I've been playing Eldrazi Tron since its inception and has decided to radically change my decklist with baby Tron incorporation. I've only had very limited testing but has had pretty good results so far. I'm still in the process of tweaking my list and inputs would be great!
Major radical changes include:
- Taking out adult Karns and wurmcoil engine for 3 copies of Karn, Scion of Urza: I wanted to test out a 3 copies list with Karn aggressively producing contruct tokens as needed
- Running 3 copies of Maps instead of 4 and increasing mind stone count to 3: I've often found myself hating the mid to late game expedition map draw especially with chalice out. Mind stone gave me a chance to power out a turn 3 Karn, synergies with it, as well as gives me the extra late game reach if needed.
Whats the game plan for sideboarding against Humans and Hollow one ?
Humans:
Out: 4x smasher (huge blowout if they phantasmal image it, we also become a control deck hoping to turn the corner after endbringer, dust, wurmcoil, or ballista with collar resolve). 4x chalice as they have cavern of souls and vial. 2x mind stone as we want to be developing our board with creatures or removing one of their creatures on turn 2.
In: spatial Contortion, warping wail, collar, needle naming vial and then canopy for backup, ratchet bomb, hangarback, torpor orb
Hollow:
Out: 4x chalice (they will resolve burning inquiry or looting even if we are on the play, before chalice resolves, they also have a bunch of ancient grudges that can be cast after they self mill it to their GY). 2x dust due to their GY recurrence and hollow one, 1x ulamog because it's slow, 2x ballista as it's not premiere removal for their 2 toughness creatures (outside of bloodghast).
In: 2x wail to counter looting, inquiry, and goblin lore, as well as exile flameblade adept. 3x relic for obvious reasons, 1x surgical because sometimes even on the play T1 relic is too slow. 2x hangar, 1x cage to stop bird and bloodghast shenanigans.
With this configuration I've gone 7-0 in my last 7 matches against the deck on MODO. We have bigger creatures, and they can't beat a wurmcoil or endbringer outside of double bolt. Warping Wail is the mvp as it catches them very off guard when you counter one of their busted sorceries and make them waste their entire turn.
Edit: some general discussion, I've been pretty down on mind stone as I evaluate how cards have performed for me the past couple of weeks. Even though I've had good results, I can think of numerous times where mind stone interfered with another turn two play and felt pretty bad. The modern format is just in a place where using mind stone to ramp out a t3 TKS or t3 or t4 smasher is just too slow for the first play of the game, and even a t3 TKS on the draw can be too slow of interaction. We really need to be doing stuff turn two in modern, and as I look on mtggoldfish at the meta, 14 of the top 20 decks I would want wail in my deck both game 1 and post board. It is removal and interaction I've found the deck is in desperate need of game 1. Sure mind stone helps ramp out our higher costed eldrazi, but I don't think that's where we want to be for an opening play until the meta slows down a step. One could argue that mind stone synegizes with Scion of Urza and that blood moon is prevalent, but I would say with the addition of scion of Urza to the deck we have more than a handful of threats that don't care about blood moon. SoU, ballista, wurmcoil, dismember, chalice, and dust are all playable through it. And we also have 4 maps and 2 wastes to cast our eldrazi, which is a decent number of outs. I ran wails over mind stones for a very long time and only went back to mind stone when blood moon decks became popular a couple of months ago, and with Scion of Urza being an amazing answer to blood moon and damping sphere I feel pretty confident in wails once again for some early game interaction. As I said, a massive amount of decks at the top of the meta have some pretty powerful uses for warping wail, some of which are our weakest matchups in humans, affinity, Titanshift, and to a lesser extent GX tron. It also is pretty important against counters company to exile an early devoted druid to avoid a turn 3 game 1 blowout. Lastly, I've found that burn and storm have become closer to even matchups whereas when I ran 2 wails maindeck i beat these decks with ease much more often. Wail has so many uses against both of these decks, and we are in a much better position against these decks when we win game 1 and get game 3 on the play, than when we lose game 1 and have to win game 3 on the draw.
Tituba9, I just want to say thank you for your usual detailed analysis and devotion to this deck. I for one always look forward to reading what you have to say. I do of others as well.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Tituba9, I just want to say thank you for your usual detailed analysis and devotion to this deck. I for one always look forward to reading what you have to say. I do of others as well.
Thanks, man. I just love this deck and modern. I'm one of the weird ones that loves playing a deck with zero colors, even my commander deck is Kozilek.
