MTG Salvation

Great result with a great list - I definitely would try it (with platinum angel and 1 watery grave in place of 1 river)
Bloody, Your decklist contain 62 cards, It's a mistake I think ye?



No repeals or too much lands?

Yea, 61 cards is reasonable with all of Our tutoring stuff. With 3 expedition map the second snappie can be the 3rd chalice of the void IMO (I don't really like 2nd snapcaster in the deck).
Do You mind swappin 2nd Eugene with all is dust in the sideboard? I still wonder about this card

This deck just won a 73-people Japanese tournament.
The major thing that pops up to me are the 2x Ulamog and the 4x TKS AND 4x Wurmcoil main.
I believe Ulamog's spot can literally be anything big like Emrakul, Sundering Titan, Ugin, etc.
The 2x Batterskull in the SB is interesting too and I wonder how it worked out for him. I think it's better in a more creature-heavy deck like this.

I really like the inclusion of 4x Wurmcoil, though I would personally run less. We have no trouble getting to 6 mana without Tron, especially in the current slowed down meta so I've been playing more of them. I've been playing 2x main and it's been amazing.
I also think TKS is at a great place again since most of the Death's Shadow players have switched over to a JTMS control deck.


What do you guys think?

I've been thinking on this, based on my experience and comments from others... If we're a quasi-control deck that plays Tron for the big threats, and other goodies, should we not be looking at UW and Jeskai Control lists for inspiration on number of and type of threats, sweepers, and counterspells? Maybe it's already been done in the 540+ pages of this thread, but I don't recall seeing it, in my various adventures through here. Nonetheless, here goes...

Using recent MTGTop8 lists from GP Lyon and SCG Indi. Also, only looking at the Main, not the sideboard.

UW Control -
Permanent Threats (6-7): 4 x Colonnade; 2-3 x Gideon
Lesser Permanent Threats/Utility (2-4): 2 x Snapcaster; 0-2 x Clique
Counterspells (7-8): 3-4 x Cryptic; 1 x Logic Knot; 1 x Negate; 1 x Remand or 0-2 x Mana Leak; 1 x Spell Snare
Target Removal (6): 4 x Path; 2 x DSphere
Sweepers (3): 3 x Verdict
Draw Engines (7): 4 x Serum; 2 x Azcanta; 1 x Sphinx's Revelation
Double Duty Draw (3-4): 3 x Cryptic; 1 x Remand

I'm not sure where to place Jace, Architect of Thought in here, so I have omitted him.

Jeskai Control -
Permanent Threats (3-4): 3 x Colonnade; 0-1 x Gideon; 0-1 Gearhulk
Lesser Permanent Threats/Utility (4): 4 x Snapcaster
Counterspells (8): 4 x Cryptic; 3 x Logic Knot; 1 x Negate
Target Removal (4): 4 x Path
Double Duty Removal/Other (8): 2 x Electrolyze; 3 x Bolt; 3 x Helix
Sweepers (1-3): 1-2 x Verdict; 0-1 EE
Draw Engines (7-8): 3-4 x Serum; 0-2 x Opt; 2 x Azcanta; 1 x Sphinx's Revelation
Double Duty Draw (4): 4 x Cryptic

Comparing Both Decks -
Permanent Threats: 3-7 Total, with the majority also serving as lands
Lesser Permanent Threats/Utility: 2-4 Total, with the majority being Snapcaster
Counterspells: 7-8 Total, with the majority being Cryptic, which performs double duty as draw engine (usually) and stall tactic (tapping creatures)
Target Removal: 4-6 Total, with the majority being single target Paths
Sweepers: 1-3 Total, with the majority running 3 and the majority of those being Verdict
Draw Engines: 7-8 Total, with the majority being 4 x Serum and 2 x Azcanta

