Hello, I've been playing MtG for about 21 years, and these days I play Pauper exclusively because I love the format. I tend to like proactive decks, and just built a Mono-G Tron deck with some mismatched Tron lands from my collection. I've played it twice at tournaments at my FLGS, went 1-2 and then 3-1. I had fun with the deck, since it's a very "Timmy" sort of Battlecruiser style. Just get absurd amount of mana, and then play janky fatties.
So I was thinking of investing in the deck's aesthetics with some Antiquities or Foreign Black Bordered Tron lands, since I like old frames and black borders on my cards whenever possible. I still have enough store credit from a lot of the Legacy/Modern staples I sold off when I quite playing formats with Rares. Or at the very least, I could get Chronicles ones with the same art (this would cost me about $15).
That said, it seems like some people get naturally bitter/salty when playing against any kind of Tron deck. One player this week, after I got Tron online on the 3rd turn and played a Wretched Gryff, just said "That's the f***ing game" and conceded. I was confused, because it's not like that was anything close to a certainly won game. While sideboarding for Game 2 he said, "You have it," and conceded the whole match. After that he kept on saying, "You taught me so much. I learned a lot that game," in a very sarcastic and condescending tone. And this was a 30-40 year old guy who I'd expect to be mature.
I don't get the big deal, since my deck wasn't even oppressive like any Ghostly Flicker control Tron, or a lockdown deck like Rhystic/Stonehorn Tron. It wasn't any different than if I'd played the Pauper Mono-G Ponza shell and generated that much mana with an Elvish Mystic/Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl combo. It was an awkward experience which has made me question whether it's worth investing more in nice Tron lands. I mean, I want my opponents to have fun, especially since I care about growing the Pauper community in my area. I've even held off on brewing some ideas I've had for LD decks, since they could seem oppressive to new players. And I know hating on Tron is a whole meme on r/magicthecirclejerking, and all memes are based partially on real response. Is this gonna be typical going forward, and should I maybe lay off the expensive Tron lands?
Man if you really like tron and want to play it, just play. He probably was just a moron, people would complain just about anything. Yeah, it's not fun to get wrecked turn 3 by tron, but the same could be said about storm, merfolk, infect, hollow one, humans, scapeshif, and so on: the list is just too long. This is modern, this is why you can't build a deck and expect to win every game. And that is why you get to side for god's sake. Luck comes and goes, there is still the chance that you won't close tron quick enough to retaliate against his strategy. AND YOU PLAYED A WRETCHED GRYFF NOT EVEN A KARN LIBERATED! He was just salty, that's all. Just for the sake of knowing, what was he playing?
EDIT: didn't realize it was pauper lol. My point still stands though: don't let others dictate what you should or should not play based on their salt levels
Then he was just salty and probably didn't even have a proper answer to tron. It happens, it's part of playing modern. As long as you weren't being annoying while playing, he was the one at fault.
Tron predates on heavy control. Heavy control players tend to be spikes, and in my experience heavily into making the game unpleasant for the other player.
Tron turns that around on them, and they get salty because of it. You give up as much to hyper aggro as they do to you, they don't like it because it balances the meta.
I used to play 12 Post in Legacy, the number of Miracle players who would either rage quit or flame me for going over their lock was quite high.
Look, it's the deck that you want to play so you should play it. if a persons behavior is making you uncomfortable, tell the judge and the store owner. That ***** is uncool, you're not the one who is making people feel bad about playing pauper, this guy is.
Welcome to playing any deck that is 'unfair'. I dont know the 'norms' of Pauper, so I cant say, but as an exclusive Modern player, people (on average) around here despise Tron and its always going to make people salty. Its one of the more hated decks in the format easily.
Is there land hate in Pauper? If not, I can imagine its a bit of a joke to play against a deck that has no meaningful hate. As it is, you can main deck Blood Moon in Modern, and thats not remotely enough to stop Tron.
EDIT: I foiled out my Mono U Taking Turns deck, and dont even play it because people are so easily tilted over the deck style. Thats just life.