I just had another thought, a way to include BOTH mind stone and warping wail, AND basilisk collar and a spatial contortion maindeck would be to shift chalices to the sideboard. I've always been the first to say chalice should be maindeck because of the power on X=1 early in the game, but chalice is pretty weak at the moment. I feel like we can take game 1 against burn and storm without it thanks to TKS and other interaction/removal, and we are so heavily favored against living end post-board it's practically a bye. Affinity is the other 'chalice' deck and it's hard to plan for chalice on zero game 1 when you're blind. Perhaps its time to bring in the interaction for game 1, and save chalices for when they really shine? I'll play some MODO leagues to try this out over the weekend, but as I'm playing in SCG Minneapolis I need to make a decision within a week. Basically I need to determine whether I'm going to run the standard mind stone and chalice maindeck and hope to run hot in draws and matchups; or to configure the maindeck to win more game 1's, putting myself in the position to be on the play game 3 more often.
Hi all, I just sent in some trades to convert my colorless eldrazi stompy to Eldrazi Tron. I’d love to hear some tips on playing this deck. I’ve played a lot of aggressive strategies but I’m going to commit to this deck as it feels pretty strong overall. I really like the addition of the new Karn in the deck as a way to draw cards and close out the game.
Looking forward to discussing the deck going forward!
There isn’t anything I didn’t like about that deck. It’s sweet. I know that usually the ETron matchup is tough. I just think ETron does a lot of the same stuff but has a much higher power level.
My local meta is a little bit of everything. Control and midrange has seen a bit of an uptick, so I’d be interested in learning more about those MU’s.
I've got a pretty in depth post coming up, I was going to do it tonight but I've decided in competitive spirit to wait until after the tournament this weekend. I ran my list and what do you know, crushed a 5-0 (10-2 in games) competitive league tonight after work.
Round 1: Grixis Shadow 2-1. They won game 1 and I won post-board games, both of them through T1 AND T2 discard, it was insane. I never cast a chalice on 1 a single time in the match. A Hangarback nullified their liliana game 3 when I had a TKS and Endbringer on the board, both of which would have been great targets for her. I'm seeing more and more lists pop up with hangarback excluded entirely from the side and there's sooo many matchups where I bring it in and love to draw it, and that's without regarding the synergy with Scion of Urza.
Round 2: Blue Moon 2-0. I really like these new Blue Moon lists with no madcap or breach+emrakul, super easy to beat with cavern of souls. Its like a jeskai control without paths.
Round 3: Humans 2-0. The pilot of this game must have been pretty new and made some blatant mistakes. Game 1 was almost unwinnable for them however: Turn 3 tron playing double reshaper. They commit heavily going wide with 2 nobles a lieutenant a kitesail and a meddling mage, naming all is dust. I turn 4 ballista + sac sanctum for another ballista, then a reshaper chump reveals a third ballista and they just conceded. Game 2 they made some critical mistakes, they should have won the game. The biggest example was they had a T2 freebooter and had a choice of taking wail or spatial, and definitely should have taken wail to make me use contortion on the 1/2 flyer instead of a future mantis rider, but they chose wrongly and i used wail to get spatial back to hand then 2 turns later used the spatial on a rider and turned the corner. I also got a late game torpor orb and wurmcoil which sealed their fate.
Round 4: Storm 2-1. They got me game 1 but postboard play I had too much spot removal for their creatures. Game two I had a ratchet bomb to blow out 16 golbins (which is often their backup plan when we slow them/kill creatures), and game 3 I sent a past in flames to the GY when they cast gifts and then warping wailed the past in flames to counter it.
Round 5: Storm 2-0. The ******* god draw. HOLY. Game 1: T3 tron with chalice on 2 into T4 ulamog on the play. Cya. Game 2: spatial and dismember in opening hand to kill their first and only two creatures of the game, followed by TKS into TKS, they play 6 gobbos which was pretty decent for them as I'm too scared to give them a draw if they trade with a TKS, and I topdeck my last tron piece to ulamog away two of their lands taking them to 1 land and they concede.
I drew really well but also made some key plays with Buried Ruin and Cavern of souls. I did the Blue Moon player so dirty by making an uncounterable 5/5 ballista and using it to ping their board and jace, they used a lot of resources to save jace at 1 loyalty (they had a spellskite, which it turns out is pretty good against ballista pings), then the following turn I used buried ruin to recast a 4/4 uncounterable ballista and pinged the last loyalty on jace and attacked for lethal a couple turns later. Buried ruin is really good. Scion of Urza did make an appearance against Blue Moon where I ended up with 7 cards in hand on turn 6 with threats on the board, that was insane, and also made an appearance against Grixis Shadow and the token generation went wide enough that I stole a sick game 2 with a line I almost missed but realized at the last second for exactsies involving using endbringer to make a shadow uanble to block for turn, swinging them to 1 and pinging on their upkeep. Storm is a pretty good matchup post-board, but I feel that's only the case when we have 6 copies total of wail and contortion and dismember, shutting them off their creatures and using relic, TKS, chalice, etc. to buy enough turns. They cannot be allowed to stick a creature, and it's also necessary to have ratchet bomb at the ready for goblins, which outside of a god draw for them usually come later in the game giving us more draws to get the ratchet in hand.
