Tron is getting more and more popular, it is starting to be represented more and more at the top tables, and looks to only get even better with some new cards from War of the Spark and the London Mulligan.

Seeing a lot of new players start playing Tron is awesome, and I wanted to share some knowledge to help you master the art of playing Tron before MC London. Here are ten tips for new Tron players in Modern.

10. Don’t splash colors

Mono-Green Tron is the most popular variant right now, and for good reason. The main reason for anyone to splash a color in Tron is for the access to powerful sideboard cards like Collective Brutality or Rest in Peace .

While those cards are very powerful at what they do and are able to swing matchups heavily in your favor, they take away from the overall gameplan of Tron. We want to focus on making our combo, and then taking advantage of it to overwhelm the opponent with powerful threats. Another reason not to is you often have to cut basics in order to make room for various dual lands, which I would not advise since there are a lot of Field of Ruin , Assassin’s Trophy , and Fulminator Mage ‘s running around right now. Mono-Green Tron is very powerful and it has such a robust variety of answers splashing another color is almost never worth it.

9. Mulligan more aggressively Game 1

When discussing opening hands with Tron, one mistake that people often make is keeping hands that do not reliably assemble Tron until turn four. Now some of that time that is okay, like in more grindy matchups where you keep anything that is reasonable because of Thoughtseize or against control decks where the matchup will go long.

In the blind, I almost always mulligan a hand of seven that does not have turn three Tron. One, Tron is a combo-control deck. Tron, especially game one, gets all of its power from assembling its combo. You always hear people complain about the consistency of Tron, because that’s what the deck is built to do.

Do not be afraid to mulligan to Tron. A five card hand with turn three Tron is much better than a seven card hand with Turn four Tron. Every Tron player has stories about winning on low mulligans, and that’s because the deck mulligans exceptionally well. One piece of advice while taking a mulligan is making it look like you are really thinking about it and upset that you are taking the mulligan, I have had opponents before comment they could guess I was on either Tron or Dredge because I did not seem bothered by taking the mulligan.

8. Sequencing 101

Sequencing is one of the most important parts of playing Tron. It is a combination of a bunch of small decisions that help set yourself up for that top deck to win. One of the most important parts of sequencing is when possible, tutor up the Urza’s Tower last.

This is because if you have to have a turn where you have Tron assembled but only have access to some of the mana, getting the Urza’s Tower last allows you to have the most mana. Another thing is the sequencing of Expedition Map vs. Sylvan Scrying .

Let’s say you have a hand of Urza’s Mine , Urza’s Power-Plant , Expedition Map , Egg, Sylvan Scrying , 2 other cards. Sequencing that hand can look like you have to decide between which route to assemble Tron. However, it is almost always right to lead on the Expedition Map because it plays around the most card while getting you Tron, and having an egg for later for a potential Ancient Stirrings can be important. One of the most important things about Tron is seeing as many cards as possible so you can find threats to take advantage of the whole point of the deck.

This means things like cracking all the eggs you have before casting Ancient Stirrings , but also knowing that sometimes you should leave your eggs uncracked until next turn when you have the mana to cast what you draw to protect from a discard spell. One last important thing about sequencing is against Control you have to evaluate your threats. You want to bait out counterspells on less important threats so that your higher value threats. You can even sandbag Tron lands to try and get them to counter set up spells like Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map to then land a threat.

7. Using Karn Liberated properly

Most people when playing Karn Liberated often want to downtick right away, which is understandable. The allure of Stone Raining an opponent or picking of a troubling permanent is strong. But Karn Liberated is much more valuable. An example of this is I was facing B/G Rock once, and my opponent played a Liliana of the Veil when I had a Karn Liberated with three loyalty late in the game.

In that spot, Liliana did not matter. We were both topdecking, and it would be a few turns before she was close to an ultimate. I made the mistake of overvaluing Liliana and undervaluing Karn. If you just continue to uptick Karn Liberated, you have immense control over the game. Plus, who doesn’t want to restart the game?

6. When to use Oblivion Stone

Oblivion Stone is one of the most powerful cards in our deck, and one of the reasons we have some such good creature deck matchups. But there are a few common mistakes that people sometimes make when using the Oblivion Stone. The best time to use Oblivion Stone is during the combat step after your opponent has declared attackers, this way you can play around haste creatures.

The only reason I do not do this is if the opponent has a card that by popping Oblivion Stone on my turn, I can prevent them from gaining value, like a planeswalker or a creature like Dark Confidant . There are also scenarios where you want to use your life total as a resource.

