MTG Salvation

Interesting list from the winning team at GP Detroit. I actually really like the 4th Walking Ballista over the 1 World Breaker MD, but I'm unsure what the 1 Oblivion Sower is doing in the SB.

My assumption is the Sower is just mirror tech. Tron likely had a much higher representation in Detroit than in a normal tournament due to the nature of Unified. The 2nd Ghost Quarter furthers that theory as well. Sower also solid against UW.

Quote from sicsmoo »

My assumption is the Sower is just mirror tech. Tron likely had a much higher representation in Detroit that in a normal tournament due to the nature of Unified. The 2nd Ghost Quarter furthers that theory as well. Sower also solid against UW.

Surprised to see the 1 Breaker cut, then. That card's pretty strong in the mirror.

Yeah, that's true. Breaker seems better than Sower in almost every scenario.

Funny how i have been praising the playset Ballistas for a while now and no one cared, then a deck wins a GP with a playset and suddenly the idea is popular.
Love it.

I will just repeat what i have said so many times before: Ballista in nuts in Tron. It is removal, a decent blocker, castable even without tron and with tron it just wins the game in 2 turn or so if it stays uncontested. The fact that it cleanly deals with Thalia is also very nice as i have seen an upswing in D&T as of late.

I cut down to 2 Wurmcoils as i found Walking Ballista to be better at stabilizing and forcing an action. You can swing for X and remove whatever your opponent plays if it threatens you.

Quote from Slivortal »

Interesting list from the winning team at GP Detroit. I actually really like the 4th Walking Ballista over the 1 World Breaker MD, but I'm unsure what the 1 Oblivion Sower is doing in the SB.

I've been playing with 4x Ballista and liking it, but I cut the 3rd Wurmcoil instead of the World Breaker. I felt running a full playset was necessary if you're cutting removal MB to make place for Relics.

Here's what I've been testing:



I play Emrakul more of a fun-of because I love that card, but it does good work in some matchups.

Quote from PraiseTheKappa »

Funny how i have been praising the playset Ballistas for a while now and no one cared, then a deck wins a GP with a playset and suddenly the idea is popular.
Love it.

I will just repeat what i have said so many times before: Ballista in nuts in Tron. It is removal, a decent blocker, castable even without tron and with tron it just wins the game in 2 turn or so if it stays uncontested. The fact that it cleanly deals with Thalia is also very nice as i have seen an upswing in D&T as of late.

I cut down to 2 Wurmcoils as i found Walking Ballista to be better at stabilizing and forcing an action. You can swing for X and remove whatever your opponent plays if it threatens you.

To be fair, a lot of different people just play different things. Stevens was on 4 Ballista, and some people were also on 1 Plat Angel or 1 Emmy MD. Results do matter though, especially when there are just so many viable options.

On the other hand, while I know talking about spoilers is kind of overdone, I think the new Assassin's Trophy is going to pretty much cement my decision to be playing a 5th basic in my flex land spot post-GRN.

Quote from Slivortal »

[quote from="PraiseTheKappa »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/established-modern/big-mana/220174-gx-tron?comment=9159"]On the other hand, while I know talking about spoilers is kind of overdone, I think the new Assassin's Trophy is going to pretty much cement my decision to be playing a 5th basic in my flex land spot post-GRN.

That card seems insane. BGx decks just got a massive boost.

Went to another PPTQ and got lost in the semifinals (again). Top 4 was 3 tron decks and 1 amulet. I was paired against the amulet Titan and lost in 3. Had to mull to 4. Had I drew a natures claim I could have won, he kept 2 amulets and drew a 3rd and I had a surgical.... so close yet again. I can’t seem to close out. I consistently get top 8 but can’t finish it.

Tron did end up winning (GR tron) but I’m not sold on the red splash over mono green.


Also I totally won the quarterfinals against spirits with platinum angel. Saved me game 2 when he would have killed me turn 4 (he was on the play).

Sell me on the red splash!

