Last week I said I would talk about Mono Blue Tron, and that’s exactly what is going to happen! You see, I’ve kinda fallen in love with the deck, and have played it nonstop in the Modern constructed queues. It helped me get a Force of Will on my second account and as of this writing it is responsible for the two qualifier points I have on my third account. Grinding is kinda fun, but I doubt I am going to be working this hard for next season’s card, which is Bayou. I think I only need one anyways, and it would be for the Belcher list that the Fro presented to us a few weeks ago!

Back to the topic at hand and away from the humble brags. This week we are continuing the look at Tron decks in Modern, as you might recall last time, we looked at a Krark-Clan Ironworks deck that happened to have Tron in it. This weekend I wanted to look at a deck that focused on assemblying the Tron to power out stupid large game changing spells. While the Ironworks deck was focused on a combo, this deck most certainly has the large stupid spells. Wurmcoil Engine trumps aggro, Mindslaver is fantastic against control, and big guys like Sundering Titan and Platinum Angel can win the game rather quickly for you!

I have to give credit to the player that played this deck. Had it not been for shoktroopa finishing second in a recent Modern Premier event on MTGO I may have never given this deck a second glance. However with this finish from a strong player one had to wonder if the deck is great or if it was just positioned well in this top eight. In the finals shoktroopa lost the solid UR Pyromancer deck, but in the top eight he defeated a Junk deck and a URW control deck along the way. Let’s take a look at the list we used for the video and for the data gathering.

Over the course of three day I played 21 matches with the deck. That number counts the two man queues that I played for this article, one Daily Event, and fifteen 8 man queues. In case you have not noticed, I played a lower than normal amount of matches considering how many events I played. Overall I did poorly. Let’s break down the events.

3-2 in 2 man queues (5 played)

2-2 in Daily Events (1 played)

10-14 in 8 man events (15 played)

My overall record was 15-18. I played 33 matches and won 45% of them. Not the greatest win percentage, but not the worst either. We can go ahead and take a look at the table of decks that I played

Decks Played

Deck Played Wins Losses Hate Bears 0 1 Burn 0 2 Affinity** 0 2 Jund 0 1 Scapeshift 0 2 Rock** 0 1 UR Pyromancer** 0 1 Zoo* 0 1 Mono Blue Delver* 0 1 Splinter Twin** 1 3 UR Storm** 2 2 Melira Pod** 1 1 GR Tron** 2 0 UWR Control** 2 0 BW Tokens* 2 0 GW Mill 1 0 Mono Blue Tron* 1 0 Duke UW Tron 1 0 Kiki Pod* ** 1 0 Junk 1 0 *Denotes video taped matches Record against top ten in the metagame** 8 10 Total 15 18

**Top ten of the format as reported by mtgo-stats.com on 4-22-14

Splinter Twin, Melira Pod, Affinity, GR Tron, UR Storm, Hexproof (Did not play against), RUW Control, Pyromancer, Kiki Pod, BG



I would not let the 8-10 record against the top ten decks fool you. It’s still 44%! Look at the results. Look at what crushed me. Winless against Affinity, Pyromancer and Rock. I beat Twin once. I beat Storm twice, and to be honest only one of those times should count, after losing game one, we sideboarded, and my opponent did not make a play for ten minutes. I split with Melira Pod, and did pretty well against GR Tron and URW Control. The last two results do not surprise me at all. The Tron deck feels like an outstanding match-up thanks to our counter magic, and the UWR Control deck can rarely keep up with our large amounts of mana and the ability to pump multiple threats out turn after turn.

Deck in Action

I ended up going 3-2 in the queues. We lost to the Blue Aggro deck that we played against, and the other aggro deck which was Zoo. We beat a top ten deck in Kiki Pod, and then a solid tier two deck in BW tokens and the Mono Blue Tron Mirror. I know, I know I just spoiled the whole video portion, but I’m just gonna leave this here, you know in case someone is interested!

The mirror match was a time consuming drag, and we were destined to go to game three. I was not going to win that game at all. Hooray for the clock!

Sideboarding

I will do this exactly one time, and I’ll never do it again. I’m going to link to mtgsalvation.com. While the site does not have a huge reputation for quality Magic discussion what it does have is huge, and I am not going to plagiarize the work of others. A user on the site Lucashungaro started a thread for the deck about a year ago, and the discussion lasts 113 pages, which is pretty impressive. More impressive is Lucashungaro actually got shoktroopa to talk about the deck and offer sideboarding advice in the thread. Normally I would offer up my own advice for sideboarding but I used every bit of what shoktroopa had to say in the thread to my own advantage, and I would feel bad if I just his words, reworked them and took credit. Lucashungaro did a very good job gathering information about the deck, and I think it would be great if you visited the site, and see just how much labor went in to it. Thanks you two you all did great work for the Modern community with that thread!

The thread is here, and the sideboard guide is in the first post, and gets updated as shoktroopa makes changes and gives his thoughts (I hope troopa is a he and I am using the correct pronoun, if not my most sincere apologies!) on the deck. Please check it out, like I said all I would be doing is repeating their words, and it’s not fair to them at all to try to muscle in on their turf and take credit unfairly!

Final Thoughts

Should you play this deck in Modern? I think so yes! It’s a competitive cheaper build in the Modern format, and at the time of this writing, costs a little more than 84 tickets to complete on MTGO! Every game I lost I felt I was in, and if I had one more turn the result may have turned out differently, with the exception of the Scapeshift match-up, which I actually think is hopeless. You have enough disruption for Twin and Storm to make going off a nightmare for them. The aggro matches get significantly better post board, and I think the control matches are closer to walks in the park than they might truly be.

With that said, I have to get back on the grind for my third Force of Will. I’m gonna be awfully sad if I do the math and find out it would have been cheaper to just buy them instead of playing for them, but without playing I would not have stuff to talk about!

Next time we’ll look at the cheapest deck in the format! Thanks for reading and watching!

Joshua Claytor

@Joshuaclaytor

@Legitmtg

www.twitch.tv/joshuaclaytor

www.facebook.com/JoshuaClaytorMTG

www.youtube.com/joshuaclaytor

joshua.claytor@gmail.com