MTG Salvation

that's kind of neat, a bit of extra ramp, and helps us stay alive. I just wish my meta wasn't so disgustingly combo. you have no idea what I'd give to face a nice midrange or aggro deck, or even the mirror

Looks to be pretty much strictly anti-Burn tech, due to it's crazy popularity recently. There's not many other decks I'd want it against - Hatebears, sure, mayyybe Ponza. And it's only really good against Burn if you play it exactly on turn 2. It's basically just a worse Tarmogoyf, as it does roughly the same thing in these matchups and has fewer applications against the field. I don't think the fact that it adds mana is particularly relevant. If you're willing to dedicate slots to beat Burn I'd just play Feed the Clan - much more flexible and good at any point in the game (especially if you have TKS or Thragtusk in play!).

I recently picked up tron after being sick of losing to it with what felt like no hope of beating it. I've been struggling a lot with sideboarding the deck and balancing the threats for each matchup, this thread and primer have been incredibly helpful in figuring out the philosophy behind the sideboard plans. Keep up the great work and discussions and I look forward to becoming more of a part of them

Thanks shockugood, welcome.

Quote from k0no »

Engineered explosives also wasn't ever a major player in Tron decks because of the heavy colour requirements. If you came across it back in the day, that would have very much been an exception rather than the rule.

I played EE in my SB during the GDS and Eldrazi Tron meta, when Chalice of the Void was all over the place. It's good answer to Chalice that has reasonable uses in other matchups and can be found by Stirrings. I was also running GR at the time, so I could EE for 2 easily, making it even more flexible.

Quote from Phelpssan »

Quote from k0no »

Engineered explosives also wasn't ever a major player in Tron decks because of the heavy colour requirements. If you came across it back in the day, that would have very much been an exception rather than the rule.

I played EE in my SB during the GDS and Eldrazi Tron meta, when Chalice of the Void was all over the place. It's good answer to Chalice that has reasonable uses in other matchups and can be found by Stirrings. I was also running GR at the time, so I could EE for 2 easily, making it even more flexible.

That's interesting and it is making me consider a 1-of EE in my build. I have 1-2 grixis whir players and 1 infect player at local events recently; I do like EE to fight those two decks more than, say, a 2 mana version of nature's claim of choice. I run a horizon canopy so 2 colors is pretty reasonable between that, forests, and eggs. Certainly not why I would run EE but it adds to the utility.

Yeah, EE does help with some tougher matchups. Grixis Whir and Infect as mentioned, also Hardened Scales. Even in Mono-Green where getting more than one color won't be easy, X=1 does work in matchups like Shadow, Humans, Spirits and Burn as well.

Hey sicsmoo, thank you so much for all the work you've put into the deck. I've been running your list and sideboarding as you suggested and it's running like a dream. Even got the League Trophy leader to ask me to concede when I was about to win the final game.

Haha, that's awesome. Thanks for the kind words.

I think I'm close to running either GW Tron or MonoR Phoenix at GP LA. So far with Mono G Tron
11-4 GP Portland (7-1 Day One, 4-3 Day Two)
5-3 GP Oakland
11-3-1 (Team) SCG Baltimore (4-5 Day One, 5-0 Day Two, 0-1 Top 8)

With all the burn running around, having access to Timely Reinforcements sounds like the position I want to be in. Also PTE has to help the GDS mu. Any thoughts?

It's still my position that adding a color is a trap. Trying to cast those white spells really puts a strain on your mana because you can only realistically play 2 Horizon Canopy. You will often have to decide between using your Chromatics for white for your sideboard cards or green for the cards that make your deck function properly. It gets messy and isn't worth the potential upside you get from the splash. Against Burn, you want to add Reinforcements to gain life, but you're trying to cast it off a land that does damage to you. It's just so awkward. And what if you don't draw Reinforcements but do draw Canopy? This will happen fairly often as it's probably a 2 Canopy/3 Timely split. Then it's just terrible as Canopy is pinging you for no reason. Overloading the manabase with colored spells is a real thing as well, especially in this matchup when you're already bringing in 6+ green spells in Tusks and Claims. Add 3 more spells of a different color and you're asking too much of the deck.

Access to Path against GDS would be nice, sure, but that matchup is totally fine if you have enough tools that Mono Green has access to ie Dismember, Relics, Thragtusks.

Hey all, been a while. A bit too much Arena, needed to get to playing T3 Karns First league I went 4-1 beating favorites like:

Burn 2-0
Mono Red Pheonix 2-1
Bant Spirits 2-0
Bad Tron (A La Mono Blue) 2-1

But for the life of me I can never beat UW Control and saw my 5-0 wings clipped by Field of Ruin.

Wasn't sure if Tron was still good...pfft of course it is. Is Tarmoboy something we can pick up again? I wasn't a huge fan of Surgical during that league but I would think with burn/R decks seeing a Renaissance, we might look back towards gofy? I haven't been playing that much modern but with Regionals coming up on March 9th, I'm sleeving up Karn's.

Goyf is fine. Certainly is good if BGx becomes the new hotness for a bit after these GP results. I think the card is a bit overrated against Burn though for reasons discussed recently (only good on turn 2, overloading the mana base with colored spells).

