Moment of Silence
Hey guys. Long time no see.
I’ll get to the meat of the article in a minute, but first I’ll tell you all where I’ve been. I’ve received lots of messages asking why I stopped going to events and writing articles over the past few months. Unfortunately, I have developed a diabetic neuropathy that causes dysesthesia, and that has sidelined me since October. I am not better yet, but recent tests say that it’s a temporary setback that should disappear in six months tops. In an effort to get off my butt, I’m attempting to put on a happy face and do things that I used to do, like get back into writing. I will be going back to writing weekly, and I thank everyone for all of the wishes of good health.
And now on with the show.
Battle of Wits
Modern PTQ season is upon us, and it appears to be a deckbuilder’s paradise. Personally, I’ve tried everything from Snapcaster Mage with Tribal Flames to Snapcaster Mage with Early Harvest… and I’ve even heard of some decks without Tiago Chan in them! A lot has already been written and speculated about the format. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far:
- There isn’t a consensus ‘best deck.’
- All of the combo decks are fair and can be dealt with if you have a decent maindeck strategy and a solid sideboard plan. However, the sheer number of combos out there makes it difficult to prepare for all of them.
- The top three decks are Affinity, U/R Storm, and U/x Tempo Delver.
- The next best decks, such as Jund, Splinter Twin, Bant, and Melira Pod are close behind.
- There are many decks on the fringe that can win a tournament.
- The cards that benefit most from Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl leaving the format have yet to come into their own. I’m looking at you, Dark Confidant!
- A true control deck hasn’t emerged… yet.
It’s this fourth point that intrigues me most. At the beginning of the year, this was a brand new format. There was no established metagame to prepare for, and that made building a control deck nearly impossible. But now that a few PTQs and other tournaments have been done and there is finally some information rolling in, the image is starting to become clearer, and we can see some trends and potential weak spots in the metagame. The weak spots I identified are as follows:
- Combo decks fall into two categories: fast and uninteractive, with minimal resilience to hate, or slower with better answers to hate cards. This, in concert with the establishment of which combos are most likely to be played, allows control players to have a coherent plan.
- Aside from Bant, the aggro decks have a very tough time dealing with Wrath effects.
- There are very few answers to lands, making mana hungry decks an option… until people realize that Blood Moon is a card.
- With the rise of Pyromancer’s Swath over Past in Flames in recent weeks, cards like Surgical Extraction and Relic of Progenitus are seeing lessened play in maindecks and sideboards. This allows for a graveyard-based control strategy to exist.
This is what led me to play U/W Tron at Modern Warfare 2 at Comic Town in Columbus, Ohio, this past weekend.
Urza’s Avenger
I opted to play at MW2 over a PTQ in relatively nearby Indianapolis (4-hour drive) because this tournament was 15 minutes from my house and was being run by my good friend and podcast co-host Matt Kranstuber. The choice was clear, and he ran a great tournament, and I had a wonderful time.
I’ve always loved playing with the UrzaTron lands. I’m not really sure why. Perhaps it’s the feeling I get when I suddenly have the mini-combo, that I’ve unlocked some kind of ‘UrzaTron’ achievement and I get XBox points. Perhaps it’s the fact that somehow the combination of a Power Plant, a Mine, and a Tower make you more powerful, which makes sense to Saruman I suppose but to no one else I can think of. Perhaps it’s the fact that I fancied myself a young Urza when I started playing. Maybe I still do…
In any case, I’ve played nearly every variant of Tron in Standard, Extended, and now Modern. I’m one of those guys who says, “power up,” when I assemble the Tron pieces. I’ve played mono-blue, blue-black, blue-red, blue-green, blue-white-black, blue-white-red, heck I’ve even played red-green Tron! But the color combination that I’ve played the most is blue-white. After all, I am the mighty Urza, master of machine and man alike, ruler of…um…let’s move on.
Leading up to the tournament, I still didn’t feel well enough to do any serious playtesting to develop a deck, so I borrowed a list from Peter Johnson, who wrote a series of articles on Tron on his blog ShutUpandBrew.blogspot.com. I tweaked his list slightly and ended up with this for the day of the tournament, where I finished in the top 16 of the 60-person field:
(Here’s a link to the top 16 decklists from the tournament: http://incontentionmagic.com/?p=724)
Creatures (2)
Lands (25)
Spells (33)
Here’s how I did:
Win, 2-0, U/W/G Windbrisk/Polymorph
Loss, 2-0, Martyr of Sands
Win, 2-0, Grixis Delver
Loss, 2-0, Bant
Win, 2-1, Living End
Win, 2-0, Bant
My two losses to Martyr and Bant were a result of some bad draws and one loose 6-card keep against Bant. I feel as though both are certainly winnable matchups, and the Martyr matchup is probably favorable. Both of the players that I lost to ended up making top 4, who decided to split at the end of the tournament.
The main thing that I learned from this tournament is that Tron is a viable option right now. Even though I only played one of the top decks in the tournament, a Delver tempo deck, I tested against Affinity, Storm, Twin, Pod, and Jund, and I didn’t have an unwinnable matchup in the bunch. The only unwinnable matchup I tested against was Mono Red, but pilots of that deck are few and far between.
If you are planning on taking Tron to a tournament in the near future, here are a few things to consider:
- I would add a second Academy Ruins. Being unable to Gifts for both the Crucible and the Ruins was annoying.
- After some deliberation, I think that I’d cut the Kozilek for a Blightsteel Colossus. The Eldrazi was good, but the indestructible nature of the Ulamog was key, plus the trample on Blightteel is more relevant a lot of the time than annihilator. I played a few games with it against Jund, and it was fantastic. It’s at least worth testing.
- I’d like to add the Karn to the maindeck, a Day of Judgment as a fifth board sweeper, a Snapcaster Mage to add value to most any Gifts pile (as well as being a ‘sixth Wrath’), and a Talisman of Progress for more acceleration and color fixing. Problem is though… I don’t know where I’d add them. Awkward.
- Remand was kind of meh all day, especially against aggro. I’m planning on testing every other legal counterspell that costs 1U to see if any of them are better.
- The sideboard needs to have Path to Exiles 5 and 6. Since that would be illegal, I am forced to look for other options. These could possibly be Condemn or Last Breath, though both have downsides.
Such is the nature of Tron; it’s an ever-changing archetype because the format is always shifting. Outside of the cards mentioned above, cards like Sundering Titan, Duplicant, Memnarch, Overrule, Open the Vaults, Unburial Rites, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and many other unexplored options are waiting to be tested. And that’s not even to mention the other color combinations possible with the Urza Lands!
Building Tron is a lot like losing your virginity: you’re excited about the seemingly endless possibilities, but you’re probably going to end up doing it wrong and making some mistakes along the way… but you’ll have fun regardless.
Questions of the Fortnight
Until next time Magicians, may you always have outs.
Reubs
@badcorehardass on Twitter for Magic related stuff
@reubenbresler for comedy related stuff
Co-host of ‘In Contention‘
incontentionmagic.com
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]