Do you guys prefer to side graveyard hate in or leave them for Karn to fetch against decks where you'd want Tormod's Crypt and Grafdigger's cage
I'm main decking to Relic of progenitus, I'm just curious what you prefer.
Would you rather be able to hit a Tormod's Crypt before having Tron or Karn in play? or do would you rather find Karn (which there's a better chance of) so you can fetch them af few turns later?
If I'm running 2 relic maindeck and 1 grafdiggers cage and 1-2 surgical in the side then what I do is move all hate to the maindeck after game 1 except move 1 relic to the side to leave as a wish target. This is because cage is a better turn 1 play. I'm not using tormods crypt in my build but that I could see going maindeck or as a wish target post board.
That's interesting. I don't see O-stone as a lock in my wishboard because I'm on 3 maindeck in my build and I feel I can move one to the side post-board for access to wishing it. I prefer that because I have many more cards in my wish board than you do and slots are extremely tight.
I originally thought ballista was a lock, but now I'm certain that a creature is a lock but I'm changing whether that creature is ballista or spellskite. Spellskite often blocks better than ballista (if you're wishing it on turn 3 with 3 mana left) and skite is a silver bullet in a few matchups. I'm currently seeing infect in local paper tournies so skite is getting the nod right now.
Grafdigger's cage is my lock for my graveyard hate slot. I typically will move cage to my maindeck postboard against dredge to hit it turn 1, and move a relic to the side as a wish target late. My sideboard also includes 1 surgical extraction so postboard I have 1 relic, 1 surgical, and 1 cage in my maindeck to hit early and I have 1 relic in my board as a wish target.
Lattice is definitely a lock as it's a 6 mana better than ulamog card a lot of the time.
Witchbane orb is something I've flipped back and forth on. Sometimes the 4th mana cost makes it feel bad and too slow, other times it's turn 4 against titanshift and I really wish I had the witchbane in there because it would have lined up perfectly. Ive also beaten mill because they couldn't target me with their spells or (some) of their triggers anymore.
Ensnaring bridge is absolutely a lock in my list at the moment. Before creator karn was printed I was VERY off of this card as I didn't see how it worked with the tron shell. But in practice, boy it does work. Early game against phoenix, titan, shadow; later against humans once you empty your hand more. It's been pretty important in spots for me to protect creator so I can lattice lock next turn with creatures on the board.
Trinisphere has been my single best performing card thus far. It has won multiple times more games singlehandedly than any other card. Other than the obvious times (infect, phoenix) the card is EXTREMELY punishing to modern decks that operate on low land counts or miss land drops early. A lot of times the trinisphere tells the opponent "you have 1 turn to use at least 3 mana on a spell to stop me from latticing you next turn and locking you out of the game with your empty board state" and if they don't have a card, which they likely won't or likely can't pay the mana tax, it's a free win basically. I've used this card against way more of the field than I anticipated because it's great in spots where the opponent can't pay the tax regardless of what deck they are.
One more card that isn't a lock but is proving really well is sorcerous spyglass. Looking at the hand of control players at a 2 mana cost is pretty good; considering I've cut TKS for my list for better combo hate cards like trinisphere. You can shut off planewalkers from bgx or UWx, it's good against robot varieties,field of ruin,the mirror,and griselbrand to name a few. I feel like I'm forgetting some other utility of this card as well.
So I've tried both a small wish board (6 cards) and large (9-10) cards and Liquimetal Coating usually makes the cut in the latter but no the former. The first turn it comes down it shuts off a land on the opponents turn with creator's passive (weak to lightning bolt out of titan decks) but that one turn can mean everything againt titan or the mirror. Coating becomes absurd the following turn, when you can then turn the opponent's land into an artifact and then uptick on it with creator to turn it into a 0/0 creature and kill it. So basically you can make a makeshift karn liberated that eats lands and have 8 copies of karn in the mirror (or use the coating 1 time to shut them off karn while you lattice the next turn). The popularity of tron right now and the prevalence of the mirror are reason to include this card in larger wish boards. 8 karns in the mirror is good.
