Urza's Saga

Urza's Saga

Urza's Saga is the fifteenth Magic expansion and was released in October 1998 as the first set in the Urza's block.

The rarity break down of the 350 black-bordered set is 110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, and 20 basic lands. Urza's Saga's expansion symbol is a set of gears, highlighting the artifacts theme of the set, and meant to symbolize Urza’s experiments in finding a means to defeat Phyrexia. R&D originally envisioned Urza's Saga (and the further block) to be centered on the enchantment theme. But the creative team told them that this block was going to be all about Urza, the greatest artificer of all time. By further referring to the block and the companion books as the "Artifacts Cycle", the original idea disappeared from view. It didn't help that that the set contained some very powerful artifacts and artifact-themed cards like Fluctuator and Tolarian Academy. In fact so many broken cards were in the set that the following period became known as Combo Winter. Players believed that too many overpowered cards and combos filled all the tournament formats. This moved the DCI to ban a large amount of cards in December 1998.