"Traditional" U-Tron - (Looking at the "stock" Pierakor, Shoktroopa, and recent 15th GP Lists)
Permanent Threats (5-6): 1-2 x Wurmcoil; 1-2 x Mindslaver; 1 x Ugin*; 0-1 Titan; 0-1 Gearhulk
Lesser Permanent Threats/Utility (5-6): 1 x Angel; 0-1 x Solemn; 1-2 x Treasure Mage; 0-1 x Trinket Mage; 1 x Snapcaster; 1 x Ballista
Counterspells (7-9): 4x Condescend; 2-3 x Remand; 0-1 x Spell Burst; 0-2 x Supreme Will
Target Removal (4-5): 2-3 x Repeal; 0-2 x Spatial; 0-2 x Dismember; 1 x Cyclonic Rift*
Sweepers (2-3): 1 x Cyclonic Rift*; 0-1 x EE; 1 x OStone
Draw Engines (4): 4 x Thirst for Knowledge
Double Duty Draw (4-6): 2-3 x Remand; 2-3 x Repeal; 0-2 Supreme Will
Permanent Counters (1-4): Chalice of the Void

This issue analyzing the U-Tron board is that most things serve 2 purposes (e.g. Ugin as target damage, targeted removal, sweeper, and more; Cyclonic Rift as targeted bounce and sweeper bounce; etc.). I've attempted to just place things in their primary intended or utilized role, fully recognizing that many can be used for 20 different things, depending on the line of play.

A few things that pop out at me are -
1) Threats: U-Tron seems to be a more threat dense deck than other control decks. The reason I say this is not just sheer number, as the numbers are actually nearly identical, but because the threats in the control decks also serve as lands and are not "dedicated" (ie solely) threats.

2) Draw Engine: The draw engine in the control decks is substantially higher and on a lower curve, 4-5 1CMC spells in Visions/Opt. Dedicated draw in the control decks is 7-8, versus 4 in U-Tron. The double duty draw is quite similar, 3-4 Cryptics in the control v. 4-6 Repeal/Remand and 0-2 Supreme Will in Tron. Substantial differences are, again, that 2 of the draw engines serve double duty as lands (Azcanta) and are permanents. Additionally, the double duty draws in Cryptic are substantially better in the mid to late game, because of the different modes, while Repeal/Remand and Supreme will are substantially better in the early game and require creativity in the late game, to make work in their primary modes of counter/bounce.

Another huge caveat to this analysis is that we utilize the Trinket and Treasure Mage packages for targeted draw (ie tutoring). These serve double duty as permanent threats, albeit, light ones, and 1 time draw (barring any bouncing and recasting shenanigans).

3) Targeted Removal and sweepers: Quantity and CMC are about the same. The primary difference is bounce v. actual destroy/kill/exile. Our targeted removal allows opponents' threats to be replayed.

4) Snapcasters: Every control deck runs 3-4 Snaps. This allows for the recurrence of nearly every spell in their deck, since they're running so few non-land permanents.

What does this all mean and what are the takeaways?

For me, dedicated draw and threats seems to be the key differentiating areas.

The low CMC of control's draw engines creates a competitive advantage over our deck. Additionally, the density, through the ability to recur them through Snapcaster, the late game double duty of Cryptic, and the permanent state of Azcanta, is a huge advantage.

The double duty of their threats also creates a competitive advantage. By this, I mean, the ability to have threats serve a vital purpose of generating mana in the early game and then being able to convert to threats in the late game makes them superior. These threats allow for that greater number of draw engines and utility spells.

Those are the 2 primary weakness, relative to the control decks, that I see in UTron. The ability to sculpt the hand for consistency is something that UW Control excels at and I think is echoed here in the forums. Whether it's issues with the correct mana (e.g. not enough blue or no tron to cast the big threats), or the wrong answers during various portions of the games. We have amazing utility throughout our deck, in that nearly ever spell serves double duty, but it's consistently getting to those at the right time that can be problematic.

The other part of that inconsistency is the relative threat density. Because we have more "non-double duty" threats, they are dead cards until we are ready to threaten our opponent with them. Given the issues getting to tron or building the mana to cast them, those threats can be dead for several turns. Depending on your draw, that can be a significant number of dead cards in your hand.

Obviously, to fix this we either incorporate more draw engines into the deck, reduce the number of threats, reduce the number of non primary threat and non primary counter type spells, increase the number of dual purpose threats, or some variation of all.

As for viable cards that can accomplish those things -

I don't know of any man lands that we can incorporate that would help in the current scheme of our deck that would be anywhere near what Colonnade offers or the current threats in the deck. Thus, I don't think man lands are an option for us, BUT I'm definitely open to hearing otherwise.

Reducing the number of threats, overall, is something I don't think is vary viable either, but looking at the overall makeup of those threats is where we can improve, I think.

