Ah, the epitome of blue: Mono-U Tron. A deck misunderstood by most and feared by others, U-Tron takes the stage as one of the most powerful and potent control decks ever to exist. Designed to outramp, outrun and eventually outgun other decks, Mono-U tron's stable board control and prevention makes it a challenging matchup for every modern archetype, and an incredibly entertaining deck to play.
Despite being viewed as a starting point for those wanting to progress to the more expensive yet more potent R/G or U/W Reanimator trons, this deck can hold its own, and some have even selected it over the other two trons for its ability to be unhampered by the wide variety of other midrange decks in modern.
I personally have had more sucessful results playing this Tron over the other two types, as control happens to be my favourite playstyle. If you like more of an aggro-like deck, strive for R/G, and if you like saccing and hilarious victories, elect to learn the ways of the U/W.
U-Tron has quite the history of sporadic top 8's and even the occasional first place finish, though those are few and far between. This is due to the deck's one flaw: despite being so well-constructed, there are many games in which it simply cannot win. I know this can be said about most decks, but it tends to be extremely prevalent with U-Tron. Let's say that this only happens about 10% of the time. But that's still 1 out of every 10 games you just can't win.
Regardless, it's still a great deck. This is how it works.
This deck focuses upon controlling all three of
Urza's Mine
, Urza's Tower and Urza's Power Plant at the same time to create great amounts of colorless mana. In mono-U Tron, we don't strive to assemble Tron by turn three; merely assembling Tron becomes a consequence of us properly controlling the gamestate with our draw engine and instants.
Blue Tron operates using a
Thirst for Knowledge
/artifact draw engine, benefiting from the additional speed of Expedition Map and Treasure Mage. Some players opt to play Solemn Simulacrum, but in my experience, I found that Spellskite is better.Remand, Repeal and Condescend are the staple MVP's of this archetype for tempo; not only do they allow us to control the board, but they also give us the capacity to dig through our deck, more easily drawing the appropriate win condition when it is required.
Hard control in the form of Oblivion Stone is often employed, seeing as it makes token decks a losing battle, and puts a clock on your opponent's clock, should their strategy for victory involve attacking with creatures.
This deck has several win conditions; an homage to its flexibility. Your victory can be met in several ways: hard-casting Wurmcoil Engine to beat the crap out of aggro decks, blowing up all of your opponent's lands with Sundering Titan and slowing the game to a painful halt with
Platinum Angel
(usually equipped with Batterskull), or successfully resolving a Mindslaver while controlling Academy Ruins and having at least one each of an Island and a Tron land to tap during your opponent's end step for recursion.
====>> Some players are unsure as to how the Slaver lock works. Basically, when you have ruins, a slaver in hand and 12 mana (one of them must be blue), you win the game. You simply cast the slaver, and if your opponent can't respond, they immediately lose (You just tell them you take all their turns and make them deck out). Some players chose to make our life difficult by having us play out the lock; in this case, just play their turns and make all the wrong decisions. Don't forget to tap them out during their end step so they have no way to interact with you on your turn.
One thing to consider before building is that this deck is the ultimate blue-charged control deck. As our professor at the Tolarian Community College puts it, it's not a deck for someone who doesn't absolutely love control.
Some builds opt to play Trinket Mage and playsets of the eggs (Chromatic Sphere but usually Chromatic Star), but this is less effective than the rock-hard control build that I've opted to run. Tolaria West is also an option for tutelage, though the issue with an extra land is finding logical space for it. I've accepted it into the deck by cutting an island; some people have other things they would rather remove from their decks.
This tier 3 deck is developing competitive; hopefully one day, it shall shine.
