I like running extra Wurmcoil right now, but I'm preferring a 1/1 split in the main and side. Many times you only need the one, but in matchups like Jund you want to be resilient to discard.
Mind Stone is really good right now, I ran up to 3 copies in a league but once I had two of them in an otherwise great opening hand I realized that's why we don't want too many copies. One is perfect to see in the opener, but anymore makes the hand do less and become too slow. I think it's perfect as a two-of.
The reason I'm wary of Batterskull in the 75 and Collar in the maindeck is one card. Ancient Grudge. It's everywhere right now, Dredge and Hollow One are milling into their own yards, Jund always seems to draw at least a copy post-board, etc. It's such a cheap answer to these cards. That, and a lot of removal meaning there's nothing to equip the collar with. However, if you are using 2x Collar in the 75, may as well be a 1/1 split so you can snag free wins off the Collar + Ballista or Bringer combo.
Since you don't have Caverns at the moment, going up to 4x Ghost Quarter to help against Affinity and GX Tron will be better than going up to 3 Sanctums. I've ran Sanctum of Ugin for a long time and played hundreds of matches with it and I can count on one hand the number of times where I would have wanted a second Sanctum of Ugin in a game, whereas there's been plenty of times I wish I had room for one or two more Ghost Quarters as I'm failing to naturally draw them early against Affinity and Tron.
Ugin is a card I really really like, but I'm pretty afraid of it being a dead card in hand because I fail to get tron active. The meta is looking prime for it though. I would prefer to have my 2x dust in the main and Ugin in the side for when he is so good it's worth being risky with how expensive he is.
Wails in the maindeck are also really good against a lot of Tier 1 and 2 decks, they have been for some months now. Previously the only deck they were 'bad' against game 1 was Grixis Shadow, now that deck is Jund. Except as you said, now it can be used to exile Bob, and can also be used in response to a Liliana downtick as a 'gotcha'. Can also counter a discard spell. Against the other top decks it is really good, often trading for a 2 mana or higher card which is some great tempo to make use of on an otherwise passed turn. I was up to 2x wails main and 2 more in the side at one point, but right now I prefer two in the main with no additional copies in the side. Spatial Contortion replaced the two copies in the side, for Mantis Rider, Spell Queller, and to bring in against Eldrazi Tron because we are siding out 8 cards (2x dust, 2x wail, 4x chalice). Contortion is also good against Taxes decks and affinity. I definitely prefer contortion to gut shot and I'm not sure why more people don't other than to copy what Sam Pardee I think ran in a large tournament.
Four chalice is really strong right now. In both paper and MODO the amount of wins Ive had where afterward the opponent revealed a hand of 1-drops is staggering. The only downside to running four maindeck chalice is it has collateral damage in only four of our own cards (and in a few corner cases our 2-drop Mind Stones and Wails). When you look at the matchups where a chalice on 1 is good, you're talking about the opponent having absurdly way more 1-drops than you, like 14-20+ copies to your 4, the percentage of games where you blank multiple cards from them is going to outweigh the times it happens with 1 or more expedition maps, by a large margin. You can also sequence around it as well. And on top of that the only time when it feels really bad is when you draw map after chalice and are also short on land drops to where that map is necessary. Sure it feels bad, but the odds of chalice benefiting us game 1 are greatly in our favor. And we get to throw all 4 copies away in matchups where chalice is bad after game 1. Its just too strong of a card to not make use of.
I have been playing MODO against recently for the first time since around Christmas (I was always playing paper 1-2x a week), and even though the deck is 'poorly positioned' if you look at the metashare, I have been doing pretty well and even had a 5-0 competitive league last night. I'll do a report of the league when I get time possibly this weekend and if not then next weekend, but for now here is the list I used for the 5-0:
I actually was an idiot and had a 14 card sideboard for it. What happened was I was lacking a second Grafdigger's copy and a second Wurmcoil or third All is Dust copy for the two slots I had warping wail taking up in the side. Right before I queued into the league I now remember I was starting to cut the wails, and realized that I was missing the cards I wanted to run and said '**** it, lets go' because it was late at night and I couldn't buy them. I must have removed a copy of wail sometime during all of this.
My ideal sideboard right now would have two Cages instead of one, and a Wurmcoil or All is Dust or even Ugin instead of the Warping Wail. But once Karn, Scion of Urza comes out that will change. I know I want him in the 75, 1-2 copies, but I don't know if it's maindeck or sideboard yet. My current thinking is it comes down to Warping Wail. Do I want 2x Wails maindeck and 2x New Karn in the side? Or swap them, and have Karns in maindeck and Wail in side? New Karn will be so good in slow, grindy, mid-range or control matchups, but will be pretty bad in aggressive, go-wide matchups where we want to be playing creatures every turn to keep up on the board.
man sounds like you know the deal. Good stuff. I agree with everything youve said. Perhaps chalice would be better as a 4 of but I havent had much luck with it at 4. I may go down to 2 mindstone and run a 2nd all is dust tho I am not to excited about going too heavy on cards that are too useless in many match ups which i hate clumping my hand with stuff like all is dust vs G-tron or the mirror.
Thank you for the reply alot of good info and things i have to consider. Im gonna start testing with the 4 ghost quarters as well bc i think you are right about that.
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Modern RUAffinityUR GMono Green StompyG CEldrazi TronC URWJeskai GeistWRU WRBoros BurnRW BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
I'd like to get a little talk about Karn, Scion of Urza going. Will he boot out his bigger self? Will we split Karns, 1 big/1 little? How many sounds good? Any thoughts all?
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
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Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I'd like to get a little talk about Karn, Scion of Urza going. Will he boot out his bigger self? Will we split Karns, 1 big/1 little? How many sounds good? Any thoughts all?