Universally, Ugin, Mindslaver, and Wurmcoil are used and generate great results. They are central cards to the deck and I cannot think of anything that would operate to replace them or perform better. The debate on these seems to center around, 1 or 2 copies in the main. Again, almost universally, 2 of one of those 3 is better in certain matchups than others, while each is extremely weak in certain matchups.

Platinum, Titan, and Gearhulk are continually questioned. Like the three above, each of these can be a rock star in certain matchups and each can be completely underwhelming, relative to its cost. Gearhulk has the added disadvantage of requiring 2 U to cast. As much as it pains me to say, I think these would be the easiest to cut out of the deck, as they are the narrowest threats, with the least utility in the broadest number of matchups, relative to Coil, Slaver, and Ugin****. Additionally, we are the only deck that looks to run either Titan or Angel, which I think speaks to the narrow nature of these cards as threats / utility.

Solemn, Trinket Mage, and Treasure Mage are great utility cards and chump blockers. However, I think they also meet the criteria for things that are relatively weak and don't operate to address the larger issues we have. Undoubtedly, the mages are exceptional at tutoring up specific threats / answers, but if we have a bigger/more efficient draw engine, the need for those specific tutors decreases. Similarly, the reduced need for U mana and the blind draw off of Solemn is waning and, as has been noted, is relatively weak, compared to the other things we have/want/need in the deck.

In terms of actual draw engines to use, I think that depends on the rest of the deck and, largely, the number of Chalices being played. Chalice seems to find its way onto 1 in most matches. Making things like Serum and Opt far less appealing. This makes something like Mishra's Bauble a great contender. Each of these 3 has various pros/cons to it, from instant speed, to deeper scrying, to 0 CMC, so I think that requires some testing and consideration with personal deck design choice, especially related to Chalices. I have looked at only these 3 because I believe the draw engine issues are early game ones especially. Getting to the cards and hand we want early on is the weakness.

I hope to test a few of these ideas over the next few weeks. I think I'll start with cutting the Trinket/Treasure Mages, Angel, Titan, etc. and incorporating Bauble or Serum in their places.

U-Tron is a very unique deck in that it doesn't really play like any other control decks. From the past 2 years that I've played the deck, I've learned that U-Tron is actually a lot closer to traditional Gx Tron than the UW/UWx/BUx control decks. Of course it's not wrong to compare U-Tron to the typical control deck variants because it is the same archetype, but I just have to disagree with you in that we need to switch our deck to play like the other control decks.

The main reason is because of our mana. We don't have 16+ blue sources like the typical control deck to utilize cards like Cryptic Command, Serum Visions, or Snapcaster Mage. It is extremely hard to play these cards properly when you have 12 colouless sources eating up half of your land slots. So we naturally lean towards artifacts/colorless spells and this is why the deck runs a lot more like a slower, but more interactive with counterspells, Gx Tron deck. Our chance to use Serum Vision on turn 1 is considerably lower than the other control decks. Our end-goal should always be what any other Tron deck wants to do: big mana threats.

I do agree, again and again, that we don't need so many threats and especially the "win-more" threats like Platinum Angel. Shoktroopa's list is a beautiful, intricate, list of 75. But if you watch him play or see his personality on his stream, no offence, he is a unique player. He likes how unique the deck is, not how it might spike a major event. Plus he is an incredible player that knows the deck back to back and knows how to play every matchup so we can't all utilize his list with a ton of 1-of's.

I personally disagree with you in that U-Tron lacks card draw compared to other control decks. Thirst for Knowledge is an extremely powerful card and I seriously miss this card so much when I play my Jeskai Control deck. Also, U-Tron doesn't really want to be at a position where it's trying to find answers. It wins when you're at a position to put big, hard-to-deal-with, threats down. This is completely different from other control variants where they win by card advantages and finding answers constantly.

@repeatsyx2

I don't disagree. While thinking on the issue and writing my post, I did feel conflicted. You're correct in saying that UTron is a unique deck because, at times, I see it as a control deck, others, as an aggro deck, others as a combo deck. It has so many different spells that do multiple things that it can flow into and mold into what you want / need it to be, assuming you can get to the answers.

However, upon seeing numerous posts about it being a control style deck and finding it to be a quasi-control deck myself, I analyzed it from that perspective and the shortcomings I see in playing it as a control deck, based on the card choices we have relative to other control decks.

