MTG Salvation

The question is whether to run Talisman of Dominance (rarely replaced with Dimir Signet) or lands. I think this is currently the decisive deckbuilding decision to make which has more implications later on for your deck. A typical shoktroopa style mana base looks somewhat like this:

The alternative cbgirardo style mana base cuts the Talismans for 2 more lands, usually 1 Island and 1 spell land like Urborg, Tolaria West, Cavern of Souls, ....

Pros for shoktroopa style:

• ramping/curving (e.g. turn2 Talisman, turn3 Solemn, turn4 Engine)
• discard fodder for Thirst
• blue source safe from Titan, Boil, Choke, etc

Cons for shoktroopa style:

• 1 land, 1 Talisman hands are not keepable, while 2 land hands with a blue source usually are
• weak to Stony Silence which usually means Talisman is boarded out vs white decks
• boarding Talisman out disrupts the relation between curve and manabase unless you board in lands or cut high cmc spells
• sometimes you lose a blue source to artifact hate (it might be your only blue source!)

Pros for cbg style:

• less mulligans
• no sideboarding headache  or postboard problems with curve against white
• access to 1 spell land and 1 more slot for a spell

Cons for cbg style:

• no turn2 Talisman ramp which means some spells are worse (Solemn, Gifts)
• lower artifact count which makes Thirst for Knowledge weaker
• fewer blue sources which are safe from Titan, Boil, Choke, ...

I personally favour the cbg style right now because I find it easier to deal with its disadvantages. The lower artifact count can be fixed by playing other cheap artifacts like Chalice of the Void main. Not being able to ramp usually leads to cutting the clunky 4cmc spells in favour of cheaper early game spells, which don't need the ramp. Your mana will be weaker to certain cards and stronger against others, so the third disadvantage is really a symmetrical one. You start to care more about Boil and Choke and less about Ancient Grudge, Shattering Spree, Stony Silence, ...

Sad Robot refers to Solemn Simulacrum, a card which used to be played very heavily but has fallen out of favour for some. I really love this card and the value it generates but currently I can't bring myself to play it. Spending 4 mana sorcery speed is a big deal and I feel like you mostly don't want to play Solemn unless you have more than enough mana anyway or you play him really fast into a dry board (imagine playing him turn3 vs scapeshift, you are unlikely to lose while you are tapped out). Usually this card is still played as a 1- or 2-of in shoktroopa style lists, however cbg style lists tend to cut him.

Chalice of the Void is a very good card in this deck because pretty much every other deck plays more 1cmc spells than we do. More importantly it's also these very cheap spells which tend to gives us trouble because they are tough to Remand/Condescend. Now you might be concerned about the nombo with Expedition Map but there is several things to consider. Postboard you won't be playing a lot of Chalice and Maps at the same time. If you want to play a game with Chalice on 1 it is naturally a good decision to board out some Maps. Furthermore even if a Map gets stuck in our hand it is not useless, as it can still be used as discard fodder for Thirst for Knowledge. Now the worst case scenario we are turning 4 of our spells into blanks, however at the same time we are usually turning at least twice that many of our opponents spells into blanks! Among them cards with a very high impact like Path to Exile, Nature's Claim, Dispel, Inquisition/Thoughtseize, ... and then there is decks which are build around an insanely low curve like Burn, Infect, Bogles, ...against these decks a Chalice on 1 will often win the game by itself.

In cbg style lists Chalice is often played mainboard to increase the artifact count and just because it's good. Shoktroopa style lists sometimes play a few in the sideboard.

Due to the nature of our own curve Chalice is mostly played on 0,1 or 4. Against a bunch of decks having a Chalice can complete lock the opponent out of the game (e.g. Scapeshift+Chalice=4). Quite a few decks cannot deal with Chalice on 1 and Engine/Angel.

Mono U Tron usually runs either 1 TE or 1 GQ to deal with man lands and spell lands like Gavony Township, Tron, Academy Ruins, Bojesu, ... Let's see what the (dis)advantages of each are:

Pros for Tec Edge:

• both are down exactly 1 land, which usually matters less to you since you have more mana through Tron
• opponent cannot "fix" his mana base by getting a 3rd color basic (imagine UWR being stuck on UR and getting a plains)
• better in the mid and late game

Cons for Tec Edge:

• opponent needs to have 4 lands, good opponents can play around it by staying at 3 lands (affinity, infect)
• you need an addtional colorless mana for the activation
• cannot target basics (rather insignificant really)
• cannot be used as a blue source (also very small impact)

Pros for Ghost Quarter:

• can be used no matter how many lands the opponent has
• no mana required to activate
• can target basics (but really why would you?)
• after Boil or some other land destruction on your only blue source you can use Ghost Quarter on one of your other lands to get an Island
• better against Affinity, Infect and Inkmoth Nexus in general

Cons for Ghost Quarter:

• you are down 1 land compared to your opponent
• opponent can get any basic, making it easier for them to have access to all colors
• weaker vs scapeshift

The really important thing in my opinion is being online always vs being online only after the opponent has 4 lands and being down a land vs not being down a land. From what I can tell more people play Ghost Quarter right now because of Inkmoth Nexus in Infect and Affinity and I do not have a convincing argument against this, except that I still play TE and I've never(!) lost a game because I had TE instead of GQ. It could've happened once but the infect opponent who had lethal turn4 played a 4th land. The other way around though I have won games vs scapeshift wich probably would've been lost with GQ.

