Ballista to remove their Arbor Elf can buy you enough time to make land drops, their top decks can be just atrocious and taking away their mana can get you really far. Also, look for moments where a ghost quarter on their land that has Utopia Sprawl(s) on it will take them off of mana and/or red mana. Warping wail is really good in the matchup. From my experience they will play their LD before their blood moon, and you will be leaving 2 mana open for wail the turn they go to cast either one, so if it's a blood moon then cast wail for a scion while moon is on the stack. get to Thragtusk/wurmcoil sticking and you're pretty golden.
The MODO meta is so bad for tron right now, it might be the worst I've seen it ever. Since creeping chill got printed, MODO got flooded with goldfish decks and graveyard decks, all operating on their own axis and all winning by turn 3/turn 4 w/ the play. I think in the past 15 matches I played, 4 or more were against Amulet Titan which is not a very good matchup if the titan player is competent. If they are smart enough to get a ghost quarter with their first Titan trigger, our deck will not get it's mana fast enough with their very fast clock. I have also played way less MODO in the past 4-6 weeks than I would like because even getting a 3-2 became such a slog, as Sicsmoo said. I do jam it in paper and continue to do great there, but it's just been way too rough going on MODO.
As for the GW discussion, having played that version a bit recently I came to the conclusion that the consistency of Mono G is still more percentage points of value against the field over hosing GY decks with RiP. With phoenix, RiP is a trap card because they don't need their GY to win like dredge and KCI do, and many times it makes the opponent's ancient grudge on your wurmcoil way too powerful. Using wurm to stabilize against dredge is pretty important in post-board play, and the non-bo with RiP feels bad there and other matchups. RiP just does not fit into our deck shell like it does other decks; it non-bos with too much IMO. Chromatic Star, Wurmcoil, Loam/Crucible; not to mention the stress it puts on your manabase/chromatics to have white by turn 2. I can see white and RiP being playable if THE TOP deck in the format is FIRMLY KCI or dredge or something that gets totally hosed. Outside of that, relic is going to get the job done enough of the time, surgical is going to get it done enough of the time, and cage is ***** in the deck IMO but a colorless turn 1 play and for that reason fits the tron shell better than RiP. Go with 1 canopy and 4 forests and run mono G. the Mono G lists are the ones putting up results in paper, there has been one green white list that top 8'd a major tournament (or maybe T16 or something), whereas there have been numerous MONO G lists. That speaks volumes to the percentage points gained by the Mono G consistency.
As an aside, I do think 4 Ostones is where we want to be; cutting either Wold Breaker, a ballista, or a relic over the 4th ostone seems better. With as much field of ruin and other tron assembly interruption there is going on, I feel like I'm leaning on an ostone activation over two turns now more than ever. Early game, decks are playing damping sphere, A-trophy, and field of ruin instead of playing threats for a clock, and Ostone really shines here because it makes them play around one on the board and it destroys their threats and their damping sphere/blood moon in one fell swoop. IMO there's just too many decks where its very good to not have access to all 4, and it seems silly to split them 3/1 in the main/sideboard.
I tested 2xgoyf over 2xtks in the side a few weeks back. It was great against bgx and control, but against the field it's middling at best. My sideboarding against decks like kci, Titanshift, amulet titan, g tron, burn, storm, and ad naus all felt pretty bad without TKS. These are unfavorable matchups and I only had 2-4 cards to side in and that felt pretty bad. IMO goyf was flavor of the month immediately after ass trophy was printed, but we really need TKS in the side for most combo decks. Crucible also does work against bgx and control without taxing our green sources early and it only takes up 1 sideboard slot. I think for regionals you've got to go with TKS over goyf in mono g.
I've been testing a list similar to Turtenwalds GW list, and while I got a 5-0 with it i have similar feelings to when I had goyf in mono g sideboard. Sure, I was beating Gy decks absurdly, but against everything else my sideboarding felt super lackluster. RiP is a narrow card, there are so many gy decks (like jund) where relic is a great card in the side but RiP isn't really playable against it. So RiP is taking 3 slots in the board and is really only playable against the super degenerate gy stuff. Timely also felt hit or miss, a lot of times I was waffling on whether I wanted to board it in because it was a middling card but also taxed me for white mana and I didn't want to run into mana issues post-board. I also missed warping wail in the side so much, I just love having 1 copy of that card.
What I've settled on is mono g, with 2 relic, 3 ball, 1 Breaker, 2 ulamog, 4 o-stone in the main with this side:
With this configuration I've got 3 ball over 3 relics main because I was seeing so many relics in gsme 1s with 3 in the deck and I was not happy with its performance in non-gy matchups. I was really missing ballista number 3 for early and mid game. However, post board I go up to 4 relics and 1 surgical, which feels pretty good against gy decks. Draw multiple relics against dredge and you'll slow them down significantly. You can also play 4 relics against bgx, to slow the tarmo clock a whole bunch and csntrip into tronlands and land tutors to aggressively re-assemble tron. Basically with all this testing, relic was such an all-star in that it trims their GY, and wipes the gy, and cantrips, it is everything I want for this deck. I do like exactly 1 surgical to have 5 gy hate cards, and I've never been a fan of grafdiggers in this deck at all.
I forgot to say that the martyr players also had surgical LOL. They had so much hate post board and the matches often went until someone had 5 minutes of clock left. It was 3 different opponents literally one after another over the course of 90 minutes or so. I was wondering if saffronolive posted a video on it or something.