Crucible is a great card and I ran one in my side pre-wishboard testing quite often. I started with one in my wish board but in testing I'm not sure I like how it played out. Against the two decks I want crucible (bgx and uwx), i found a turn 4 creator on 4 mana into tutoring crucible was just not doing anything. Before, I could play the crucible on turn 3 against bgx or I could bait uwx into countering a 1 mana ancient stirrings on turn 4 to easily resolve crucible there. crucible coming down 2 turns slower against bgx is not helpful, and trying to resolve crucible against uwx in this scenario is more difficult as well. With how tight my sideboard list is, I'm just not sure if this card is making enough impact to deserve a slot as a wish target when other options are more powerful.
So here's where I'm at with testing. My maindeck is identical whether I'm doing a small or large wishboard:
12 tron land
4 forest
1 ghost quarter
1 sanctum of ugin
1 blast zone (hands down the best colorless utility land we have access too and the only one that gives green producing Horizon Canopy competition for the slot)
With this build I'm keeping spot removal in because I don't want to auto lose to infect, devoted druid, etc. Pretty much swapping tks in the board for silver bullets against different combo decks.
Losing spot removal and a thragtusk to have more turn 3 wish targets against the field and have witchbane against titan, burn, mill, etc. Also walking ballista is a great card turn 3 and later but again I prefer skite if I'm using a smaller wish board, at least right now.
There's lots of testing and practicing to be done but I feel like the minimalistic wish board replacing TKS with silver bullets has some real legs. It lowers the curve of the maindeck a good bit, gives us a maindeck threat against blood moon in creator, and gives us a one sided stony silence which is super nice against all kinds of decks. It's really hard to say with any certainty whether this build or the traditional build is better right now, but I think they are within small percentage points of one another regardless so there's a lot to be gained in testing this new configuration when we know what we have in the traditional build and we know how to pilot it.
What were both your sideboards? I'm deciding between one board with 7 wish targets and 3 thrag 3 claim 2 dismember; or one minus the dismembers and plus 2 more wish targets. What wish targets do you guys find are locks for slot, and which are fringe or don't quite make the cut? Thoughts on o-stone taking up a wish slot? Witchbane? Ballista? Crucible?
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.
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.
I reached a lot of the same conclusions as I was building a list; eldrazi tron, when built ideally, uses mind stone and scion of Urza and other cards to be the dominant midrange strategy. But right now decks are so fast that midrange hardly exists. If I can't pkay mind stone or scion of Urza maindeck then I don't think e tron is where i want to be, the deck becomes quite clunky without cards like those to smoothe the curve out.
When I look at sideboarding plans it feels even clunkier. Using storm as an example (even though it's not very prevalent atm), chalice on 1 and 2 both do serious work but so do a lot of our 1 and 2 drop sideboard cards. It's not smoothe at all. E tron is the midrange king but I don't think midrange is good right now and chalice alone can't carry the deck.
Hey guys, I just finished writing a new primer after the previous OP was deleted due to the EU regulations stuff. I've been playing the deck regularly for the past couple weeks and it's been fun. I mostly made the switch from Gx Tron because Burn is super popular online right now and I wanted a better matchup. I wouldn't say the deck is in a great position right now - it kinda got left in the dust after 2018 brought so many wide and fast decks plus powerups for midrange and control, but it's better than it's been in a while with Burn, UR Phoenix and Grixis Shadow all among the top decks and Chalice being very good against them.
What kind of list are you running with? Im considering going back to E tron momentarily. I do like Arch over sea gate, seems like a decent swap to me. How do you feel about 23/24 lands, mind stone count, and baby Karn count? I'm also liking 1/1 splits of both wurm and collar in the main/side.
Prison brew with land destruction (win 2-1)
(I lost the first match because 1) mb bmoon and 2)although I got o-stone, he kept destroying my lands so in the end I only had 4 mana and he beat me down with his creatures.
Jund (win 2-0)
B/G Rock (Win 2-0)
Classic Affinity (Win 2-1)
Top 8 was: 2 mono-G tron (including me), GDS, classic affinity, Ponza, mono-blue living end, dredge and 1 other which I do not know.
Top 8
R1: Ponza (win 2-1): the one match up I didn’t want to face.
G1 I lost.
G2 I managed to cut him off of red early thanks to WB, which left him stranded with 3 BBE in his hand.