I've got a pretty in depth post coming up, I was going to do it tonight but I've decided in competitive spirit to wait until after the tournament this weekend. I ran my list and what do you know, crushed a 5-0 (10-2 in games) competitive league tonight after work.
Round 1: Grixis Shadow 2-1. They won game 1 and I won post-board games, both of them through T1 AND T2 discard, it was insane. I never cast a chalice on 1 a single time in the match. A Hangarback nullified their liliana game 3 when I had a TKS and Endbringer on the board, both of which would have been great targets for her. I'm seeing more and more lists pop up with hangarback excluded entirely from the side and there's sooo many matchups where I bring it in and love to draw it, and that's without regarding the synergy with Scion of Urza.
Round 2: Blue Moon 2-0. I really like these new Blue Moon lists with no madcap or breach+emrakul, super easy to beat with cavern of souls. Its like a jeskai control without paths.
Round 3: Humans 2-0. The pilot of this game must have been pretty new and made some blatant mistakes. Game 1 was almost unwinnable for them however: Turn 3 tron playing double reshaper. They commit heavily going wide with 2 nobles a lieutenant a kitesail and a meddling mage, naming all is dust. I turn 4 ballista + sac sanctum for another ballista, then a reshaper chump reveals a third ballista and they just conceded. Game 2 they made some critical mistakes, they should have won the game. The biggest example was they had a T2 freebooter and had a choice of taking wail or spatial, and definitely should have taken wail to make me use contortion on the 1/2 flyer instead of a future mantis rider, but they chose wrongly and i used wail to get spatial back to hand then 2 turns later used the spatial on a rider and turned the corner. I also got a late game torpor orb and wurmcoil which sealed their fate.
Round 4: Storm 2-1. They got me game 1 but postboard play I had too much spot removal for their creatures. Game two I had a ratchet bomb to blow out 16 golbins (which is often their backup plan when we slow them/kill creatures), and game 3 I sent a past in flames to the GY when they cast gifts and then warping wailed the past in flames to counter it.
Round 5: Storm 2-0. The ******* god draw. HOLY. Game 1: T3 tron with chalice on 2 into T4 ulamog on the play. Cya. Game 2: spatial and dismember in opening hand to kill their first and only two creatures of the game, followed by TKS into TKS, they play 6 gobbos which was pretty decent for them as I'm too scared to give them a draw if they trade with a TKS, and I topdeck my last tron piece to ulamog away two of their lands taking them to 1 land and they concede.
I drew really well but also made some key plays with Buried Ruin and Cavern of souls. I did the Blue Moon player so dirty by making an uncounterable 5/5 ballista and using it to ping their board and jace, they used a lot of resources to save jace at 1 loyalty (they had a spellskite, which it turns out is pretty good against ballista pings), then the following turn I used buried ruin to recast a 4/4 uncounterable ballista and pinged the last loyalty on jace and attacked for lethal a couple turns later. Buried ruin is really good. Scion of Urza did make an appearance against Blue Moon where I ended up with 7 cards in hand on turn 6 with threats on the board, that was insane, and also made an appearance against Grixis Shadow and the token generation went wide enough that I stole a sick game 2 with a line I almost missed but realized at the last second for exactsies involving using endbringer to make a shadow uanble to block for turn, swinging them to 1 and pinging on their upkeep. Storm is a pretty good matchup post-board, but I feel that's only the case when we have 6 copies total of wail and contortion and dismember, shutting them off their creatures and using relic, TKS, chalice, etc. to buy enough turns. They cannot be allowed to stick a creature, and it's also necessary to have ratchet bomb at the ready for goblins, which outside of a god draw for them usually come later in the game giving us more draws to get the ratchet in hand.
Karn, Scion of Urza has felt like the truth. Having a cheap planeswalker maindeck to generate card advantage has had only good results against midrange and control decks.
I don't think the 3 Chalice of the Void is necessarily correct, but I figured if 3 Blood Moons could be correct depending on the expected metagame, then 3 Chalice of the Void felt worth the old college try.
On the Sideboard (Outliers)
3 Relic of Progenitus => 3 Surgical Extraction to see if this works out better against combo, control, and Hollow One.
1 All is Dust => 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon Crossing my fingers this works out better for some midrange and control matchups.
3 Gut Shot has been good to great every week at my FNM.
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I played against a UW Geist of Saint Traft deck, and I was confused about what to do. It was a hybrid of UW Control and the Jeskai Geist of Saint Traft decks. After talking to the guy a little bit, this is what I recall to within 54 cards:
Chalice of the Void seemed bad, but was actually more mediocre to good, and seemed worth 1 or 2 in the 60. Ratchet Bomb seemed reasonable, but was too slow in the game.