I don't think you're wrong in saying it's akin to a Gx Tron deck, in that what we're looking to do is jam huge threats that stick. However, if you look at the Gx Tron decklist and video matches, it seems to either: 1) hit Tron incredibly fast and overwhelm the opponent (ie OMG T3 Karn, derp); or 2) control the board state through sweepers and targeted removal like Ballista, until it can hit a huge threat and overwhelm the opponent.

UTron lacks the ability to hit Tron quickly on a consistent basis. We have far fewer digs and tutors that get us to Tron, relative to Gx Tron. Jamming an early game threat and overwhelming the opponent is far less likely to occur. READ - less likely, not impossible.

Thus, we're more on the same line as the 2nd route Gx takes, which is controlling, not only, the board, but also the stack. Because of this, our deck has a larger control component to it than Gx Tron and can't be said to be a true comparison. Just as you mentioned that we're not a true control deck either. We have too few blue sources to consistently hit a T1 Serum and don't have 8+ counterspells that we recur with 4 Snapcasters. We are certainly an amalgamation of both these styles.

I think the ultimate question is, how do you make the 2 styles work together and consistently operate as a cohesive unit, rather than consistently opposing one another? By this, I mean, if we're going to aggro, we need to get to Tron and jam those threats. If we're going to control, we need to be able to stall the board and stack long enough to have the mana to jam and protect the threats we have. It's tough to do that when your mana bases aren't perfectly in sync and when your threats don't always pull double duty as control elements.

One method for counteracting this is sculpting your draws or increasing the amount of draw you have, in order to hit more cards and increase the odds of hitting what you need.

I lean towards Bauble for this purpose for a few reasons: 1) 0 CMC - no blue to worry about and, as mentioned previously, Chalice usually finds it's way onto 1 CMC, so it gets around that; 2) Artifact - can be discarded to Thirst can be recurred with Academy Ruins (if you wanted); 3) Optional Scry - your opponent's top deck, or your top deck (obviously, you can't put it on the bottom, but you know what the draw will be); you then have options to alter or manipulate the draw by cracking a map, tutoring, etc.

Also, just for further clarification on why I bring this up... It's not because I think the deck is bad or incapable of posting good results. We've clearly seen many 5-0 MTGO finishes and a recent 15th at a GP, so the deck can perform. I have also gone 4-0 and had great results at my LGS. It's a matter of, are there weakness, inconsistencies, or issues with the deck that make it a less consistent performer than other Modern decks? If so, what, if anything, can be done to improve the deck and make it a more consistent competitor?

There seems to have been very few changes over the past few years to the core of the deck, with only minor modifications to the typical 5-10 "flex" slots in the deck. I have seen no Top 8 finishes at any major, live event in that time. Why? Is the deck bad? Is there nobody playing it at these events? Is the deck played by the wrong caliber player? Or, something else?

Based on my playing the deck and reading this board, and others, the most common thing I see is - "consistency". Coupling that concern with the fact that the deck does play similar to a control deck, I looked to the major control decks putting up results for comparison. As I mentioned in my post, the primary differences seemed to be draw engines and threat types. Concluding there wasn't much we could do about the threat types, but could only really play with which of the threats should remain and the correct number of each to employ, I looked at the draw engines.

Control decks rely on having answers, consistently. They need to have the right answer at the precise moment, or they crumble. What gives them that consistency? They see a lot of cards, via draw engine, and the manipulate the cards they draw through scry abilities. We have Condescend for scrying, we have Thirst for drawing, and our Remand/Repeal suite plays double duty as counter/bounce and draw. However, we don't have anything T1 that draws and often times we're not hitting anything that begins the draw / scry engine until T3. Thirst is 3 CMC, we can't effectively counter or bounce anything until we have at least 2 mana, which is our opponents' T3, when on the draw, and often times opponent isn't playing relevant things to counter until T3 ("It's a T3/T4 format").

So, what can we do in those first turns to increase the cards we see and our ability to sculpt the hand for later turns? The same thing control decks do. Low CMC draw engines like Serum, Opt, or Bauble.

This is just one idea for how to improve the deck's performance, if, in fact, it actually needs tweaking, as opposed to an actual professional caliber pilot to win a major event with the current list and show that where we're at is as good as it gets.