Close to running the following list for GP LA. After testing Mono R Phoenix, Sultai Reclation, Bant Nexus, and Tron I'll try running this at my $2k before making the final call for GP LA. My motivation here is the PTEs for GDS/Phoenix/Titan and Timely for the burn match ups. I'm giving up some points in the mirror (no GQ), dredge (Grafdigger's), and GBx (3 Basics).

Points of Interest:
Running white but playing Surgical over RiP - This is fairly intentional. I'm not in favor of overloading my white mana here and surgical is a bit less rigid / better late. In testing RiP has been fairly awful.

I'm not sold on path enough to stretch the manabase. Path is definitely our best removal for shadow, but they have ways to counter the path very easy and I think we are more likely to win by playing threats on our turn. I'm in no way saying path is bad against grixis shadow, but I think it's not good enough to force it into our deck in the current meta.

I really don't like path against primetime decks. Against both decks your winrate plummets if they resolve a titan at all (unless you can surgical the primetime away from amulet, but path doesn't help that line at all). Primetime decks being popular are the largest reason I'm not all in on white for paths right now.

Edit: I think burn is worth mentioning as well. It's probably the deck that benefits the most against us from being ramped by path. And the deck is quite popular and at least 55% winrate over tron. Do you path their creature on turn 1 or 2 and allow them to start double casting 2 drops on turn 3? They often operate on very low land counts and we can steal games when they stumble on mana.

Quote from Tituba9 »

I'm not sold on path enough to stretch the manabase. Path is definitely our best removal for shadow, but they have ways to counter the path very easy and I think we are more likely to win by playing threats on our turn. I'm in no way saying path is bad against grixis shadow, but I think it's not good enough to force it into our deck in the current meta.

I really don't like path against primetime decks. Against both decks your winrate plummets if they resolve a titan at all (unless you can surgical the primetime away from amulet, but path doesn't help that line at all). Primetime decks being popular are the largest reason I'm not all in on white for paths right now.

Edit: I think burn is worth mentioning as well. It's probably the deck that benefits the most against us from being ramped by path. And the deck is quite popular and at least 55% winrate over tron. Do you path their creature on turn 1 or 2 and allow them to start double casting 2 drops on turn 3? They often operate on very low land counts and we can steal games when they stumble on mana.

I agree on all this, but especially the bit about not playing specific removal if it's bad vs. Burn. Path not only suffers from this, but also Dismember, in my opinion.

Alright. Current affairs post!

London mulligan.
We stand to gain from this change but only marginally, and so does everyone else. Don't feel like the proposed new rule will give us a relatively over-bearing advantage. The overall effect will be net-neutral.

Path in Tron: this card is only really an acceptable choice against decks like shadow, hollow one, eldrazi and (weirdly) the mirror. It's a clean answer to big threats like gurmag angler, hollow one and wurmcoil (and ulamog in a pinch, although for obvious reasons that's still not the best trade). You'll also get marginal value from hitting voice of resurgence, kitchen finks and vannifar from that deck, so you can add 'creature combo without too much interaction' into the list of times when path might be an acceptable choice. If vannifar pod takes off, it's a good pick there (although let's also consider that our generic sweepers are potentially even better)

It's "OK" against phoenix but not the best. Their deck is designed to operate around spot removal so it won't be swinging too many phoenix matchups in your favour.

So the question is: is the meta full of those big-creature strategies. Death's shadow seems popular, but otherwise? Unclear. I wouldn't necessarily splash for the same cons colour unless I had some guaranteed meta-specific 2-for-1s or better (like pyroclasm which was frequently amazing in the meta when it was widely played)

First and foremost, the amount of effort and information in this thread has been mind blowing and is much appreciated by someone who is relatively new to the deck and modern. That being said, I've gone back through the thread a bit and can't seem to find some information regarding the mono-red phoenix matchup. I'm using the standard Sideboard listed in the primer for the most part. This matchup feels like a mix between burn and izzet phoenix, but I can't seem to nail down the cards I want to remove. I definitely want 3 claim, and 2 surgical/cage type cards, but I'm at a small loss as to what to start cutting. Also thragtusk also seems very good here.

I unfortunately don't have any data to backup these decisions, but how does everyone feel about:

+3 claim, +2 surgical/cage (not decided which I want to run or if both), and possibly 2-4 Thragtusk (Not sure the full 4 are good since it cannot block phoenix)

-2 ballista, -4 O. stone (is this correct vs mono red? It does have ~10 creatures outside of phoenix), Should I be cutting ugins or some number of karn for the rest?

You can board out some Karn's, because when facing 3 damage, Karn is a 7-mana Vindicate, whilst Ugin gets also rid of multiple threats at once.

Mono R Phoenix is a tricky one. I haven't actually seen the deck very much since its initial burst into the meta but I guess I'd do something like this:

-2 Ballista, -2 Ostone, -2 Karn, -1 Ugin, -1 Ulamog

+3 Claim, +4 Thragtusk, +1 Cage

I do think you want as many Thragtusk as you can get. No, it doesn't block Phoenix but it does block Swiftspear, Soul-Scar and Bedlam Reveler and more importantly it gains 5 life which I think matters a lot given how much burn they have.

I like Cage for shutting off Phoenix and Looting but not Surgical because a lot of the time it wont be game-winning and the 2 life matters.

I like keeping a couple Ostone because they're bringing in 3 Blood Moons and it's still just a good card against certain board states they produce. I could see an argument for cutting all of them though.

There's probably an argument for Spatial Contortions as well.