I like the UW matchup with crucible, it does a lot there and usually they can only cryptic bounce or teferi tuck it away. Tbh, I feel the games I lose to uw are the ones where they get us with stony for multiple turns or play multiple fields by turn 4, either way by the time we cast anything meaningful they've gotten a Jace and teferi down and are amassing snapcaster and cryptics in hand. I was already beating uw before with 4 forests and 1 horizon canopy in my mono g build, with crucible as a crutch I think 3 is fine. I will also say having two canopies to cantrip with in grindy post-board play was really really nice. I was churning through my deck quite well and stumbling not too often.
I think bgx decks have the best chance with fulm, otherwise we play thrag into wurm on curve or wipe the board with o-stone and then topdeck way better at parity. Fulminator slows our curve while allowing them to put on a clock or Liliana away our hand. It's similar to uw in that I don't see myself winning the games where they draw 3 or more land destruction by turn 4-5 regardless of the number of forests in my deck. They need to seriously flounder on their gameplan for us to be in the game at that point. More forests will help win those games, but those games are in the minority and I still win the matchups with hardly ever going up to 5 basics in any of my tron builds. I don't thunk one is right over the other, I think it's all about your individual post board plan for the mentioned decks. For me, the way I want to beat them is by redundant tron assembly through maps and Scrying, as well as "gotcha" with a turn 3/4 crucible returning a needed tronland back from the yard to the board. I am playing to assemble tron and play my cards asap rather than try to grind and outlast with extra forests.
Haven't played MTGO for a couple weekends and I was really interested in GW tron testing, ending up snagging a 5-0 to end the night. I didn't cast RiP until match 5 against hollow one, it was game 3 and I was on the play with T1 relic into T3 wurmcoil and T4 RiP to seal the game.
Match 1: Martyr Life 2-1
Match 2: Martyr Life 2-1
Match 3: Mardu Burn: 2-1
Match 4: Skred Dragons: 2-0
Match 5: Hollow one: 2-1
Pretty soft matchups, I faced Martyr Life 3 opponents in a row if you go back to the previous league which is a bit ridiculous. That matchup is not a gimme considering they can get a quick 6/6 lifelink flyer out and have like 7-8 copies of field and ghost quarter with crucible to back it up. One of the lists had pithing needles, stony silence, AND damping spheres. That was the one time I lost.
Edit: Forgot to say that this is Owen's list from the tournament, except I opted to keep the Worldbreaker over third Ulamog because I really like the option of tutoring 7 mana cast trigger removal when it's relevant. I also went with crucible over the third copy of timely for two reasons; first, since this build is down to 3 basics I wanted crucible as a way to deal with lost of land destruction and second because I didn't want to flood myself with cards demanding white when I'm running an extremely greedy mana build. I'm not sure which is better, the crucible did some work against the martyr grindy matchups but timely was amazing against burn and pretty good against humans and skred to buy time.
Seems like Owen's GW Tron list lays the smack down on Dredge and GY based decks. I know there was previous discussion on whether it was time to explore the GW build. RIP, Relics, Timely's, Cage's are all confirmed to be in Owern's SB. That is some massive hate.
I definitely like the idea of 3xRiP in the board right now. The card helps against hollow one, dredgevine, and KCI in addition to dredge. Its a very powerful card against all of these decks because it's an enchantment rather than an artifact, and we need help in all of these matchups postboard. Its much more of a hoser than relic, cage, and surgical right now. The latter cards are certainly good, but not equally applicable to the different GY decks like RiP is. It also might be playable against arclight phoenix/bedlam reveler build as well. I love me some horizon canopy in tron, I'll be trying this build out. Timely is a pretty great grindy card against midrange decks that are heavily attacking our mana, and also seems good against humans which heavily disrupts our tron assembly or board wipes.
Do you have die roll percentages for burn and humans with that data? I don't keep die roll data myself as it's not something I have control of, but those two matchups I feel like the play game 1 is really important. It would be interesting if your burn match history had a high percentage of die roll losses. Regardless, the burn matchup has a lot of ways we can get blown out before we land a meaningful threat, and post-board since we bring in 10-12 cards the deck changes quite a bit and I've had some experience with great cards in my opening hand but the hand is still unplayable. Like double natures claim with no green source or chromatic kind of stuff.
I think that Tarmogoyf over Thought-Knot makes sense if degenerate combo is pushed out of the meta. If the meta is dominated by fair decks and control decks, AND also has a lot of land destro slowing us, such as it is now, Tarmogoyf makes some decent sense. If burn/storm/KCI are at the top of tier 1, TKS feels more necessary in the side, but when those decks are few and far between I feel confident I can still battle against those decks with my other sideboard cards (relic/surgical for graveyard, claims for burn/KCI). Tarmo feels applicable against a large number of popular decks right now, whereas TKS is not brought in against stuff like BGx because it's very likely to die and give them a re-draw.
I went out to play weekly paper magic tonight for the first time in a couple weeks, and I swapped my two TKS out for two Tarmogoyfs once I arrived to the store because I saw 2+ people on BGx and 3+ people on U/x control. The field was absurdly fair and there was one combo player, Titanbreach. I figured it was the perfect time to test out Goyf as I would be siding it in a lot. I managed to avoid the Breach player and I took first place at 4-0 in matches and 8-0 in games. Opponents were BG rock, UR TiTi, Humans, the newish GW druid + Knight in that order. The deck ran absurdly hot with topdecks, it was on fire the whole tournament. There was some slight non-bo with relic and goyf together postboard, but what I did was lead with the goyf and play the relic after they answered/removed goyf.