He won 2 post-board games by tapping out for T3 Geist of Saint Traft tempoing me out with ease.
The whole mish-mash of UW Control and Jeskai Geist threw me off, and I was unsure of how to sideboard for the match.
How would y'all have sideboarded?
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Are you set on the deck as it is or would you tweak it a bit?
Another AiD and another Ratchet Bomb in the 75 could be in order.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Well, we pulled down a 4th at the SCG Minneaopolis Open this weekend. 2 Old Karn list. Congrats to Carl Johnson.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
He and Carl Johnson mention Torpor Orb being really good post game one vs. Humans. Depending on your meta, 2 or even 3 sounds decent. Personally I'd run 2 Baby Karn to synergize better with Orb over Big Karn. Any thoughts?
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
He and Carl Johnson mention Torpor Orb being really good post game one vs. Humans. Depending on your meta, 2 or even 3 sounds decent. Personally I'd run 2 Baby Karn to synergize better with Orb over Big Karn. Any thoughts?
I like Karn, Scion of Urza mainboard more to give our deck a Planeswalker angle that can't be hit by a board-wipe (even though its tokens do), but a multiple Torpor Orb and Karn, Scion of Urza strategy seems like one of the best avenues to attack Humans postboard.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't played against Humans with ETron), but if it is as bad as the Robots and/or Elves matchup, then I think I would want 3 or 4 of whatever sideboard card to have the best chances of seeing it in both postboard games.
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Personally, I would drop Big Karn from the main in your list and add the second All is Dust. I'd also drop one of the Extractions in the side and add another Ratchet Bomb if what you said about your meta is occurring.
As for Torpor Orb. If your meta has a lot of Humans, Affinity and Elves then yes I'd want to run 3 copies of Torpor Orb in the side. If you would want to go to a third Baby Karn in the main something would have to come out as well.
Again without knowing the specifics of your meta these calls may not be the correct ones. But it is food for thought. Let us know how it shakes out. I'll let others put in their 2 cents.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
He and Carl Johnson mention Torpor Orb being really good post game one vs. Humans. Depending on your meta, 2 or even 3 sounds decent. Personally I'd run 2 Baby Karn to synergize better with Orb over Big Karn. Any thoughts?
Torpor orb is also pretty narrow, so I think two copies is where we want to be. We don't want to draw the second copy in any given game and we should be fine to draw it turn 3-6 if we are playing spot removal and/or deploying creatures in the field on turns 2, 3, etc.
Carl's maindeck Liberateds with a third in the side is very interesting. I've played quite a bit in the current meta and the card seems too slow of a card, especially making room for the third copy in the side. I find it so hard to take liberated over scion of urza maindeck, they are both extremely powerful but scion of urza is the more playable card with our mana ramp/curve. I also like the possibility of equpping a maindeck collar to the construct tokens, seems like that would steal some game 1's when we would otherwise have run out of creatures. I do like that he cut mind stones for spatial contortion main for extra spot removal. I like his build but I have a hard time seeing why liberated would be better than scion of urza in the meta of that tournament unless the idea was to run hot with tron early. If I were to make a maindeck list right now I would do the exact same as him except swap 2 liberated for 2 SoU and take the wurmcoil to the side for ulamog to have permanent exile effect.
It's cool to see that Todd Stevens had the same thoughts regarding chalice as I had recently. It's left me feeling conflicted on how I would like to configure the deck, on one hand I can think of so many matchups where chalice game 1 (and for all 2/3 games) chalice plays a key role, and Carl just showed that you can have a 13-4 run with 4 chalices main (Ive also had good MODO success with the chalices main as well) at a pretty high level modern tournament. Yet when I construct a full 75 list without having to include chalice, I really like how the maindeck looks because I'm fitting in all of the cards I want and not making any compromises due to lack of room. You'd be able to get 2 Mind Stone, 1 Collar, Wurmcoil and Ulamog maindeck (20 creatures), 2 spatials, and a planeswalker configuration of 2 SoU and 1 liberated which I quite like the look of. That is my ideal maindeck build with every card I would want and the number of copies I'd want, but it is excluding 4 chalice to make room for it all. And I agree with Stevens with his point that if you aren't running chalice maindeck, don't have it in the 75 at all because people are more prepared for it post-board.
So what do you do? Do you keep the chalices in the list because it is shown to still be effective? Do you remove them and focus on beating the decks at the top of tier 1? Right now I cannot make a list with 4 chalices main that makes me totally happy with the other 32 nonlands, Im stuck making compromises in my last couple of card choices.
