What exactly was so broken about Urza's Block?

Question

I've often heard it said that the Urza Block (Urza's Saga, Urza's Journey, Urza's Destiny) was the most powerful, broken block in Magic history, with decks able to win on turn 1 or 2. I also saw it stated (in some MaRo article) that something like 20 cards were eventually banned from that standard format in an attempt to restore balance. However, I've never seen a good, detailed explanation of what, exactly, went wrong, which cards were to blame, and how the uber-powerful decks of that era actually worked. Can anybody here offer an explanation or a link to an external source?

Answer 1

Preface: I've been drafting this for a few days now. I focused on the cards that were banned, because those were the most broken. I'm sure there were dozens of other combos not included here, and this is by no means giving the fullest extent of how the cards could be used to maximize their broken-ness.

The first step is to take a look at what cards were available at the time. Mirage had just rotated out, which leaves us with the Tempest block and of course Urza's block. This leaves us with some very powerful 0 and 1 mana artifacts: Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, Ornithopter, and to a lesser extent, Spellbook.

Note that with Lotus Petal and Mox Diamond, you have yourself 2 mana available on your first turn without playing a land. (To be fair, both of those are part of Mirage, not Urza's.)Those mana can go into a Grim Monolith, which in turn gives you 3 mana when tapped. Make your land drop a Tolarian Academy and suddenly you have 6 mana available on your first turn, and you only needed four cards to do it. I think we can agree that 6 mana on the first turn is broken in an innumerable number of ways. This led the Academy to be the first to be banned.

Along with the Academy was Windfall. This was broken for a couple of reasons. First, consider a card like Divination, which has a card advantage of 1 for 3 mana at sorcery speed. (You draw two cards, but you had to spend 1 card to do it). When you also consider Azure Mage it becomes clear that in blue, 3 or 4 mana is appropriate for 1 in-hand card advantage. Now, consider how fast you blow through cards here: you dropped four cards (lotus, mox, grim, and academy) as well as any other 0 drop artifacts, and use a Windfall. You discard your 0 or 1 non-playable cards and pick up 7 more. Your opponent dumps all 7 of his and draws 7 more. You just gained 6 or 7 card advantage for 3 mana. That just isn't competitive.

The other aspect of Windfall is that your opponent is also playing combo. It was not uncommon for people to mull down to 4 to get their combo. While this will lower the card advantage you get from Windfall, it essentially wastes your opponent's mull! He now has to settle for whatever 4 or 5 crap cards are on the top of his deck. If you went first, then your opponent has not had an opportunity to play, but now is facing you with at least 6 cards on the battlefield, the ability to generate 6 or more mana a turn, and to top it all off, you just gave him a complete crap hand instead of the one he mulled to get. Bummer. So understandably, those were the first two to get banned.

In the next round of bans, you see Dream Halls get the axe. Now, without Academy and Windfall to pump up your early mana, this isn't as effective. It was costed such that you can't use it until turn 5, and you have to use two cards to do it instead of one. So since they were expecting you'd use this on turn 4 or 5, it would end up being very damaging. And under normal circumstances, it is. But there's one small problem. You discard that other card instead of paying the cost. This is supposed to make it so you can't use it. But Yawgmoth's Will made it so you could use it. If you Dream Halled two cards, you could cast the other two cards with Yawgmoth's Will. And with all the mana you have and card draw available, it's reasonable to pull this off.

Another one that was banned was Earthcraft. This card used to look like this:

Creatures you control have: T: untap a target basic land.

However, it was decided that splicing text onto cards was a bad thing. So it was changed to

Tap an untapped creature you control: untap a target basic land.

in the name of being easier to work with. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of making creatures with summoning sickness able to tap for mana, which is decidedly overpowered.

Fluctuator was banned because there's about 40ish legal cards with cycling, and they're all (Cycling 2). So they all basically let you loot them for free to burn through your deck. Cycling for free is broken. This combo didn't take much to come together.

Lotus Petal was banned for the combo listed out above, and I'm sure there were dozens of variants of it.