I really like what new Karn does for the deck, it smoothes out our clunky mana, whether we are flooding or bricking. It finds tron pieces and threats. The downside is it is a bit slow. How does new Karn help the humans, affinity, GX tron, and storm matchups? We are at risk of losing games against these decks before the card advantage takes over the game. Against affinity and humans, we need to be putting creatures down or using our mana on removal, where is the time to play a 4 mana walker when we are almost always playing catch up in board state? It feels pretty bad there. Against midrangey stuff and control, a new Karn that sticks should be amazing and take us over the top in terms of threats and cards. Also, imagine the upside of having T3 tron and playing new Karn + a reshaper to protect it. Or using mind stone ramp to play it T3 into an empty board. That sounds really good against certain decks. Basically my feelings are if Modern were a midrange and control-fest, Id put 2 in the maindeck instead of both Old Karn and Warping Wail to smoothe out the clunky draws. It would help find lands or threats, help activate tron, and give us card advantage before we can get to Endbringer. But if it's too wide creature/combo of a format, it might be 1-2x in the side for grindy matchups. There is certainly room in my sideboard for 2 copies if it performs as I think it would.
What it comes down to for me is how well Warping Wail maindeck performs in the matchups where we need it, specifically the ones I mentioned earlier; storm, affinity, humans, and GX tron. Wail performs really well here and is far from a literal dead card in other matchups like all is dust is. I can understand the philosophy of wanting to focus on 'our' gameplan game 1 and save Wail for the sideboard, in which case new Karn would fit two maindeck slots better, but I think Wail has a legitimate use in many tier 1-2 matchups. It costs 2 mana to new Karns 4, so it lowers the curve of the deck. It's a great tempo card, and gives us instant speed interaction which is often not expected from the deck. I guess I've always been wary of having too high of a curve with the deck, to minimize the games where I lose to bricking on lands and mulligans with unplayable hands.
I think it replaces old Karn entirely if you are running Ulamog in the deck, for permanent exile. I think old Karn had high variance, as we have all experienced, and new Karn is exactly the kind of card advantage this deck needs to keep up with the new beast that is Jund with BBE. But if you're on the 4 Bringer no Ulamog plan, then a 1/1 split of old and new karn could be totally fine. I would definitely want an answer to Ensnaring Bridge + Pithing Needle in my maindeck.
My list with New Karn maindeck would look like this:
As I said, it could easily be swapping the Karns and Wails between maindeck and side. It could also be 2 Grafdigger's Cage and 1 Karn in the side instead of 2 Karn and 1 Cage. I'm going to be testing him quite a bit when he comes out.
Against those quick decks we could always give Karn's -2 a shot. If played turn 3 or 4 we may already have 1 or 2 artifacts on the board. Combinations of Mind Stone, Map, Ballista, Chalice, Walker, Cage, Collar or Relic. A 3/3 creature with Karn at 3 loyalty on turn 3 or 4 could slow the tide against Humans or Affinity. Natural Tron on turn 3 with a Mind Stone and Map/Relic on the board could lead to a Karn, Reshaper and a 3/3 token creature if needed. I'm excited at the prospects and think what you said about running Little Karn over Big Karn with Ulamog sounds correct. I need to start play testing.
Lastly, would 2 baby Karn free up the Sea Gate Wreckage slot? Maybe for a 3rd Cavern or 3rd GQ or a Field of Ruin? Could 2 Baby Karn and -1 SGW free up a slot for a man land? Would Sanctum be necessary without big Karn then?
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Could Weatherlight bump out Batterskull for those who run it? How about in big or little Karn's slot? Thoughts? Would we be better off with a different vehicle instead or none at all?
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Against those quick decks we could always give Karn's -2 a shot. If played turn 3 or 4 we may already have 1 or 2 artifacts on the board. Combinations of Mind Stone, Map, Ballista, Chalice, Walker, Cage, Collar or Relic. A 3/3 creature with Karn at 3 loyalty on turn 3 or 4 could slow the tide against Humans or Affinity. Natural Tron on turn 3 with a Mind Stone and Map/Relic on the board could lead to a Karn, Reshaper and a 3/3 token creature if needed. I'm excited at the prospects and think what you said about running Little Karn over Big Karn with Ulamog sounds correct. I need to start play testing.
Lastly, would 2 baby Karn free up the Sea Gate Wreckage slot? Maybe for a 3rd Cavern or 3rd GQ or a Field of Ruin? Could 2 Baby Karn and -1 SGW free up a slot for a man land? Would Sanctum be necessary without big Karn then?
You bring up some good points on the -2 I hadn't thought about. It doesn't turn it into s good card against humans and affinity, but it does make it less of a liability. Even a 1/1 could chump a non-flyer to buy time for us to play bigger creatures the following turn.
I'm not sure about the sea gate slot. If Karns were in the maindeck, you would think we'd be at an empty hand less often. That slot could be a buried ruin or GQ/Field/Tec. Edge instead. I don't think we need 3 cavern, usually two is enough even through land destruction or spreading seas. I still like sanctum without big karn, I don't like the idea of running a 1-of ulamog with no way to tutor it to hand. There's also ridiculous utility in sanctum and I like that. With 2 new Karns I could definitely see less of a need on sea gate.
If Weatherlight wasn't historic cards, but rather ancient stirrings (or ancient stirrings that couldn't choose lands), it would be something that interested me. But as it is it's mostly "dig 5 for an artifact card". I think I would prefer both skysovereign and smugglers copter in that spot. The former helps more against flyer decks (affinity, taxes), and copter is really good for filtering extra lands. Colorless eldrazi stompy runs a 1-of copter maindeck to filter lands and dead SSG/serum powder mid to late game. With new Karn, may be copter is a good way to deal with the extra Karn draws. It also is good against flyers obviously, AND can be crewed with a Karn-2 token. I actually really like sound of 2 new Karn and 1 copter maindeck after this discussion.