While this list looks fine, I would like a wurmcoil main, I would like the mind stones, and would like Karn Liberated as a 1-of to see mid-late game. Also, does anyone else sometimes struggle with choosing chalice or 1-drops in some matches post-board? Surgicals are pretty good, relics are pretty good, but against combo decks and control decks they clash with chalice. I lost to KCI once because I had to play chalice on 1 on turn 2, but then couldn't surgical away their myr retriever when the opportunity presented itself the very next turn. Opponent said if I surgicaled right there I would have won the game and match. Would eliminating the chalices and preventing this self-damage post-board be worth it?
Man do I like the look if this 75; both karns maindeck, both mind stone and spatial maindeck, collar and wurmcoil as well. There's no collateral damage with chalice and sideboard cards, which seems really nice. But would this hold up against the decks we previously leaned on chalice heavily for? Lantern, Affinity, Burn, Storm, KCI, Amulet Titan, Living End, GDS, and Bogles are the ones I can think off of the top of my head where chalice on 0, 1, or 2 is really important ASAP. A lot of these are combo decks and tough for us to beat, will they get even worse with no chalice? Damn you Carl for doing so well and making this decision so difficult!
Edit: The more I think about it, the more I can agree with taking out the 2x Hangarback and replacing them with 1x Ugin and 1x Skysovereign. Against humans, and affinity hangarback is not great but still usable, but the boat can do work in both and Ugin obviously as an additional board wipe against humans is good. Against mardu mancer hangarback is decent because they don't have paths, but the matchup is slow and grindy enough where a late game resolved Ugin could be devastating to them. And against Jeskai control I'd rather have ugin for non-creature threat than a hangarback that can get path'd or Teferi'd back into my deck, gaining no value.
I've been playing Eldrazi Tron since its inception and has decided to radically change my decklist with baby Tron incorporation. I've only had very limited testing but has had pretty good results so far. I'm still in the process of tweaking my list and inputs would be great!
Major radical changes include:
- Taking out adult Karns and wurmcoil engine for 3 copies of Karn, Scion of Urza: I wanted to test out a 3 copies list with Karn aggressively producing contruct tokens as needed
- Running 3 copies of Maps instead of 4 and increasing mind stone count to 3: I've often found myself hating the mid to late game expedition map draw especially with chalice out. Mind stone gave me a chance to power out a turn 3 Karn, synergies with it, as well as gives me the extra late game reach if needed.
Decklist here.
Humans:
Out: 4x smasher (huge blowout if they phantasmal image it, we also become a control deck hoping to turn the corner after endbringer, dust, wurmcoil, or ballista with collar resolve). 4x chalice as they have cavern of souls and vial. 2x mind stone as we want to be developing our board with creatures or removing one of their creatures on turn 2.
In: spatial Contortion, warping wail, collar, needle naming vial and then canopy for backup, ratchet bomb, hangarback, torpor orb
Hollow:
Out: 4x chalice (they will resolve burning inquiry or looting even if we are on the play, before chalice resolves, they also have a bunch of ancient grudges that can be cast after they self mill it to their GY). 2x dust due to their GY recurrence and hollow one, 1x ulamog because it's slow, 2x ballista as it's not premiere removal for their 2 toughness creatures (outside of bloodghast).
In: 2x wail to counter looting, inquiry, and goblin lore, as well as exile flameblade adept. 3x relic for obvious reasons, 1x surgical because sometimes even on the play T1 relic is too slow. 2x hangar, 1x cage to stop bird and bloodghast shenanigans.
With this configuration I've gone 7-0 in my last 7 matches against the deck on MODO. We have bigger creatures, and they can't beat a wurmcoil or endbringer outside of double bolt. Warping Wail is the mvp as it catches them very off guard when you counter one of their busted sorceries and make them waste their entire turn.
Edit: some general discussion, I've been pretty down on mind stone as I evaluate how cards have performed for me the past couple of weeks. Even though I've had good results, I can think of numerous times where mind stone interfered with another turn two play and felt pretty bad. The modern format is just in a place where using mind stone to ramp out a t3 TKS or t3 or t4 smasher is just too slow for the first play of the game, and even a t3 TKS on the draw can be too slow of interaction. We really need to be doing stuff turn two in modern, and as I look on mtggoldfish at the meta, 14 of the top 20 decks I would want wail in my deck both game 1 and post board. It is removal and interaction I've found the deck is in desperate need of game 1. Sure mind stone helps ramp out our higher costed eldrazi, but I don't think that's where we want to be for an opening play until the meta slows down a step. One could argue that mind stone synegizes with Scion of Urza and that blood moon is prevalent, but I would say with the addition of scion of Urza to the deck we have more than a handful of threats that don't care about blood moon. SoU, ballista, wurmcoil, dismember, chalice, and dust are all playable through it. And we also have 4 maps and 2 wastes to cast our eldrazi, which is a decent number of outs. I ran wails over mind stones for a very long time and only went back to mind stone when blood moon decks became popular a couple of months ago, and with Scion of Urza being an amazing answer to blood moon and damping sphere I feel pretty confident in wails once again for some early game interaction. As I said, a massive amount of decks at the top of the meta have some pretty powerful uses for warping wail, some of which are our weakest matchups in humans, affinity, Titanshift, and to a lesser extent GX tron. It also is pretty important against counters company to exile an early devoted druid to avoid a turn 3 game 1 blowout. Lastly, I've found that burn and storm have become closer to even matchups whereas when I ran 2 wails maindeck i beat these decks with ease much more often. Wail has so many uses against both of these decks, and we are in a much better position against these decks when we win game 1 and get game 3 on the play, than when we lose game 1 and have to win game 3 on the draw.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Thanks, man. I just love this deck and modern. I'm one of the weird ones that loves playing a deck with zero colors, even my commander deck is Kozilek.