G3 was a nailbiter, we both made mistakes. My mistake was that when I was at 1 I should not have attacked with wurmcoil because he had 2 attackers (he had a bbe and tireless tracker). His mistake was after that he played bmoon but didn’t crack a fetch before playing it which would have generated a clue, he could’ve sac the clue for tracker and attack for lethal(after my swing with wurmcoil). I managed to get there in the end.
R2: Classic affinity (0-2)
G1-mulled to 6 but kept a hand with 2x ballista, tower, mine, scrying and o-stone. I kept because all I needed was either an egg, forest, map or even the 3rd tron piece. Lucky for me my opponent kept a slow hand. Unlucky for me I did not see any of those cards until 6 turns later and it was too late unfortunately. I only saw 1 other land and it was a GQ.
G2-I was steamrolled but that happens with affinity (he had the nut draw and I had to mull to 4).
Overall I’m happy with how it turned out! I picked up a scalding tarn and got a sweet play mat.
Thoughts:
Maybe I need to shuffle better because it seems that I was either drawing all lands or all non-lands during the tournament (one of the matches I had 3 of each of the urza lands out lol). Urza factory helped a lot when I was facing jund as I was drawing nothing but lands but I was able to chump block tarmogoyf until I found a threat.
I’ve been thinking of replacing the 3rd ballista with a 4th wurmcoil but I’m not 100% sure yet.
Finally I would like some advice on how I should SB against U/W control. I see some discussion earlier but it seems to be RG tron while I’m mono-G.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!
Hello! I was the other Tron player that made the top 4 of this tournament. It was great that I beat the ponza player in the swiss and you beat them in the first round of the top 8; it shows that the matchup is not as terrible as people think because outside of stormbreath dragon the deck just cannot pressure us fast enough. Warping wail was really good for me in game 3.
My loss in the top 4 was to the mono U living end player, on the back of Nimble Obstructionist countering an Ulamog trigger and an O-stone activation. Lesson learned: if they have 2U up, play around the stifle effect if you can afford to.
For UW, refer to a comment I made within the last page for what my sideboard plan is. Crucible helps a lot (more than emrakul IMO because the card effects the game much earlier) if you really want to shore up that and the BGx matchup. I was watching your loss to UW in round 1 and in the final game your opponent landed an early stony silence and you drew 4+ artifacts in a row right after. That is how like 1/2 of my game losses to UW go, the other half are when I miss multiple land drops in the first 5-6 turns of the game. To lower the artifact count I would suggest cutting ostones and trimming relics before touching the chromatics. The chromatics are key to a turn 2 scrying and they cantrip into cards late game to dig for threats and threats and threats.
It cannot be correct to sideboard maps and scryings in the matchup. Those cards are better than oblivion stone and I don't think it's particularly close.
Relics can be useful to protect our tron lands from sugrical extraction, but as you run crucible of worlds there is a bit of a non-bo there so trimming a relic or two is fine. UW is one of the matchups to have crucible in your board for, you definitely bring it in.
For UW control with the sideboard 'user-23561543' linked, I would do this:
You could also bring in only 2 tks if you want to keep more relics in to protect against surgical. 3 claims will be enough, you don't want to get stuck with multiple in hand.
I like Dismember more than recently as well. Grixis Shadow does seem to be getting more popular now, despite one of its best matchups, KCI now being dead. Though maybe now Humans resurges which would repress Shadow. Either way, I've always seen the Shadow matchup as very good but it seems like 2 Disdainful Stroke is becoming the norm in their SB, as opposed to 0-1 before. This is actually a fairly big deal as it allows them to counter Thragtusk more often which is the key card post-board. So Dismember is a card I would be looking at to keep the matchup favorable. It's also good against TiTi, Counters Company and any Prime Speaker Vannifar brews people will be trying out.
I agree with your last two posts for sure. My most recent sideboard actually looks like this (first one I've made post KCI ban):
I like more wail than dismember becauee I think more often I want to play 2 wails in a game than 2 dismember and I think wail helps more <50% matchups. This is with 3 relics and 2 ballista maindeck as per usual.
Got into a debate at my LGS tonight. What’s everyone’s opinion on our matchup with G/W Value Town? I smashed it last week 2-0 easy peasy and then lost to it 2-1 this week. My feelings are, it’s an okay matchup. They have to GQ us and have disruption otherwise it’s lights out. Thoughts?