So my question to you in that approach is what are we trying to find with all those card draws? Do we have reliable cheap sweepers like Supreme Verdict? Do we have early cards that we can play when we draw them? The problem is that we simply don't really have too much option as a mono-U player. Do we have turn 1 fetches to utilize the Bauble?

I think our main gameplan needs to be to delay the game as long as we can until we find Tron with cards like Supreme Will or Thirst for Knowledge, aka, tempo your opponent out. That's why I think cards like Remand and Repeal are great. And I wonder if we can play cards like Exhaustion as well, but probably not at sorcery speed. And that is precisely what our problem is. When we can't delay an opponent out effectively, such as against Humans, Burn, or Eldrazi, we fall behind. And I think we need to approach these from a different angle. What if we slammed down more, bigger, threats on the same turn? Or threats that delay or disrupt your opponent like Silent Arbiter or Thought-Knot Seer that are easy on our manabase, instead of trying to play catchup with our terrible removal plans? I think this could be our way of achieving a more consistent deck. Because our manabase is not really going to change.

Quote from repeatsyx2 »

topkyle's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Lands (24) 1 Academy Ruins 1 Gemstone Caverns 1 Ghost Quarter 8 Island 1 Tolaria West 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 4 Urza's Tower Creatures (11) 4 Thought-Knot Seer 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 1 Walking Ballista 4 Wurmcoil Engine	Insants (17) 4 Condescend 1 Cyclonic Rift 2 Dismember 3 Remand 2 Repeal 1 Supreme Will 4 Thirst for Knowledge Artifacts (8) 1 Chalice of the Void 4 Expedition Map 1 Mindslaver 2 Oblivion Stone	Sideboard Cards (15) 3 Field of Ruin 1 Dismember 1 Negate 4 Spatial Contortion 2 Surgical Extraction 2 Batterskull 1 Chalice of the Void 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

This deck just won a 73-people Japanese tournament.
The major thing that pops up to me are the 2x Ulamog and the 4x TKS AND 4x Wurmcoil main.
I believe Ulamog's spot can literally be anything big like Emrakul, Sundering Titan, Ugin, etc.
The 2x Batterskull in the SB is interesting too and I wonder how it worked out for him. I think it's better in a more creature-heavy deck like this.

I really like the inclusion of 4x Wurmcoil, though I would personally run less. We have no trouble getting to 6 mana without Tron, especially in the current slowed down meta so I've been playing more of them. I've been playing 2x main and it's been amazing.
I also think TKS is at a great place again since most of the Death's Shadow players have switched over to a JTMS control deck.


What do you guys think?

This list looks insane to me. Can't figure out how it plays in my head. I agree TKS might be getting better again and I am 100% down to play with 2 in my 75, but man the toolbox is completely gone and this feels more like Gx Tron. Does it feel like this deck needs to luck into natural tron a lot more? What's the point of Tolaria West here? It's too little too late to grab a Chalice and there's no Cage or Relic in the SB. No need to grab Field of Ruin when Ulamog punches control in the face anyway. I don't like Mindslaver without Treasure Mage if my plan is just to slam Eldrazi into people.

The guy topped a bigger tourney than I ever have so I guess he knows something I don't. I would definitely love to try something like this just to shake it up. It feels very powerful, but it's so out of my comfort zone when analyzing a U Tron deck.

I agree with the notion that the deck needs to lean harder on consistency in order to achieve high-level results, and I think the key to that lies in deck construction. I think that if you intend to run a wide variety of threats as is customary for U-Tron, you need to ensure that they are all fetchable. This is part of why I disagree with decisions like only having one copy of Cyclonic Rift, Oblivion Stone, or Ugin in the 75. If it's important enough that you want it in the deck, you should make enough room for it such that you have a reasonable chance of seeing it in a timely manner. I also think that we should run multiple tutors for the cards we do want as 1-of silver bullets; I've been jamming 2 Treasure Mage and 2 Trinket Mage so far, and they've been great at finding me what I need, when I need it. Lastly, we need lots of dig to increase the number of virtual copies of every card in the deck; Remand is well-positioned again, and Repeal is still handy. I really do think 4 copies of each is the way to go.

Excellent analysis there @Darkx87.
It essentially joins points that have ben made in previous posts. The deck indeed needs tweaking and that for multiple reasons: losing to itself, meta changing, not enough (early) consistency, etc.
The question I would re-highlight is this one: what does the deck do? On a consistency level, is it really viable to play the deck hoping to hit one of the three strategies enumerated above? or does the deck needs tunning for a more refinned strategy?

