Sometimes, you catch the eye of that girl in your Chemistry class, take her out to eat at your favorite restaurant (probably Petra in Memphis, TN), have a great time, get her number, and find out that she actually has a mirror on the ceiling of her bedroom when you weasel your way into that situation later that week. Sometimes, you smack the cheese hat off the guy to your right and send it careening into a pitcher of beer as Chad Johnson catches a winning touchdown for the DIth time in his career while the Green Bay fans shake their fists in agony. Sometimes, just sometimes, you manage to find the elusive tube sock that has lingered in your laundry basket for eons while its poor and lonely compatriot dawdles in a drawer unused.
All of these are appropriate times to utter the phrase, “We did it, boys.” But none has ever been so fitting as the time I called Richard at 3am after the first day I tested with this deck.
A lot of people have said that their deck has broken the format. A lot of authors have claimed that their deck has “no bad matchups.” But not since Napster (I believe) has that statement been so true as it is now.
Here is the list:
Creatures (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (36)
Before I begin, I will refer you to Richard’s article here, because I’m operating under the assumption that you already have a rudimentary understanding of how the deck works. While I will be talking briefly about why you’d want to play the deck and some of the advantages it has over the other decks in the format, I’m not going to go into how the cards themselves interact or why a certain card is in the list over another. He’s taken care of that, and will let you know exactly what advantages this list has over normal straight-up Tron. Rather, I want to focus on how you go about playing the deck in certain matchups, and how your strategies fundamentally change based on your opponent’s plan of attack.
It is worth noting, however, the differences between his list and mine. As I’m sure you can tell, 73 out of the 75 cards are the same. He has a Skycloud Expanse in the maindeck where I have a Nomad Stadium, because he doesn’t want to randomly lose games due to not having a Blue source. The pain you might have to take early on is also an issue for him. I, on the other hand, like having something to do with Crucible that is inherently broken and not simply use it for the purpose of breaking Gifts. Stadium gets you out of burn range in the short-term, and over the course of two or three activations becomes a threat in and of itself when your life total becomes so high that Boros or TEPS can’t realistically kill you.
I also have a Trinisphere in the sideboard where he has a Platinum Angel. Neither of us are admittedly 100% sure about this slot – same, incidentally, with Serrated Arrows – but he wants to improve the Ichorid and Affinity matchups whereas I want to shore up TEPS. The TEPS matchup is currently better than either the Ichorid or Affinity one, but TEPS is roughly twice as common as either of those decks, and I want to give myself more plays in turns 2-4 that slow them down enough to get my advantage online. There is no way that deck can realistically go off through a Trinisphere early. Admittedly, of course, there is only one copy – but it mostly functions as a Chalice #5 anyway, and you can always Gifts for it if you want to cast it and another spell in the same turn (or don’t quite have the time to recur a Platinum Angel).
Alright, so you know the basics. But can the deck really perform?
Well, you be the judge. I could list out all of my playtesting results, but you have no idea what caliber of opponents I’m playing against, and nobody believes what anybody says about testing anyway. “I’m 60% against deck X.” Sure you are. “No, man, I played two hundred matches, and only lost three of them.” Right. Meanwhile, your opponent – your baby brother – is busy flinging mashed green peas at you from his high chair and drooling all over his bib.
Instead, I’ll just say that Richard and I posted a combined 11-2-3 record with the deck in the swiss at the recent Nashville PTQ, which featured a regional record 149 players. Two of those draws were in the fifth round, where we ID’d with one another at 4-0 so we could eat. The other draw was courtesy of my ass clown round 6 opponent, who was flagrantly taking advantage of the clock since he knew he could stall me out. At the end of extra turns, he was at seven. I had a Sundering Titan in play and he was under hard Mindslaver lock. His board featured the basic land Swamp and no other permanents, and his hand consisted of exactly one Magic: The Gathering card. Would he concede to me? Of course not. And how do I know he was trying to take advantage of the clock? He kept in copies of the card Ghastly Demise – at least two, because he hit that many with Dark Confidant – despite it being absolutely abysmal against my deck. Its only target in games 2 and 3 is Sundering Titan, and that big man hitting the graveyard isn’t real optimal for his three-color list. What am I going to do, beat the control deck down with seven-mana Air Elementals? Discard a card every turn to my 5/5 when I know he’s playing bounce and can just, you know, swing back for lethal with a Tog anyway? Yah, real good. The only possible reason he would ever keep that card in is to stall and prevent himself from taking twenty damage before extra turns are up. Thanks, guy.
