I've been running a U/R version that has held decent MUs against both U/B trinket control and MBC. Though I found the more common aggressive and fast MUs a problem. I'm going to try running more flame slash and lightning bolts but is playing Tron in pauper probably just going to be better by rushing to building the tron or leisurely assembling the tron in a control deck is the question I'm encountering.
what does GR tron do against delver (which has to be one of, if not the, biggest deck in the format post-banning) other than lose horribly when they spend 3 turns building up to a bunch of easily counterable "wincons"?
Tron exists in modern because the wincons are insane and counterspell decks are bad. That's completely the opposite in pauper. Modern tron also has eye of ugin to give you some measure of inevitability against the true control decks, and a way to turn late game land tutors into wincons.
what does GR tron do against delver (which has to be one of, if not the, biggest deck in the format post-banning) other than lose horribly when they spend 3 turns building up to a bunch of easily counterable "wincons"?
Tron exists in modern because the wincons are insane and counterspell decks are bad. That's completely the opposite in pauper. Modern tron also has eye of ugin to give you some measure of inevitability against the true control decks, and a way to turn late game land tutors into wincons.
He's referring to G(r) Tron in Modern which has shown more success than Mono U (not to sound like I'm bashing Mono U since I play mono U).
Although the question here has nothing to do with modern. Modern and pauper are not the same format. The question isn't if porting the modern tron decks is a viable strategy it's if there is some possible way of building a tron deck that could be viable in pauper.
I wrote an article about it that'll be up Thursday and you can see what I played there I think it's fun, but if successful it'll have to be heavily focused on green and/or blue. There are significant issues with the mana base and the heavy colorless generation. Don't take this wrong, but I think that black splash into BUGTrinketTron is a real stretch... have you tried that because I think it'd be clunky. That deck I think needs more solid draw.
Also consider what you said about those one mana burns. They're great, no argument there, but consider your average deck at 24 lands. You're already committing 50% of those lands to the tron mana base so you're reducing the chance of hitting into a basic and even more so if you're running two colors. This means those early burn spells have a reduced chance of being early. That being said a mid-to-late Flame Slash isn't really a loss in tempo because it hits so much.
As far as the Marauder tron deck you're referencing I have tried it several times. It is a cool concept and on paper looks like it is doing great things, but in my play experience it never goes well. I never seem to be drawing like I feel I should be and spend a lot of activations on my chromatic trinkets just trying to find a Fangren Marauder.
You should keep play testing this deck and post some matchup results with more specific details on what cards helped win or lose. I wanted to try running a 3+ color version but was thinking I may be getting too greedy with mana base to allow for consistency. Starting from a wide variety decklist might be a great place to start to find what's working well and what isn't.
I like the idea of more options and more variety. I'm just worried it may not be consistent enough.
I think the problem with Tron is that Tron has even less access to coloured mana so it really wants something like Wurmcoil Engine or Karn Liberated that is colourless and high-impact. Pauper simply doesn't have that. The fact that trying to resolve those things against Delver in a format with Counterspell is an utterly ridiculous strategy also counts against it.
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On average, Magic players are worse at new card evaluation than almost every other skill, except perhaps sideboarding.
@Madmanquail: A couple things you should think about with that Ub list:
Impulse: The perfect dig spell for the deck, since it digs hard for tron pieces or answers, it's at a cost that works well alongside the countermagic (either they play something that you counter, or you Impulse EoT), and it gives you tools to find things that Teachings cannot by itself, like Crushers and other non-instant/flash finishers.
Crypt Incursion: This is the lifegain spell that I would recommend for any Ub Teachings variant, be it Tron or otherwise. Against a burn deck, if they have a Keldon Marauders and one other random dude in the yard, you gain 6 life. I don't think it would hurt to put some Hydroblasts in the board, too, but Crypt Incursion is a good nail in the coffin to Teachings for.
I just read the article by JustSin at MTGOAcademy. Great work, fits right in this thread
He cites an older SimicPost list by newplan, which employs Fade Away. This seems to be a possible spell in the 4C shell. It is hard to deal with, but not as effective without Fissuring the opponents land first.