Recurring Nightmare was banned because three mana and a creature (Probably 0 mana) was too little to return a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield, considering it goes back to your hand, not the graveyard (even if Yawgmoth's Will is active). It's even worse when the cards coming back are Great Whale, which yields infinite mana (although the infinite mana combo requires four lands on the board, and most games didn't last even that long!)

Time Spiral was the last of the second round to be banned from standard. It had the same problem windfall did, where you got to draw seven cards (including spells you've already played! How convenient!) and get the massive card advantage. Now this is 6 mana, not 3, and we know there's a gigantic difference between 3 and 6 (way way way more than twice as much). But as we've established, you can get 6 mana on your first turn... And to top it all off, you get to untap 6 lands. Umm, yes that's just a little too powerful.

The next big card to get the axe is Mind over Matter. This is simple: you discard (which we've established there's already massive card advantage here, which lessens the penalty...) and you get to untap an artifact (with academy, mana, or the mana artifacts themselves), creature (with earthcraft, mana, or Birds of Paradise), or land (mana). So you get even bigger mana amounts.

Memory Jar was so broken it was the only card to get an emergency ban. Basically you get to draw and play with 7 cards. As we've established your hand empties faster than a AK with a 14 round clip, you're going to get most of those cards out the turn you play it. And since 5 mana isn't all that much to get on turn 1, you might end up with this on turn 1, which when combined with another draw combo will give you access to 20 or more cards on turn 1. Broken? Yep. Unlike windfall, this doesn't kopper your opponents starting hand, as he'll get it back at the end of the turn. But you'll have another 4 or 5 permanents on the board, so what's he really going to do to you at this point anyway?

Like I said, these probably have even better ways to get the most out of them. But hopefully this gives an idea of exactly how these things were broken, and why Wizards reacted the way they did with all the bans. For what it's worth, this is the first genuine test of Wizards reacting to the fan base, and I would go so far as to say their biggest mistake up until that point and even to this day (needless to say they learned many lessons from it!)

Edit to add: I take it back. Their biggest mistake to this day is the reserved list, and I'm happy to die on that hill. <3

Answer 2

I played during combo winter. Some of the responses are good, but a couple issues. For example, when Urza's Saga was printed, 5th Edition was the Standard core set. So no one ran Grim Monolith; it was too expensive. Everybody used Mana Vault (it was printed in 5th). So a typical Academy build would look something like this:

4 Ancient Tomb 4 City of Brass 3 City of Traitors 4 Tolarian Academy 4 Wasteland

4 Lotus Petal 4 Mana Vault 4 Mox Diamond 2 Scroll Rack 4 Voltaic Key 2 Urza's Bauble 3 Mind Over Matter 3 Intuition 3 Power Sink 4 Stroke of Genius 4 Time Spiral 4 Windfall

And it was banned because it was annoying. The games would look something like this:

Game 1

Your Turn 1: Tolarian Academy, Mox Diamond (pitch City of Brass), tap Mana Vault to play Voltaic Key, use Voltaic Key to make a total of four colorless, tap Tolarian Academy to Time Spiral, reshuffle hand, deck, and yard, then draw seven and untap Tolarian Academy. Play a few more artifacts, tap Tolarian Acadamey to play Mind Over Matter. Discard a card to untap Tolarian Academy, then tap it for however many artifacts you have (probaby six or seven). So, at this point, Mind Over Matter basically reads: "Discard a card: add a U to your mana pool for each artifact you control." After chucking a couple of cards to the MOM to make a bunch of mana with Academy, you cast Stroke of Genius targeting yourself and grabbing a chunk you your library (maybe 15-18 cards). Repeat the process, then Stroke of Genius yourself for the rest of your library. Play every artifact in the deck. MOM now nets about 17 blue mana with each discard, and you have about thirty-five spare cards to chuck. So you make a metric butt-ton of mana, then target me with 140-point Stroke of Genius. Game over.

Game 2:

My Turn 1: ["YAY! I get to play a land this game!!!"] Mountain. Go. Your Turn 1: Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, Mana Vault, Time Spiral...(see game 1 for the rest).

And if you think this is ugly, google Zvi Bargain. Without a doubt the most broken standard deck that ever existed.

Edit: Combo Winter Continued...