I think the deck has the tools to keep us off tron, and knight presents a great clock for them, but the deck has little filtering so it tends to lose in a blowout when it doesn't find quick land destro. It's been a while since I've played against it but when a deck has a good clock and ghost quarter recursion, it will always have a chance against us. I think it's a good matchup for them but the decks lack of filtering gives us enough of a window to resolve a single walker or o-stone and it's lights out. Last time I played the deck I remember they led with a t2 knight, which is what they want to do, and I just spatialed it and they no longer had a way to slow tron and it was a blowout. If they let us get tron active they are toast so they rely heavily on a good opener.
Good Stuff Sicsmoo. I have gone back and forth between friendlies and competitive leagues, and my best guess is that there are fewer players at higher MMR (1700+) playing in friendlies, so you get matched up against the same people more often. This is amplified when you play at the odd hours I do, well after midnight.
I did some competitives over the past couple of days, and cashed in all 4 leagues with these records: 3-2, 3-2, 4-1, then 4-1. This was after a couple of weeks away from mtgo but I was still playing tron in paper during that time. My loss in the first 4-1 was to dredge while going for the trophy. I had a relic in the opening hand game 1 but they were on the play and brought in 3 amalgams, 2 narcomebas, and a bloodghast on turn 2 before I could get a chance to crack the relic. Had I been on the play here I could have won that game. The loss in the second 4-1 was to storm, warping wail countered their turn 3 pieces of the puzzle and then I karn-->ulamog'd them out of the game but in game 3 they had turn 2 electromancer and I had a warping wail rather than spatial in hand for removal. Regardless of that, Wail did some good stuff for me and I'm glad I cut the 1 dismember for the second wail before I ran these leagues. I see so much titanshift in comp. leagues, I haven't run the numbers but I would be surprised if it was below 5%, crazy to see you only played it 4 times in 290 matches. I think I had played it 4 times in a 15 match stretch this month, which is one of the reasons I wanted wails in the list.
League 1:
Round 1: L Jund 1-2
Round 2: W Unidentified 1-0 No clue what happened here, they mulliganed to 6 and I mulliganed to 4 (mine, tower, chromatic, ulamog) and then they conceded before we started game 1.)
Round 3: L Titanshift 1-2
Round 4: W Martyr Proc 2-0
Round 5: W Budget Affinity 2-1
League 2:
Round 1: L Titanshift 1-2 (same guy that beat be last round)
Round 2: W UW control
Round 3: W Titanshift 2-1 (karn on turn 3 on the play game 3 won it, wail sealed game two.)
Round 4: W G Tron 2-0 (I actually won with a T3 wurmcoil on the play against a t3 karn in game one, never seen it before it was wild. The reason it worked was they removed my tower with Karn but I had a second tower in my hand and played a second wurmcoil, killing karn with the first. They could not answer two wurms before they died, by the time they played their own wurm they were at 3 life and dead thru attacks. Game two they mulled to 3 and then conceded.)
Round 5: L Humans 1-2
League 3:
Round 1: W Burn 2-1
Round 2: W Humans 2-1 (same player as previous league, REVENGE!)
Round 3: W UW Control 2-1 (same player as previous league)
Round 4: W Abzan 2-1
Round 5: L Dredge 0-2 (this was the match talked about above)
League 4:
Round 1: W KCI 2-1 (they punted game 1 while comboing off and allowed me to steal it with ostones into ulamogs. never concede early people, they can fizzle or punt!)
Round 2: L Storm 1-2
Round 3: W Bant Spirits 2-1
Round 4: W Mono Red Prison 2-0
Round 5: W Burn 2-1 (got lucky here game 1; they had guide and switfy on the field and me at 7 life, they draw eidleon into nacatl as I play wurmcoil into wurmcoil into ulamog and seal it.)
Is it possibly time to swap the spatials in the board for dismembers? With GDS climbing tier 1, and UR Phoenix having both TiTi and drakes which are out of spatial range, it might be time to swap to the spot removal that hits more creatures. I've also seen a sizeable uptick in infect in paper tournaments locally, where the 1 mana interaction means a whole lot. It's very hard to interact with infect on 2 mana spells. I know there's this new card coming that makes a T1 or T2 dismember uncastable, but until that gets play in modern I'm thinking dismember might have some value at the moment. Im not sure if I'd maindeck it, but right now I'm looking at a board config like this:
I like 2 wails to help interact with storm, ur bird decks, hollow one, and primetime decks. There's a lot of primetime in my area as well which makes me want extra wail copies.