I just had another thought, a way to include BOTH mind stone and warping wail, AND basilisk collar and a spatial contortion maindeck would be to shift chalices to the sideboard. I've always been the first to say chalice should be maindeck because of the power on X=1 early in the game, but chalice is pretty weak at the moment. I feel like we can take game 1 against burn and storm without it thanks to TKS and other interaction/removal, and we are so heavily favored against living end post-board it's practically a bye. Affinity is the other 'chalice' deck and it's hard to plan for chalice on zero game 1 when you're blind. Perhaps its time to bring in the interaction for game 1, and save chalices for when they really shine? I'll play some MODO leagues to try this out over the weekend, but as I'm playing in SCG Minneapolis I need to make a decision within a week. Basically I need to determine whether I'm going to run the standard mind stone and chalice maindeck and hope to run hot in draws and matchups; or to configure the maindeck to win more game 1's, putting myself in the position to be on the play game 3 more often.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
Looking forward to discussing the deck going forward!
There isn’t anything I didn’t like about that deck. It’s sweet. I know that usually the ETron matchup is tough. I just think ETron does a lot of the same stuff but has a much higher power level.
My local meta is a little bit of everything. Control and midrange has seen a bit of an uptick, so I’d be interested in learning more about those MU’s.
Round 1: Grixis Shadow 2-1. They won game 1 and I won post-board games, both of them through T1 AND T2 discard, it was insane. I never cast a chalice on 1 a single time in the match. A Hangarback nullified their liliana game 3 when I had a TKS and Endbringer on the board, both of which would have been great targets for her. I'm seeing more and more lists pop up with hangarback excluded entirely from the side and there's sooo many matchups where I bring it in and love to draw it, and that's without regarding the synergy with Scion of Urza.
Round 2: Blue Moon 2-0. I really like these new Blue Moon lists with no madcap or breach+emrakul, super easy to beat with cavern of souls. Its like a jeskai control without paths.
Round 3: Humans 2-0. The pilot of this game must have been pretty new and made some blatant mistakes. Game 1 was almost unwinnable for them however: Turn 3 tron playing double reshaper. They commit heavily going wide with 2 nobles a lieutenant a kitesail and a meddling mage, naming all is dust. I turn 4 ballista + sac sanctum for another ballista, then a reshaper chump reveals a third ballista and they just conceded. Game 2 they made some critical mistakes, they should have won the game. The biggest example was they had a T2 freebooter and had a choice of taking wail or spatial, and definitely should have taken wail to make me use contortion on the 1/2 flyer instead of a future mantis rider, but they chose wrongly and i used wail to get spatial back to hand then 2 turns later used the spatial on a rider and turned the corner. I also got a late game torpor orb and wurmcoil which sealed their fate.
Round 4: Storm 2-1. They got me game 1 but postboard play I had too much spot removal for their creatures. Game two I had a ratchet bomb to blow out 16 golbins (which is often their backup plan when we slow them/kill creatures), and game 3 I sent a past in flames to the GY when they cast gifts and then warping wailed the past in flames to counter it.
Round 5: Storm 2-0. The ******* god draw. HOLY. Game 1: T3 tron with chalice on 2 into T4 ulamog on the play. Cya. Game 2: spatial and dismember in opening hand to kill their first and only two creatures of the game, followed by TKS into TKS, they play 6 gobbos which was pretty decent for them as I'm too scared to give them a draw if they trade with a TKS, and I topdeck my last tron piece to ulamog away two of their lands taking them to 1 land and they concede.