Bauble is a very interresting tool, but what does it do? It plays a filtering role; like Gx strats it tires to simply "cut" 4 cards of the deck to find more and augment the "finding" for our consistency. Is this what the deck needs? Does it really constribute to the deck plans?

That japanese list plays alot of threats, but on two very interresting and different levels: first the wurmcoils army serves all non-path/non-Jace decks (by a quick and known almost-instant-win); second the thought-know seers and the Ulamogs offers a very sustainable tempo/finisher against control decks. And to this arsenal it has a a little ballista fetchable by the same tool used to fetch a chalice (blahblah map combo, etc.).
So in this way of seeing it, the deck only have so many threats consistency that the control requirements is secondary, or in support of __, because the board would be in constant check by U-Tron play.
Also, it wouldn't require so much draw or counter/removal because it would always be the other payer's role to keep on removing extremly sticky and dangerous threats. Like in a chest game when you keep checking your opponent's king, he's the one making evasive moves thus giving you free room to manipulate the field under pressure. I don't know if this is the answer or at least an answer, but it defenetly reveal something important: this deck has a clear, definite and probably very consistent gameplan before even hiting the board.

That said, I do think it is important to have a real plan like this one (japanese performer) when we build/play UTron. So I ask to benefit the tinkering/thinking: what is UTron gameplan before even playing the deck? Although it is a known question we've all been asking ourselves, I ask it again because I think we're at a crossroad, aka the lack of consistency, concerning this interrogation. Simply being utterly reactive in the current meta isn't enough anymore.

2c

Great question.

I think what you're looking for depends on what you're playing against, obviously, and how you've designed the core of the deck, more importantly. In your example of Humans, you're correct, we don't have a quick sweeper to draw into, like Supreme Verdict. If you're running EE mainboard though, that's an option of something to draw into to deal with Humans. In the Burn example, you'd be digging for Chalice and counters.

Even looking at the deck as a tempo/midrange style deck, we can look to things like Jeskai Midrange for comparison. There too we see 4-6 draw engine cards occupying the 1 CMC slot and 3-4 copies of Cryptic as a dual counter / draw engine.

Again, the deck could be quite well positioned as it is currently designed and the primary issue is inexperienced lines of play. Admittedly, it took me a lot longer to learn this deck than it did others and I'm still learning new things every time I play with it. As my experience has grown, that feeling of the deck being inconsistent has lessened, a bit, but the underlying issue of missing draws into U lands or Tron lands or counters is still present. That issue still happens.

If you want Burn tech, just bump the Spatial Contortions to the main (at the expense of Dismember, which costs life) and put Spreading Seas in your side. As a longtime Merfolk pilot, I can tell you that Burn's manabase is very fragile, and Seas is often a devastating blow. It's also really good at zapping manlands out of Affinity and at hurting Humans' manabase. To boot, it also cantrips.

Then why play Bauble? Why not play another counterspell in its place? Or why not play another EE? Bauble only digs 1, which we can't filter unless we use 2+ mana on a map or Field of Ruin, which means Thirst for Knowledge does a better job of it at Instant Speed. What does Bauble actually do for us?

I play Jeskai Control and Tempo myself and the draw-go deck relies heavily on JTMS and Azcanta for card draw. Cryptic's of course great, but I can't dig 3-4 with it to filter things. It's basically a Remand on steroids as it just replaces itself. I don't really consider this as "card draw" or "filter". Serum Visions and the JTMS/Azcanta are the only real "filters" to the deck. The tempo deck relies heavily on cantrip cards like Electrolyze. It doesn't play Opt too often either. Snapcaster is an all star as it just recurs all of the deck's cheap, efficient spells. But as U-Tron, we just don't have the access to it.

Hey guys, new user here to the forums but not to the deck. I've been playing Tron for a while now, and a few months ago made this shift in the deck (which I really like) - from Mono-U Tron to U/W Tron. Not the gifts combo stuff, still this flavor of deck, but I was looking for other people's thoughts on this list. It also seems to fit in well with the current discussion.

Thanks in advance for any feedback you might have!