I feel like the opponent usually opens up with 1+ Phoenix attacking by turn 3, a flipped TiTi by turn 3/4, or a blood/alpine moon to attack our mana. These decks look at so many cards so fast that I don't believe there is much opportunity to invest 7 mana into a might resolve Karn on turn 3. They only have 2 rejections and 2 moons, but they dig much deeper than the average modern deck and will see them more often early in the game. And if a Karn resolves they can remove it so easily with a bolt or bird attack. My sideboard plan is an attempt to maximize my interaction with them in the first 3 turns of the game and set up a turn 4 o-stone board wipe or stick a wurmcoil and stabilize with lifegain.
Against aggressive blue decks I've never been a fan of tapping 7 mana and spending my whole turn on a card that might not resolve, I've only just started using Karn more against storm because they have decreased their remand count in the 75.
I dont want any copies of Karn or Ballista becauee they dont do much if they resolve, and Karn is a pretty big liability in a matchup that is fast and has ceremonious rejection and spell pierce in the side. Trim 1 ugin over 1 ulamog because as a creature ulamog will resolve more often, and because of rejection the cast trigger is better. I like 1 surgical here because this deck is more about grinding with looting and recurring birds or flipping TiTi early. If they are doing the former and we hit looting, their grind potential goes way down. Same if you hit a bird. I have a decent time stopping an early TiTi flip thanks to warping wail. I don't think surgical is amazing, but I do think it's better than the second copy of ugin or the third claim.
More aggressive and more likely to be on blood moon so I want the third claim. Ugin is a bit worse here than UR because of reveled being CMC 8. I don't want surgical or warping wail so I keep a ballista for sanctum triggering. I did not include spatial because it only hits one creature (I don't include Phoenix because it recurs), and if I take out a ballista and an o-stone or ulamog to make room for spatials, the deck is looking absurdly low on threats and might have issues putting pressure on the opponent. As sicsmoo said, I do like ulamog in these matchups because we need threat that threatens to end the game very fast.
This deck is more creature based so I want more ballistas and spatials. Needed to cut a claim to make room. Cutting more off the top end because it feels like the most explosive of the three decks. Not a fan of warping wail because they can easily pump their dudes out of range of it, even tapped out with a gut shot.
I wouldn't mind spatials against mono r bird but it's hard to find the room. UR is the only one I like surgical in because the others are more aggro attacking our life total.
If I'm running 2 relic maindeck and 1 grafdiggers cage and 1-2 surgical in the side then what I do is move all hate to the maindeck after game 1 except move 1 relic to the side to leave as a wish target. This is because cage is a better turn 1 play. I'm not using tormods crypt in my build but that I could see going maindeck or as a wish target post board.
I originally thought ballista was a lock, but now I'm certain that a creature is a lock but I'm changing whether that creature is ballista or spellskite. Spellskite often blocks better than ballista (if you're wishing it on turn 3 with 3 mana left) and skite is a silver bullet in a few matchups. I'm currently seeing infect in local paper tournies so skite is getting the nod right now.
Grafdigger's cage is my lock for my graveyard hate slot. I typically will move cage to my maindeck postboard against dredge to hit it turn 1, and move a relic to the side as a wish target late. My sideboard also includes 1 surgical extraction so postboard I have 1 relic, 1 surgical, and 1 cage in my maindeck to hit early and I have 1 relic in my board as a wish target.
Lattice is definitely a lock as it's a 6 mana better than ulamog card a lot of the time.
Witchbane orb is something I've flipped back and forth on. Sometimes the 4th mana cost makes it feel bad and too slow, other times it's turn 4 against titanshift and I really wish I had the witchbane in there because it would have lined up perfectly. Ive also beaten mill because they couldn't target me with their spells or (some) of their triggers anymore.
Ensnaring bridge is absolutely a lock in my list at the moment. Before creator karn was printed I was VERY off of this card as I didn't see how it worked with the tron shell. But in practice, boy it does work. Early game against phoenix, titan, shadow; later against humans once you empty your hand more. It's been pretty important in spots for me to protect creator so I can lattice lock next turn with creatures on the board.