Along with the infamous Academy deck, another blue goey-offey deck was High Tide. Much like the Legacy High Tide of today, this one used High Tide, Mind Over Matter (Candelabra was not extended legal, and nobody played type 1.5, which is what was legacy was called back then). However, unlike the fast High Tide of today, back then High Tide was basically a draw-go deck that finished with a combo. The goal was to go off as late as possible; turn 15 or 20 if you could wait that long. I liked the control aspect of High Tide, and I actually played High Tide over Academy. But, like a draw-go, you still had to find the right balance so you didn't flood, but had the mana to fight a counter battle if need be. Plus, the deck got absolutely crushed by Steel Pox (another really fun deck of the era that gets overshadowed by the combo decks of the day).

So High Tide was a strong deck, but not necessarily broken. There were a couple of noteworthy innovations with the deck. For example, one such innovation (I believe the brain-child of Johnny Magic himself) was to run Thawing Glaciers to smooth out the mana base. It also allowed for the use of Brainstorm which, until that point, was considered useless. Also, since it doesn't return to the hand until end-step, pairing Thawing Glaciers with Mind Over Matter allows you to dig every island out of the deck on the turn you go off. The player would activate Thawing Glaciers, untap it with Mind Over Matter, activate it again, etc... Then untap all eighteen or so islands with a Turnabout - it was pretty cool! Even so, the deck still needed the right balance, and needed the right spells for the metagame. But when Dream Halls was added to the mix, the deck no longer punished players for bad deck design. Handful of counters and no mana to cast them? No problem! Discard Force Spike, cast Force of Will. Handful of Garbage? No problem! Discard Force Spike to cast Turnabout at your opponent's end-step, then Arcane Denial your own Turnabout and grab four cards next turn. With Dream Halls, any idiot could pilot a High Tide deck to a top eight finish, so it had to go.

But some cards during this period were banned out of pure paranoia - Fluctuator for example. There was a proposed Fluctator archtype which consisted of 4 Fluctuator, 1 Lotus Petal, 1 Dark Ritual, 1 Haunting Misery, and a bunch of cycling cards. A player would (in theory) resolve Fluctuator, cycle through their library, pop Lotus Petal, cast Dark Ritual, cast Haunting Misery, then exile the 20 cycling creatures for the win. In reality, the deck was unworkable. The cycling lands came into play tapped, it was vulnerable to any kind of disruption, there was no real sideboard, and you couldn't Mulligan. Doing so may cause you run out of cycling cards before you hit the requisite number of creatures in the yard. Deck beat itself most of the time. Another one of these paranoia banning was (in my humble opinion) Memory Jar.

Now, a case can be made against Memory Jar. Randy Buehler and Eric Lauer piloted identical Jar Decks to top eight finishes at GP Vienna in 1999. But they were both beat out by Kai Budde's High Tide, and a Counter Sliver deck, so it was beatable. And it was prone to fizzle, and hard to pilot. In fact, a friend of mine (a guy named Mark Gordon) won GP Kansas with a Lackey Sligh deck. Despite being legal, there wasn't a single Memory Jar deck in the top eight of that event. So, while many will disagree, I think the Jar banning was more attributed to paranoia than actual format-breaking. Plus, people were sick-to-death of combo decks.

Later, I'll do another edit and cover all the Bargain abuses. Yawgmoth's Bargain was format-breaking!!!

Edit 2:

By this time, it was mid-1999, and things seemed to be straightening out. Anything with nasty combo potential was banned (or about to be), and Magic was getting back to normal. One of the more popular Standard decks (at least in my hometown) was a deck built around Living Death and the 187 creatures from Urza's Legacy. Wildfire was another popular choice, as was mono-green and mono-red aggro decks. It seemed as though the ugly combo winter had passed, and spring and summer seemed to bring vibrant, interactive decks back to the game.

Then Urza's Destiny happened...