Just a few thoughts on the decklist:
I find it has a much better matchup against aggro (of all sorts) than U-Tron does, especially in the post-board games. It doesn't suffer noticeably against UW or Jeskai-type control, or all-in stuff like Storm and griselbrand combo either.
By far the biggest change from the stock decklist is that I'm not running Chalices, which is mostly so I can run Paths.
Any thoughts?

@BloodyRabbit

Your analysis and my reflections, as noted above, are what have kept me from diving into this idea before. That is, the deck has tons of ways to interact, nearly every card is interaction throughout the entirety of the game. However, the question is consistently having that interaction. Some element of that is, "Hey, that's magic. Sometimes you have the cards and sometimes you don't.", but the question is, does that happen too much with UTron because, as Jhernor mentioned, the deck is trying to be too many things?

Or, does it seem like the deck is inconsistent because we have anecdotal evidence coming from an overly verbal and inexperienced base of players?

If I look at the spell counts, the spells geared towards controlling the opponent/stack/board clearly outnumber the rest. From there, we see creatures as the primary win condition (usually Wurmcoils). Then, we have a combo win condition (Mindslaver into Ruins). Finally, almighty Ugin as a 1 of.

The typical control deck is a large number of control spells, with a few large creature finishers. We have that, less the great late game counters (Cryptic), dual purpose creatures (man lands), and early game cantrips.

The typical combo deck is some number of control spells, with a large amount of cards dedicated to making the combo work quickly. Tron speeds up the turn at which we can make the combo work, but we certainly don't have a very fast and consistent way of making sure that happens each and every game.

We're stuck in this odd limbo where we're a control deck with big creatures and a unique combo, neither win condition is consistently quick to get to, for the deck as constructed. Thus, we're required to fall back on controlling the board until we get there. Once we do get there, we need to control the stack to make sure we can either keep the creatures on the board or the combo rolling. This isn't too difficult because of how our combo operates and the fact we use sticky Wurmcoils.

So, we have powerful win conditions. We have good counterspells.

What are we missing to generate a top GP finish? Players, meta, or cards/decklist?

Quote from rothgar13 »

If you want Burn tech, just bump the Spatial Contortions to the main (at the expense of Dismember, which costs life) and put Spreading Seas in your side. As a longtime Merfolk pilot, I can tell you that Burn's manabase is very fragile, and Seas is often a devastating blow. It's also really good at zapping manlands out of Affinity and at hurting Humans' manabase. To boot, it also cantrips.

4x Chalice + 2x Spellskite /end

Game ending combo against Bogles too.

Chalice v. Affinity, Storm, and Lantern is huge as well. Does work against GDS and other shadow decks, which rely on 1CMC cantrips, hand disruption, and Death's Shadow itself. Can be very useful against control decks, because of their reliance on 1 CMC cantrips and removal.

I would rather run Dismember over Spatial because it is a much broader answer. The 4 life loss is a bummer, but that can be reduced by Caverns and River of Tears. The net positive generally outweighs the life loss, but, again, that comes down to knowing when to play Dismember, as opposed to alternatives.

This whole conversation kind of got me thinking about just going for monoblue control with Whir of Invention for silver bullets and wincons, maindeck Chalice and Baubles.

That's just bad Lantern, honestly. One of the strengths of U-Tron is that it can randomly blow you away with Tron hands, and good luck stuffing Tron lands and enough U sources to cast the Whir of Invention in the same deck.

I'm with you on Tolaria West never working out in practice the way I think about it in theory. My U is just too heavily taxed to make it happen. I'm thinking I'll swap it for a plain old Island, since that's what it often ends up being.

I definitely dislike the idea of running the deck without having access to Map -> Tolaria -> Ballista in the late game... but it never happened in my testing. I usually just use the land as a land. Maybe Cavern could be integrated in the decklist, despite the improved number of cc1 plays.

It happened to me twice in the GP lyon, and it was quite good. It almost killed my opponent in the deathshadow match'up, and I used it to get a balista lock with academy ruin against mardu pyromancer.
I agree that it's underwhelming to play a T1 tolaria west just to insure having a blue source early, and not playing it tapped on turn 3/4 when you decide to go for the Map T1, but in the mid game, it helped me to get tron online or fetched a field of ruins several times, and in the late, the expedition map/tolaria west transmute will get your opponents to raise their eyebrows, but when they see ballista coming, they get it...
Then again, I don't find myself having too much trouble assemble double blue in the game, so...