Here is the 75 I used for the tournament (after the goyf audible):
I don't remember much about game 1, I'm pretty sure I got turn 3/4 tron and they did not see A-trophy to prevent me from slamming threat after threat. Game 2 they led with T2 damping, into T3 pass the turn, into T4 backup damping, and I Ostone wiped the board on my turn 5. I brought in goyfs here, and cast one on turn 2 that would have just dominated the game except he had the only fatal push he didn't sideboard out in his opening hand (that's what he said, we were chatting while we played). I think more often than not BGx opponents will be left with few copies of push post-board, and that makes a T2 goyf from us pretty appealing.
Round 2: UR TiTi 2-0
They had TiTi in the sideboard, so they were mostly just a UR control deck with durdly win-cons game 1. I landed a wurmcoil and started recurring worldbreaker and they couldn't stop it. Game 2, I had not brought in warping wail because I wasn't expecting TiTi. But once again an early goyf grew to 4/5 and eventually they had to start chumping it and I grinded them out because they could not pull off a TiTi combo. Actually, I had a 3/4 goyf and they had a TiTi to block it, but I played a 1/1 ballista in mainphase 1 to add creature type to the yard in case they thought they could block and didn't see it. They did block, and I pinged their snapcaster with my ballista before combat damage to pump goyf to 4 power and kill the TiTi. I am pretty sure the opponent would not have made that block if they saw the line that added another type of card to the yard, and it totally turned the tide of the game because they were no longer threatening to flip the TiTi that had 2 counters on it when it blocked.
Round 3: Humans 2-0
Game 1 I won the die roll, assembled T4 tron, and the opponent cast Meddling mage naming Ugin and image copying mage naming Ostone on their turn 3. They did everything correctly, but my hand was 2x Ulamog, World breaker, and a wurmcoil. I cast T4 breaker exiling aether vial, and I think I drew a powerplant the following turn to slam Ulamog and seal the game. The opponent made a good point that by playing World Breaker instead of wurmcoil, I risked them having a second phantasmal image to copy breaker and exile one of my tron lands. My response was that My ulamogs were uncastable until I drew the 4th tronland, and I was more confident with playing Breaker and guaranteeing I removed their vial with my turn rather than play a wurmcoil that gets reflector mage'd back to my hand. Basically, I knew from the position I was in that reflector mage or image were bad for me and likely unbeatable given the wide boardstate they already had, and the fact that my 2 lines were T4 breaker into T5 wurm or the opposite of that, and I had to hope they had neither and play a card that took their vial and could block their flyers. What line would you guys have taken here? Cutoff from Ostone/ugin due to meddling mage, 8 mana on board (tron + forest) with no lands in hand and 2 Ulamogs in hand (along with 1 wurm and 1 breaker), and opponent had a board of 2x meddling mages, 1x 1 drop human, 1 freebooter, and 1-2 nobles or something like that. With a vial on 2 and a couple cards in hand.
Game 2 I kept a shaky hand (2x ballista, 2x chromatic, ostone, forest, one tron land). I kept his hand because I was up a game and on the draw, and my gameplan was to cast T2 ballista and ping a 1 toughness creature, then T3 do the same thing, then T4 cast ostone and T5 blow it up. Its not the best gameplan, but being up a game I liked that plan over aggressively milling for tron and getting my scrying/stirrings freebootied away anyway before I could cast them. What I really like about ballista here is you block their biggest dude, and ping something with 1 toughness, and you prevent a lot of damage and slow their pressure for a 2 mana investment and a 1-for-1 trade with the creature you are killing with the ping. I ended up digging with the chromatics to draw tron piece #2 and sylvan scrying on turn 3, and instead I went: T2 ballista blocking a 2/2 and pinging a little thalia on their T3 attack, T3 I cast scrying and played second tronland, T4 I blew up ostone, T5 I cast an Ugin I topdecked, and T6 I played a 5/5 ballista.
Round 4: Newish GW Company deck 2-0
Game 1 I was on the play. I can't remember much of the details about this game, but I know he got a T2 knight down thanks to T1 birds, and he attacked my tron with field of ruin at least twice, but I am pretty sure I either blew up on ostone or naturally drew into tron again and cast an ugin. Either way, he had no druid combo pressure and I wiped the board before knight grew big. Game 2 they cast T2 knight again, and I had mine and chromatic on the battlefield with powerplant in hand and a stirrings and not much else as it was a mull to 6. I thought I was in big trouble with this knight, but I topdecked spatial contortion to kill the knight before he could use it to fetch a field of ruin. He cast another night on turn 3, and another one on turn 4. He was also missing land drops and was on 2 lands this whole time. I had two forests and a sanctum and 1 tronland as my 4 lands (field of ruin) on turn 4 and I played an Ostone staring down his 2 knights and 2 lands (and a bird of paradise Im pretty sure). It basically came down to this: he had enough lands in his GY that if he topdecked a fetchland, he could grow each knight to a 10/10 and swing for exactsies. If he didn't get the fetchland, he had to hope I both didn't have 2 more forests in my deck and didn't have my 5th land drop in hand. Since he didn'd draw the fetchland, rather than deal 18 and get his board wiped and have no way to finish the game with 2 lands, he tried to attack my mana by activating knights and double quartering me, but I did indeed have 2 more forests as well as the 5th land in my hand and he conceded.