I drew really well but also made some key plays with Buried Ruin and Cavern of souls. I did the Blue Moon player so dirty by making an uncounterable 5/5 ballista and using it to ping their board and jace, they used a lot of resources to save jace at 1 loyalty (they had a spellskite, which it turns out is pretty good against ballista pings), then the following turn I used buried ruin to recast a 4/4 uncounterable ballista and pinged the last loyalty on jace and attacked for lethal a couple turns later. Buried ruin is really good. Scion of Urza did make an appearance against Blue Moon where I ended up with 7 cards in hand on turn 6 with threats on the board, that was insane, and also made an appearance against Grixis Shadow and the token generation went wide enough that I stole a sick game 2 with a line I almost missed but realized at the last second for exactsies involving using endbringer to make a shadow uanble to block for turn, swinging them to 1 and pinging on their upkeep. Storm is a pretty good matchup post-board, but I feel that's only the case when we have 6 copies total of wail and contortion and dismember, shutting them off their creatures and using relic, TKS, chalice, etc. to buy enough turns. They cannot be allowed to stick a creature, and it's also necessary to have ratchet bomb at the ready for goblins, which outside of a god draw for them usually come later in the game giving us more draws to get the ratchet in hand.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
Thank you for the detailed write up, good job!
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
Artifacts [9]
4 Expedition Map
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Mind Stone
Spells [6]
2 Dismember
2 Warping Wail
1 Spatial Contortion
1 All is Dust
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Karn Liberated
Lands [24]
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
3 Wastes
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Buried Ruin
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Chalice of the Void
3 Gut Shot
1 Pithing Needle
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Spatial Contortion
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
On the Deck
I took some guidance form Tituba9's earlier list and replaced my 3rd and 4th Engbringer with Karn, Scion of Urza.
Without realizing it, I also moved to a 1:1 split of All Is Dust:{Karn Liberated, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger}.
Karn, Scion of Urza has felt like the truth. Having a cheap planeswalker maindeck to generate card advantage has had only good results against midrange and control decks.
I don't think the 3 Chalice of the Void is necessarily correct, but I figured if 3 Blood Moons could be correct depending on the expected metagame, then 3 Chalice of the Void felt worth the old college try.
On the Sideboard (Outliers)
3 Relic of Progenitus => 3 Surgical Extraction to see if this works out better against combo, control, and Hollow One.
1 All is Dust => 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon Crossing my fingers this works out better for some midrange and control matchups.
3 Gut Shot has been good to great every week at my FNM.
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxHow do y'all strategize around Detention Sphere, Settle the Wreckage, and other sweepers?
I played against a UW Geist of Saint Traft deck, and I was confused about what to do. It was a hybrid of UW Control and the Jeskai Geist of Saint Traft decks. After talking to the guy a little bit, this is what I recall to within 54 cards:
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
2 Vendilion Clique
Spells [23]
4 Opt
2 Serum Visions
4 Path to Exile
4 Spreading Seas
2 Syncopate
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Detention Sphere
2 Cryptic Command
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
Lands [24]
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Field of Ruin
16 U/W lands
Chalice of the Void seemed bad, but was actually more mediocre to good, and seemed worth 1 or 2 in the 60.
Ratchet Bomb seemed reasonable, but was too slow in the game.
He won 2 post-board games by tapping out for T3 Geist of Saint Traft tempoing me out with ease.
The whole mish-mash of UW Control and Jeskai Geist threw me off, and I was unsure of how to sideboard for the match.
How would y'all have sideboarded?
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxAnother AiD and another Ratchet Bomb in the 75 could be in order.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Well, we pulled down a 4th at the SCG Minneaopolis Open this weekend. 2 Old Karn list. Congrats to Carl Johnson.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/37081_Bold-New-Looks-At-Eldrazi-Tron.html
He and Carl Johnson mention Torpor Orb being really good post game one vs. Humans. Depending on your meta, 2 or even 3 sounds decent. Personally I'd run 2 Baby Karn to synergize better with Orb over Big Karn. Any thoughts?
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
No, I am not 100% set on the SB.
Do you mean change this back:
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon => 1 All is Dust
or go to 3 All is Dust in the 75?
And add another Ratchet Bomb in the board too?
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxSecond!
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxI like Karn, Scion of Urza mainboard more to give our deck a Planeswalker angle that can't be hit by a board-wipe (even though its tokens do), but a multiple Torpor Orb and Karn, Scion of Urza strategy seems like one of the best avenues to attack Humans postboard.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't played against Humans with ETron), but if it is as bad as the Robots and/or Elves matchup, then I think I would want 3 or 4 of whatever sideboard card to have the best chances of seeing it in both postboard games.
CETronC
WUBGRHumansWUBGR
UMerfolkU
GU
InfectGURBGx
DredgeRBGxAs for Torpor Orb. If your meta has a lot of Humans, Affinity and Elves then yes I'd want to run 3 copies of Torpor Orb in the side. If you would want to go to a third Baby Karn in the main something would have to come out as well.