Trinisphere has been my single best performing card thus far. It has won multiple times more games singlehandedly than any other card. Other than the obvious times (infect, phoenix) the card is EXTREMELY punishing to modern decks that operate on low land counts or miss land drops early. A lot of times the trinisphere tells the opponent "you have 1 turn to use at least 3 mana on a spell to stop me from latticing you next turn and locking you out of the game with your empty board state" and if they don't have a card, which they likely won't or likely can't pay the mana tax, it's a free win basically. I've used this card against way more of the field than I anticipated because it's great in spots where the opponent can't pay the tax regardless of what deck they are.
One more card that isn't a lock but is proving really well is sorcerous spyglass. Looking at the hand of control players at a 2 mana cost is pretty good; considering I've cut TKS for my list for better combo hate cards like trinisphere. You can shut off planewalkers from bgx or UWx, it's good against robot varieties,field of ruin,the mirror,and griselbrand to name a few. I feel like I'm forgetting some other utility of this card as well.
So I've tried both a small wish board (6 cards) and large (9-10) cards and Liquimetal Coating usually makes the cut in the latter but no the former. The first turn it comes down it shuts off a land on the opponents turn with creator's passive (weak to lightning bolt out of titan decks) but that one turn can mean everything againt titan or the mirror. Coating becomes absurd the following turn, when you can then turn the opponent's land into an artifact and then uptick on it with creator to turn it into a 0/0 creature and kill it. So basically you can make a makeshift karn liberated that eats lands and have 8 copies of karn in the mirror (or use the coating 1 time to shut them off karn while you lattice the next turn). The popularity of tron right now and the prevalence of the mirror are reason to include this card in larger wish boards. 8 karns in the mirror is good.
Crucible is a great card and I ran one in my side pre-wishboard testing quite often. I started with one in my wish board but in testing I'm not sure I like how it played out. Against the two decks I want crucible (bgx and uwx), i found a turn 4 creator on 4 mana into tutoring crucible was just not doing anything. Before, I could play the crucible on turn 3 against bgx or I could bait uwx into countering a 1 mana ancient stirrings on turn 4 to easily resolve crucible there. crucible coming down 2 turns slower against bgx is not helpful, and trying to resolve crucible against uwx in this scenario is more difficult as well. With how tight my sideboard list is, I'm just not sure if this card is making enough impact to deserve a slot as a wish target when other options are more powerful.
So here's where I'm at with testing. My maindeck is identical whether I'm doing a small or large wishboard:
12 tron land
4 forest
1 ghost quarter
1 sanctum of ugin
1 blast zone (hands down the best colorless utility land we have access too and the only one that gives green producing Horizon Canopy competition for the slot)
2 Ulamog
3 Wurmcoil
1 Ballista
4 karn liberated
4 karn creator
2 ugin, spirit dragon
4 chromatic sphere
4 chromatic star
4 expedition map
3 oblivion stone
2 relic of progenitus
4 sylvan scrying
4 ancient stirrings
Small wish board:
1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
3 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
2 dismember
1 surgical extraction
With this build I'm keeping spot removal in because I don't want to auto lose to infect, devoted druid, etc. Pretty much swapping tks in the board for silver bullets against different combo decks.
Large wish board:
1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
1 liquimetal coating
1 witchbane orb
1 walking ballista
2 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
1 surgical extraction
Losing spot removal and a thragtusk to have more turn 3 wish targets against the field and have witchbane against titan, burn, mill, etc. Also walking ballista is a great card turn 3 and later but again I prefer skite if I'm using a smaller wish board, at least right now.
There's lots of testing and practicing to be done but I feel like the minimalistic wish board replacing TKS with silver bullets has some real legs. It lowers the curve of the maindeck a good bit, gives us a maindeck threat against blood moon in creator, and gives us a one sided stony silence which is super nice against all kinds of decks. It's really hard to say with any certainty whether this build or the traditional build is better right now, but I think they are within small percentage points of one another regardless so there's a lot to be gained in testing this new configuration when we know what we have in the traditional build and we know how to pilot it.
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.
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.
When I look at sideboarding plans it feels even clunkier. Using storm as an example (even though it's not very prevalent atm), chalice on 1 and 2 both do serious work but so do a lot of our 1 and 2 drop sideboard cards. It's not smoothe at all. E tron is the midrange king but I don't think midrange is good right now and chalice alone can't carry the deck.