Even after that last match, I'm still a fan of horizon canopy over forest number 5. My logic is based on percentages, albeit anecdotal. It feels to me like more often (more games), I run into scenarios where it is later in the game and I draw a map or scrying that does me no good as I have tron (usually redundant tron), and I've already gotten sanctum/quarter or they are super irrelevant, and I want to turn my map or scrying into a cantrip. The number of games where I fail to find because I don't have forest number 5 are very few and far between, but I will admit that I need to play more MODO matches with the new A-trophy meta before I stand by that statement. In fact, I don't own a horizon canopy on MODO because they are a bit spendy, and I'm going to try some scavenger grounds once again because dredge is all up in the MODO meta right now. I want to get games in with 4 forests and see how often I get punished for not having the 5th. I would play with canopy over scavenger grounds in paper because (obviously) the paper meta shifts no where near as much as the MODO meta because cards aren't near as liquid, and I like that canopy is still a green source.
Something I'm not seeing others bring up in regards to Field vs. GQ is the ability to use GQ on our own lands for a green source in a pinch. Ive done this at least a handful of times. The most recent went like this: assemble tron turn 3, no threat to deploy. Have a stirrings in hand but no green source. Turn 4 I go: float 7 mana, play GQ, GQ a tronland I have a backup of in hand, stirrings off forest, find and cast Karn and that Karn buys me the time to win the game.
Field is much more narrow of a card, GQ is more of a toolbox card. I'm also not a big fan of needing to leave up 2 mana to use the field, it can mess up sequencing or just be too slow against affinity/infect manlands. Lastly, GQ loops with crucible much better.
I cut the Cage after 1 league for the 4th Claim. 5 losses in a row to Hardened Scales was enough.
Basically he said that because of ancient stirrings, there is way more value in the first copy of skite over the third tks/something else. We have a high chance to cast t2 skite in the matchups we want it. I like 3 Claim and 3 thrag because we want these in our opening hand when we want them and stirrings can't find them, two TKS seems fine because of stirrings. It's also my personal opinion infect is going to be on an upswing, at least in paper. It's not a widely applicable card, but I can also see why the last sideboard slot is good for a colorless silver bullet instead of gy or combo hate card number X.
I'm not a fan of cage in tron either. Dredge, hollow one, and bridgevine can find ancient grudge yo remove it super easily. Against bridgevine it only stops the creature shenanigans, it doesn't stop bridge from below. Storm can bounce the cage on our end step, whereas we can crack relic in response to clear their GY. Trimming away their GY with relic activations each turn can be super good, and surgical is live on turn 1 just like cage is. I can't see much of a reason to use a slot on cage over the other two gy hate cards, and CoCo decks aren't enough reason for me to include it.
I like Owen Turtenwalds reasoning for including skite in his board and I'm going to run with it on paper (probably not on MODO as the odds of running into infect are pretty low).
I'm also on the same maindeck as Faustino other than the scavenger, I'm still on canopy instead because it is better with crucible post-board. I have considered 2 ballista and 20 lands to fit both scavenger and canopy.
For sideboard I'm considering what to do for the 15h slot. My 14 locks are:
3 Claim
3 swagdaddy
2 TKS
2 surgical
2 spatial
1 Wail (need a 3rd spot removal due to loss of dismember, I like wail over 3rd spatial)
1 crucible
Options (in order of most to least likely):
1 cage
1 skite
3rd tks
1 Emmy
1 dust
Cage would be the 5th GY hate and a decent turn 1 play on the play against degenerate Gy decks. My question to you guys regarding skite is if you feel the card is strong against hardened scales affinity? Does it have the potential to impede their counter shenanigans? If I'm using skite for only infect I'm less likely to choose it, but both infect and hardened scales are on the rise and it has potential to help both matchups. The third copy of TKS is potentially weaker than the first copy of cage or skite. For Emmy and dust, those are meh in my opinion, and not really necessary to win any of the matchups they are good in. Anyone have thoughts?
Slivortal, very nice primer update, thank you! I did catch a few things on a quick pass:
There is a mention of RG Tron instead of Gx Tron in the Sideboard Composition section (just below that title block, before the spoiler tagged section). Also, under "The Cards You Will Generally Play" section, 3-4 Forests should probably be 4-5, and the mention of "green-producing lands 5-6" in the paragraph there can come out.
You might consider adding a single Horizon Canopy to the Tech section, based on how it's been showing up in multiple performing lists. It's sad to see Spellskite no longer mentioned as a tech or sideboard option anymore, but almost no one plays it anymore, do they?
All this said, your primer is and always has been clear and direct, as well as a joy to read. Great work!
Canopy is definitely as playable as scavenger, factory, and 5th forest. Between all of the choices, canopy synergizes with crucible of worlds the best, and as crucible is seeing more play due to UW control being popular, canopy has popped up more and more. Not to mention it's the only of the utility lands that taps for green mana.
Spellskite should probably be mentioned, but mostly as a silver bullet to affinity and infect. Unless either of these decks rises to the top of the format, it should probably only be used in a specific paper meta to hedge against infect, as affinity is a fine matchup without skite.