Quote from Abzanleap »

Went to another PPTQ and got lost in the semifinals (again). Top 4 was 3 tron decks and 1 amulet. I was paired against the amulet Titan and lost in 3. Had to mull to 4. Had I drew a natures claim I could have won, he kept 2 amulets and drew a 3rd and I had a surgical.... so close yet again. I can’t seem to close out. I consistently get top 8 but can’t finish it.

Tron did end up winning (GR tron) but I’m not sold on the red splash over mono green.


Also I totally won the quarterfinals against spirits with platinum angel. Saved me game 2 when he would have killed me turn 4 (he was on the play).

Sell me on the red splash!

I don't like the red splash anymore with the need for basics (especially with Trophy about to drop), but its selling point is that the red sweepers are very good against Vial decks, and conditionally good against Scales. Though vs. Vial decks you also run into the problem of the sweepers sometimes not being enough if they get 1 or 2 good pump effects.

The original Tron decks ran 4 Pyro MD, but Pyro's not quite as insane as it was in Modern's infancy.

Quote from PraiseTheKappa »

Funny how i have been praising the playset Ballistas for a while now and no one cared, then a deck wins a GP with a playset and suddenly the idea is popular.
Love it.

I will just repeat what i have said so many times before: Ballista in nuts in Tron. It is removal, a decent blocker, castable even without tron and with tron it just wins the game in 2 turn or so if it stays uncontested. The fact that it cleanly deals with Thalia is also very nice as i have seen an upswing in D&T as of late.

I cut down to 2 Wurmcoils as i found Walking Ballista to be better at stabilizing and forcing an action. You can swing for X and remove whatever your opponent plays if it threatens you.

This is a really weird post. Everyone has known Ballista has been great for a long time now, hence 3 becoming the norm in the past couple months. Playing 4 isn't hot tech or a big secret that's now popular because it won a GP, it's simply another viable configuration depending on what you feel like hedging against more. Ballista is super medium against Burn, Hollow One, Grixis Shadow, etc, which will really punish you for not having the 3rd Wurmcoil. It may well be that 4 Ballista was the right choice for Detroit, but again, it was a Unified tournament, so it skews things.

On adding red: I've toyed with it a lot recently, and what it comes down to is you simply need at LEAST 3 basics to not get totally blown out by UW or any other random midrange/control deck packing a bunch of Fields/Paths in this meta. 3 is razor's edge territory, and with a configuration like that you're looking at playing 20 lands or cutting Sanctum or GQ, which can't be right. Also you're generally looking at playing only 3 Grove of the Burnwillows, because how can you really find room for 4? So this becomes pretty awkward if you want to side in 6 red cards, which is kinda the whole appeal of adding the color. Relying on Chromatics to fix your mana will not work out in the long run. It's tempting because there are some sweet splash cards, but I just don't know that you can make the manabase good enough. One thing I have considered is just running a lot of counter-land hate cards in the side ie 2 Needle 2 Crucible to make up for the low basic count against these decks, but then there's still the second problem I mentioned.

Quote from Abzanleap »

Sell me on the red splash!

I've always been a big fan of GR, but even I think Mono-G is better right now. Ballista does a fairly decent Pyroclasm impression in helping us keep up with go-wide decks while being generally more useful, and there's no truly amazing red SB cards in the current meta.

Add to this the increasing need of basics, plus the ability to run more utility lands, and it becomes really hard to justify sticking to red. If the meta shifts in a way where Clasm or Bolt is amazing then I'll go back to it, but for now I'm sticking to Mono-G.

Quote from Slivortal »

On the other hand, while I know talking about spoilers is kind of overdone, I think the new Assassin's Trophy is going to pretty much cement my decision to be playing a 5th basic in my flex land spot post-GRN.

Came here to post this. Maindeckable answer to most of the format that can stuff Tron before it gets online, or snipe Karn or Ugin? BGx is about to be much more popular, and will be armed to the teeth even pre-board. More basics and lower-curve threats need to be mandatory. Fortunately, this deck has already been trending this way; seeing three copies of Ballista and Wurmcoil, with TKS and Thragtusk in the sideboard, is a good sign. Also nice that Emrakul TPE can't get hit by this, like Ulamog, but it sucks that you can't then use it to blow up their own stuff.