Ugin is an amazing card which is worshipped like no other (except for maybe Mindslaver) by some Mono U Tron players. And to understand why you only need to resolve Ugin once and see how he can completely dominate a game. Usually when Ugin comes into play you will -X to clear the board, after which you are still left with a planeswalker of decent size. If your opponent tries to commit new creatures to the board you can either pick them off one by one with the +2 or just -X again and again every other turn. It will be pretty much impossible for your opponent to establish any kind of presence on the board while Ugin lives. If you manage to get Ugin to 10 (which is really not as hard as it looks) an ultimate will usually win the game by itself. Most often you end up putting down a bunch of Tron lands + a Mindslaver (sometimes through Treasure Mage) + Expedition Map/Academy Ruins leading to an instant lock. Still there are many Mono U Tron players who don't play this card and the reasoning is usually:

• cannot be tutored for (except with gifts which is another issue altogether)
• cannot be recurred with Ruins
• more expensive than a 2nd O-Stone
• weak against man lands, affinity, twin, ...

These are valid concerns but in my personal opinion Ugin is too good to not play him. You don't really need to tutor him. The tutoring still works exactly as before you can tutor up Angel/Engine/Titan/Slaver(/Batterskull) when you need to, howeve Ugin you can only draw into. When you do draw into Ugin, it is usually a huge blowout like we only know it from Sundering Titan vs 3-color decks. I believe while Ugin is very good and very fun it is not mandatory to play him. He is good but not necessary.

Batterskull competes with Wurmcoil Engine for the same slot in this deck: lifelinker, satbilizer, win con. Wurmcoil Engine was first and is still the favourite for many people. A few reasons why Wurmcoil Engine might be better (quoted from MTG-Fan):

- Most decks can deal with the Germ token very easily. Yes, you can bounce the Batterskull back to hand and replay it then, BUT if they abrupt decay or liliana or whatever your Germ token, and you bounce and replay, you've just spent THIRTEEN mana for a 4/4 lifelink vigilance guy. If you had Wurmcoil in that situation, Decay doesn't touch it and Lili edict is just bad vs. it.

- A 4/4 lifelink vigilance is solid vs. aggro but it's still just a 4/4 body in the end. Against a combo or control deck, that's a slower clock. For 1 more mana you could have 6/6 instead of 4/4. And against Tarmogoyf decks and the like, a 4/5 tarmogoyf kills a Germ token with ease, whereas no matter how big a Tarmogoyf is it's always dying to Wurmcoil.

However there are some good qualities too. The most important thing to consider is Path to Exile, the best answer versus Wurmcoil Engine, doesn't really do anything against Batterskull. Batterskull is generally very resilient to removal as long as you have 8+ mana and while it is true that bouncing and replaying takes time and mana your opponent is basically trading removal spells for tempo which is a good trade for us as long as we don't die immediately.

Something that is too often ignored (I was guilty of this for a time) is the ability to equip Batterskull for 5. Especially when you already have a creature in play that doesn't have summoning sickness it's a great idea to equip Batterskull on that creature and swing rather than bounce replay. Having a Titan or Angel equiped with Batterskull is insane. A Snappy/Treasure Mage/Solemn riding the 'skull is still way better than a 4/4 germ.

Batterskull costs only 5 mana compared to Wurmcoil Engine 6 mana. This can be great because you might be able to play Batterskull earlier against decks like Zoo where you want the stabilizer asap but it also means you cannot tutor for it with Treasure Mage. If you want to be able to tutor for Batterskull you can play Fabricate, which has a few other advantages like tutoring Chalice, Map, Ostone, Jester's Cap, Spellskite and being able to flashback it with Snappy.