I believe talks of bannings is against the forum rules. There is a dedicated forum for that.
I cut worldbreaker from the main to the side and put in a dismember. I still don't want to cut plat angel. Ended up shaving a wail from the side, and replaced loam for crucible, had a discussion with some buddies and loam is cute but crucible is better. I disagree because g2 they are bringing in artifact hate as well as land hate, and loam doesn't fall to artifact hate like crucible. But I will try it for Dallas.
And oppositions to cutting WB from the main?
I think crucible is better right now, and I also wouldn't bring it in against decks with targeted artifact hate outside of ponza. I don't think I want crucible against Jund or jeskai control (only 2 fields, wear/tear in the side). But I really really like crucible against UW control and lantern, and GX/U tron. Where are you guys siding in crucible? Against decks like GW CoCo and Death & Taxes I'm not really a fan becauee we are already lowering the curve with TKS and thrags. I mostly put it back in the board for UW, I feel it gives some legitimate percentage points in the matchup. Recur sanctum, canopy, tronlands, and GQ. I actually had a match on MODO against UW where I recurred GQ so many times I took them completely off of blue. It was glorious.
I was one that tried without ballista main and I would strongly advise against it right now. Humans is on the upswing and will be a top 3 deck in the format for the immediate future, and ballista with tron mana is nothing short of stellar there. Ballista is an insane card against bridgevine, taking out their 1 toughness creatures and emptying bridges from their yard. I think two maindeck is the correct number at the moment.
Fellow Tron players, I see a lot of questions about mulligans with Tron but there are not many resources online. I've started something that could become a series if it's popular and I have enough time.
I won't list my accomplishments over the past 5 years with our deck here. Not only because they're mediocre, but also because that's not the point. I offer my view on the hand in question, but ultimately the idea is that we all weigh in and learn from each other's perspective. There are many hands that I'd love to hear your opinion on, as I'm sure I don't mulligan perfectly. The link is to a different thread, so we don't clutter this one with the discussion but instead keep it centralised.
Mulliganing and Sideboard discussions are things I really enjoy, getting other people's perspective/knowledge/experience on a deck/format/matchup is super helpful. I definitely feel like there's not enough of this discussion out there, and would prefer to pick others' brains and learn from their experience than only have my own ideas and opinions to draw from. I think it's a part of what makes improvement and growth as a player; it broadens your 'field of view', for lack of a better term. When you learn about lines or strategies from someone else, you incorporate that knowledge into your own "memory warehouse". I love that stuff.
The MODO meta is so bad for tron right now, it might be the worst I've seen it ever. Since creeping chill got printed, MODO got flooded with goldfish decks and graveyard decks, all operating on their own axis and all winning by turn 3/turn 4 w/ the play. I think in the past 15 matches I played, 4 or more were against Amulet Titan which is not a very good matchup if the titan player is competent. If they are smart enough to get a ghost quarter with their first Titan trigger, our deck will not get it's mana fast enough with their very fast clock. I have also played way less MODO in the past 4-6 weeks than I would like because even getting a 3-2 became such a slog, as Sicsmoo said. I do jam it in paper and continue to do great there, but it's just been way too rough going on MODO.
As for the GW discussion, having played that version a bit recently I came to the conclusion that the consistency of Mono G is still more percentage points of value against the field over hosing GY decks with RiP. With phoenix, RiP is a trap card because they don't need their GY to win like dredge and KCI do, and many times it makes the opponent's ancient grudge on your wurmcoil way too powerful. Using wurm to stabilize against dredge is pretty important in post-board play, and the non-bo with RiP feels bad there and other matchups. RiP just does not fit into our deck shell like it does other decks; it non-bos with too much IMO. Chromatic Star, Wurmcoil, Loam/Crucible; not to mention the stress it puts on your manabase/chromatics to have white by turn 2. I can see white and RiP being playable if THE TOP deck in the format is FIRMLY KCI or dredge or something that gets totally hosed. Outside of that, relic is going to get the job done enough of the time, surgical is going to get it done enough of the time, and cage is ***** in the deck IMO but a colorless turn 1 play and for that reason fits the tron shell better than RiP. Go with 1 canopy and 4 forests and run mono G. the Mono G lists are the ones putting up results in paper, there has been one green white list that top 8'd a major tournament (or maybe T16 or something), whereas there have been numerous MONO G lists. That speaks volumes to the percentage points gained by the Mono G consistency.
As an aside, I do think 4 Ostones is where we want to be; cutting either Wold Breaker, a ballista, or a relic over the 4th ostone seems better. With as much field of ruin and other tron assembly interruption there is going on, I feel like I'm leaning on an ostone activation over two turns now more than ever. Early game, decks are playing damping sphere, A-trophy, and field of ruin instead of playing threats for a clock, and Ostone really shines here because it makes them play around one on the board and it destroys their threats and their damping sphere/blood moon in one fell swoop. IMO there's just too many decks where its very good to not have access to all 4, and it seems silly to split them 3/1 in the main/sideboard.