Hmmh. Interesting discussion I too am looking forward to this.
I'm wondering. Is there somewhere a good explanation to why we run 24 lands? I'm pretty new to MTG/E-tron and I find that I have a lot of land draws when I would like a threat.
I don't own Caverns so I run 4 GQ and 3 Wastes (Ponza at kitchen table magic)
Hmmh. Interesting discussion I too am looking forward to this.
I'm wondering. Is there somewhere a good explanation to why we run 24 lands? I'm pretty new to MTG/E-tron and I find that I have a lot of land draws when I would like a threat.
I don't own Caverns so I run 4 GQ and 3 Wastes (Ponza at kitchen table magic)
We run 24 lands because we really want an average of 3 lands in our starting hand. With how high the curve of the deck is, if we didn't have eldrazi temple we'd probably go up to 25 lands to help make 4 land drops by turn 4. Our assembling of tron is far from consistent, and we don't have cards like ancient stirrings or 8x chromatic to dig for tron pieces/lands like GX tron does. 22-23 lands would start to feel pretty sketchy because a 1-2 land hand with no expedition map is really bad. You don't want to be hoping to rip 1 or more lands in your first few turns of the game.
The last 2 posts show why we could really use a decent colorless man-land. Keep us at 24 lands and give us an extra threat.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
E-tron had a pretty good showing at SCG Milwaukee this past weekend. Got a top 8 in the open as well as 1st and 7th place in the classic. It's still getting top 8's even though according to metashare data it's been falling off quite a bit since fall and early winter. Some of the downtick is because people are playing the new eldrazi FOTM in GR Eldraz, the fact that Grixis Shadow isn't the menace it was back then (E tron was one of the few decks that went toe to toe with GDS in it's prime), and the meta is becoming wider as a whole. Back in the fall the highest meta share decks were around 10%, whereas right now 5C Humans jut got bumped from 5% to 6% with a couple top 8's at Milwaukee as well (it also had the most day 2 decks along with Burn at 8). E tron still seems like as solid a choice as GR Eldrazi, the former having more variance and the latter being more consistent at ramping reshaper, TKS, and Smasher below curve.
Yep, E-Tron isn't going anywhere and as soon as Karn 2.0 comes out we may see a slight bump in play as well.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I like Karn, Scion of Urza because it seems to be the best explicit card advantage available to us.
Attacking BGx Midrange and Ux Control from a Planeswalker card advantage angle would be a boon in those matchups. But I don't think that it is necessarily what the deck needs.
From a deck building perspective, I am unsure if we need more Eldrazi disruption or a better battlefield stabilizing Eldrazi top-end.
I like to compare the Midrange Beatdown plans of ETron and U Merfolk.
(I've been playing U Merfolk for years and I understand its strengths and weakness better.)
(Yes I know it is possible for ETron to have a Big Mana B Plan)
U Merfolk could use more generic, disruption like Humans has access to in Kitesail Freebooter and Meddling Mage. The new Green Merfolk didn't bring better disruption, and frequently traded out Cursecatcher for Kumena's Speaker. It's one of the reasons UG Merfolk didn't succeed, while Humans did. Chalice of the Void and Thought-Knot Seer are super great, but I feel like U Merfolk, we could use a little more main-deckable generic disruption that is stapled to a creature, but is not activated by tapping the creature (so we can continue the beatdowns).
Master of Waves versus Endbringer. Endbringer gets replaced so often because it does not generate advantage on EtB. More importantly, 1 or 2 Endbringer activations do not end the game, whereas 1 or 2 attacks with Master of Waves frequently does. Master of Waves frequently stabilizes the board or swings the game, whereas Endbringer does not do that as quickly as I would like.
Karn, Scion of Urza does not disrupt nor immediately stabilize the board, explicitly, so I am currently not excited about it, but am mildly interested in testing 1 or 2 in the 75, as an affordable Planeswalker.
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Modern CETronC WUBGRHumansWUBGR UMerfolkU GUInfectGU RBGxDredgeRBGx
I'm starting my Masters in Comp Sci at NC State this fall, and know some Python, but am less certain on the stats part.
I know these Broken Hand classes do not seem to explicitly include t2 Thought-Knot Seer and t3 Reality Smasher, but I will do some digging with the code he posted and report back if I come to different conclusions.
What's up guys. Just had to come in and express my amazement that this deck is still not only seeing quite a bit of play (mostly in paper), but putting up good results as well. What is the motivation to play this deck now, when you have not only one (Affinity), but 2 (Humans) absolutely terrible matchups in the tier 1 bracket alone? BR Hollow One is unfavorable as well, and Jund is more difficult now that they have BBE. I could go on.
I'm not trying to come in here and crap on the deck or anything, I'm just legitimately confused. I played well over 1000 matches with this deck last year and had a lot of success but it just seems terrible to me right now from a competitive perspective. I'm assuming it's just a case of people playing the deck they have in paper, and running good/dodging the bad matchups. But this is not really sustainable of course. Sure, there can be weekends where it fluxes into a good position, but I can't see a good argument for playing it week in and week out like last year.
New Karn is cool to have access to, for sure, but it does nothing to improve the deck against the fast-and-wide strategies that are plaguing it right now.
Also, the Gx Tron matchup is interesting to me. It seems to be a consensus bad matchup, but are we sure it isn't one of those matchups that just feels bad but is actually fine? My record against it was 19-12, or 61%. Anyone else record data and can shine some light on this?