The set contained a card which some of the ugliest combo decks to-date were built around: Yawgmoth's Bargain. It was disgustingly broken!!! And there were many decks built around it. One variant would use Flash to put an Academy Rector into play, not pay the reduced cost, then exile it to fish out Yawgmoth's Bargain. Another variant (and my personal favorite) used Intuition to search for a Yawgmoth's Bargain, a Delusions of Mediocrity, and a Seismic Assault. Then it used Frantic Search to pitch whichever one was sent to the hand, then cast Replenish, draw about 25 cards, and dump lands to Seismic Assault for the win. But the worst variant was the type that Zvi Mowshowitz piloted to a top eight finish at Nationals. I'm not going to post the decklist, but you can read about it here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/8452_Degree-of-Difficulty.html

On the Standard side, the problem with the deck wasn't necessarily the power level (although the power level was absurd). The problem was that playing against it was akin to a slow, agonizing death - it was sheer torture!!! The opponent would resolve a fast Yawgmoth's Bargain (usually turn two or three), draw cards one-at-a-time, and periodically pause for several minutes at a time in order to perform a bunch of mental gymnastics to calculate how to play out the hand to get more cards, play a few cards, draw a few more, pause and think for another five minutes, play some more. Eventually with untap shenanigans like Turnabout and Voltaic Key, they'll have generated enough mana to resolve a lethal Blaze. A typical game went something like this:

On opponent's first turn, they play Underground River and Mox Diamond, then pass the turn. You play a land and say, "go." Then, at your discard phase, they cast Vampiric Tutor. Then they slowly scan through every card in their library, then scan through it again. Then they stop at a card, scrutinize it, look at their hand, look at the card, look at their hand again, look at the card again, think for a minute, decide not to take it and repeat this process until they find a card that will work. Then, on their turn, they play City of Traitors, tap it for Grim Monolith, tap Grim Monolith for Voltaic Key, tap Voltaic Key to untap the Grim Monolith, tap Grim Monolith for a total of four colorless mana, cast Dark Ritual off the Mox Diamond, then cast Yawgmoth's Bargin with one black floating and an untapped Underground River. Then they start drawing cards one-at-a-time, announcing their new life total before each draw...

"Seventeen" (draw a card)... "Sixteen" (draw a card)... "Fifteen" (draw a card)... "Fourteen" (draw a card)... Then they would stop and do arithmetic in their head for a full five minutes.

"Thirteen" (draw a card)... "Twelve" (draw a card)...

Then they pause for another five minutes to do more mental calculations. Meanwhile, you have nothing to do but stare at their forehead and watch them crunch numbers.

"Eleven" (draw a card)...

Then you shout, "Oh, FOR F**K'S SAKE!!! LET ME KNOW IF YOU WIN." Then you put your hand down, walked away from the table, got a Coke, smoked a cigarette, then returned fifteen minutes later, and they were still trying to go off! No exaggeration; this is what playing against Zvi Bargain was like. And people HATED it!!!

It nearly ruined the game. Players were quitting in troves. It was like the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression - so many people quit to play Ultima Online and liquidated their collections that the singles market was saturated, and card prices plummeted as a result. At the time, I actually bought a white-bordered Mox Jet for sixty bucks. It was bad. It was really bad. Magic barely survived.

Fortunately, the rotation of Tempest block out of Standard deprived these decks of the mana acceleration that they needed to be busted. The version of Bargain that existed after Tempest Block rotation (Sabre Bargain) was much more modest and fair. Also, Masques Block brought in cards like Rishadan Port, Dust Bowl, and Tangle Wire that put these decks in check.

But, on the Extended side, Yawgmoth's Bargain was definitely broken based on power level. Imagine Zvi Mawshowitz's version, except with Mana Vault instead of Grim Monolith, Cadaverous Bloom instead of Skirge Familiar (which was also an enchantment, so it could be cheated out like Bargain), Illusions of Grandeur instead of Delusions of Mediocrity, drain life was in, and Lotus Petal was still legal. With decks like Academy before it, and decks like Flashhulk after it, turn one kills (or even turn 0 kills) were possible, but very rare. This was not the case with Extended Bargin. It won on turn one something like 30 or 40 percent of the time, and it won on turn two something like 60 or 70 percent of the time. More often than not, you had to tutor for some element of the combo that you were missing, but about a third of the time, the opening draw had the cards to win the game on the first turn. It you couldn't win by turn two, you should have Mulliganed. It was by far the most broken deck that has ever existed!!!