Just...wow. What an incredibly powerful answer, especially to us.

Quote from Thenarus »

Quote from Slivortal »

On the other hand, while I know talking about spoilers is kind of overdone, I think the new Assassin's Trophy is going to pretty much cement my decision to be playing a 5th basic in my flex land spot post-GRN.

Came here to post this. Maindeckable answer to most of the format that can stuff Tron before it gets online, or snipe Karn or Ugin? BGx is about to be much more popular, and will be armed to the teeth even pre-board. More basics and lower-curve threats need to be mandatory. Fortunately, this deck has already been trending this way; seeing three copies of Ballista and Wurmcoil, with TKS and Thragtusk in the sideboard, is a good sign. Also nice that Emrakul TPE can't get hit by this, like Ulamog, but it sucks that you can't then use it to blow up their own stuff.

Just...wow. What an incredibly powerful answer, especially to us.

Funnily enough, the GP Detroit list is almost exactly where I want to be post-Trophy. 4 Ballista/3 Wurmcoil MD, Spellskite and Crucible in the SB. The only change I want to make right away is the 2nd GQ for the 5th Forest. I'm also not sold on the Sower over the 3rd Thragtusk, but it might actually be really decent in games where we can't assemble Tron.

Quote from Slivortal »

(deck direction post Assassin's Trophy related to the last GP)

Wholeheartedly agree, especially the bit you also aren't sold on with Oblivion Sower replacing the third Thragtusk. In a world where BGx is back in force, Tusk is lower on curve and takes much more effort to answer.

I would definitely make room in the 75 somewhere for at least one copy of World Breaker though, even if Emrakul is the card getting the boot for it. WB's abilities to recur and block fliers after making an immediate impact on the board are way more consistent than the pseudo-Mindslaver of Emrakul, especially considering how Relic (a solid anti-BGx card) can slow down its casting.

Hell, I like Urza's Factory more than Emrakul right now; a 20th land in the 75 that is a fetchable mana sink and threat (or blocker) generator has been paying off in spades for me recently, especially against UW Control. If we end up dragging more games out against BGx, Factory plays well there too.

Quote from Thenarus »

Hell, I like Urza's Factory more than Emrakul right now; a 20th land in the 75 that is a fetchable mana sink and threat (or blocker) generator has been paying off in spades for me recently, especially against UW Control. If we end up dragging more games out against BGx, Factory plays well there too.

Not sure about this, I think the new removal spell makes Urza's Factory considerably worse. It's very mana-intensive and we're likely to have more trouble keeping Tron online, plus Trophy is a clean removal to this land.

Well... I ran Tron at a pptq last weekend and was planning on running it this weekend at another one.

However, the printing of assassin's trophy has me feeling like the heyday of Tron is probably over. I'm testing for a GP in December and if I can't guarantee a decent midrange matchup I don't really know why I'm playing the deck. Sorry for jumping ship but I think that's what I'm gonna do for a couple of months just to see how it shakes out. I don't want to put in weeks of testing for a deck that might almost disappear overnight.

Well, that's understandable. I was already thinking about diversifying my own repertoire with decks. Maybe we are over reacting? Or maybe the truth is there is now a 2cmc card in relevant colors that Answers our 7 and 8 drops walkers at Instant speed. That's pretty absurd. Yeah, beating Field of Ruin was tricky, beating Field and Trophy in the same deck...that seems very difficult. Especially when they clock you and disrupt you on the correct axis.

I think it's important to note Assassin's Trophy only goes in 1 archetype. Yeah, BGx will see more play with this card and it's a beating for us, but it's not like its a terrible matchup like Infect and they just got Git Probe back or something like that. Modern is a huge format with innumerable decks keeping each other in check. This card is not going to kill Tron.