An early Chalice is often gamebreaking. They can get under or around it, yes, but in most cases it cripples them. A Ghost Quarter or 2 (esp combined with Surgical), TKS and Smasher beats gets the job done. Sometimes you can just assemble Tron before they do and Karn them, or play TKS and Reshaper on the same turn, etc.
Mono-G Tron is my deck of choice now so I'll be seeing the matchup from the other side, but it will take me a while to get a good sample size because E-Tron is pretty scarce online right now. So far I've played 219 matches and only seen E-tron twice, less than 1% of the matches.
You are mistaken about the matchups. Affinity isn't really a bad match because it depends on only a few threats (cranial, ravager, overseer, signal pest). It needs to resolve one of those and keep it around. Between spatial contortion, ratchet bomb, and pithing needle - we can make it very hard for them to get aggression going. Furthermore, affinity can't really answer our threats very well. Chalice on 0 on the play is devastating to affinity, as is a chalice on 2.
Eldrazi Tron has one of the better Humans matchups. Ratchet bombs, spatial contortion, and hangarback walker slow them up. Resolving an All is Dust, tron + ballista, or ballista + basilisk collar is pretty much game. Humans usually gets game 1, but game 2 and 3 are pretty favorable for Eldrazi Tron.
In addition, E Tron has a much better matchup versus burn, storm, and ponza than green tron.
You might be getting the impression that those are bad matchups because of the way E Tron lists used to be built when most other decks were dropping single threats. Take a look at some of the current lists that are winning (E-Tron had a pretty good weekend in Milwaukee) - you'll probably notice that Eldrazi Tron just has access to way more removal these days.
You are mistaken about the matchups. Affinity isn't really a bad match because it depends on only a few threats (cranial, ravager, overseer, signal pest). It needs to resolve one of those and keep it around. Between spatial contortion, ratchet bomb, and pithing needle - we can make it very hard for them to get aggression going. Furthermore, affinity can't really answer our threats very well. Chalice on 0 on the play is devastating to affinity, as is a chalice on 2.
Eldrazi Tron has one of the better Humans matchups. Ratchet bombs, spatial contortion, and hangarback walker slow them up. Resolving an All is Dust, tron + ballista, or ballista + basilisk collar is pretty much game. Humans usually gets game 1, but game 2 and 3 are pretty favorable for Eldrazi Tron.
In addition, E Tron has a much better matchup versus burn, storm, and ponza than green tron.
You might be getting the impression that those are bad matchups because of the way E Tron lists used to be built when most other decks were dropping single threats. Take a look at some of the current lists that are winning (E-Tron had a pretty good weekend in Milwaukee) - you'll probably notice that Eldrazi Tron just has access to way more removal these days.
Well, welcome to the forum, but I must say your first post is quite a perplexing one.
Affinity is most certainly a bad matchup. You will almost always lose game 1, and so you'll be forced to play game 3 on the draw, if you manage to get that far. Unless they have a slow start, Ratchet Bomb is too slow on the draw. Relying on Contortion/Wail/Needle to stop their onslaught is just not realistic. Can you get there? Of course. But it's an uphill battle for sure. What you're saying about them not being able to answer our threats is moot because they don't care about our threats. Their plan is to kill us before they matter. The Chalice plan is extremely tenuous against them as well. Chalice on 0 on the play is good, sure, but you have to both know they're on Affinity, and be on the play for that to work. In large tournaments or on Magic Online this can basically never occur in game 1, unless you happen to luck out and know for certain your opponent is on the deck, and even then you have to draw it in your opener! So a maximum once per match this can be a good play. Chalice on 2 can be good in certain circumstances, but given that it comes down at earliest on turn 3, usually turn 4, in most cases they'll already have an overwhelming board position and it will not help you. I played 44 matches against Affinity with a full suite of removal in the 75 and I won 15 of them. How many have you played?
Humans, again, you're a huge underdog in game 1, and then you want to rely on Ratchet Bomb on the draw in game 3? Almost all their threats cost 2+. Yeah, All Is Dust is great, but you only have 2 copies, but they have 4 Freebooter and 4 Meddling Mage at the ready to shut that down, not to mention Thalia, which taxes all the other spot removal as well. Even 3/3 Ballista turn 3 is not gonna be enough on the draw in many games. They just put too much power on the board too quickly, and you can't even expect to block because of Reflector Mage. The sideboard cards are not enough to swing it.
The only way I can see someone thinking these matchups are favorable or even not terrible is that they just don't have a large enough sample size. Hell, I lost 5+ matches in a row to Jund as green Tron recently. Variance happens. But if you play dozens and dozens of matches, there's just no way Eldrazi Tron has a positive record against Affinity or Humans.
Also, what you're saying about the decks being built differently now is just incorrect as well. Having access to multiple Ratchet Bombs, Warping Wails, Hangarback Walkers and Spatial Contortions has been the norm for at least 6 months.
It seems like you have chosen which deck to play based on the likelihood that deck goes infinite on the MODO meta. Not everyone is interested in the same thing; personally I play MODO as often as I can, but the reason I play it is to play much more than my schedule allows me to play paper, and to practice my deck against fringe decks or decks I would otherwise not face in my paper meta. I prefer to play the game in paper and in person, and use MODO as a tool to be better prepared for paper tournaments, which are my main focus. E tron has performed very well for me locally, my MATCH winrate in paper lifetime with the deck is 149-68, 68.7%. The reason I'm still on the deck is because it continues to perform well for me and I continue to win store credit, probably to the tune of at least a thousand dollars since I've been playing the deck in total. The humans matchup seems very far from unwinnable, and it feels pretty hyperbolic for you to say that game 1 against affinity (it is a terrible matchup though, stats don't lie) and humans is auto-loss. I've won SO many games against these decks by getting fast mana for an absurdly large ballista, an early all is dust, or a T4 ulamog into concession. Those decks do not interact with our lands or our assembling of tron, and a well above average eldrazi tron hand will beat an average to below average affinity or humans hand game 1. It seems you feel like your opponents will always have the nuts when you type so hyperbolic, whereas I am confident I can win games and matches against bad matchups thanks to variance.