OP, your experience is unfortunately a side affect of having such an old, beloved and wide-spread card game that is extremely competitive. You'll eventually interact with a grown adult who makes you ask "do they deserve the title?". Sadly enough nowadays you will also probably have asked that same question regarding the other motorists on your drive to any given place. It's the world nowadays. Life is going 120mph for most and anything beyond surface-level interactions with people could very well be beyond most individual's tolerance of effort. Yes, you whooped a 30yr old's ass in a card game and he was salty. You can work your face off for a decade to put aside the cash for a very nice car and it could get keyed the first time you park it at the mall. That 120mph rush that most folks' lives are stuck in means more than just your Magic nerd opponent will blow up at the slightest perceived grievance or even plain 'ole jealousy. Every person's life story is unique and you don't have to justify your financial desires to anybody but who pays your bills. If you are the master of your bills, then by all means spend your money however you like!
Pauper has ponza and some very fast aggro decks (stompy, burn, affinity, infect, bogles.) Tron also has very little of worth to ramp into, the best being ullamog's crusher and mulldrifter.
Tron is very balanced in pauper, it just eats the control decks that people play to beat Delver (the formats king.)
Just so you know, this is a problem that exists in any kind of non-rotating constructed format. There is a huge leap going from the "designed as intended" safe space of standard to the wild west of modern, pauper, and legacy. A lot of people genuinely don't like competitive non-rotating formats because they are often the grounds where some of the worst cards to play against find a home, and it takes some grit to finally get oneself acclimated to it. For my thoughts on Tron, see my mini-rant in the spoiler tag.
In general, I find that the rule of thumb is that standard, draft, and limited are best among strangers, and modern, legacy, and commander are best among friends. You don't really have a good time when one person steam rolls the other person with no challenge, and that is bound to inevitably happen in a wide open format. This is especially true with old returning players: I absolutely crushed my first playgroup when I was coming back to MTG because I had resources like this forum and tons of time to goofball with decks, and got really salty when someone would beat me because they played prison cards and stalled the game with no win cons.
As for Tron: This is more on WoTCs shoulders than anything else. The Urza Lands were from a time when Wizards didn't set the curve on mana so tight and the majority of strategies used mana boosts as a way to balance cards in hand with card power. It was actually a really good system, but they gutted it largely because of the reserved list. If the RL didn't exist we would never have had the kind of MTG we see today where they had to basically cut back mana rocks and power creep the heck out of creatures and spells at the lower CMCs.
People don't realize that those Shivan Dragons that look awful today were actually meant to be played on Turn 4-5 a lot of the time. Hypnotic Specter was often a turn 1 play via Dark Ritual. Green did it's ramp via creatures like Llanowar Elves, and everyone usually used Sol Ring as a way to help push spells out faster and pay for X costs. Some decks even traded around their mana-sources mid game in a sense in order to fuel cards like Fireblast.
Now we got none of that. They decided to jam everything into the same curve, and then left a vestige of the old world in modern via the tron lands, red mana boosts like Seething Song and Phyretic Ritual, then basically banned all the red mana excels except for a few. And you wonder why old school players at times feel like they just want to smash their head through a wall.
Because they did this change, it made tron into a deck that can feel like a roulette wheel to the opponent much like Aetherworks Marvel in standard. The deck looks like it would be easy to beat if you can stop the lands from connecting, but then there aren't a lot of ways to stop the lands from connecting fast enough, such as by using Sinkhole.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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So I was thinking of investing in the deck's aesthetics with some Antiquities or Foreign Black Bordered Tron lands, since I like old frames and black borders on my cards whenever possible. I still have enough store credit from a lot of the Legacy/Modern staples I sold off when I quite playing formats with Rares. Or at the very least, I could get Chronicles ones with the same art (this would cost me about $15).
