Why Do Players Praise the Urza Lands when the Loci Are Better?
General forum
Posted on Feb. 19, 2020, 5:51 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Many players praise the Urza lands (Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower), but those same player seem to forget that the loci (Cloudpost and Glimmerpost) can generate a greater amount of mana in sufficient quantities.
With one copy of each Urza land, a player can generate 7 mana, or 28 mana with four copies of each land. With four copies of Cloudpost, a player can generate 16 mana, and, with four copies of Glimmerpost, they can generate 36 mana, which takes only eight lands, rather than twelve.
Therefore, why is it that most players hold the Urza lands in high regard but do not do the same for the loci? What does everyone else say about this?
I would imagine it's because the urza lands can benefit on turn 1.
Assuming you get a mine/plant/tower in the first 3 turns. your mana growth is:
- Turn 1 (any urza): 1 mana
- Turn 2 (any urza): 2 mana
- Turn 3 (any urza): 7 mana
In contrast having two Cloudpost and 1 Glimmerpost:
- Turn 1 (Cloudpost): 0 mana
- Turn 2 (Cloudpost): 2 mana
- Turn 3 (Glimmerpost): 7 mana
February 19, 2020 6:13 p.m.
grumbledore says... #4
legacy post uses locus lands because they are better. modern tron uses urza lands because they are legal.
February 19, 2020 7:23 p.m.
grumbledore says... #5
also the amount of life gain that is possible from glimmerpost is hugely relevant (with vesuva, stage, etc)
February 19, 2020 7:25 p.m.
triproberts12 says... #6
While it is definitely funny to point to the fact that the loci are busted as hell but also not Modern-legal, I actually had this same thought a few days ago while putting together a commander list. I had a reason to run Expedition Map in a mana-hungry blue deck, and threw in the Tron lands. Never even occurred to me to include the loci until I was looking through the full list of utility lands. I think it's mostly just that people who don't play Legacy never see them anywhere else.
Caerwyn says... #2
Tron is legal in Modern; the Locus lands are not. That’s about all there is to it. Modern is a more popular format leading to more people discussing it, and Tron is a persistently powerful deck in that format. At the time of writing 10.4% of decks are Tron decks, per mtgtop8.
The Locus lands are not only in less popular formats, they also don’t have the same presence in those formats as Tron does in Modern. Cloudpost only sees play in 3.3% of Legacy decks and sees no play at all in top8 Vintage decks.
February 19, 2020 6:09 p.m.