GX tron has honestly only been performing better than E tron on MODO. Ive been watching both decks quite closely when it comes to paper tournament results; day 2 count, top 8 count, etc., both decks are pretty equally represented and GX tron has actually fallen out of recent Top 8's whereas E tron has been there. Why would this be when humans and affinity are auto-losses? How are people going X-2 or better in swiss with E tron if the field is so well lined up against it? I don't buy that E tron is a bad deck simply because of metashare percentage. I think E tron is so much more resilient to tron hate than GX tron. It doesn't get hosed by surgical or crumble, and both decks are pretty equally punished by multiple field of ruins/Quarters. Stony Silence and chalice aren't doing much against E tron compared to GX tron, and while GX tron will have an easier time removing dampening sphere, E tron doesn't care so much that it's on the battlefield. Ignoring all of those things, modern is a format where both your deck and your opponent's deck will not operate optimally every single game. It's a game of variance, sometimes your deck runs hot, sometimes you dodge bad matchups and sometimes you draw like a god and win those bad matchups anyway. If some dude can win an SCG tournament with KCI combo, why should I care that GX tron is SLIGHTLY better positioned at a tournament than a deck I have a blast playing and see a lot of success with? Another point which I like to make is that GX tron wins and loses by a wide margin sometimes, a bit too much for my taste. I like that E tron has close games, grindy games, plays as control and beat down, and has game against a massive amount of a wide open modern meta. I practice the bad matchups like crazy because I am super determined to overcome the odds and super stoked when I pull off a win rather than being sad or depressed that the deck that should beat mine did.
I honestly don't know where you are coming from, coming into the forum and trashing the deck that continues to put up results just because you have some bias against it. Is the reason you feel the need to do this because you wish you could play the deck but you can't because it can't go infinite on MODO? What else would it be? I've absolutely noticed a trend of you seeming to think your opinions are fact throughout our conversations here and this entire page of your posts is a resounding example of that attitude. It's pretty hard to have a constructive conversation with someone when they immediately dismiss your input with a scoff because it's so below their level of thinking, and that's the attitude I tend to get from you. It's one thing to bring up points as to why E tron may be worse, discussion is always great and it's why I post here, but to phrase it in such a condescending way as you have in these comments is ridiculous. And lastly, did you have to be such a dick to someone on literally their first post? Who cares that they said something that was wrong when they said affinity isn't a bad matchup, what the hell is the point in tearing them down rather than having a civil discussion? It kinds feels like you have an attitude toward E tron for whatever reason, and I don't know what the point of bringing it here is.
Mind Stone is really good right now, I ran up to 3 copies in a league but once I had two of them in an otherwise great opening hand I realized that's why we don't want too many copies. One is perfect to see in the opener, but anymore makes the hand do less and become too slow. I think it's perfect as a two-of.
The reason I'm wary of Batterskull in the 75 and Collar in the maindeck is one card. Ancient Grudge. It's everywhere right now, Dredge and Hollow One are milling into their own yards, Jund always seems to draw at least a copy post-board, etc. It's such a cheap answer to these cards. That, and a lot of removal meaning there's nothing to equip the collar with. However, if you are using 2x Collar in the 75, may as well be a 1/1 split so you can snag free wins off the Collar + Ballista or Bringer combo.
Since you don't have Caverns at the moment, going up to 4x Ghost Quarter to help against Affinity and GX Tron will be better than going up to 3 Sanctums. I've ran Sanctum of Ugin for a long time and played hundreds of matches with it and I can count on one hand the number of times where I would have wanted a second Sanctum of Ugin in a game, whereas there's been plenty of times I wish I had room for one or two more Ghost Quarters as I'm failing to naturally draw them early against Affinity and Tron.
Ugin is a card I really really like, but I'm pretty afraid of it being a dead card in hand because I fail to get tron active. The meta is looking prime for it though. I would prefer to have my 2x dust in the main and Ugin in the side for when he is so good it's worth being risky with how expensive he is.
Wails in the maindeck are also really good against a lot of Tier 1 and 2 decks, they have been for some months now. Previously the only deck they were 'bad' against game 1 was Grixis Shadow, now that deck is Jund. Except as you said, now it can be used to exile Bob, and can also be used in response to a Liliana downtick as a 'gotcha'. Can also counter a discard spell. Against the other top decks it is really good, often trading for a 2 mana or higher card which is some great tempo to make use of on an otherwise passed turn. I was up to 2x wails main and 2 more in the side at one point, but right now I prefer two in the main with no additional copies in the side. Spatial Contortion replaced the two copies in the side, for Mantis Rider, Spell Queller, and to bring in against Eldrazi Tron because we are siding out 8 cards (2x dust, 2x wail, 4x chalice). Contortion is also good against Taxes decks and affinity. I definitely prefer contortion to gut shot and I'm not sure why more people don't other than to copy what Sam Pardee I think ran in a large tournament.