I planned on calling that guy out, actually, on the off chance that people actually care about my opinion and would never ever ever ever ID or concede to that guy for the remainder of his Magical career. Unfortunately, though, my brain decided to block his name from my memory. The sole identifying factor that remains in my head is the image of his heinous, hideous, suicide-inducing moustache, which looked like the byproduct of an aborted blown nose smeared unevenly onto his upper lip. So sorry, guy, I guess you’re off this time. [Bitter much? – Craig.]
Anyway, point being, I consider the deck’s record for all practical purposes to be 12-2. My loss came to a Flow Rock list that Richard beat in the very next round, and I have no idea what beat Richard. Our wins, meanwhile, came against the gauntlet of Extended decks, ranging from Boros to TEPS to other U/W Tron decks to Flow Deck Wins to Aggro Loam to everything else. Sounds Good To Me. Even when we were punting so savagely that we were qualified to play on the National Football League’s special teams, the deck came through again and again. Worth it to me, thanks.
Before we begin talking about how to play against a particular matchup, it’s worth exploring exactly why you’d want to play this deck in the first place. Often as deck designers (and players) we get so preoccupied with how “good” our creation is in the abstract that we forget why we’re running it in the first place.
If you’re playing TEPS, for example, it’s obviously important to you to try and play a deck that wins before your opponent can get his strategy off the ground. Speed, then, is a priority, because the longer the game goes on the more likely it is that your opponent is mounting some kind of advantage. If you’re disrupted you only care about whether or not it prevents you winning before fundamental turn X, and you only care to disrupt the opponent enough so that he can’t stop you from winning on that same fundamental turn. If you’re playing Aggro Loam, you’re trying to create a game state where your superior engine (Life from the Loam) or giant creatures (Terravore) will make it overwhelmingly difficult for the opponent to gain any kind of advantage. Etc etc.
Put simply, with this deck you’re actively trying to do nothing, because you have inevitability against everything. Tron and Gifts ensure that the longer the game goes on, the more likely it is that you Just Win. You have the ultimate trumps in Mindslaver Lock and, to a lesser extent, Sundering Titan or Platinum Angel. You are one of the few “absolute control” decks in recent memory in the sense that you’re not just trying to tap out for a Keiga or whatever; you can literally prevent your opponent from being able to do anything. Scepter Chant does this to an extent with Teferi and Scepter on a Stick, but only you are capable of getting to this kind of game state by casting one single card.
What does this mean, then? Put simply, your goal is to avoid dying. The deck will eventually deliver a way to win, but the longer you can actively do nothing (think the flavor text on Null Rod) the more likely it is that you’ll just win the game basically on accident. This is not to say that you have no early game or that you aren’t quick; on the contrary, I’ve “won” games as early as turn 1 or 2. Sometimes, you get Chalice for one on the play against Boros, or resolve a Gifts on turn 2 in the U/W mirror to get your Tron online by turn 4.
Understanding this principle will make it clear why it’s necessary to do some counter-intuitive things, like go out of your way to set Chalice at one with an Explosives out game 1 against Tron decks so that you don’t randomly pack it to a well-timed Decree of Justice, and why in that same matchup you’re not really concerned about much except getting your mana online and keeping an Academy Ruins on the table so that you don’t get Mindslaver locked. Even in the ostensible mirror you can resolve a Gifts and set up the lock within a turn or two, so you have inevitability. You have the control role in any and all matchups (except one, which we’ll get to later). Assume it.
I’ve mentioned a lot about the Tron mirror, so we might as well start there. I’ve said pretty much everything that’s important already, but the absolute most important key to winning is to get Tron online before they do. That’ll let you cast multiple threats in a turn and overpower their countermagic to resolve a Gifts. Platinum Angel is actually fine game 1 just to force them to Wrath, and in doing so to tap colored sources of mana. Sundering Titan is very good for the same reason. Once the both of you get Tron the limiting factor will be colored mana, so he can help control that to a degree. The Tron being so important is also why, contrary to intuition, Chrome Mox is actually great in the mirror. Sure, it gets Repealed, but the matchup is not about numbers so the -1 card isn’t going to hurt you too bad. What is going to happen is that you’re going to be casting Thirst and Gifts before they can get to their Fact or Fictions, so you can start digging quicker. Chalice is basically dead so you want to set one at one and another at seven, eventually, to stop their Eternal Dragons if those ever come up. But you’ll be pitching it to TFK most of the time.