I've been testing a list similar to Turtenwalds GW list, and while I got a 5-0 with it i have similar feelings to when I had goyf in mono g sideboard. Sure, I was beating Gy decks absurdly, but against everything else my sideboarding felt super lackluster. RiP is a narrow card, there are so many gy decks (like jund) where relic is a great card in the side but RiP isn't really playable against it. So RiP is taking 3 slots in the board and is really only playable against the super degenerate gy stuff. Timely also felt hit or miss, a lot of times I was waffling on whether I wanted to board it in because it was a middling card but also taxed me for white mana and I didn't want to run into mana issues post-board. I also missed warping wail in the side so much, I just love having 1 copy of that card.
What I've settled on is mono g, with 2 relic, 3 ball, 1 Breaker, 2 ulamog, 4 o-stone in the main with this side:
3 thrag
3 Claim
2 TKS
2 relic
2 spatial
1 Wail
1 crucible
1 surgical
With this configuration I've got 3 ball over 3 relics main because I was seeing so many relics in gsme 1s with 3 in the deck and I was not happy with its performance in non-gy matchups. I was really missing ballista number 3 for early and mid game. However, post board I go up to 4 relics and 1 surgical, which feels pretty good against gy decks. Draw multiple relics against dredge and you'll slow them down significantly. You can also play 4 relics against bgx, to slow the tarmo clock a whole bunch and csntrip into tronlands and land tutors to aggressively re-assemble tron. Basically with all this testing, relic was such an all-star in that it trims their GY, and wipes the gy, and cantrips, it is everything I want for this deck. I do like exactly 1 surgical to have 5 gy hate cards, and I've never been a fan of grafdiggers in this deck at all.
I like the UW matchup with crucible, it does a lot there and usually they can only cryptic bounce or teferi tuck it away. Tbh, I feel the games I lose to uw are the ones where they get us with stony for multiple turns or play multiple fields by turn 4, either way by the time we cast anything meaningful they've gotten a Jace and teferi down and are amassing snapcaster and cryptics in hand. I was already beating uw before with 4 forests and 1 horizon canopy in my mono g build, with crucible as a crutch I think 3 is fine. I will also say having two canopies to cantrip with in grindy post-board play was really really nice. I was churning through my deck quite well and stumbling not too often.
I think bgx decks have the best chance with fulm, otherwise we play thrag into wurm on curve or wipe the board with o-stone and then topdeck way better at parity. Fulminator slows our curve while allowing them to put on a clock or Liliana away our hand. It's similar to uw in that I don't see myself winning the games where they draw 3 or more land destruction by turn 4-5 regardless of the number of forests in my deck. They need to seriously flounder on their gameplan for us to be in the game at that point. More forests will help win those games, but those games are in the minority and I still win the matchups with hardly ever going up to 5 basics in any of my tron builds. I don't thunk one is right over the other, I think it's all about your individual post board plan for the mentioned decks. For me, the way I want to beat them is by redundant tron assembly through maps and Scrying, as well as "gotcha" with a turn 3/4 crucible returning a needed tronland back from the yard to the board. I am playing to assemble tron and play my cards asap rather than try to grind and outlast with extra forests.
Match 1: Martyr Life 2-1
Match 2: Martyr Life 2-1
Match 3: Mardu Burn: 2-1
Match 4: Skred Dragons: 2-0
Match 5: Hollow one: 2-1
Pretty soft matchups, I faced Martyr Life 3 opponents in a row if you go back to the previous league which is a bit ridiculous. That matchup is not a gimme considering they can get a quick 6/6 lifelink flyer out and have like 7-8 copies of field and ghost quarter with crucible to back it up. One of the lists had pithing needles, stony silence, AND damping spheres. That was the one time I lost.
Edit: Forgot to say that this is Owen's list from the tournament, except I opted to keep the Worldbreaker over third Ulamog because I really like the option of tutoring 7 mana cast trigger removal when it's relevant. I also went with crucible over the third copy of timely for two reasons; first, since this build is down to 3 basics I wanted crucible as a way to deal with lost of land destruction and second because I didn't want to flood myself with cards demanding white when I'm running an extremely greedy mana build. I'm not sure which is better, the crucible did some work against the martyr grindy matchups but timely was amazing against burn and pretty good against humans and skred to buy time.
I definitely like the idea of 3xRiP in the board right now. The card helps against hollow one, dredgevine, and KCI in addition to dredge. Its a very powerful card against all of these decks because it's an enchantment rather than an artifact, and we need help in all of these matchups postboard. Its much more of a hoser than relic, cage, and surgical right now. The latter cards are certainly good, but not equally applicable to the different GY decks like RiP is. It also might be playable against arclight phoenix/bedlam reveler build as well. I love me some horizon canopy in tron, I'll be trying this build out. Timely is a pretty great grindy card against midrange decks that are heavily attacking our mana, and also seems good against humans which heavily disrupts our tron assembly or board wipes.
I went out to play weekly paper magic tonight for the first time in a couple weeks, and I swapped my two TKS out for two Tarmogoyfs once I arrived to the store because I saw 2+ people on BGx and 3+ people on U/x control. The field was absurdly fair and there was one combo player, Titanbreach. I figured it was the perfect time to test out Goyf as I would be siding it in a lot. I managed to avoid the Breach player and I took first place at 4-0 in matches and 8-0 in games. Opponents were BG rock, UR TiTi, Humans, the newish GW druid + Knight in that order. The deck ran absurdly hot with topdecks, it was on fire the whole tournament. There was some slight non-bo with relic and goyf together postboard, but what I did was lead with the goyf and play the relic after they answered/removed goyf.