Four chalice is really strong right now. In both paper and MODO the amount of wins Ive had where afterward the opponent revealed a hand of 1-drops is staggering. The only downside to running four maindeck chalice is it has collateral damage in only four of our own cards (and in a few corner cases our 2-drop Mind Stones and Wails). When you look at the matchups where a chalice on 1 is good, you're talking about the opponent having absurdly way more 1-drops than you, like 14-20+ copies to your 4, the percentage of games where you blank multiple cards from them is going to outweigh the times it happens with 1 or more expedition maps, by a large margin. You can also sequence around it as well. And on top of that the only time when it feels really bad is when you draw map after chalice and are also short on land drops to where that map is necessary. Sure it feels bad, but the odds of chalice benefiting us game 1 are greatly in our favor. And we get to throw all 4 copies away in matchups where chalice is bad after game 1. Its just too strong of a card to not make use of.
I have been playing MODO against recently for the first time since around Christmas (I was always playing paper 1-2x a week), and even though the deck is 'poorly positioned' if you look at the metashare, I have been doing pretty well and even had a 5-0 competitive league last night. I'll do a report of the league when I get time possibly this weekend and if not then next weekend, but for now here is the list I used for the 5-0:
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Artifacts [10]
2 Mind Stone
4 Expedition Map
4 Chalice of the Void
Spells [6]
2 Dismember
2 All Is Dust
2 Warping Wail
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Warping Wail
I actually was an idiot and had a 14 card sideboard for it. What happened was I was lacking a second Grafdigger's copy and a second Wurmcoil or third All is Dust copy for the two slots I had warping wail taking up in the side. Right before I queued into the league I now remember I was starting to cut the wails, and realized that I was missing the cards I wanted to run and said '**** it, lets go' because it was late at night and I couldn't buy them. I must have removed a copy of wail sometime during all of this.
My ideal sideboard right now would have two Cages instead of one, and a Wurmcoil or All is Dust or even Ugin instead of the Warping Wail. But once Karn, Scion of Urza comes out that will change. I know I want him in the 75, 1-2 copies, but I don't know if it's maindeck or sideboard yet. My current thinking is it comes down to Warping Wail. Do I want 2x Wails maindeck and 2x New Karn in the side? Or swap them, and have Karns in maindeck and Wail in side? New Karn will be so good in slow, grindy, mid-range or control matchups, but will be pretty bad in aggressive, go-wide matchups where we want to be playing creatures every turn to keep up on the board.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
Thank you for the reply alot of good info and things i have to consider. Im gonna start testing with the 4 ghost quarters as well bc i think you are right about that.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I really like what new Karn does for the deck, it smoothes out our clunky mana, whether we are flooding or bricking. It finds tron pieces and threats. The downside is it is a bit slow. How does new Karn help the humans, affinity, GX tron, and storm matchups? We are at risk of losing games against these decks before the card advantage takes over the game. Against affinity and humans, we need to be putting creatures down or using our mana on removal, where is the time to play a 4 mana walker when we are almost always playing catch up in board state? It feels pretty bad there. Against midrangey stuff and control, a new Karn that sticks should be amazing and take us over the top in terms of threats and cards. Also, imagine the upside of having T3 tron and playing new Karn + a reshaper to protect it. Or using mind stone ramp to play it T3 into an empty board. That sounds really good against certain decks. Basically my feelings are if Modern were a midrange and control-fest, Id put 2 in the maindeck instead of both Old Karn and Warping Wail to smoothe out the clunky draws. It would help find lands or threats, help activate tron, and give us card advantage before we can get to Endbringer. But if it's too wide creature/combo of a format, it might be 1-2x in the side for grindy matchups. There is certainly room in my sideboard for 2 copies if it performs as I think it would.
What it comes down to for me is how well Warping Wail maindeck performs in the matchups where we need it, specifically the ones I mentioned earlier; storm, affinity, humans, and GX tron. Wail performs really well here and is far from a literal dead card in other matchups like all is dust is. I can understand the philosophy of wanting to focus on 'our' gameplan game 1 and save Wail for the sideboard, in which case new Karn would fit two maindeck slots better, but I think Wail has a legitimate use in many tier 1-2 matchups. It costs 2 mana to new Karns 4, so it lowers the curve of the deck. It's a great tempo card, and gives us instant speed interaction which is often not expected from the deck. I guess I've always been wary of having too high of a curve with the deck, to minimize the games where I lose to bricking on lands and mulligans with unplayable hands.
I think it replaces old Karn entirely if you are running Ulamog in the deck, for permanent exile. I think old Karn had high variance, as we have all experienced, and new Karn is exactly the kind of card advantage this deck needs to keep up with the new beast that is Jund with BBE. But if you're on the 4 Bringer no Ulamog plan, then a 1/1 split of old and new karn could be totally fine. I would definitely want an answer to Ensnaring Bridge + Pithing Needle in my maindeck.
My list with New Karn maindeck would look like this:
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Artifacts [10]
2 Mind Stone
4 Expedition Map
4 Chalice of the Void
Spells [4]
2 Dismember
2 All Is Dust
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
Lands [24]
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Warping Wail
As I said, it could easily be swapping the Karns and Wails between maindeck and side. It could also be 2 Grafdigger's Cage and 1 Karn in the side instead of 2 Karn and 1 Cage. I'm going to be testing him quite a bit when he comes out.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
Against those quick decks we could always give Karn's -2 a shot. If played turn 3 or 4 we may already have 1 or 2 artifacts on the board. Combinations of Mind Stone, Map, Ballista, Chalice, Walker, Cage, Collar or Relic. A 3/3 creature with Karn at 3 loyalty on turn 3 or 4 could slow the tide against Humans or Affinity. Natural Tron on turn 3 with a Mind Stone and Map/Relic on the board could lead to a Karn, Reshaper and a 3/3 token creature if needed. I'm excited at the prospects and think what you said about running Little Karn over Big Karn with Ulamog sounds correct. I need to start play testing.