At the time, Magic was in Standard season, and the banhammer came down quickly on Yawgmoth's Bargain in Extended, so it never saw major tournament play. But not before the deck saw one major innovation. Since the Illusions of Grandeur cost its controller 20 life when it left play, the whole nutroll of generating enough mana to resolve a big drain life became superfluous. A player could simply Donate an Illusions of Grandeur and let the opponent die when they couldn't pay the upkeep. While Yawgmoth's Bargain was legal, this process could all be done in a single turn. When Bargain was banned, players substituted Necropotence for Yawgmoth's Bargain and spread the combo out over a few turns. This evolved into what was probably the last broken combo deck of the series: Trix.

I don't know why, but at the time combo players had this weird fascination with naming combo decks after breakfast cereals (Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles, Trix, etc.), so this is how Trix got its name. Anyway, Trix dominated the tournament scene for a while. In an attemp to slow the deck down, Dark Ritual and Mana Vault were banned in extended. The ban didn't work, so they FINALLY killed it once-and-for-all by banning Necropotence and Demonic Consultation. And this was the final nail in the coffin for the long series of crazy combo decks.

And this is the unabridged history of Combo Winter.

Answer 3

There have been several times in MtG history that the game was broken for a while. Black Summer, with the proliferation of Necropotence decks, Affinity decks that abused cheap artifacts and artifact lands, and Combo Winter that resulted in the largest number of bannings. Mark Rosewater discusses why cards get banned and restricted. While not all the cards are from Urza block, about half are, and Mark includes some interesting information about the prototype versions of some of the cards and why they are broken.

Lotus Petal (banned in Extended, restricted in Vintage) – This card shows how crazy Black Lotus is. During Tempest design, I thought it would be flavorful to make new “fixed” Black Lotus. Since I liked the idea of a 0 cost artifact, I lowered the number of mana it produced. The development team even questioned if it was too weak. In the end though we felt like the card might find some use in a very niche deck. I guess the niche decks were degenerate decks.

A timeline of DCI banning/restrictions is available if you just want to know the timing of the various bannings. This article has some nice background on Combo Winter, some examples of Pro Tour decks, and links to tournament reports of what decks were being played at the time. It has an interesting piece from Randy Buehler on why Memory Jar was emergency banned, the first and only card to be banned before its release. If memory serves, Wizards even offered replacement packs if you opened a Memory Jar, because it was unplayable.

“The one card that was ever subject to an emergency ban was Memory Jar, which has the unfortunate text “draw seven cards” on it. However, the power of Memory Jar itself isn’t why the DCI broke with its normal policy of quarterly changes. The only reason the DCI chose not to wait until the next regularly scheduled dates was because the very health of the Magic game was being threatened by “Combo Winter.” Urza’s Saga was four months old when Memory Jar came out in Urza’s Legacy. During those four months, there was a large and loud public outcry about the way the game was being ruined by all the “broken” cards in Saga. Since Saga was affecting all Constructed formats, not just Extended, there wasn’t anywhere for Magic players who didn’t like combos to go. They either played against a steady stream of combo decks, or they didn’t play at all. The DCI’s first round of bannings in December 1998 didn’t fix things and players began leaving the game in droves. It was vitally important to the health of the game to clean things up before too many more players walked away, so quite a large number of cards were included in the DCI’s March 1, 1999 announcement, which would become effective April 1 of that year. Players were optimistic that Combo Winter was finally going to end.

Answer 4

I realize I'm a year and change too late, but for anyone who stumbles across this post, just run a few games with the following list and you'll get it:

• 3 Dream Halls
• 4 Mind Over Matter
• 4 Grim Monolith
• 3 Thran Dynamo
• 4 Voltaic Key
• 4 Lotus Petal
• 3 Mox Diamond
• 4 Windfall
• 3 Turnabout
• 4 Tolarian Academy
• 12 Island
• 4 Memory Jar
• 4 Time Spiral
• 4 Stroke of Genius

Your sideboard would essentially be:

• X Phyrexian Colossus
• X Masticore
• X Phyrexian Processor
• X Morphling

As alternate win conditions.

• X Counterspell
• X Quash
• X Dismiss
• X Defense Grid

For the Stroke mirror and the counters of any Counter-Phoenix or Counter-Slivers or Counter-Troll or Counter-whatever.

