Commander Spotlight: Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Hey, friends! Today I'm super excited to talk about the MTGGoldfish preview card that Wizards of the Coast graciously gave us: Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath!
Let's get this out of the way first: Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is a very, VERY good card in Commander which I'm genuinely thrilled to start brewing with. It's an insane value engine, able to draw tons of cards, gain tons of life, and ramp out tons of lands. This card has a giant amount of card text, however, so here's a quick breakdown to explain it easier:
- Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is a 6/6 legendary elder giant creature that you can cast for 1UG or alternatively cast from the graveyard with escape by paying GGUU and exiling five other cards from your graveyard.
- When Uro enters the battlefield or attacks, you gain 3 life and draw a card, then you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield.
- When Uro enters the battlefield without escaping (if you cast it from your hand or command zone, for example), you sacrifice it. Uro only sticks around if you cast it with escape!
How this usually plays out is that you'll first cast Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath from your hand or command zone, sacrificing Uro while drawing a card, gaining 3 life, and possibly putting a land into play. Later on you'll cast Uro from the graveyard for its escape cost, triggering its ability again but now Uro will stick around the battlefield, able to use its 6/6 body to attack and get even more sweet triggers.
Played straight like this, Uro is very good in just about any deck. His triggered ability is basically a lifegaining Growth Spiral stapled on to a 6/6 creature. Casting Uro from your hand or command zone early on as an overpriced Growth Spiral is totally fine, but then once you can cast Uro with escape things get nutty as you immediately get another Growth Spiral trigger and can now start pressuring opponents with a 6/6 beater that Growth Spirals each time it attacks! That's a lot of potential for card draw, lifegain, and ramp, all while smashing our opponents! And best of all, Uro's escape ability means you can keep recasting him from the graveyard as needed as long as you have cards to exile!
Uro can be jammed into any Simic deck and yield great value, but the titan's potential is fully realized once you start pairing him with cards that have high synergy with him. Here are some powerful synergies to really abuse Uro:
Playing Around the Sacrifice Trigger
When Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath enters the battlefield without escaping, its triggered ability forces us to sacrifice it. But the triggered ability must first go on the stack and resolve before we must sacrifice our titan, giving us an opportunity to do stuff before that happens.
We can sacrifice Uro in response to draw six cards off Greater Good, ramp some more with Perilous Forays, or mill ourselves with Altar of Dementia so we have enough cards to exile so that Uro can escape.
We can save Uro from the graveyard by bouncing the titan back to our hand with cards like Vedalken Mastermind, Chulane, Teller of Tales, or Paradoxical Outcome.
We can even stop Uro's sacrifice trigger from resolving altogether with cards like Sundial of the Infinite. We can stop the trigger from happening with Torpor Orb, which also stops Uro's Growth Spiral enter the battlefield trigger, but we still get the attack trigger!
Getting More Growth Spiral Triggers
The best part of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is that sweet sweet Growth Spiral trigger when it enters the battlefield or attacks. Luckily for us, there's tons of ways to squeeze out more of that trigger goodness.
Two classic enter the battlefield support cards, Panharmonicon and Yarok, the Desecrated, absolutely love Uro. Strionic Resonator works too!
Cheap blink effects like Cloudshift, Ephemerate, and Roon of the Hidden Realm allow us to get additional enter the battlefield triggers out of Uro for cheap, even if he dies after.
Once Uro has escaped, haste lets us get an attack trigger the turn he's cast. Cards like Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are perfect ways to start attacking while also protecting our value engine. If you're in Red then you get even more excellent haste enablers like Rhythm of the Wild but also extra combat steps like Seize the Day. More combats mean more attacks which means more triggers!
Escape Made Easy
Escape is what makes Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath really busted. It allows us to start swinging in with an undercosted 6/6 that repeatedly Growth Spirals us. The keyword is inherently card advantage as well, since casting Uro from our graveyard doesn't "cost" us a card from our hand.
Casting Uro from our hand / command zone is a fine way to get him in our graveyard so we can escape with him, but we don't even need that first step if we don't want to. We can discard Uro from our hand with cards like Frantic Search and Windfall, or pitch him to tutor with cards like Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman. We can mill him into our graveyard with cards like Mesmeric Orb and Satyr Wayfinder. Or we can tutor him into our graveyard with Entomb and Buried Alive.