Lastly, would 2 baby Karn free up the Sea Gate Wreckage slot? Maybe for a 3rd Cavern or 3rd GQ or a Field of Ruin? Could 2 Baby Karn and -1 SGW free up a slot for a man land? Would Sanctum be necessary without big Karn then?
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
You bring up some good points on the -2 I hadn't thought about. It doesn't turn it into s good card against humans and affinity, but it does make it less of a liability. Even a 1/1 could chump a non-flyer to buy time for us to play bigger creatures the following turn.
I'm not sure about the sea gate slot. If Karns were in the maindeck, you would think we'd be at an empty hand less often. That slot could be a buried ruin or GQ/Field/Tec. Edge instead. I don't think we need 3 cavern, usually two is enough even through land destruction or spreading seas. I still like sanctum without big karn, I don't like the idea of running a 1-of ulamog with no way to tutor it to hand. There's also ridiculous utility in sanctum and I like that. With 2 new Karns I could definitely see less of a need on sea gate.
If Weatherlight wasn't historic cards, but rather ancient stirrings (or ancient stirrings that couldn't choose lands), it would be something that interested me. But as it is it's mostly "dig 5 for an artifact card". I think I would prefer both skysovereign and smugglers copter in that spot. The former helps more against flyer decks (affinity, taxes), and copter is really good for filtering extra lands. Colorless eldrazi stompy runs a 1-of copter maindeck to filter lands and dead SSG/serum powder mid to late game. With new Karn, may be copter is a good way to deal with the extra Karn draws. It also is good against flyers obviously, AND can be crewed with a Karn-2 token. I actually really like sound of 2 new Karn and 1 copter maindeck after this discussion.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
^ I second that!
I'm wondering. Is there somewhere a good explanation to why we run 24 lands? I'm pretty new to MTG/E-tron and I find that I have a lot of land draws when I would like a threat.
I don't own Caverns so I run 4 GQ and 3 Wastes (Ponza at kitchen table magic)
We run 24 lands because we really want an average of 3 lands in our starting hand. With how high the curve of the deck is, if we didn't have eldrazi temple we'd probably go up to 25 lands to help make 4 land drops by turn 4. Our assembling of tron is far from consistent, and we don't have cards like ancient stirrings or 8x chromatic to dig for tron pieces/lands like GX tron does. 22-23 lands would start to feel pretty sketchy because a 1-2 land hand with no expedition map is really bad. You don't want to be hoping to rip 1 or more lands in your first few turns of the game.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Attacking BGx Midrange and Ux Control from a Planeswalker card advantage angle would be a boon in those matchups. But I don't think that it is necessarily what the deck needs.
From a deck building perspective, I am unsure if we need more Eldrazi disruption or a better battlefield stabilizing Eldrazi top-end.
I like to compare the Midrange Beatdown plans of ETron and U Merfolk.
(I've been playing U Merfolk for years and I understand its strengths and weakness better.)
(Yes I know it is possible for ETron to have a Big Mana B Plan)
U Merfolk could use more generic, disruption like Humans has access to in Kitesail Freebooter and Meddling Mage. The new Green Merfolk didn't bring better disruption, and frequently traded out Cursecatcher for Kumena's Speaker. It's one of the reasons UG Merfolk didn't succeed, while Humans did. Chalice of the Void and Thought-Knot Seer are super great, but I feel like U Merfolk, we could use a little more main-deckable generic disruption that is stapled to a creature, but is not activated by tapping the creature (so we can continue the beatdowns).
Master of Waves versus Endbringer. Endbringer gets replaced so often because it does not generate advantage on EtB. More importantly, 1 or 2 Endbringer activations do not end the game, whereas 1 or 2 attacks with Master of Waves frequently does. Master of Waves frequently stabilizes the board or swings the game, whereas Endbringer does not do that as quickly as I would like.
Karn, Scion of Urza does not disrupt nor immediately stabilize the board, explicitly, so I am currently not excited about it, but am mildly interested in testing 1 or 2 in the 75, as an affordable Planeswalker.
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxhttp://wiresandstarlings.tumblr.com/post/171334677044/when-i-get-to-california-im-gonna-write-my-name
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/you-probably-dont-mulligan-enough/
source code: https://github.com/nalkpas/hand-simulator
Articles and source code author: Allen Wu
Big take-away:
"if you’re willing to mulligan to 5 looking for a great hand, you’ll get one over 90% of the time."
Classes of Broken hands (great hands mentioned above) used in simulation:
- Tron
- Chalice of the Void + 2 lands
- t3 Thought-Knot Seer
- t2 Matter Reshaper
- 2 Eldrazi Temple + Spell
Simulation assumes a typical 24 Etron land base.
I'm starting my Masters in Comp Sci at NC State this fall, and know some Python, but am less certain on the stats part.
I know these Broken Hand classes do not seem to explicitly include t2 Thought-Knot Seer and t3 Reality Smasher, but I will do some digging with the code he posted and report back if I come to different conclusions.
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxI'm not trying to come in here and crap on the deck or anything, I'm just legitimately confused. I played well over 1000 matches with this deck last year and had a lot of success but it just seems terrible to me right now from a competitive perspective. I'm assuming it's just a case of people playing the deck they have in paper, and running good/dodging the bad matchups. But this is not really sustainable of course. Sure, there can be weekends where it fluxes into a good position, but I can't see a good argument for playing it week in and week out like last year.
New Karn is cool to have access to, for sure, but it does nothing to improve the deck against the fast-and-wide strategies that are plaguing it right now.
An early Chalice is often gamebreaking. They can get under or around it, yes, but in most cases it cripples them. A Ghost Quarter or 2 (esp combined with Surgical), TKS and Smasher beats gets the job done. Sometimes you can just assemble Tron before they do and Karn them, or play TKS and Reshaper on the same turn, etc.