Here is the 75 I used for the tournament (after the goyf audible):
3 Ballista
3 wurm
1 Breaker
2 Ulamog
Walkers (6)
4 Karn
2 Ugin
Spells (8)
4 Scrying
4 Stirrings
4 Map
4 Star
4 Sphere
4 Ostone
2 Relic
Lands (19)
12 Tron
1 Quarter
1 Sanctum
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Forest
2 Tarmogoyf
3 Thrag
3 Claim
2 Spatial
1 Wail
1 Crucible
2 Surgical
1 Spellskite
Round 1: BG rock 2-0
I don't remember much about game 1, I'm pretty sure I got turn 3/4 tron and they did not see A-trophy to prevent me from slamming threat after threat. Game 2 they led with T2 damping, into T3 pass the turn, into T4 backup damping, and I Ostone wiped the board on my turn 5. I brought in goyfs here, and cast one on turn 2 that would have just dominated the game except he had the only fatal push he didn't sideboard out in his opening hand (that's what he said, we were chatting while we played). I think more often than not BGx opponents will be left with few copies of push post-board, and that makes a T2 goyf from us pretty appealing.
Round 2: UR TiTi 2-0
They had TiTi in the sideboard, so they were mostly just a UR control deck with durdly win-cons game 1. I landed a wurmcoil and started recurring worldbreaker and they couldn't stop it. Game 2, I had not brought in warping wail because I wasn't expecting TiTi. But once again an early goyf grew to 4/5 and eventually they had to start chumping it and I grinded them out because they could not pull off a TiTi combo. Actually, I had a 3/4 goyf and they had a TiTi to block it, but I played a 1/1 ballista in mainphase 1 to add creature type to the yard in case they thought they could block and didn't see it. They did block, and I pinged their snapcaster with my ballista before combat damage to pump goyf to 4 power and kill the TiTi. I am pretty sure the opponent would not have made that block if they saw the line that added another type of card to the yard, and it totally turned the tide of the game because they were no longer threatening to flip the TiTi that had 2 counters on it when it blocked.
Round 3: Humans 2-0
Game 1 I won the die roll, assembled T4 tron, and the opponent cast Meddling mage naming Ugin and image copying mage naming Ostone on their turn 3. They did everything correctly, but my hand was 2x Ulamog, World breaker, and a wurmcoil. I cast T4 breaker exiling aether vial, and I think I drew a powerplant the following turn to slam Ulamog and seal the game. The opponent made a good point that by playing World Breaker instead of wurmcoil, I risked them having a second phantasmal image to copy breaker and exile one of my tron lands. My response was that My ulamogs were uncastable until I drew the 4th tronland, and I was more confident with playing Breaker and guaranteeing I removed their vial with my turn rather than play a wurmcoil that gets reflector mage'd back to my hand. Basically, I knew from the position I was in that reflector mage or image were bad for me and likely unbeatable given the wide boardstate they already had, and the fact that my 2 lines were T4 breaker into T5 wurm or the opposite of that, and I had to hope they had neither and play a card that took their vial and could block their flyers. What line would you guys have taken here? Cutoff from Ostone/ugin due to meddling mage, 8 mana on board (tron + forest) with no lands in hand and 2 Ulamogs in hand (along with 1 wurm and 1 breaker), and opponent had a board of 2x meddling mages, 1x 1 drop human, 1 freebooter, and 1-2 nobles or something like that. With a vial on 2 and a couple cards in hand.
Game 2 I kept a shaky hand (2x ballista, 2x chromatic, ostone, forest, one tron land). I kept his hand because I was up a game and on the draw, and my gameplan was to cast T2 ballista and ping a 1 toughness creature, then T3 do the same thing, then T4 cast ostone and T5 blow it up. Its not the best gameplan, but being up a game I liked that plan over aggressively milling for tron and getting my scrying/stirrings freebootied away anyway before I could cast them. What I really like about ballista here is you block their biggest dude, and ping something with 1 toughness, and you prevent a lot of damage and slow their pressure for a 2 mana investment and a 1-for-1 trade with the creature you are killing with the ping. I ended up digging with the chromatics to draw tron piece #2 and sylvan scrying on turn 3, and instead I went: T2 ballista blocking a 2/2 and pinging a little thalia on their T3 attack, T3 I cast scrying and played second tronland, T4 I blew up ostone, T5 I cast an Ugin I topdecked, and T6 I played a 5/5 ballista.
Round 4: Newish GW Company deck 2-0
Game 1 I was on the play. I can't remember much of the details about this game, but I know he got a T2 knight down thanks to T1 birds, and he attacked my tron with field of ruin at least twice, but I am pretty sure I either blew up on ostone or naturally drew into tron again and cast an ugin. Either way, he had no druid combo pressure and I wiped the board before knight grew big. Game 2 they cast T2 knight again, and I had mine and chromatic on the battlefield with powerplant in hand and a stirrings and not much else as it was a mull to 6. I thought I was in big trouble with this knight, but I topdecked spatial contortion to kill the knight before he could use it to fetch a field of ruin. He cast another night on turn 3, and another one on turn 4. He was also missing land drops and was on 2 lands this whole time. I had two forests and a sanctum and 1 tronland as my 4 lands (field of ruin) on turn 4 and I played an Ostone staring down his 2 knights and 2 lands (and a bird of paradise Im pretty sure). It basically came down to this: he had enough lands in his GY that if he topdecked a fetchland, he could grow each knight to a 10/10 and swing for exactsies. If he didn't get the fetchland, he had to hope I both didn't have 2 more forests in my deck and didn't have my 5th land drop in hand. Since he didn'd draw the fetchland, rather than deal 18 and get his board wiped and have no way to finish the game with 2 lands, he tried to attack my mana by activating knights and double quartering me, but I did indeed have 2 more forests as well as the 5th land in my hand and he conceded.
