Like the classic trio of Urzatron lands, Urza’s Workshop synergizes with other Urza’s lands. This allows it to create an immense amount of mana to ramp into obscenely powerful and otherwise prohibitively expensive threats. Unlike the other Urzatron lands, Urza’s Workshop doesn’t require a specific combination of Urza’s lands to be effective. Instead, Urza’s Workshop improves for “each Urza’s land you control.” This allows Urza’s Workshop to generate up to eight under ideal circumstances. That is, however, only so long as your playgroup allows Acorn cards like Nearby Planet during Commander games.
As you can imagine, having a single land that can tap to generate eight colorless mana is strong in any MTG format. In Commander, however, Urza’s Workshop absolutely excels at its intended purpose. As Good Morning Magic host Gavin Verhey explained, Urza’s Workshop is essentially an automatic upgrade for colorless Commander decks. After all, due to Commander’s singleton deck construction, colorless decks are already playing both good and bad colorless lands, such as Ash Barrens. Subsequently, Urza’s Workshop’s ability to ramp into threats like Kozilek, the Great Distortion makes it an obvious choice.
During the spoiler video for Urza’s Workshop, Gavin Verhey revealed that they effectively wanted it to be a no-brainer. “My idea here was that you’re usually playing some of these other cards [Urzatron lands] anyway, so this will fit right in as a land that can occasionally give you two or more mana.” Verhey went on to state that it’s “deceptively powerful as it’s essentially just an untapped land that levels up into more mana later on.” Alongside having Urza’s lands in play, Verhey noted, “you do need to hit Metalcraft, but that should be easy enough, right?”