• X Hibernation
• X Evacuation

For the Gaea's Cradle decks. Nobody else had a chance of racing you, so nobody else deserved sideboard slots.

As for the main deck, there were, of course, variations. Maindeck Masticores and shaving numbers on Thran Dynamo and the enchantments to include Evacuation or Counterspell was common, but generally a bad idea. With a deck like this, you should be all-in. I experimented with a list that played Skyshroud Forest for Crop Rotation. If you didn't find Mind Over Matter yet, you could sacrifice an Academy to go get another Academy. I was super pissed when they banned Memory Jar because I had just spent all my money on a pre-order playset at age 10 as soon as the card was spoiled in Scrye or The Duelist or whatever magazine. Then they proceeded to ban the whole deck and all the trading and buying I had done for the past year.

Answer 5

Tolarian academy, Yawgmoths Will, Windfall, Fluctuator, Time Spiral, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, and Gaeas Cradle.

(I remember having a fluctuator deck that could win turn one. Fluctuator was banned right from the start however.)

All those cards needed to be banned or restricted due to how fast you could win. Sneak attack and Cradle werent banned or restricted but both were clearly staples and very good.

Not to mention cards like Morphling, who might not seem great now. But back then, he was about the best creature you could cast.

Thats just Urzas Saga. And there are many more cards im not mentioning that had a huge impact on all formats like Voltaic Key and Stroke of Genius.

Urzas Legacy was a great set to draft with and had great cards for its time. But overall that set was the weakest of the 3 in the block. Rancor, Tinker, Grim Monolith, Deranged Hermit, memory jar, Palinchron, and Treetop Village/Faerie Conclave. As you can see this list isnt quite on par with Saga.

Urzas Destiny was another one that over time doesnt seem like a great set. But it was BROKEN in its day. Masticore, Opalescence, Replenish, Yavimaya Hollow (was a crap rare back then basically), Academy Rector, Opposition, Treachery, Yawgmoths bargain, covetous dragon,Elivhs Piper, Pattern of Rebirth, Rofellos, and Plow Under.

It was the perfect cherry on top of the SICKEST block ever made. The constructed formats for standard and block were my favorite...still to this day.

When people get nostalgic about the Urza block its for a good reason! It was the BEST BLOCK OF ALL TIME. And its not even close.

Answer 6

We are now playing magic cards. We typically envision the scenario to be involved with summoning some creatures to attack or defend, casting some spells to hinder our opponents, setting up enchantments to boost up our advantages. If our opponents don't do anything we play, a typical creature fast attack deck of all era probably wins on turn 4 or turn 5(if not, we need to redesign our deck). What if we are playing against someone that does nothing to what you play, and suddenly wins the game on turn 2 or turn 3 or even the first turn? The word "broken" is used to address such issues. A lot of people don't want to play against such type of decks, but Urza's Saga block supplies numerous amount of cards that can make decks of this type.

What are the ways to win a Magic game?

1. One player's life drops to 0 or less. (This is most common way to win.)
2. One player's deck is running out of cards, and he/she has to draw. (The normal circumstance would be players have played for a long time.)
3. Certain cards dictates other winning conditions, and they have just been met. (e.g. Coalition Victory)

In 2, if someone plays a game with 60 cards initially, and if you can force him/her to draw more than 60 cards at any turn, you win the game. If you can do this on turn 1, you win on turn 1. The cards in Urza's Saga block create such chance to become more likely to happen. This concept is not seen in nowadays blocks because cards that can lead to this scenario will not be created, but if you play Vintage format, you will still see this.

Stoke of Genius forces anyone to be named to draw X cards. If you have 60 mana for X, your opponent loses the game instantly. Many decks in Vintage uses this method to win the game ----- generating a very large amount of mana in a single turn and then force the opponent draw to win.

Voltaic Key + Grim Monolith = 5 mana Voltaic Key + 2x Grim Monolith = 7 mana

Tolarian Academy gives you 1 blue mana for each artifact you control. Together with Voltaic Key and grim monolith, we can have a lot of mana.