Again without knowing the specifics of your meta these calls may not be the correct ones. But it is food for thought. Let us know how it shakes out. I'll let others put in their 2 cents.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Torpor orb is also pretty narrow, so I think two copies is where we want to be. We don't want to draw the second copy in any given game and we should be fine to draw it turn 3-6 if we are playing spot removal and/or deploying creatures in the field on turns 2, 3, etc.
Carl's maindeck Liberateds with a third in the side is very interesting. I've played quite a bit in the current meta and the card seems too slow of a card, especially making room for the third copy in the side. I find it so hard to take liberated over scion of urza maindeck, they are both extremely powerful but scion of urza is the more playable card with our mana ramp/curve. I also like the possibility of equpping a maindeck collar to the construct tokens, seems like that would steal some game 1's when we would otherwise have run out of creatures. I do like that he cut mind stones for spatial contortion main for extra spot removal. I like his build but I have a hard time seeing why liberated would be better than scion of urza in the meta of that tournament unless the idea was to run hot with tron early. If I were to make a maindeck list right now I would do the exact same as him except swap 2 liberated for 2 SoU and take the wurmcoil to the side for ulamog to have permanent exile effect.
It's cool to see that Todd Stevens had the same thoughts regarding chalice as I had recently. It's left me feeling conflicted on how I would like to configure the deck, on one hand I can think of so many matchups where chalice game 1 (and for all 2/3 games) chalice plays a key role, and Carl just showed that you can have a 13-4 run with 4 chalices main (Ive also had good MODO success with the chalices main as well) at a pretty high level modern tournament. Yet when I construct a full 75 list without having to include chalice, I really like how the maindeck looks because I'm fitting in all of the cards I want and not making any compromises due to lack of room. You'd be able to get 2 Mind Stone, 1 Collar, Wurmcoil and Ulamog maindeck (20 creatures), 2 spatials, and a planeswalker configuration of 2 SoU and 1 liberated which I quite like the look of. That is my ideal maindeck build with every card I would want and the number of copies I'd want, but it is excluding 4 chalice to make room for it all. And I agree with Stevens with his point that if you aren't running chalice maindeck, don't have it in the 75 at all because people are more prepared for it post-board.
So what do you do? Do you keep the chalices in the list because it is shown to still be effective? Do you remove them and focus on beating the decks at the top of tier 1? Right now I cannot make a list with 4 chalices main that makes me totally happy with the other 32 nonlands, Im stuck making compromises in my last couple of card choices.
Deck 1 - With Chalice
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Artifacts [9]
1 Basilisk Collar
4 Expedition Map
4 Chalice of the Void
Spells [6]
2 Dismember
2 All Is Dust
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
Lands [24]
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Buried Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Pithing Needle
1 All is Dust
2 Torpor Orb
2 Warping Wail
1 Wurmcoil Engine
While this list looks fine, I would like a wurmcoil main, I would like the mind stones, and would like Karn Liberated as a 1-of to see mid-late game. Also, does anyone else sometimes struggle with choosing chalice or 1-drops in some matches post-board? Surgicals are pretty good, relics are pretty good, but against combo decks and control decks they clash with chalice. I lost to KCI once because I had to play chalice on 1 on turn 2, but then couldn't surgical away their myr retriever when the opportunity presented itself the very next turn. Opponent said if I surgicaled right there I would have won the game and match. Would eliminating the chalices and preventing this self-damage post-board be worth it?
Deck 2 - Without Chalice
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Artifacts [7]
2 Mind Stone
4 Expedition Map
1 Basilisk Collar
Spells [6]
2 Dismember
2 All Is Dust
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Karn Liberated
Lands [24]
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Buried Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Pithing Needle
1 All is Dust
2 Torpor Orb
2 Warping Wail
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Man do I like the look if this 75; both karns maindeck, both mind stone and spatial maindeck, collar and wurmcoil as well. There's no collateral damage with chalice and sideboard cards, which seems really nice. But would this hold up against the decks we previously leaned on chalice heavily for? Lantern, Affinity, Burn, Storm, KCI, Amulet Titan, Living End, GDS, and Bogles are the ones I can think off of the top of my head where chalice on 0, 1, or 2 is really important ASAP. A lot of these are combo decks and tough for us to beat, will they get even worse with no chalice? Damn you Carl for doing so well and making this decision so difficult!
Edit: The more I think about it, the more I can agree with taking out the 2x Hangarback and replacing them with 1x Ugin and 1x Skysovereign. Against humans, and affinity hangarback is not great but still usable, but the boat can do work in both and Ugin obviously as an additional board wipe against humans is good. Against mardu mancer hangarback is decent because they don't have paths, but the matchup is slow and grindy enough where a late game resolved Ugin could be devastating to them. And against Jeskai control I'd rather have ugin for non-creature threat than a hangarback that can get path'd or Teferi'd back into my deck, gaining no value.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR