Ugin’s Labyrinth – Modern Horizons III
Date Reviewed: June 14, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.50
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 3.75
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
It’s easy to get hung up trying to think of the cards that you can exile to activate this land’s big-mana mode (“how many versions of Kozilek are there again?”). It’s easy to do that, and thus forget that if you do have a card that matches, you can do whatever you want with the land in following turns. There’s no “use this only to cast an Eldrazi” or “use this only to activate an ability”. You do have to have other things in your deck that want lots of colorless mana, but there are whole constructed decks based around that, and constructed is really what this card is intended for. Even with the ability to return the card to your hand being awkward occasionally, this is potentially much more reliable than a number of multiple-mana lands that already see play. I’d expect to see more of this card in some capacity – possibly a lot more.
Note that if you have some way to untap the land, you can add the two mana, untap it, return the exiled card to your hand, and cast it with the land’s mana just like you weren’t intended to do. Considering that the ability is a reference to how Ugin’s countermeasures against the Eldrazi couldn’t hold up against Jace, Chandra, and Sarkhan stumbling around, it seems rather fitting.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
This is one of those cards that sets off alarm bells, in a sense, and a large part of that is because it’s a land that taps for 2 mana. Ugin’s Labyrinth does have a particular demand to do that: you need to exile a colorless card that’s expensive enough to turn on the double mana, but this isn’t too steep a demand in the decks that want it. It’s not even a permanent loss, as you can pull the card out of exile when you want to cast it, though you do then give up the ability for it to draw double mana.
This is a dangerous land with in-built homes, especially in Modern (a format with a prominent deck, Tron, stuffed with cards that activate it). It’s not a land without its costs; it’s not legendary or restrictive in how the mana can be used, but it requires a card you’re fine waiting to cast to be particularly good, and colorless decks sometimes can struggle to keep their resources flowing in a long, drawn-out game. But nearly any land capable of tapping for two mana unconditionally on the turn it comes out will turn heads, and this is certainly a head-turner of a card.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
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