If your opponent is not presenting lethal on the attack and you can afford to take the damage, you can wait until their end step to activate the Oblivion Stone. This forces them to play into it further or waste their turn not playing anything. Then after you activate the Oblivion Stone at the end of their turn, you can untap and play a threat to start to try to pull away. Another good habit to get into is using fate counters. Sometimes you have to be careful and play around something that could destroy the Oblivion Stone. Sometimes you get into a situation where you are playing draw-go with an opponent, it is correct to put a fate counter on your Oblivion Stone in the situation you draw another one.

5. Playing around hate

There are a lot of different types of Tron hate, and each one attacks us in various different ways.

Blood Moon : Despite all the talk about Blood Mooning Tron players, this is actually the easiest hate to play around. Often the decks that utilize Blood Moon are slower, and this allows us to either make natural land drops to cast our planeswalkers/ large creatures, and we also have Oblivion Stone to easily get rid of the Blood Moon.

Stony Silence : Stony Silence is pretty good against it, but we have ways to work through it. One, be on the play. Stony Silence does almost nothing against us on the draw. On the play, it can be backbreaking, which is why when facing Stony Silence decks you need to evaluate your opening hand and take into consideration how a Stony Silence will affect you. One way to do this is make your hand can generate green mana either the turn they have Stony Silence or has a basic forest to play Nature’s Claim

Dampening Sphere : This hate card is very similar to Stony Silence, except we can expect if from many different decks, and it is good against us both on the play and the draw. You need to evaluate the opening hand to make sure you can work through a Dampening Sphere, and the one plus side to this over Stony Silence is Oblivion Stone is still a useful card here.

Fulminator Mage / Stone Rain : This is the worst kind of Tron hate that unfortunately cannot really be played around. The best chance B/G Rock, Jund, or Ponza has at beating you is having these cards in multiples.

4. Sideboard staples

The three main cards that are sideboard staples at this point are Nature’s Claim , Thragtusk , and Thought-Knot Seer . I’ll talk more about Nature’s Claim in a second. Thragtusk is an all-star for us. It comes in against pretty much everything expect combo. It allows us a threat that is castable through Blood Moon , Dampening Sphere when we are being Ghost Quartered , and the life gain and body are very good against aggro. Thought-Knot Seer comes in a lot of the matchups Thragtusk does but is our best card against various combo decks. Being able to Thoughtseize combo decks is huge, and most of them take out removal so this stays on the battlefield and represents a quick clock. One card that I think is a sideboard staple specifically in this meta of Dredge and Phoenix being huge is Surgical Extraction . Being able to stunt the development of both those decks while still being able to use our mana to assemble Tron is very important.

3. Side-out Ghost Quarter more often

This is not a huge tip, but one I think is very important for the deck. Tron is a combo deck, and our combo pieces happen to be lands. Any lands that are in the deck that are not Tron serve a specific purpose. The Forests are there so Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin are not Strip Mine . The Sanctum of Ugin is a worse Eye of Ugin that helps us close out games.

Buried Ruin is just a value card. Ghost Quarter is in the deck to deal with troublesome lands like manlands, karoo lands, opposing Tron lands, etc. Because you are trying to assemble certain lands, in the matchups where Ghost Quarter’s only real application is being a Waste or targeting your own Tron lands, it is correct to board it out. Think of Ghost Quarter as a spell instead of a land. If the spell doesn’t do anything in the matchup, you can board it out.

2. ABC- Always Be Claiming

Nature’s Claim is the best card in our sideboard, and you should never have less than 3 of them. They are essential for beating a lot of Tron hate cards, like Stony Silence , Dampening Sphere , and Blood Moon . The best part about Nature’s Claim is it is almost never bad, so if you are not 100% you will not need it, you can always board anywhere from 1-3 copies in. Lots of decks have random artifacts or enchantments, Dampening Sphere is colorless so it can show up where you least expect it, and the life gain can be very relevant. Always be Claiming.

1. It’s Okay to Not Have Tron Games 2 & 3

Yes, I just had a whole section talking about how important Tron in the opening hand is. That is for Game 1 though. There are definitely situations where you can keep hands Games 2 & 3 without a clear path to Tron. For an example. I have kept many hands against affinity where it was 1 Tron land, a forest, an egg, and a pile of removal spells. This hand on the surface does not look very good, but being able to slow your opponent down enough where they almost run out of resources allows you to do what Tron does best, topdeck like the best of them.

Those are the top 10 tips I would give anyone who is new to Tron, understanding these will put you on the path to Tron mastery. Praise be to the Karnfather.

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