Eye of Ugin's ban is one of Modern's most cited land-related bans, but it is far from the only time Magic's design team has had to rein in a land or land-based tutoring effect for being too efficient.
Comparing it to other infamous cases shows a recurring pattern: lands that generate too much mana too fast, or tutor too efficiently, tend to eventually draw restrictions regardless of era.
This guide places Eye of Ugin alongside several other well-known broken lands and tutoring engines, covering what made each one a problem and where they sit today.
For collectors, this comparison also doubles as a shopping map across some of Magic's most historically significant restricted and banned mana sources.
Each card below is worth understanding both for its own competitive history and for how it illustrates the broader pattern of what actually gets a land or mana source restricted in this game.
Gaea's Cradle taps for mana equal to the number of creatures its controller controls, making it capable of producing enormous amounts of green mana in creature-heavy decks. It is restricted in Vintage rather than banned outright.
Unlike Eye of Ugin's Modern ban, Gaea's Cradle's restriction reflects Vintage's singleton-style restricted list approach, allowing exactly one copy rather than removing the card entirely.
Mishra's Workshop taps for three colorless mana, but only to cast artifact spells, making it a defining piece of Vintage's fastest artifact-based combo and aggro strategies. It is also restricted rather than banned in Vintage.
Like Eye of Ugin, Mishra's Workshop's power comes from enabling an entire strategy built around a narrow but extremely efficient mana source.
Bazaar of Baghdad does not produce mana at all; instead it lets its controller draw two cards and discard three, fueling graveyard-based strategies like Vintage Dredge. It is restricted in Vintage for enabling those decks' explosive starts.
This shows that not every problematic land generates mana; some, like Bazaar, break a format by enabling a completely different kind of engine entirely.
Field of the Dead, a land that creates zombie tokens for controlling seven or more differently named lands, was banned in Pioneer for enabling an overwhelming value engine in dedicated lands-matter decks.
Its ban reflects a more recent instance of the same underlying pattern: a land-based engine that outpaces a format's ability to interact with it in time.
In every case, including Eye of Ugin, the problem was never the land alone; it was the land combined with a supporting card pool that made its power level unmanageable within that specific format's expected pace.
This is why bans and restrictions on lands are relatively rare compared to spells, but tend to be especially memorable and format-defining when they do happen.
Each of these cards carries a genuine competitive history story, similar to Eye of Ugin's Eldrazi Winter narrative, which makes them a natural extension for any collector already drawn to banned and restricted card history.
Building a small collection around Magic's most format-defining broken lands is a coherent, historically grounded collecting theme distinct from chasing raw rarity or price alone.
Each of these cases has fed into how design and play design teams evaluate new mana-generating or tutoring lands today, with more caution applied to any land whose power scales with an easily expandable card pool.
Collectors and players who track this history are often better positioned to anticipate which newly printed lands might eventually draw similar scrutiny as future sets are released.
Assembling copies of each card discussed here, even in their most affordable available printings, creates a genuinely coherent small collection centered on a real, well-documented thread of Magic's competitive history.
It is restricted to one copy in Vintage, not banned outright.
Enabling explosive graveyard-based strategies like Vintage Dredge.
No, Field of the Dead is banned in Pioneer, while Eye of Ugin is banned in Modern.
Yes, design teams apply more caution to lands whose power scales with an easily expandable card pool.
No, most are restricted to one copy in Vintage rather than banned across every format.
Protect every historically significant pickup with sleeves built for long-term storage, and organize your collection in a proper binder from the Magic: The Gathering collection.
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