They still have titans to beat face with so its not quite a beat down.
True, but without Valakut, Titan is just a 6/6 and we should have no problem dealing with it. I used to run 4x Leyline of the Void maindeck in Tron (this was years ago, back when Storm and Valakut were huge) and as long as I had a Leyline in play I really wasn't afraid at all of their Primeval Titans.
I'm having trouble deciding what I think about Karn in our deck. There's a number of cards we could put in the sideboard to wish up with them, but he's also rather slow in that way. It'd be great to think he grab a Walking Ballista, Perilous Vault/Oblivion Stone, Wurmcoil Engine/Batterskull, or anything else as the case might be, but doing so is slow going.
I'm more worried about opposing decks running it. It seems like it goes nicely into Lantern Control or Whir Prison, meaning our matchups against them go down considerably thanks to the maindeck Stony Silence. The good news is that it doesn't come into play as quickly as Stony Silence, so you can probably get through your Chromatics and Maps, but it makes future draws of them useless while also preventing you from using Oblivion Stone, a critical card against them. Granted, they'd usually name it with a Spyglass or Needle anyway, but Karn means they can use that Needle/Spyglass on something else.
Anyone have any SB tech options vs Whir Prison? It's too bad that Creeping Corrosion doesn't have the anti-regenerate clause. Was wondering if you guys had any other viable options.
There's not really that much tech for the matchup because our deck is basically already anti-Whir Prison tech. It's a stellar matchup. They don't have enough Spyglasses to cover everything, so unless they manage to put together the Tectonic Edge+Crucible of Worlds combo fast enough and prevent you from thwarting it with a Relic of Progenitus, the first game is yours. Even in the second all they can really do is hope to beat you down with Sai or kill you with Tezzeret before you break your way through their defenses.
Interesting perspective; in my experience the matchup isn't very good at all. You missed a couple key points I think - the 4 maindeck Chalice of the Void is not a good time for us, especially with 4 Welding Jar to keep it around if we manage to slip O-Stone past Spyglass. And 4 Whir of Invention with the maindeck Damping Sphere, giving them effectively 5 copies of it. Same goes for Spyglass of which they have 2 main and 2 more in the sideboard. 4 is definitely enough to cover everything, but even in game 1 they really only need 1 quickly to shut off O-Stone which then buys them tons of time to set the lock up further. They have all the tools to shut down our gameplan, and given how redundant/full of tutors the deck is, I think they'll succeed more often than not. Currently my record in the matchup is 4-6.
It's true Chalice is annoying, but again their lack of clock means we have a whole lot of time to find an answer to it, it's not like EldraziTron where you have to worry about getting beaten down by Reality Smashers in the meantime. Damping Sphere has the same problem Blood Moon often has against us, which is that if not backed up with a clock it doesn't really accomplish much.
I'll admit, I only played against it once (in which I had a fairly decisive, albeit slow, victory). But I know someone who plays the prison deck and he says that Tron is one of his worst matchups.
Anyone have any SB tech options vs Whir Prison? It's too bad that Creeping Corrosion doesn't have the anti-regenerate clause. Was wondering if you guys had any other viable options.
There's not really that much tech for the matchup because our deck is basically already anti-Whir Prison tech. It's a stellar matchup. They don't have enough Spyglasses to cover everything, so unless they manage to put together the Tectonic Edge+Crucible of Worlds combo fast enough and prevent you from thwarting it with a Relic of Progenitus, the first game is yours. Even in the second all they can really do is hope to beat you down with Sai or kill you with Tezzeret before you break your way through their defenses.
But if you're really looking for something to make the matchup even better, try Orbs of Warding. As noted, their main threats are Tezzeret and Sai, but while it's in play Tezzeret can't ultimate and neither Sai nor his tokens can hurt you. The card's also good against Valakut, Burn, and Storm.
If Counterspell is the limit of riskiness that Wizards is willing to do, that's pretty sad. I mean, 1 whole set just to let in a single card that most players know is fine? This is just a glacially (to quote my friends here) slow way to do things.
I feel like you just offered an argument to not reprint it. Endlessly recurrable Snapcaster Mages? Only reliably stopped by land destruction? Sounds extremely risky.
I predict they'll take a cautious approach to this set. Counterspell is probably the limit of riskiness they'll be willing to engage in.
Hey, remember how there were people who would swear up and down that Jace was so broken that if unbanned, every Blue deck in the format would play him? Yep, he's sure dominating all right. Look at all those Blue decks that are totally running Jace.
Yeah, I know that was a long time ago, but I still want to laugh about it.
It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.
How do you guys think the BB in Bedevil will affect its Modern play? I feel like Wizards may have given it BBR instead of 1BR to attempt to make it tougher in Modern to play, but it ends up just hurting its play in Standard much more, right? Maybe I'm off.
It's BBR because Hero's Downfall was 1BB, which already had double Black. The colorless was replaced with the more narrow Red to compensate for the fact this was a more powerful effect.
IME Tron vs Mardu Pyromancer is 90/10, or pretty damn close. Oliver Tiu said this as well, as someone with a lot of experience with Mardu. He actually took the Molten Rains out of his deck because it just didn't translate to winning any more games, and I've found this to be the case from the Tron side. But I don't know of any other matchups that are that extreme. I still beat Infect 25% of the time as Tron.
Actually, Mill vs Tron might be 90/10 in Mill's favor, but thankfully I don't have a large enough sample size to say that with confidence.
Mardu Pyromancer vs. Tron isn't good, but it's sure as heck not 90/10. The deck had easy access to the hate cards that hurt Tron considerably, and Fulminator Mage combines nicely with Kolaghan's Command to keep Tron down.
Mill vs Tron is really awful, though, unless you packed one of the original Eldrazi in your deck (most likely sideboard); playing one of those singlehandedly swings games slightly into Tron's favor. Back when Emrakul, the Aeons Torn was a staple in Tron, Mill was actually a positive matchup (and if you were running original Ulamog also, as some did, it was a nearly unwinnable matchup for Mill). Unfortunately, nowadays the original Eldrazi are fairly unimpressive in Tron against anything that's not Mill, so there's not much incentive to run them normally.
Its CMC at 4 (though push is less played than it used to be).
Its counting exile. (As MaRo use to say, if you start treating exile as another GY, we all lose out. Now we need to *shuffle* the GY?)
Add to it that it draws you a card if it resolves... fortunately, its mana cost is a bit unwieldy, but not even much given fetches. It not OP, but just piles multiple annoying bits. If someone builds a pact of negation + temur battle rage version, then I will rage quit.
Remove any of those and the card would likely be unplayable.
I'm more worried about opposing decks running it. It seems like it goes nicely into Lantern Control or Whir Prison, meaning our matchups against them go down considerably thanks to the maindeck Stony Silence. The good news is that it doesn't come into play as quickly as Stony Silence, so you can probably get through your Chromatics and Maps, but it makes future draws of them useless while also preventing you from using Oblivion Stone, a critical card against them. Granted, they'd usually name it with a Spyglass or Needle anyway, but Karn means they can use that Needle/Spyglass on something else.
It's true Chalice is annoying, but again their lack of clock means we have a whole lot of time to find an answer to it, it's not like EldraziTron where you have to worry about getting beaten down by Reality Smashers in the meantime. Damping Sphere has the same problem Blood Moon often has against us, which is that if not backed up with a clock it doesn't really accomplish much.
I'll admit, I only played against it once (in which I had a fairly decisive, albeit slow, victory). But I know someone who plays the prison deck and he says that Tron is one of his worst matchups.
But if you're really looking for something to make the matchup even better, try Orbs of Warding. As noted, their main threats are Tezzeret and Sai, but while it's in play Tezzeret can't ultimate and neither Sai nor his tokens can hurt you. The card's also good against Valakut, Burn, and Storm.
...uh-oh. What if Careful Study is in Modern Horizons?
I predict they'll take a cautious approach to this set. Counterspell is probably the limit of riskiness they'll be willing to engage in.
Hey, remember how there were people who would swear up and down that Jace was so broken that if unbanned, every Blue deck in the format would play him? Yep, he's sure dominating all right. Look at all those Blue decks that are totally running Jace.
Yeah, I know that was a long time ago, but I still want to laugh about it.
Mill vs Tron is really awful, though, unless you packed one of the original Eldrazi in your deck (most likely sideboard); playing one of those singlehandedly swings games slightly into Tron's favor. Back when Emrakul, the Aeons Torn was a staple in Tron, Mill was actually a positive matchup (and if you were running original Ulamog also, as some did, it was a nearly unwinnable matchup for Mill). Unfortunately, nowadays the original Eldrazi are fairly unimpressive in Tron against anything that's not Mill, so there's not much incentive to run them normally.