Crop Rotation makes sure that even if you don't have any Tolarian Academy in your hand on turn 1, you can still scoop it up. If you have 4x Tolarian Academy and 4x Crop Rotation, the chance that you can get a Tolarian Academy on the first turn increases from 40% to 65%.

Windfall/Memory Jar lets you draw 7 cards. If you have less than 7 cards when you cast/activate, you gain cards.

Mind Over Matter + Tolarian Academy + many artifact in play + a lot of cards in your hand is a combo that can generate such a huge amount of mana. Since Mind Over Matter is 2UUUU and Tolarian Academy generates blue mana, it's not difficult to cast early in the game.

Yawgmoth's Will allows you to play with less cards need to be drawn.

Yawgmoth's Bargain does not give you disadvantage if you play it early in the game. A sudden draw of 10 cards makes combo decks work immediately.

Time Spiral almost work like giving you an extra turn because you get to untap 6 lands and refill your hand.

Tinker can be used to call up Memory Jar.

Frantic Search not only lets you have a chance to gain the card that you want, but also untaps lands. If one of the land is Tolarian Academy, you gain more mana on that turn.

All those mentioned cards can be merges into a single extended deck. Apart from Mind Over Matter, all mentioned cards so far belong to Urza's Saga block. That's how powerful this block is.

I didn't mention how Tempest block and 6th Edition can help this type of deck. Scroll Rack, Dream Halls, Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor can speed up drawing. Mana Vault is even cheaper than Grim Monolith. City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb give you more mana early in the game. Lotus Petal and Mox Diamond not only provide mana themselves, but also boost up Tolarian Academy. Furthermore, they allow you to play non-blue spells such as Yawgmoth's Will and Yawgmoth's Bargain.

This type of deck is played like this: You play Tolarian Academy + many artifacts, then you draw and draw and draw to give yourself more cards and more artifacts with Mind Over Matter in play(with 2 stroke of genius). With almost your library becomes your hand, force you opponent to draw more cards than he/she has in their libraries for the win. With Vintage format, from the help of power nine and Wheel of Fortune, if there were no restrictions on power nine and Wheel of Fortune, this type of deck finishes the game on turn 1 with probability at least 80%. We rarely see a turn 3 or above finish. If you are playing against a deck of the same type, it's almost like whoever wins the flip whoever wins the magic card game. What is the need of playing magic card then? Where is players' interactions during the game? A lot of players would not play such a card game.

Tolarian Academy + Mind Over Matter is not the only way to generate a large amount of mana in a single turn. Grim Monolith + Power Artifact, Worldgorger Dragon, Fastbond + Zuran Orb + Crucible of Worlds, and more other strategies can achieve. All combo decks requires the components of combo to be met. Yet the cards in Urza's Saga block mentioned in this article can also be used in other combo decks to speed up drawing just like Ancestral Recall. Those cards appear in almost every Vintage deck. They have perpetual effect in Magic. If we have a new combo in the future, those cards will always be used. Because of such versatility and such a large number of cards in a single block. Urza's Sage is the most broken block throughout history.

Answer 7

Way too much easy and fast mana that fuelled way too many skilless value engines. Tolarian academy gave you more mana when you played artifacts that gave you mana by themselves. Tolarian academy also conveniently gave you the blue mana needed for your stroke of genuis.

You had worn powerstone, thran dynamo and grim monolith that could be played easily early with no real cost which partnered with tolarian academy to give you even more mana.

You also had draw engines like windfall and stroke of genuis that refilled your hand so when you were done ramping you could refill your hand and go searching for a wincon. You even had Yawghmoths bargain which people actually realised was better than Necropotence because you got the cards immediately. Yawghmoths Will being an incredible Snapcaster Mage for everything in your graveyard

You also had lands like city of traitors and ancient tomb that ramped you with no real cost as you would win long before a couple of shocks to the face mattered.

Answer 8

I am certainly no guru, and I play MTG very casually compared to some. I think the reason the Urza block got mixed reactions was the introduction of some powerfully good cards, and the number of these cards, that these days (certainly in modern format that my group plays mostly) probably aren't that powerful at all! The game of MTG has changed over the years.

My group have fond memories of that block! Gaea's Cradle. Serra Avatar. Defence of the Heart. Congregate. Crazy days!