And for the record: in my games up until now I had few problems of finding my colored mana. It happened more often that I just lacked lands. I upped the count to 22. Maybe that should be even more.
the Fade Away is interesting because while I used to love it, for whatever reason it just didn't seem to cut it and I think it was because that with the mana base being so diluted color-wise that you weren't able to play it as early... the card works best to take advantage of decks with greedy mana bases, but despite the fact I think we'll see plenty of aggro in the new meta there is an argument to be made for the card losing power depending on how much mid-range/slower decks we see.
I saw Alex Ullman suggesting Wayfarer's Bauble, which is a smart choice to fix colors I hadn't considered... but I'm not sure it really works better than Expedition Map and he was suggesting both, which seems mad to focus up to eight slots on mana fixing in a deck that will probably want to be running 24 lands any ways, but that's just me... anyone else got thoughts on it?
I would almost think that that Wayfarer's Bauble may actually be better for some Tron lists. Being able to put the land onto the battlefield, albeit tapped, still doesn't waste the next turn playing the land which is my only complaint about Expedition Map. On the flip side, it doesn't search out Tron pieces. So maybe a bit of both, in place of Prism or the other eggs.
I've been testing R/G Tron and G Tron. Aurochs Herd is a must in any list running green. At least in my opinion. Playing in the Just For Fun, I've had several opponents quit after dropping the Herd just because they knew I was about to chain them together. Obviously, anything blue has an easier time with it. But MBC does not like it.
Fangren Marauder and the eggs are good tricks. But not nearly consistent enough. You have to eggs to crack when the Marauder hits the field and sometimes you just have to use them earlier.
The thing about the eggs is that Modern Tron plays a bunch of powerful colourless cards so it doesn't need coloured mana to function throughout the game. Same reason it plays Ancient Stirrings. You can't really do that in Pauper.
I've been meaning to try Walker of the Grove in my lists. Just haven't gotten to it yet. Sprout Swarm seems like it might be an interesting play to combat fast aggro.
I would almost think that that Wayfarer's Bauble may actually be better for some Tron lists. Being able to put the land onto the battlefield, albeit tapped, still doesn't waste the next turn playing the land which is my only complaint about Expedition Map. On the flip side, it doesn't search out Tron pieces. So maybe a bit of both, in place of Prism or the other eggs.
I've been testing R/G Tron and G Tron. Aurochs Herd is a must in any list running green. At least in my opinion. Playing in the Just For Fun, I've had several opponents quit after dropping the Herd just because they knew I was about to chain them together. Obviously, anything blue has an easier time with it. But MBC does not like it.
Fangren Marauder and the eggs are good tricks. But not nearly consistent enough. You have to eggs to crack when the Marauder hits the field and sometimes you just have to use them earlier.
Why would you want the bauble? Tron decks love basic lands?
Prophetic Prism doesn't ramp and make colored mana. It also opens up more doors to you just straight-up losing to Ancient Grudge on your entire color manabase.
Why would you want the bauble? Tron decks love basic lands?
I'm thinking of it just because it puts the land on the battlefield as opposed to your hand. It costs the same as Expedition Map but the Map puts the piece in your hand so you waste your next turn playing that land.
It's just something that could help the speed and consistency of Tron decks. Or at least mono colored lists where the basic land isn't a hindrance. At least in my, admittedly inexperienced opinion.
Sprout Swarm seems so bad lol a great sink for the mana, but the effect is so underwhelming I don't care if you can put like three 1/1s in play a turn, it's a poor use of time imo
Why would you want the bauble? Tron decks love basic lands?
the discussion is based on tron having some hard times finding colors, but again I think Expedition Map works better since it can find either tron or basics
Sorry, for some reason I said Prophetic Prism instead of Prismatic Lens. Obviously Prophetic Prism is good, that's why it was a 4-of in all the 8post decks. What I was saying about Ancient Grudge applies to a deck that has 8 total Signets/Lenses and totally would fall apart to a 3-mana double-stone rain on all of its color sources. That's where a Wayfarer's Bauble could fix colors, do it for colorless mana, and still not be weak to Ancient Grudge.
Probably what got me confused what that Madmanquail was actually talking about Prismatic Lens, then talking about Prophetic Prism, and I just answered quickly with a post that clearly didn't make a lot of sens.