What kind of list are you running with? Im considering going back to E tron momentarily. I do like Arch over sea gate, seems like a decent swap to me. How do you feel about 23/24 lands, mind stone count, and baby Karn count? I'm also liking 1/1 splits of both wurm and collar in the main/side.
Hello! I was the other Tron player that made the top 4 of this tournament. It was great that I beat the ponza player in the swiss and you beat them in the first round of the top 8; it shows that the matchup is not as terrible as people think because outside of stormbreath dragon the deck just cannot pressure us fast enough. Warping wail was really good for me in game 3.
My loss in the top 4 was to the mono U living end player, on the back of Nimble Obstructionist countering an Ulamog trigger and an O-stone activation. Lesson learned: if they have 2U up, play around the stifle effect if you can afford to.
For UW, refer to a comment I made within the last page for what my sideboard plan is. Crucible helps a lot (more than emrakul IMO because the card effects the game much earlier) if you really want to shore up that and the BGx matchup. I was watching your loss to UW in round 1 and in the final game your opponent landed an early stony silence and you drew 4+ artifacts in a row right after. That is how like 1/2 of my game losses to UW go, the other half are when I miss multiple land drops in the first 5-6 turns of the game. To lower the artifact count I would suggest cutting ostones and trimming relics before touching the chromatics. The chromatics are key to a turn 2 scrying and they cantrip into cards late game to dig for threats and threats and threats.
Relics can be useful to protect our tron lands from sugrical extraction, but as you run crucible of worlds there is a bit of a non-bo there so trimming a relic or two is fine. UW is one of the matchups to have crucible in your board for, you definitely bring it in.
For UW control with the sideboard 'user-23561543' linked, I would do this:
IN: 3x tks, 3x claim, 3x thrag, 1x crucible
OUT: 4x ostone, 3x wurm, 2x relic
You could also bring in only 2 tks if you want to keep more relics in to protect against surgical. 3 claims will be enough, you don't want to get stuck with multiple in hand.
I agree with your last two posts for sure. My most recent sideboard actually looks like this (first one I've made post KCI ban):
3 Claim
3 thrag
2 spatial
2 surgical
2 TKS
2 wail
1 dismember
I like more wail than dismember becauee I think more often I want to play 2 wails in a game than 2 dismember and I think wail helps more <50% matchups. This is with 3 relics and 2 ballista maindeck as per usual.
I think the deck has the tools to keep us off tron, and knight presents a great clock for them, but the deck has little filtering so it tends to lose in a blowout when it doesn't find quick land destro. It's been a while since I've played against it but when a deck has a good clock and ghost quarter recursion, it will always have a chance against us. I think it's a good matchup for them but the decks lack of filtering gives us enough of a window to resolve a single walker or o-stone and it's lights out. Last time I played the deck I remember they led with a t2 knight, which is what they want to do, and I just spatialed it and they no longer had a way to slow tron and it was a blowout. If they let us get tron active they are toast so they rely heavily on a good opener.
I did some competitives over the past couple of days, and cashed in all 4 leagues with these records: 3-2, 3-2, 4-1, then 4-1. This was after a couple of weeks away from mtgo but I was still playing tron in paper during that time. My loss in the first 4-1 was to dredge while going for the trophy. I had a relic in the opening hand game 1 but they were on the play and brought in 3 amalgams, 2 narcomebas, and a bloodghast on turn 2 before I could get a chance to crack the relic. Had I been on the play here I could have won that game. The loss in the second 4-1 was to storm, warping wail countered their turn 3 pieces of the puzzle and then I karn-->ulamog'd them out of the game but in game 3 they had turn 2 electromancer and I had a warping wail rather than spatial in hand for removal. Regardless of that, Wail did some good stuff for me and I'm glad I cut the 1 dismember for the second wail before I ran these leagues. I see so much titanshift in comp. leagues, I haven't run the numbers but I would be surprised if it was below 5%, crazy to see you only played it 4 times in 290 matches. I think I had played it 4 times in a 15 match stretch this month, which is one of the reasons I wanted wails in the list.