I’ve mentioned casting Gifts, but I haven’t really said what you want to do with it. If you get it off early you are going to try and set up Tron. If you have two pieces, great; then you can Gifts for the missing piece, Petrified Field, Academy Ruins, and Crucible of Worlds. This not only gives you your mana but also gives you Ruins advantage, simultaneously making every relevant artifact you draw into a threat, ensuring you don’t get locked, and turning the second Gifts into a double Demonic Tutor. If you need two Tron pieces, though, it’s trickier. You can go for Crucible, Academy, and the two Tron pieces. This will get you Tron, but leave you to draw Petrified Field before you can set up any kind of lock. At the same time, you’re not behind them per se as they have to (just like you) draw their one Academy at this point to get that advantage and most likely have to complete their own Tron as well. You can also go for Crucible, Academy, Petrified Field, and one Tron piece and just hope to draw into the last one. This gives you more security but also makes you more vulnerable in the short term if they happen to out-draw you.
In the late game, Gifts is simple. Unless you have to Gifts for an answer to something (Explosives / Recursion package or Repeal / Decree / Condescend / Wrath if they’re being aggressive with Angel or whatever) you’re just going to get the Mindslaver lock (Ruins, Field, Crucible, Slaver) and beat them on the spot.
Sideboarding-wise, you take out the bad irrelevant threats (Angel, Masticore) and awful cards (Chalice of the Void, some number of Wraths) for another Ruins, another Slaver, two Ghost Quarters, a Gifts Ungiven, a Tormod’s Crypt, and as many Repeals as you think necessary. I usually swap out a Wrath for a Repeal and leave in a couple of Wraths for non-lethal Decrees or early Angels. It’s honestly a matter of preference. Your strategy remains the same except that you have no dead cards, another “I win!” (Gifts), and more resilient recursion / ways to fight recursion. Is nice.
Boros
Fortunately, this is a lot simpler. I know the deck isn’t that popular anymore, but it’s a good template for most aggro decks so it’s good to know what to do. Basically, if you’re on the play you want to sit a Chalice at one to stop a good fifty percent of their deck. From there you can counter what’s relevant, don’t walk face-first into a Molten Rain, and either seal the deal with another Chalice or a Platty. If you don’t get an early Chalice, you are going to have to use Repeals, Wraths, Decrees, and Explosives to keep yourself at a reasonable life total. Stick a Chalice at two as soon as you can to keep yourself out of the majority of their burn (Legionnaires, Sudden Shocks if they play them, Helix obviously) and unblockable creatures (Priests, God knows what else). Platty is usually game, as is an activated Mindslaver. Stadium can help you stall if you draw into it. Mainly, though, you want to tap out for a Razormane because unless they have a lot of burn in hand they are kold to that card. He’ll kill in a couple of swings and wipe their board in the process—and first strike means they aren’t blocking and burning him out.
After board you take out all of the cute recursion, one Gifts, and expensive spells for more Repeals, Explosives, Angels, and Masticores, and you add an Arrows just to make their life hell. You want to Chalice for two as soon as possible to stop Ancient Grudge (though if you can Mox out a Chalice for one you want to do it) then tap out for a Masticore and challenge them to burn you out before they die. Usually they aren’t up to the dare.
Aggro Loam
Chalice for two is very strong. Putrefy is annoying if they play it, but usually setting X equal to two equals a concession. Don’t walk into an early Devastating Dreams, and if you tap out for something make sure you have an answer to Terravore. Depending on the amount of discard you think they play and the amount of countermagic you have in your opener, sometimes you want to Chalice at one to avoid having your hand wrecked with Therapies and the like. Without discard backup they can’t very well play Devastating Dreams, as it’s a giant kick in the nethers to have that baby Remanded. Sundering Titan is the high nut once you get there, too. All in all, game 1 is pretty easy.
Game 2 is a different story, though, because of Krosan Grip. You don’t care so much about the Split Second as much as you do the fact that it’s an artifact kill spell that costs three. If they can Wish for Shattering Spree, well, that is low too. But my strategy is to board in Masticores, Repeals (which are just amazing against them), Crypt, and depending on the build, potentially Arrows for Angel, Explosives, at least one Decree, and a Gifts. Sometimes you don’t bring in Masticores, and sometimes you become more reliant upon Gifts and Recursion depending on what their post-board plan is and how many artifact kill spells they have. Masticore can be really, really good if they don’t have Kudzu, and he just kills every single one of their creatures (including Terravore if you can get Crypt) or absolutely awful if their men are Wall, Kudzu, and no Mongrel. In that case, though, Explosives becomes a little bit better, so it’s a judgment call. You still want Core regardless, as a 5/5 that they absolutely have to kill. Repeal is nice because all of the sudden they can’t just Dreams / Vore you, as you’ll float mana and Repeal their guy and give yourself time to recover. The thing to remember is that even though they have a lot of kill spells, you have a lot of targets. If you can get a Chalice at two out early, then they can’t dig aggressively for an answer and have to flat draw the Grip.