I'm not convinced on wayfarer's bauble. If you want acceleration and fixing, it seems to me you would get a better deal with prismatic lens. If it's for the interaction with trinket mage, you would be better off saving your deck space and using seat of the synod/tree of tales - cut out the middle man!
I'm now running Prophetic prism in my (nearly) monoblue deck. Even though I am monoblue, i think prisms are still worth it. The reason they work is that they give coloured mana without using up a land drop - which means you can drop more tron pieces faster - meaning you are basically "accelerating" your mana compared to if you didn't have them.
I'm not running Trinket Mage, if you look at my list. The only things that aren't instants, in my maindeck, are the artifacts and a pair of Crushers. That's why Wayfarer's Bauble has an advantage over Prophetic Prism, which costs a 2-mana mainphase investment as opposed to Bauble and Signet which only force 1 mana investment on the turn you drop them. That doesn't matter if you have 3 different Tron pieces already, but I like my deck to survive when it isn't walking down streets paved with gold and diamonds.
I'm not advocating running Bauble over Map. But a combination of the two. 4 Maps and maybe 2-3 Baubles. If it's straight up one vs one, then Map wins every time. But as a supplement to Map, I think Bauble could work
I agree that Bauble is something separate from Map, as well. I'm running Signets and Baubles instead of Prisms and Signets. I'll probably move to a lower count of Baubles, since I have over 30 mana sources in my deck--and that's too many. But I definitely like both Bauble and Signet over Prism, as I'm not playing Ghostly Flicker, which does nothing in my deck.
My build is running Impulse instead of Map, which is an experiment. Impulse can find your tron pieces early while also being able to dig up other stuff at any point in the game. I don't know if it's worthwhile to play 0 Maps, but I think Impulse definitely makes it so can cut back on Maps. I'm probably going to move to this configuration, next time I get back on MTGO:
Wayfarer's Bauble makes decent sense if you have a lot of action piled up at :4mana:; this probably informs the preference for Dimir Signet, as well.
I'm not sure I like Dimir Signet as much; I think if you're trying to go Draw-Go from turn 2 onward, you should commit to it (with Expedition Map) instead of hedging. As a bonus, you never have to care about artifact hate this way.
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Oh, you think the losers' bracket is your ally, but you merely adopted the scrub tier. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t 4-0 an FNM until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but an extra pack to sell for store credit!
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I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
Tron exists in modern because the wincons are insane and counterspell decks are bad. That's completely the opposite in pauper. Modern tron also has eye of ugin to give you some measure of inevitability against the true control decks, and a way to turn late game land tutors into wincons.
mono U tron does not run Eye.
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
He's referring to G(r) Tron in Modern which has shown more success than Mono U (not to sound like I'm bashing Mono U since I play mono U).
Although the question here has nothing to do with modern. Modern and pauper are not the same format. The question isn't if porting the modern tron decks is a viable strategy it's if there is some possible way of building a tron deck that could be viable in pauper.
Also consider what you said about those one mana burns. They're great, no argument there, but consider your average deck at 24 lands. You're already committing 50% of those lands to the tron mana base so you're reducing the chance of hitting into a basic and even more so if you're running two colors. This means those early burn spells have a reduced chance of being early. That being said a mid-to-late Flame Slash isn't really a loss in tempo because it hits so much.
As far as the Marauder tron deck you're referencing I have tried it several times. It is a cool concept and on paper looks like it is doing great things, but in my play experience it never goes well. I never seem to be drawing like I feel I should be and spend a lot of activations on my chromatic trinkets just trying to find a Fangren Marauder.
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
You should keep play testing this deck and post some matchup results with more specific details on what cards helped win or lose. I wanted to try running a 3+ color version but was thinking I may be getting too greedy with mana base to allow for consistency. Starting from a wide variety decklist might be a great place to start to find what's working well and what isn't.
I like the idea of more options and more variety. I'm just worried it may not be consistent enough.
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
Impulse: The perfect dig spell for the deck, since it digs hard for tron pieces or answers, it's at a cost that works well alongside the countermagic (either they play something that you counter, or you Impulse EoT), and it gives you tools to find things that Teachings cannot by itself, like Crushers and other non-instant/flash finishers.