Even when we ignore the cmc and removal it's not obvious which card performs better on the board. In a stabilizing/lifelinker role Batterskull can sometimes be better because of vigilance allowing you to attack and block gaining 8 life each turn. In similiar situation it's sometimes a real headache whether you want to attack with your Engine because you might die to your opponents swing if he has Snap+Bolt in your end step. The advantage for Batterskull only gets bigger if we can equip on another creature. Still there is again also an argument for Wurmcoil Engine being the better stabilizer. Consider a Primeval Titan, 4/5 Tarmogoyf or just any creature that can block a Batterskull for days. The deathtouch on Engine  is very good vs double blocking, stopping your opponent from just swinging with their biggest dude every turn and generally a great thing to have. Trading an Engine with one of your opponents big dudes is usually a good play considering we get tokens and have Academy Ruins. Compare that to chump blocking with your germ every turn, it may buy you some time but you have to spend 8 mana each turn to keep your board state while your opponent is most likely still developing his board further.

One last thing which you have to consider is Stony Silence. It doesn't completely turn Batterskull into a blank since you still have the ETB trigger but it seriously weakens it. I still believe in playing Batterskull vs white, you just have to keep this card in mind and bounce it at some point.

Most people think about UW tron and reanimating Elesh Norn or Iona when they see Gifts Ungiven. That's not at all what you want to do with Gifts Ungiven in Mono U Tron. Instead you can use Gifts as a value engine to get card advantage and to some degree tutoring. Imagine you are playing vs combo or control and you are in dire need of a counter: Gifts into Remand, Condescend, Negate, Snapcaster. Or against midrange/aggro you are dead on board: Gifts into Aetherize, O-stone, Cyclonic Rift, Snapcaster. Or you are looking to end the game so you get Mindslaver, Expedition Map (to get Ruins), Ugin, Noxious Revival. Gifts Ungiven gives you an insane amount of options and it's just a great blue card in pretty much every part of the game. Cards like Snapcaster, Crucible of the Worlds and Noxious Revival help you maximize the effectiveness of Gifts Ungiven, but adding these cards will dilute the core of your deck. So you have to make a choice how deep you want to go with Gifts. The most conservative approach as seen by Shoktroopa is to just add 1-2 Gifts Ungiven to a stock list. When I played Gifts I went a little bit further playing 2 Gifts, 1 Noxious main and 1 Crucible side and making several changes to other cards in the main and side to get more out of my Gifts. In my personal opinion playing with value Gifts is a lot of fun but most likely not as strong as a streamlined "normal" version of Mono U Tron. At 4cmc Gifts is rather expensive for modern, especially if we keep in mind that Gifts does not have an immediate impact most of the time. With Gifts you will eventually generate an advantage but sometimes it'll just be too slow or too clunky.

If you do want to try Gifts you should keep some things in mind:

1.  Redundancy:
   You want to build your deck in such a way that you have different cards doing the same thing, e.g. Batterskull/Wurmcoil Engine, O-Stone/Ugin, Cyclonic Rift/Aetherize/Aetherspouts/Hibernation. This way if you are in need of a lifelinker, a wipe or a bounce you have several targets for your Gifts and you can make sure that you end up with at least 1 answer to your problem. Most notably I would play some 1-of counters (Mana Leak, Swan Song, Pact, Negate) in the 75 so you can Gifts into 4 different counters. Having at least 3 answers against midrange "dead on board" situations is also important (like Aetherize,Silent Arbiter,lifelinker,wipe). Snow-Covered Island also falls in this category, to make it easier to get a blue source.
2. Gifts synergy:
   Snapcaster is a decent card in Mono U Tron but usually not considered a core part of the deck which is irreplacable. However if you play Gifts the value of Snapcaster increases a lot and you should play at least 1. Another card which has a great synergy with Gifts is Noxious Revival as a blank 4th Gifts target. Crucible enables you to get lands very aggressively, like going for Tower, Crucible, Mine, Map. Buried Ruins is another possibility. There are probably more cards with either flashback or other graveyard interaction which you could use with Gifts.
3. Ramping:
   4cmc is quite a lot in a format like modern. If you play Talisman you will be able to play Gifts on turn3 at least sometimes, and that 1 turn is going to be the difference between stabilizing in time and dying often enough.

Here is one example deck list.

http://gatherling.com/deck.php?mode=view&id=29120

When I started out building the deck I was on a tight budget and replaced expensive cards like Remand with cheaper alternatives like Mana Leak. Back then I argued that the budget version of Mono U Tron wasn't that much worse than the "real" version. So at first Mana Leak was only considered to be a budget alternative to Remand but recently some people started to replace their main Remands with Mana Leaks because Remand is so bad vs very cheap spells and aggro decks in general. Who hasn't been in this situation: you have an engine in play, your opponent casts path and your only counter is Remand.

Mana Leak is definitely a playable spell and in an aggro-heavy meta I believe playing Mana Leak over Remand is the correct decision, which is pretty obvious if you think about how many matchups we board out Remands (basically every aggro matchup). The really tough question is how aggro-heavy does your meta need to be? I've personally not felt the need to play Mana Leak in the mtgo meta but I might try a split soon to give Mana Leak a try. I hesitate to make the change because Remand, Repeal and Condescends digging ability are an important component of this deck. Often I only end up assembling tron or finding my answer because of the digging on those cards.