Mono-G Tron is my deck of choice now so I'll be seeing the matchup from the other side, but it will take me a while to get a good sample size because E-Tron is pretty scarce online right now. So far I've played 219 matches and only seen E-tron twice, less than 1% of the matches.
Eldrazi Tron has one of the better Humans matchups. Ratchet bombs, spatial contortion, and hangarback walker slow them up. Resolving an All is Dust, tron + ballista, or ballista + basilisk collar is pretty much game. Humans usually gets game 1, but game 2 and 3 are pretty favorable for Eldrazi Tron.
In addition, E Tron has a much better matchup versus burn, storm, and ponza than green tron.
You might be getting the impression that those are bad matchups because of the way E Tron lists used to be built when most other decks were dropping single threats. Take a look at some of the current lists that are winning (E-Tron had a pretty good weekend in Milwaukee) - you'll probably notice that Eldrazi Tron just has access to way more removal these days.
Affinity is most certainly a bad matchup. You will almost always lose game 1, and so you'll be forced to play game 3 on the draw, if you manage to get that far. Unless they have a slow start, Ratchet Bomb is too slow on the draw. Relying on Contortion/Wail/Needle to stop their onslaught is just not realistic. Can you get there? Of course. But it's an uphill battle for sure. What you're saying about them not being able to answer our threats is moot because they don't care about our threats. Their plan is to kill us before they matter. The Chalice plan is extremely tenuous against them as well. Chalice on 0 on the play is good, sure, but you have to both know they're on Affinity, and be on the play for that to work. In large tournaments or on Magic Online this can basically never occur in game 1, unless you happen to luck out and know for certain your opponent is on the deck, and even then you have to draw it in your opener! So a maximum once per match this can be a good play. Chalice on 2 can be good in certain circumstances, but given that it comes down at earliest on turn 3, usually turn 4, in most cases they'll already have an overwhelming board position and it will not help you. I played 44 matches against Affinity with a full suite of removal in the 75 and I won 15 of them. How many have you played?
Humans, again, you're a huge underdog in game 1, and then you want to rely on Ratchet Bomb on the draw in game 3? Almost all their threats cost 2+. Yeah, All Is Dust is great, but you only have 2 copies, but they have 4 Freebooter and 4 Meddling Mage at the ready to shut that down, not to mention Thalia, which taxes all the other spot removal as well. Even 3/3 Ballista turn 3 is not gonna be enough on the draw in many games. They just put too much power on the board too quickly, and you can't even expect to block because of Reflector Mage. The sideboard cards are not enough to swing it.
The only way I can see someone thinking these matchups are favorable or even not terrible is that they just don't have a large enough sample size. Hell, I lost 5+ matches in a row to Jund as green Tron recently. Variance happens. But if you play dozens and dozens of matches, there's just no way Eldrazi Tron has a positive record against Affinity or Humans.
Also, what you're saying about the decks being built differently now is just incorrect as well. Having access to multiple Ratchet Bombs, Warping Wails, Hangarback Walkers and Spatial Contortions has been the norm for at least 6 months.
GX tron has honestly only been performing better than E tron on MODO. Ive been watching both decks quite closely when it comes to paper tournament results; day 2 count, top 8 count, etc., both decks are pretty equally represented and GX tron has actually fallen out of recent Top 8's whereas E tron has been there. Why would this be when humans and affinity are auto-losses? How are people going X-2 or better in swiss with E tron if the field is so well lined up against it? I don't buy that E tron is a bad deck simply because of metashare percentage. I think E tron is so much more resilient to tron hate than GX tron. It doesn't get hosed by surgical or crumble, and both decks are pretty equally punished by multiple field of ruins/Quarters. Stony Silence and chalice aren't doing much against E tron compared to GX tron, and while GX tron will have an easier time removing dampening sphere, E tron doesn't care so much that it's on the battlefield. Ignoring all of those things, modern is a format where both your deck and your opponent's deck will not operate optimally every single game. It's a game of variance, sometimes your deck runs hot, sometimes you dodge bad matchups and sometimes you draw like a god and win those bad matchups anyway. If some dude can win an SCG tournament with KCI combo, why should I care that GX tron is SLIGHTLY better positioned at a tournament than a deck I have a blast playing and see a lot of success with? Another point which I like to make is that GX tron wins and loses by a wide margin sometimes, a bit too much for my taste. I like that E tron has close games, grindy games, plays as control and beat down, and has game against a massive amount of a wide open modern meta. I practice the bad matchups like crazy because I am super determined to overcome the odds and super stoked when I pull off a win rather than being sad or depressed that the deck that should beat mine did.
I honestly don't know where you are coming from, coming into the forum and trashing the deck that continues to put up results just because you have some bias against it. Is the reason you feel the need to do this because you wish you could play the deck but you can't because it can't go infinite on MODO? What else would it be? I've absolutely noticed a trend of you seeming to think your opinions are fact throughout our conversations here and this entire page of your posts is a resounding example of that attitude. It's pretty hard to have a constructive conversation with someone when they immediately dismiss your input with a scoff because it's so below their level of thinking, and that's the attitude I tend to get from you. It's one thing to bring up points as to why E tron may be worse, discussion is always great and it's why I post here, but to phrase it in such a condescending way as you have in these comments is ridiculous. And lastly, did you have to be such a dick to someone on literally their first post? Who cares that they said something that was wrong when they said affinity isn't a bad matchup, what the hell is the point in tearing them down rather than having a civil discussion? It kinds feels like you have an attitude toward E tron for whatever reason, and I don't know what the point of bringing it here is.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR