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Urza's Cave card art
Live Play Data

Urza's Cave

Land — Urza's Cave · Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)
3%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
1253
Decks Running
553
Median Cast Turn
4
Drawn → Played
75%
Format

75% of drawn Urza's Caves are cast before the game ends, and decks that resolve it show a +12.5 percentage-point win-rate lift over decks that never interact with their copy.

Urza's Cave is a niche but purposeful land: it taps for colorless mana and, when sacrificed for {3}, fetches any land from the library onto the battlefield tapped. Across 1181 multiplayer Commander games tracked on Playgroup Live, 75% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended, one of the higher execution rates we see for lands with an activated ability.

The card sits in 553 of the 19725 decks in the dataset, an 3% inclusion rate that reflects its specialist role. It is not a universal staple. It slots into colorless artifact strategies and land-synergy builds where fetching a specific land at the right moment matters more than raw mana acceleration. The median first activation lands on turn 4, consistent with early-game utility rather than a late tuck.

The concentration picture is healthy for a card this narrow: 419 distinct players have brought Urza's Cave to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for 419 spread across the top-commander list, which skews heavily toward colorless and five-color commanders. That commander spread tells you exactly who wants this card.

At a glance
  • 3% of tracked Commander decks include Urza's Cave
  • 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
  • T4 median turn of first activation
  • 63% battlefield stickiness once activated
  • 38% win rate in games where Urza's Cave was activated
  • 419 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=231
11%
T1
13%
T2
14%
T3
15%
T4
12%
T5
29%
T6-9
6%
T10+
Median 4 P25 3 · P75 6 · max 13
Cast same turn as drawn 46%

The "good card" funnel

1253 brought · 419 players
Brought to game
1253
Ever drawn
307
Reached battlefield
231
Still on board at game end
146
75%

Of 1253 Urza's Caves brought to games, 307 were drawn, 231 of those were activated, and 63% of activated copies stayed on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +5.9pp

Players who cast this card win 38% of the time (n=217) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=817).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 32% (n=67) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +12.5pp; 95% confidence interval +5.9pp to +19.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

340 instances
2.9%
Library
42.9%
Battlefield
30.0%
Graveyard
8.8%
Exile

Most Urza's Caves end up in the graveyard after their sacrifice ability resolves, which is expected. A smaller cluster finishes on the battlefield, likely copies that generated colorless mana but were never sacrificed before the game ended.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Colorless commanders dominate the top-commander list, with Ultron, Zhulodok, and Molecule Man leading by deck count. The spread across roughly a dozen different commanders suggests Urza's Cave fills a consistent role across colorless and land-synergy strategies rather than being a one-deck card.

Card text
Urza's Cave card

Urza's Cave

Land — Urza's Cave
{T}: Add {C}. {3}, {T}, Sacrifice this land: Search your library for a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
Modern Horizons 3 (MH3) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Mark Poole

Frequently Asked

How often is Urza's Cave drawn in a Commander game?
In 1181 tracked multiplayer games where Urza's Cave was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is in line with what you expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 307 instances that reached a player's hand, 75% were activated and resolved before the game ended.
What turn does Urza's Cave typically get activated?
Median first activation lands on turn 4, with the middle half of activations falling between turns 3 and 6. The distribution is fairly smooth across the early and mid game, suggesting players activate it when the fetch target is most relevant rather than rushing it on curve.
Does casting Urza's Cave actually improve your win rate?
In games where Urza's Cave was activated, the normalized win rate is 38%. In games where it stayed in the library untouched, that rate is 26%, a +12.5 percentage-point gap. The lower confidence bound on that delta is just above zero, so this is an early positive signal rather than a definitive conclusion. Both sample sizes are above 15, which makes it the most credible read we can offer at this dataset size.
Is Urza's Cave legal in Commander?
Yes. Urza's Cave from Modern Horizons 3 is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, or Pauper Commander.
Which commanders most often play Urza's Cave?
The top of the list on Playgroup Live is dominated by colorless commanders: Ultron (Artificial Malevolence), Zhulodok (Void Gorger), Molecule Man, and Ultima (Origin of Oblivion) all rank near the top by deck count. Five-color commanders like Ulalek and Child of Alara also appear, likely because their land bases benefit from a flexible colorless fetch. The colorless commander concentration is a strong directional signal about where Urza's Cave earns its slot.
How concentrated is the Urza's Cave data among a few players?
419 distinct players have brought Urza's Cave to a tracked game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for roughly 13.5% of all instances, which is above our 15% flag threshold but not severely so. The data is reasonably spread, and the large unique-player count strengthens confidence in the directional numbers. We continue to label trends as early signals rather than settled conclusions given overall dataset size.