We all know how good Karn can be because of RG tron. So why not give Karn a try in Mono U Tron? Well RG tron is really a completely different deck with a completely different gameplan. RG tron plays so many cards dedicated to assembling tron they can pretty consistently have tron by turn 3-4. Furthermore they play 4 Karns plus ways to find him so a turn 3-4 Karn is quite likely. In comparison Mono U Tron takes more time to assemble tron and to find Karn. So while Karn can be expected turn 3-4 in RG tron it's much more likely we assemble tron by turn 6-7 but then we'd still need to be lucky and find Karn. Karn on turn 3 wins the game, Karn on turn 7? Well if you are lucky he might still win you the game but too often your opponent just won't care. Against creature decks you'd probably end up exiling 1 creature and then lose your Karn. Against combo you might lose the next turn. Against control Karn might actually be great even on turn7 but control is neither popular nor a problem for us.

Karn is only great if you play him early - something that we cannot consistently do.

todo

I feel like we have to talk about Kozilek now. Thanks to Thomas Pendergast there are now a bunch of new U Tron players running around playing a 1-of Kozilek main. I have to admit that I never tried Kozilek or any other Eldrazi side or main board but I feel pretty confident in my assessment especially after I saw Thomas reasoning for playing Kozi and how fast he abandoned the idea. Thomas reasoning to play Kozi main as far as I understand it was

1. there was mill in his local meta
2. just giving it a try because why not
3. it's not a bad card. it's not unplayable

And I think those are pretty good reasons. I love to try out crazy stuff myself (Culling Scales anyone?) but it's kind of unfortunate that one of the best finishes and therefore one of the most popular deck lists isn't a completely solid list. Especially since there are surely people who believe the reason Thomas was able to perform so well compared to other U Tron pilots is that Kozilek.

Kozi is definitely playable, for 10 he will at very least draw 4 even if he is countered/removed. If he is not countered/removed it's a really fast clock. That being said I am pretty sure a Kozi is just worse than any other staple threat you could play in that slot (Mindslaver, Ugin, Titan, Angel, Engine, Bskull). Kozi is a nombo with Academy Ruins and you cannot tutor for it. I could see Kozi as a sideboard card which is good vs control because draw 4 even if he gets countered is so huge. But do we really need a sideboard card specifically for control? One at 10 cmc? I doubt it.

I tried out Staff of Nin about a year ago and like so many other cards I like it on principle but in the end it doesn't have enough impact and it's too slow. I've got to admit that I only played it for 2 FNMs though. I never used the ping on anything but my opponents life total so the ping is probably overrated. The amount of creatures that you can kill with Staff is really not that big. The card draw is nice and will surely eventually at some time win you the game. But it doesn't have an impact right away and that's really the reason the card is not good imo. Every single threat we play has to have an impact right away.

Wurmcoil Engine/Batterskull/Plat Angel = instantly stabilize the board (quite often at least)
Mindslaver = oops I win or at least disrupt the enemy quite a bit
Sundering Titan = oops I win against some decks or at least a big guy which takes down 1 land
Ugin = instantly stabilize the board, respectable clock since -10 wins the game

I'd play an extra copy of any other threat over Staff. There is no matchup where I'd want a staff except control which is really not a concern.

No, well usually not. Sometimes they will have Blood Moon just when you got Tron and that will buy them enough time to win. However far more often we can just ignore Blood Moon and play our normal early control game with Remand, Repeal, Condescend, Thirst, etc. The game plan is to buy time, hit land drops and eventually you will have all tron pieces on the board and bounce the Blood Moon. Then it's usually game over for the opponent. Does this mean that Blood Moon is bad vs U Tron? No, it is not but people seriously overestimate what it can do. They are used to Blood Moon winning the game by itself vs RG Tron and Amulet Bloom which is not at all the case against us. As a U Tron player you should be more worried about Sowing Salt, Choke and Boil than Blood Moon. Quite often I've found that Blood Moon was more crippling to my opponent than it was to me (I've seen affinity players bring in Blood Moon...)

I'm going to use online prices as I play exclusively online and paper prices are different in NA/EU. A "normal" Mono U Tron list usually costs about 100-200 tix. By replacing some of the expensive cards with budget alternatives you can get that price down to 50tix. The first list I played was actually 35 tix but the core cards of the deck have become more expensive since.

One example for a budget list is this: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/311232#online

You can probably save 20-30% of the online price displayed on mtggoldfish if you buy at the correct bots, use discount codes etc. If you want to improve upon this budget list you can get some of these cards:

1. Oblivion Stone instead of Perilous Vault
2. Remand instead of Mana Leak
3. Dismember for the sideboard
4. Chalice or Spellskite
5. Snapcaster