Even after that last match, I'm still a fan of horizon canopy over forest number 5. My logic is based on percentages, albeit anecdotal. It feels to me like more often (more games), I run into scenarios where it is later in the game and I draw a map or scrying that does me no good as I have tron (usually redundant tron), and I've already gotten sanctum/quarter or they are super irrelevant, and I want to turn my map or scrying into a cantrip. The number of games where I fail to find because I don't have forest number 5 are very few and far between, but I will admit that I need to play more MODO matches with the new A-trophy meta before I stand by that statement. In fact, I don't own a horizon canopy on MODO because they are a bit spendy, and I'm going to try some scavenger grounds once again because dredge is all up in the MODO meta right now. I want to get games in with 4 forests and see how often I get punished for not having the 5th. I would play with canopy over scavenger grounds in paper because (obviously) the paper meta shifts no where near as much as the MODO meta because cards aren't near as liquid, and I like that canopy is still a green source.
Field is much more narrow of a card, GQ is more of a toolbox card. I'm also not a big fan of needing to leave up 2 mana to use the field, it can mess up sequencing or just be too slow against affinity/infect manlands. Lastly, GQ loops with crucible much better.
Basically he said that because of ancient stirrings, there is way more value in the first copy of skite over the third tks/something else. We have a high chance to cast t2 skite in the matchups we want it. I like 3 Claim and 3 thrag because we want these in our opening hand when we want them and stirrings can't find them, two TKS seems fine because of stirrings. It's also my personal opinion infect is going to be on an upswing, at least in paper. It's not a widely applicable card, but I can also see why the last sideboard slot is good for a colorless silver bullet instead of gy or combo hate card number X.
I like Owen Turtenwalds reasoning for including skite in his board and I'm going to run with it on paper (probably not on MODO as the odds of running into infect are pretty low).
3 thrag
2 TKS
2 surgical
2 spatial
3 Claim
1 Wail
1 crucible
1 skite
For sideboard I'm considering what to do for the 15h slot. My 14 locks are:
3 Claim
3 swagdaddy
2 TKS
2 surgical
2 spatial
1 Wail (need a 3rd spot removal due to loss of dismember, I like wail over 3rd spatial)
1 crucible
Options (in order of most to least likely):
1 cage
1 skite
3rd tks
1 Emmy
1 dust
Cage would be the 5th GY hate and a decent turn 1 play on the play against degenerate Gy decks. My question to you guys regarding skite is if you feel the card is strong against hardened scales affinity? Does it have the potential to impede their counter shenanigans? If I'm using skite for only infect I'm less likely to choose it, but both infect and hardened scales are on the rise and it has potential to help both matchups. The third copy of TKS is potentially weaker than the first copy of cage or skite. For Emmy and dust, those are meh in my opinion, and not really necessary to win any of the matchups they are good in. Anyone have thoughts?
Canopy is definitely as playable as scavenger, factory, and 5th forest. Between all of the choices, canopy synergizes with crucible of worlds the best, and as crucible is seeing more play due to UW control being popular, canopy has popped up more and more. Not to mention it's the only of the utility lands that taps for green mana.
Spellskite should probably be mentioned, but mostly as a silver bullet to affinity and infect. Unless either of these decks rises to the top of the format, it should probably only be used in a specific paper meta to hedge against infect, as affinity is a fine matchup without skite.
I think crucible is better right now, and I also wouldn't bring it in against decks with targeted artifact hate outside of ponza. I don't think I want crucible against Jund or jeskai control (only 2 fields, wear/tear in the side). But I really really like crucible against UW control and lantern, and GX/U tron. Where are you guys siding in crucible? Against decks like GW CoCo and Death & Taxes I'm not really a fan becauee we are already lowering the curve with TKS and thrags. I mostly put it back in the board for UW, I feel it gives some legitimate percentage points in the matchup. Recur sanctum, canopy, tronlands, and GQ. I actually had a match on MODO against UW where I recurred GQ so many times I took them completely off of blue. It was glorious.
I was one that tried without ballista main and I would strongly advise against it right now. Humans is on the upswing and will be a top 3 deck in the format for the immediate future, and ballista with tron mana is nothing short of stellar there. Ballista is an insane card against bridgevine, taking out their 1 toughness creatures and emptying bridges from their yard. I think two maindeck is the correct number at the moment.
Mulliganing and Sideboard discussions are things I really enjoy, getting other people's perspective/knowledge/experience on a deck/format/matchup is super helpful. I definitely feel like there's not enough of this discussion out there, and would prefer to pick others' brains and learn from their experience than only have my own ideas and opinions to draw from. I think it's a part of what makes improvement and growth as a player; it broadens your 'field of view', for lack of a better term. When you learn about lines or strategies from someone else, you incorporate that knowledge into your own "memory warehouse". I love that stuff.