Scepter Chant
Close to a bye. Sitting Explosives at two or holding Repeal is amazing. You basically always win by end-step Giftsing, having it get countered, and then setting a Chalice at two because they have no idea what is coming. If they don’t counter the Gifts, then either set up Tron so you can force through the Chalice, or grab your own countermagic and have it do the work for you. If somehow you can’t execute this plan, just keep mana open so they don’t sneak in a Teferi and make them answer some Decree of Justice tokens.
After boarding you get more Repeals, Explosives, and Ruins or Mindslaver if you want them (depending on their ratio of Chants to non-Chant Scepter targets) for Core, Angel, and couple of Wraths. Your plan stays the same, you have tons of mana advantage, and all in all it’s just not that difficult to win.
Nassif.dec
Another very easy matchup. Once again, in game 1 they are practically kold to Chalice at two, only they don’t really have any countermagic so they can’t stop it before it hits the table. One thing you might have to remember is that Explosives can wipe their board, but they’ll have Counterbalance out so you have to get tricky. You can pay two colored mana but tap a Tron land for a couple more colorless to get out of Counterbalance range, and then wreck them at your leisure. Yet again Masticore is just a giant house, shoring up the offensive and defensive roles quite nicely. Angel is also surprisingly hard for them to deal with because they’ve used most of their burn trying to kill you—or it’s locked under a Chalice. It’s important, though, to be mindful of the fact that they can Stifle a Chalice trigger when it’s a crucial spell. This most often happens on an Engineered Explosives they have tutored up to wipe your artifacts, so the only way to truly lock them is to have Chalices at one, two, and three. For this reason it’s prudent to kill them as quickly as you can. Assuming they’ve burnt their Explosives, or that you have countermagic in hand, I find the best way to do this is to just hard-cast Decree of Justice and take it the distance.
Boarding, however, is a little counter-intuitive. You actually board out Chalice despite how savage it is for you game 1, because of Kataki, and because of the fact that you can’t stop Dwarven Blastminer with a Chalice at two. Tapping out is just much more dangerous when they have so many cheap threats. You take out Slaver because they’re probably leaving in Stifle, and a Gifts because you don’t particularly care about recursion. You leave in Crucible to help offset Blastminer if they get it, and bring in Explosives, Repeals, Masticores, and Arrows to assume the aggressive role. It becomes very feasible to just kill every single thing they cast, and they generally aren’t prepared for you to go on the offensive.
TEPS
Yet again, Chalice is the stone high. If they haven’t laid an Egg yet then you drop Chalice at one and they basically can’t win; it’s too difficult for them to work out their mana. Obviously they are not kold just yet, but keep a counterspell or so available and it’ll be too hard for them to work their numbers out. Angel will finish them off as well as leave you able to tap out, and Slaver is generally good game for obvious purposes. If you can’t get Chalice out early enough to stop Eggs (or Stars or Spheres or whatever), you want to hold it until you can drop it with counterspell mana open. Ideally you’ll just Repeal or Explosives what Star-type things they have out and Chalice for one. If you survive long enough, though, you can piece together Tron for Chalice at two plus Angel. From there you cannot lose.
After boarding you get another Slaver, another Angel, Trinisphere, two Ghost Quarters, Crypt for their Sins, and a Repeal if you want it. You take out Wraths, Decrees, Sundering Titan and Masticore, because you have a number of ways to win at this point – Crucible / Quarter, Angel / Chalice, Mindslaver, etc. You want to leave in at least one Explosives for Empty the Warrens concerns. Chalice at one is even more important because of their Chants and Duresses, so it’s okay to do that even if they have an egg sitting on the board. Mainly, though, the matchup is very straightforward. The fewer spells you’re allowing them to cast, the less likely it is that you’ll lose. And Chalice / Angel is still good game.
Now we get to the harder matchups. Angel is usually good game, but you have to survive until then and stick a Chalice at two in case they have Ancient Grudge. If you get Chalice at one before they get a Putrid Imp you’re usually in good shape, because you can get counter mana for the rest of their discard outlets and by the time they get to dredging you’ve got an Air Elemental. Unfortunately, if you can’t get an early Chalice then Explosives and Repeal are your best weapons. Use those cards to try and stall until you get Angel. It is possible to get aggressive with a Masticore, but it’s not very likely. Mainly, it’s usually feasible to beat them with one Mindslaver activation. Remove Ichorids with Ichorids, sacrifice Psychatogs to Therapies, or generally just deck them with Deep Analysis / discard outlets if you have the mana.
