Uro, Titan Of Nature’s Wrath Will Change Green Decks Forever

Aren’t the big Simic 6/6 mythic rares supposed to be Draft chaff?

After Throne of Eldraine, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) really felt like they didn’t wanna dial it back on busted cards for 1GU. Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath is exactly the kind of card that is going to irrevocably change the face of green in Magic forever.

Anybody that’s made it as far as reading articles on StarCityGames.com doesn’t have to have it spelled out how important the card Growth Spiral can be in the decks that it’s prevalent in. The games that involve a Growth Spiral and the games that don’t are night and day. Uro fills a similar role.

The key difference is simply that Uro is filling the three-drop slot on the curve. What this means is that the decks and curves that are interested in incorporating Uro are going to be one of three things: decks interested in a one-three-five curve, graveyard decks looking for a self-contained value engine, or fair decks that are simply using Uro as a recurring threat.

In terms of fitting the card into the curves of existing decks that lean fairer, the key is to think of the card as something more akin to Cultivator’s Caravan or Darksteel Ingot. After all, the land that Uro puts onto the battlefield is going to enter the battlefield untapped, meaning it’s only going to actually tie down two mana during the turn that its front half is cast.

Luckily, there happens to be a deck that’s interested in filling its curve with cards that effectively cost two mana and generating critical masses of mana:

Simic Ramp sticks out as a perfect home for Uro to slot into. On top of the fact that it already is interested in having a bunch of Explores, it adds even more value to Cavalier of Thorns.

Speaking of cards that will see a good chunk of play alongside Uro, Cavalier of Thorns stands to have its own value skyrocket over the next few weeks. Filling the graveyard with exactly enough cards to recur Uro is attractive on its own and the card was seeing play before Uro existed!

Going infinitely large isn’t the only way to abuse either of these cards:

On the more interactive side of things is a deck that’s simply looking to cast a bunch of spells and simply have Uro be a threat that never goes away. Something that a lot of people haven’t seemed to connect with the escape mechanic is that it signifies cards that cannot be answered for as long as their owner continues to simply play Magic.

Like the delve mechanic in Khans of Tarkir block, escape simply demands playing Magic. That’s to say, if you make land drops and cast cards that end up in the graveyard, you’ll get paid. Does that sound like anything else in Standard?

Hydroid Krasis is the kind of card that necessitates some quantity of resources be developed before it’s cast. The payoff is reasonable enough that the card sees play in spite of this.

Uro doesn’t.

Uro being both a payoff and a developmental tool has value that can’t be understated within the context of these Simic decks. The fact that it continues to produce value on the back half is just astonishing in its own right. I didn’t even realize Uro had a ‘Titan trigger the first time I read it. That’s to say it makes like Primeval Titan and friends and does something when it enters the battlefield and when it attacks. Speaking of…

Amulet Titan has been straying further from Ancient Stirrings and more in the direction of Once Upon a Time for awhile now. Rather than using cards like Explore, this version of the deck is leaning into Sakura-Tribe Scout, Arboreal Grazer, and its namesake in order to increase the odds of cranking out Uro on the second turn. The padding that it provides against aggressive strategies isn’t nothing, and having more to do in the games in which you can’t find a copy of Primeval Titan is an enormous boon for the archetype itself.

That being said, this might be the final straw that justifies moving to the Amulet-free Simic Titan decks:

With a deck that’s already leaning into curves involving Oko, Thief of Crowns, it’s only natural that a three-mana Simic card is going to slot into this deck perfectly. The biggest problem that these decks are going to face when compensating for Uro is putting enough cards in the graveyard in order to return it. I’d expect a slightly higher number of fetchlands to be an easy way to lean in the direction of bending the deck a bit without actually sacrificing too much of the versatility of the land package.

On the other side of things are the graveyard decks that have nothing but cards to shove in the graveyard:

Cards that pay you for putting a ton of cards in your graveyard isn’t something that this deck is short on. When there aren’t even full playsets of Haunted Dead and Prized Amalgam, it’s easy to understand that the back half of Uro isn’t necessarily the reason that it’s being shoved in the deck. What it does, though, is act as a Gurmag Angler that helps dig for enablers in low-resource games.

Historically, Dredge-adjacent decks have been great at mulliganing because they don’t play a traditional game in terms of how many resources they need to get off the ground. This is because cards that fill the graveyard are each going to be worth more than a single card in their own right.

As long as you can find a couple of these cards in your opening hand, you’ll dump enough into your graveyard in order to justify keeping lands and enablers.

The most frequent issue with mulligans in this deck is that with the number of payoff cards in the deck, the range of opening hands that are keepable is much lower than with a traditional Dredge deck. That’s largely on the back of the fact that a Dredge pilot can chain Stinkweed Imps into each other in order to continue feeling the graveyard.

Without some sort of card that can get itself going and keep fueling itself, it’s harder to justify mulliganing as low with Pioneer’s Dredgeless Dredge list.

Luckily, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath does a bit in fixing that problem. Even if its back half isn’t going to do anything to help the deck get off the ground, the front is. Having a card that occupies a similar spot to Gurmag Angler, while also having play in the developmental stages of the game, goes a long way. Consider the following six-card hand:

This is the kind of hand that is somewhat unimpressive, yet incredibly resilient. If those copies of Uro were Gurmag Anglers, this would likely be a mulligan. As it stands, this hand is perfectly serviceable in several matchups. Having a card that can dig towards more enablers, while also being a payoff in the later portions of the game, is exactly the kind of effect that this archetype is in desperate need of.

As a final deck to touch on, Ondrej Strasky had been toying around with an Emry, Lurker of the Loch / The Great Henge brew that this card plays both sides of splendidly. Throwing Uro into the mix makes the deck look more legitimate, bit by bit:

A deck that’s already playing to the graveyard? Check.

A deck with an aggressive sub-theme that wants mana sinks to develop and exploit? Check.

The point of including this deck with everything else is just to really show how many different ways there are to abuse Uro. Whether it’s in a fair shell, a graveyard amalgamation, a lands pile, or even an aggro deck, slotting Uro in just feels natural.