not so much. Honestly looking at the gallery of cards that can make Powerstone, I wonder how much space they truly saved, like the ones that are really wordy already don’t have to explain what these things do. The others either have the last word of the reminder text get its own line, or have flavor text (sucks you might have to shorten them, but for gameplay it may be justified, bringing the longer version on Arena doesn’t hurt).
And lastly, the one with literally the biggest stature, Meld. There’re 6 cards, three mythics and three rares (Scryfall has to tell you it’s 9 because they separate the backside) and they are just attached to the normal set size, no cutting the SFC set needed. The goal of these are simple, to represent the pinnacle of power these characters can be, yes, not just the brother but also Titania, imagine her as the third side proper. Returning from Eldritch Moon, we no longer have a pair for the drafters, nor we have actually gotten a mono blue pair, we instead slightly redesign the frame for these things. The front side has a new symbol, intended to be unified much like the lame triangles we have nowadays. This one is obviously much cooler since it has to represent a cooler thing, and therefore it choose to look like an axe. The back side no longer has a symbol, and it also removes the side borders of the art, which honestly I wouldn’t mind on normal Magic cards, as long as they keep the black border.
As mentioned right above, there’re 3 different meld pairs, three halves are at mythic and the other three are rare. This section will truly dive in individual cards’ ideas and their respective execution.
While Eldritch Moon’s meld pairs represent more literal pairings between two “relatively equal” things (a horde of rats and a horde of human, a town and a crew of soldiers defending it and lastly two angels), this time, it’s more so one really important character channeling some power from an external source to get to their ultimate form. Ones that are all much wordier and obviously have less room for flavor text, not like any of the halves that don’t actually trigger the melding usually have the flavor texts, they need the reminder text line to find their other.
Colorwise, they do the new Amonkhet gods thing of using 2 dual colored pairs and one monocolor pair to get to all 5 colors represented through just 3 cards.
The two color pairs may be familiar to a certain desparked planeswalkers duo, Azorius for the “good” and Rakdos for the “bad”. These first two are both Human Artificers, with 2 devotion costs, stat being their mana value modified by -1/+1 so 2 more points of toughness than power, that if you can’t meld, you still have one ability to gain value out of. Their backsides each have 6 different abilities, through one let you choose 3 out of 6 and the other let you choose 2 out of 5. And that latter one really suffers form that horrible planeswalker frame with everything feeling way more shrunk and spaced out than frankly necessary. Contrast them to Titania, who has 1 more power than Urza so 1 less toughness than Mishra and costs as much as Urza and obviously she isn’t a Human Artificer. She tuns into a scalable creature that doesn’t give you quite as much choice, it makes sense, green just gives you one value engine and one engine that values well.
Now look at the other halves that give these characters power, the two brothers obviously goes for artifacts while the woman goes for her land. Only one of these is legendary and colorless, which seems really strange considering the stature of these things, after all look at the kind of people these things will meld with. Each has something to check or give on arrival and each has an activated ability, two while they are kept around while the other is in case it wasn’t kept around. Anyhow, let me remind you that Mishra meld with a mono red creature while Urza holds these two stones that either gives a blue ability or a black ability, where’s the white?
How do I feel about these things? For one, there are certainly too few of them, I love a me a really strong and literal tie between Magic cards like these. For two, there is now one mono color and eight color pairs that still haven’t got their meld pairs. For three, when are we finally getting melds between three different cards? Keep repeating that with the bullet point count and the number of cards required to meld increase by one each time…