The escape mechanic is fantastic, but exiling five cards is a lot. Most decks can naturally pay for escape costs once or twice by the mid to lategame, but doing it quickly and repeatedly is going to be tough for most decks. Self-Mill decks running cards like Mesmeric Orb and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant can keep the graveyard stocked up with cards that Uro can exile to escape.
The Best Commander Homes For Uro
With these synergies in mind, let's go over some of the best decks that can run Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath.
Uro is a great option to choose as your commander. The biggest strength to choosing Uro is that he's so consistent and reliable thanks to the escape mechanic, letting you avoid the commander tax by casting him with escape instead. This makes Uro an excellent commander choice in playgroups that run tons of creature removal.
By jamming together all the synergy cards already covered -- getting around the sacrifice trigger with cards like Greater Good, getting more triggers with Lightning Greaves, and making escape easy with cards like Satyr Wayfinder -- our deck naturally builds into a Lands deck that uses the Graveyard as a resource. Since we're playing a bunch of extra lands, landfall cards like Roil Elemental and Avenger of Zendikar get stronger. And since we're filling our graveyard to fuel escape, recursion cards like World Shaper and Splendid Reclamation get stronger. We win with Uro beats or typical land finishers like Avenger of Zendikar, Rampaging Baloths, Zendikar's Roil, and others.
There's a ton of overlap between Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and one of the current most popular Simic commander, Tatyova, Benthic Druid. No matter which is your commander, the other is definitely part of the 99.
Tatyova's trigger is significantly stronger since it's much easier to trigger it multiple times per turn thanks to fetchlands (Misty Rainforest), regular Green ramp (Rampant Growth), and other disgusting synergies (Burgeoning). It's rather common of Tatyova decks to effortlessly draw half their library by the time they're ready to win the game.
Uro is the perfect new addition in a Tatyova deck, doing everything you'd want in a card: more card draw, more lifegain, and most importantly another way to play additional lands, which triggers Tatyova! Value overload! It should be easy enough to escape with Uro with all the discarding down to handsize you'll be doing, not to mention the abundant fetchlands Tatyova typically plays for additional triggers. Tatyova decks often run Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, which double as haste enablers for Uro.
Assuming your commander isn't dying often, Tatyova is a stronger commander than Uro, but the titan is far more reliable and resilient to removal so it will excel in playgroups loaded with creature removal. The nice thing is that the legendaries work so well together; it's easy to swap between these two commanders leading the same deck, depending on the playgroup and what you feel like running!
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is one of the best Self-Mill decks out there and will absolutely love running Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath. Sidisi decks quickly and consistently fill their graveyard with cards straight from the library, milling Uro with cards like Mesmeric Orb or tutoring him there with Buried Alive, all while making zombie tokens in the process. From there, Uro can easily escape multiple times, becoming a reliable value engine for the deck.
Similar to Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Muldrotha is also all about Self-Mill, with a stronger emphasis on Graveyard themes, specifically recursion. Once Uro is in the graveyard you can cast him with his escape cost or use Muldrotha to cast him for his regular cost, sacrificing him and doing it again next turn and a repeatable engine that way. As your graveyard fills with escape fodder and other creatures you'd rather cast with Muldrotha, you can switch to escaping with Uro instead! Another excellent, excellent inclusion.
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath's enter the battlefield trigger is strong enough that it's a no-brainer inclusion in the deck that cares the most about enter the battlefield effects: Yarok, the Desecrated. Uro sits nicely with the other cheap staple creatures that ramp + draw when they enter the battlefield, like Coiling Oracle and Risen Reef. Then later on he escapes and generates some sweet value while attacking!
Bonus Uro List!
I'll leave you with one more goodie: a quick deck list with Uro as the commander! As mentioned earlier, there's a lot of similarities between it and Tatyova, Benthic Druid, except Uro benefits more from specific cards like self-mill and haste enablers. If you love Tatyova but she keeps getting shut down by your opponents, you may want to switch to Uro; the titan is fine with being killed since you can always escape with it again!
That's All, Folks!
Hope you enjoyed this early spotlight for Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath. How do you plan on using this new legendary creature? Will you build around it as a commander or use it in the 99? Let me know what spice you have in store! Thanks for reading!