That said, it seems like some people get naturally bitter/salty when playing against any kind of Tron deck. One player this week, after I got Tron online on the 3rd turn and played a Wretched Gryff, just said "That's the f***ing game" and conceded. I was confused, because it's not like that was anything close to a certainly won game. While sideboarding for Game 2 he said, "You have it," and conceded the whole match. After that he kept on saying, "You taught me so much. I learned a lot that game," in a very sarcastic and condescending tone. And this was a 30-40 year old guy who I'd expect to be mature.
I don't get the big deal, since my deck wasn't even oppressive like any Ghostly Flicker control Tron, or a lockdown deck like Rhystic/Stonehorn Tron. It wasn't any different than if I'd played the Pauper Mono-G Ponza shell and generated that much mana with an Elvish Mystic/Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl combo. It was an awkward experience which has made me question whether it's worth investing more in nice Tron lands. I mean, I want my opponents to have fun, especially since I care about growing the Pauper community in my area. I've even held off on brewing some ideas I've had for LD decks, since they could seem oppressive to new players. And I know hating on Tron is a whole meme on r/magicthecirclejerking, and all memes are based partially on real response. Is this gonna be typical going forward, and should I maybe lay off the expensive Tron lands?
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
EDIT: didn't realize it was pauper lol. My point still stands though: don't let others dictate what you should or should not play based on their salt levels
All I know was that it was Blue/Black, because I didn't get to see much besides lands.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
Tron turns that around on them, and they get salty because of it. You give up as much to hyper aggro as they do to you, they don't like it because it balances the meta.
I used to play 12 Post in Legacy, the number of Miracle players who would either rage quit or flame me for going over their lock was quite high.
@OP Don't let pathetic man-children whine you out of a decent deck.
Scrubs are going to scrub.
Look, it's the deck that you want to play so you should play it. if a persons behavior is making you uncomfortable, tell the judge and the store owner. That ***** is uncool, you're not the one who is making people feel bad about playing pauper, this guy is.
BGGRock
Modern
BRGJund
BBGRock
Is there land hate in Pauper? If not, I can imagine its a bit of a joke to play against a deck that has no meaningful hate. As it is, you can main deck Blood Moon in Modern, and thats not remotely enough to stop Tron.
EDIT: I foiled out my Mono U Taking Turns deck, and dont even play it because people are so easily tilted over the deck style. Thats just life.
Spirits
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Tron is very balanced in pauper, it just eats the control decks that people play to beat Delver (the formats king.)
Tron is the natural predator for my BGx modern deck. Almost unwinnable, but I don't get mad when that happens. Bad match ups exist for a reason.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
In general, I find that the rule of thumb is that standard, draft, and limited are best among strangers, and modern, legacy, and commander are best among friends. You don't really have a good time when one person steam rolls the other person with no challenge, and that is bound to inevitably happen in a wide open format. This is especially true with old returning players: I absolutely crushed my first playgroup when I was coming back to MTG because I had resources like this forum and tons of time to goofball with decks, and got really salty when someone would beat me because they played prison cards and stalled the game with no win cons.
People don't realize that those Shivan Dragons that look awful today were actually meant to be played on Turn 4-5 a lot of the time. Hypnotic Specter was often a turn 1 play via Dark Ritual. Green did it's ramp via creatures like Llanowar Elves, and everyone usually used Sol Ring as a way to help push spells out faster and pay for X costs. Some decks even traded around their mana-sources mid game in a sense in order to fuel cards like Fireblast.
Now we got none of that. They decided to jam everything into the same curve, and then left a vestige of the old world in modern via the tron lands, red mana boosts like Seething Song and Phyretic Ritual, then basically banned all the red mana excels except for a few. And you wonder why old school players at times feel like they just want to smash their head through a wall.
Because they did this change, it made tron into a deck that can feel like a roulette wheel to the opponent much like Aetherworks Marvel in standard. The deck looks like it would be easy to beat if you can stop the lands from connecting, but then there aren't a lot of ways to stop the lands from connecting fast enough, such as by using Sinkhole.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!