League 1:
Round 1: L Jund 1-2
Round 2: W Unidentified 1-0 No clue what happened here, they mulliganed to 6 and I mulliganed to 4 (mine, tower, chromatic, ulamog) and then they conceded before we started game 1.)
Round 3: L Titanshift 1-2
Round 4: W Martyr Proc 2-0
Round 5: W Budget Affinity 2-1
League 2:
Round 1: L Titanshift 1-2 (same guy that beat be last round)
Round 2: W UW control
Round 3: W Titanshift 2-1 (karn on turn 3 on the play game 3 won it, wail sealed game two.)
Round 4: W G Tron 2-0 (I actually won with a T3 wurmcoil on the play against a t3 karn in game one, never seen it before it was wild. The reason it worked was they removed my tower with Karn but I had a second tower in my hand and played a second wurmcoil, killing karn with the first. They could not answer two wurms before they died, by the time they played their own wurm they were at 3 life and dead thru attacks. Game two they mulled to 3 and then conceded.)
Round 5: L Humans 1-2
League 3:
Round 1: W Burn 2-1
Round 2: W Humans 2-1 (same player as previous league, REVENGE!)
Round 3: W UW Control 2-1 (same player as previous league)
Round 4: W Abzan 2-1
Round 5: L Dredge 0-2 (this was the match talked about above)
League 4:
Round 1: W KCI 2-1 (they punted game 1 while comboing off and allowed me to steal it with ostones into ulamogs. never concede early people, they can fizzle or punt!)
Round 2: L Storm 1-2
Round 3: W Bant Spirits 2-1
Round 4: W Mono Red Prison 2-0
Round 5: W Burn 2-1 (got lucky here game 1; they had guide and switfy on the field and me at 7 life, they draw eidleon into nacatl as I play wurmcoil into wurmcoil into ulamog and seal it.)
3x Thrag
2x TKS
3x Claim
1x Emmy
1x Cage
1x Crucible
2x Wail
2x Dismember
I like 2 wails to help interact with storm, ur bird decks, hollow one, and primetime decks. There's a lot of primetime in my area as well which makes me want extra wail copies.
Against aggressive blue decks I've never been a fan of tapping 7 mana and spending my whole turn on a card that might not resolve, I've only just started using Karn more against storm because they have decreased their remand count in the 75.
UR Phoenix/TiTi:
IN: 3xThrag, 1xCage, 1xWail, 2xClaim, 1xSurg
OUT: 3xBall, 4xKarn, 1xUgin
I dont want any copies of Karn or Ballista becauee they dont do much if they resolve, and Karn is a pretty big liability in a matchup that is fast and has ceremonious rejection and spell pierce in the side. Trim 1 ugin over 1 ulamog because as a creature ulamog will resolve more often, and because of rejection the cast trigger is better. I like 1 surgical here because this deck is more about grinding with looting and recurring birds or flipping TiTi early. If they are doing the former and we hit looting, their grind potential goes way down. Same if you hit a bird. I have a decent time stopping an early TiTi flip thanks to warping wail. I don't think surgical is amazing, but I do think it's better than the second copy of ugin or the third claim.
Mono Red Phoenix:
IN: 3xClaim, 3xThrag, 1xCage
OUT: 4xKarn, 2xBall, 1xUgin
More aggressive and more likely to be on blood moon so I want the third claim. Ugin is a bit worse here than UR because of reveled being CMC 8. I don't want surgical or warping wail so I keep a ballista for sanctum triggering. I did not include spatial because it only hits one creature (I don't include Phoenix because it recurs), and if I take out a ballista and an o-stone or ulamog to make room for spatials, the deck is looking absurdly low on threats and might have issues putting pressure on the opponent. As sicsmoo said, I do like ulamog in these matchups because we need threat that threatens to end the game very fast.
Mono Red Runaway Steamkin:
IN: 3xThrag, 2xSpatial, 2xClaim, 1xCage
OUT: 4xKarn, 2xUgin, 1xUlamog, 1xBall
This deck is more creature based so I want more ballistas and spatials. Needed to cut a claim to make room. Cutting more off the top end because it feels like the most explosive of the three decks. Not a fan of warping wail because they can easily pump their dudes out of range of it, even tapped out with a gut shot.
I wouldn't mind spatials against mono r bird but it's hard to find the room. UR is the only one I like surgical in because the others are more aggro attacking our life total.