Crypt Incursion: This is the lifegain spell that I would recommend for any Ub Teachings variant, be it Tron or otherwise. Against a burn deck, if they have a Keldon Marauders and one other random dude in the yard, you gain 6 life. I don't think it would hurt to put some Hydroblasts in the board, too, but Crypt Incursion is a good nail in the coffin to Teachings for.
thanks was just going to plug it myself
http://www.mtgoacademy.com/anything-but-tron-a-thon/
the Fade Away is interesting because while I used to love it, for whatever reason it just didn't seem to cut it and I think it was because that with the mana base being so diluted color-wise that you weren't able to play it as early... the card works best to take advantage of decks with greedy mana bases, but despite the fact I think we'll see plenty of aggro in the new meta there is an argument to be made for the card losing power depending on how much mid-range/slower decks we see.
I saw Alex Ullman suggesting Wayfarer's Bauble, which is a smart choice to fix colors I hadn't considered... but I'm not sure it really works better than Expedition Map and he was suggesting both, which seems mad to focus up to eight slots on mana fixing in a deck that will probably want to be running 24 lands any ways, but that's just me... anyone else got thoughts on it?
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
I've been testing R/G Tron and G Tron. Aurochs Herd is a must in any list running green. At least in my opinion. Playing in the Just For Fun, I've had several opponents quit after dropping the Herd just because they knew I was about to chain them together. Obviously, anything blue has an easier time with it. But MBC does not like it.
Fangren Marauder and the eggs are good tricks. But not nearly consistent enough. You have to eggs to crack when the Marauder hits the field and sometimes you just have to use them earlier.
Has anyone tried Walker of the Grove or Sprout Swarm?
Why would you want the bauble? Tron decks love basic lands?
4 Dimir Guildgate
6 Island
1 Swamp
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
4 Dimir Signet
3 Impulse
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Mystical Teachings
4 Syncopate
4 Exclude
4 Diabolic Edict
1 Capsize
2 Ulamog's Crusher
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Dispel
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Grim Harvest
4 Innocent Blood
4 Fade Away
I keep it pretty simple.
I'm thinking of it just because it puts the land on the battlefield as opposed to your hand. It costs the same as Expedition Map but the Map puts the piece in your hand so you waste your next turn playing that land.
It's just something that could help the speed and consistency of Tron decks. Or at least mono colored lists where the basic land isn't a hindrance. At least in my, admittedly inexperienced opinion.
Sprout Swarm seems so bad lol a great sink for the mana, but the effect is so underwhelming I don't care if you can put like three 1/1s in play a turn, it's a poor use of time imo
the discussion is based on tron having some hard times finding colors, but again I think Expedition Map works better since it can find either tron or basics
^yup
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
Probably what got me confused what that Madmanquail was actually talking about Prismatic Lens, then talking about Prophetic Prism, and I just answered quickly with a post that clearly didn't make a lot of sens.
I'm not running Trinket Mage, if you look at my list. The only things that aren't instants, in my maindeck, are the artifacts and a pair of Crushers. That's why Wayfarer's Bauble has an advantage over Prophetic Prism, which costs a 2-mana mainphase investment as opposed to Bauble and Signet which only force 1 mana investment on the turn you drop them. That doesn't matter if you have 3 different Tron pieces already, but I like my deck to survive when it isn't walking down streets paved with gold and diamonds.
I'm not advocating running Bauble over Map. But a combination of the two. 4 Maps and maybe 2-3 Baubles. If it's straight up one vs one, then Map wins every time. But as a supplement to Map, I think Bauble could work
My build is running Impulse instead of Map, which is an experiment. Impulse can find your tron pieces early while also being able to dig up other stuff at any point in the game. I don't know if it's worthwhile to play 0 Maps, but I think Impulse definitely makes it so can cut back on Maps. I'm probably going to move to this configuration, next time I get back on MTGO:
4 Dimir Guildgate
5 Island
2 Swamp
2 Expedition Map
4 Dimir Signet
2 Wayfarer's Bauble
4 Mystical Teachings
2 Mysteries of the Deep
4 Memory Lapse
4 Syncopate
4 Exclude
4 Diabolic Edict
2 Ulamog's Crusher
I'm not sure I like Dimir Signet as much; I think if you're trying to go Draw-Go from turn 2 onward, you should commit to it (with Expedition Map) instead of hedging. As a bonus, you never have to care about artifact hate this way.