Boarding gives you Angel, Serrated Arrows to soak up nine, Gifts to go get Angel, and more Repeals / Explosives to buy you time. I usually board out Remands, a Wrath or two, Masticore, Sundering Titan (though you can keep it in if you want to try and be the aggressor), and Crucible. Again, it usually doesn’t take a lock. Decree is nice because you can hard-cast it for some blockers and kill them out of nowhere pretty quickly. Oh, yeah, and you get Tormod’s Crypt, but they are obviously going to have an answer to that so I wouldn’t get too optimistic.
Affinity
Affinity is actually very similar to Ichorid, in that sometimes they get draws that Just Beat You and you can just get The Wrong Draw. Chalice at two is very strong because it stops Shrapnel Blast, Ravager, and most importantly Cranial Plating. From there Angel is just game, and once again you can probably find a way to beat them with Slaver. I don’t have a whole lot to say about game 1 because it’s very hit or miss; you’ll understand what I mean when you start to play it. Remand is not all that exciting because so many of their spells are free, but at the same time it sure is good when the alternative is getting hit in the face by a 13/1. Oddly enough Myr Enforcer is basically your worst nightmare, in that you can’t really counter it or Repeal it or Explosives it, and it can kill you real quick.
The biggest problem, though, is the possibility that they can dump a ton of counters on a Nexus and you just cannot touch it. That is one of the many reasons Chalice at two is so important. If they manage to get that far, you either have to get a Platinum Angel out ASAP to stall for either Chalice at Two or Mindslaver lock, or hardcast Decree of Justice and pray for the best.
Boards again give you Angel and Repeal / Explosives to stop Cranials and Little Men. An interesting strategy is to board in Ghost Quarters and try to get them with Crucible / Quarter under the assumption that it messes with the actual Affinity mechanic. Remember, too, that Serrated Arrows now cancels out a +1+1 counter, so you can use that to curb Modular. I’d take out a couple of Remands, Sundering Titan, a Gifts, and Masticore (it’s not going to really be killing much of anything, and you’re much more interested in the Angel / Chalice plan). Trinisphere also comes in on the play, to randomly go to town with Chrome Mox should you draw it in the opening seven; paying three is somehow pretty difficult for an eighteen land deck that relies upon a sudden burst of free spells.
…
And there you have it. My plan for Flow Deck Wins is very similar to RDW, because (counter-intuitively) you don’t care about Flow past a certain point—that point being “Resolving an Artifact Creature.” Their guys are smaller and kill you slower, so that is nice, but sometimes they just get Land Elf Land Flow on the play and there is nothing you can do. Nevertheless, it’s a positive matchup, because Flow notwithstanding they really don’t have a whole lot of offense. Flow Rock, on the other hand, seemed very bad to me because they could tear my hand apart before Flowing me early. Richard, though, didn’t seem to have much trouble with it, so he might be the guy to ask about that strategy.
To sum it up, I think Zvi would love this deck. It’s unfair. It’s straightforward in its gameplan. It’s powerful. You get to play with Gifts Ungiven, so your opponent gets to make bad decisions. You have tutoring and recursion and oodles of mana and all of the things that have made decks broken in the past. You take the skeleton of an already established and very successful archetype (U/W Tron) and make it strictly better. You even alleviate the typical problem of most “Silver Bullet” decks by being able to discard those bullets to TFK should they not show up at the right time. The deck has got it all.
Play it at the PTQs. I promise, you’ll win. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that this version of Tron sets up an entirely new paradigm for the metagame, and that strategies are going to have to shift significantly if they have any hope of beating this archetype. Not only a handful, but most established archetypes pack it up to a Chalice set at something or another. Blind Land / Mox / Chalice is just soooooooooooooooooo good against the format. Furthermore, the only questionable matchups this deck has – Ichorid, Affinity, and Flow Rock (bearing in mind that the first two are really not bad in the abstract because you still have hard locks against them in addition to the normal Tron gameplan) – have significant trouble with other prominent decks. I have no idea, for example, how a slow Green/Black deck that applies next to no pressure can have any chance at beating a very quick combo deck of any variety. Congratulations, you’ve got Duress and Therapy. Good luck clocking me. God forbid I drop a Soltari Priest. I think that deck’s only maindeck answers to that card are the two maindeck Pernicious Deeds. GL drawing it, brah.
If you’re not playing this deck, make sure you know how to deal with it. I have no idea if this exact list will make any impact or not, but I have confidence the strategies underlying it will radically alter the format as we know it.
Welcome to a new Extended. It feels good to say that.
Zac