Creature (9)
Land (23)
Artifact (11)
Instant (17)
Sideboard
Creature (2)
Instant (13)
On TCGPlayer, this deck costs $102-$103. The goal is to give beginning modern players a budget intro to the best budget deck in modern.
Current description is based on my big kid U-Tron deck. Actual deck description coming soon.
This deck is based off Dalektable's deck. He no longer has it listed on the site, but figured I'd cite my sources.
Mono U Tron: Hi, My Name is Baymax
The Blue Tron deck is a control deck that attempts to defeat its opponents through an extraordinary mana advantage and cards that exploit that advantage such as Condescend and Platinum Emperion, who looks and acts like Baymax from Disney's Big Hero 6.
The Mana Base
The mana base of my U-Tron consists of 4 Urza's Mine, 4 Urza's Power Plant , 4 Urza's Tower , 1 Ghost Quarter, 1 Tolaria West, 8 Island, and 1 Academy Ruins.
Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant , and Urza's Tower , otherwise known as the Tron lands, are the the basic building blocks of the deck. While I have won games without ever assembling Tron, it is much more challenging to do so. The goal of these lands is to ramp heavily for the sake of casting colorless spells of immense proportion. It is the main principle of the card selections of the deck.
Academy Ruins is a card that interacts with the graveyard and allows you to use spells numerous times. We will talk more about it's interactions in the Infinite Combo section of this description.
Tolaria West allows you to tutor for a land you need at a given time. If I were playing Sundering Titan , it would also provide a non-basic blue source to evade the ETB effect.
Islands are lands that tap for blue mana.
Control
In my version of U-Tron, I run 9 mainboard counterspells that consist of 4 Remand, 4 Condescend, and 1 Spell Burst. Some variants are more aggressive and choose to omit some while others can be even more controlling; it really depends on your play style.
Condescend is an obvious choice for this deck because the Tron lands give you the ability to make "X" an unpayable a good portion of the time. Another reason is that it only has 1 blue mana in its casting cost, which makes it easier for a deck with so many colorless lands to cast. Lastly, you'll note that Condescend allows you to scry 2, which is huge because it allows you to decide your cards for the next two turns more or less. Anyone who has played standard with Dissolve can attest to the importance of scry in a control deck.
Remand is a controversial choice for this deck. While it is the most commonly played 2-drop counter for the deck, many players opt for Mana Leak because returning a spell to an opponent's hand simply delays rather than stops. However, I choose to play Remand because the can-trip (a spell with a draw effect attached to it) is incredibly powerful. In theory, Remand is more of a tempo card, but Tron, having only very few threats, and of those, typically only one each, uses the draw efficiently to cycle through its deck. One turn is sometimes all that is needed.
Spell Burst is perhaps the weakest counterspell in the deck in the early stages, but the later the game goes, the more valuable it becomes until your opponent can essentially cast nothing at all. It can provide a lockout after Cyclonic Rifting your opponent. Talk about stalling!
Of course, control needs more than just counterspells to stay alive, and that's why U-Tron utilizes an arsenal of bounce spells to keep the board temporarily clean. The spells that perform this function in the deck are 4 Repeal and 1 Cyclonic Rift.
Repeal, like Remand, is a can-trip. It allows you to bounce your opponent's Tasigur, the Golden Fang and draw a card simultaneously. While the "X" cost might seem high, remember that the Tron lands allow you to easily have enough mana to perform these functions on most occasions.
Cyclonic Rift is your emergency panic button. When things get out of hand, you press the blue button, and aid will come. Or at least you hope. This card is potent against decks running tokens as well as a slew of non-creature cards.
Last but not least, we have a mass removal spell that actually destroys things: Oblivion Stone . O-Stone is an obvious choice for this deck because it is colorless, and it allows you the choice of what you destroy, unlike other cards like Perilous Vault. What's more, as an artifact, it is able to be recurred via Academy Ruins.
Draw and Tutors
Like many a control deck, Tron uses draw spells and tutors to search out its win conditions. The spells I have chosen to do this portion of the work are: 4 Thirst for Knowledge, 4 Expedition Map, 3 Treasure Mage, and 1 Fabricate.
Thirst for Knowledge is an important draw 2 for 3 mana instant that is optimal for grabbing what you need. Though it does cause you to discard, drawing three gives the depth to see what you might want or need in a situation and get rid of what you don't need. Remember: artifacts can be brought back with Acadmey Ruins.
Expedition Map allows you to search your library for a land you need in the moment. As talked about before, the Tron lands need one another to be successful, and the map helps you to bring them together. It can also grab an Island or an Academy Ruins depending on what you need, which makes it incredibly versatile and useful.
Treasure Mage is important because she provides a body while allowing you to search out one of your main threats (excluding Ugin, the Spirit Dragon) to get you in a place to win the game. Playing the Mage is often a key turning point in a match when you now have a chump block to hold off damage for a turn before playing a win-condition.
Fabricate is a more versatile Treasure Mage without the body. Sometimes Fabricate will be used to find Expedition Map to activate the Tron lands while at others it grabs Oblivion Stone to clear the board, and still at others, it acts as a Treasure Mage to search for your big guns.
The Big Guys
My version of the U-Tron deck revolves around a toolbox build that allows you to search for the behemoth you need when you need it. These big guys include: 2 Wurmcoil Engine, Platinum Angel, and Platinum Emperion.
Wurmcoil Engine is one of your most resilient threats, allowing you to make tokens that act similarly to the original form upon its death (be wary of Path to Exile). Its ability to gain large chunks of life at a time dominates many matchups that simply cannot deal with a 6/6 deathtouch/lifelink. Moreover, the Engine is your most reliably casted bomb when you don't have Tron set up due to its 6 mana price point.
Platinum Angel works as Tron's Melira, Sylvok Outcast against infect, and it dominates mill and Lantern Control by simply not allowing them to win. Additionally, in many situations, having a Platinum Angel allows you to beat for 4 a turn without the worry of losing health (be sensitive to removal, of course).
Platinum Emperion is your go-to guy for any deck trying to kill you through non-infect damage, stalling out the game with Jund or other midrange, attack-based decks and utterly destroying archetypes like burn.
Win Conditions
While any of the big guys could be a win condition, they are not the main circumstances under which to win in the deck. I tend to think of Mindslaver as the primary win-con, and I put Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, along with any other big threat, under that category of secondary win-con.
Mindslaver lock is the infinite combo created between Academy Ruins + Mindslaver when you have Ruins and 12 open mana on the field (2 Towers, a Mine, a Power Plant, and two Islands is my preferred version). This allows you to control your opponent's turns for the remainder of the game. While this can eventually lead to a mill out by simply tapping all your opponent's lands and playing anything with Phyrexian mana or 0 cmc immediately, I find that I usually have a creature on the board, so I tend to let them attack and eat their creatures and then swing if my opponent hasn't already conceded.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a very effective win-con against most decks aside from other Tron variants (he can't exile non-colored permanents). If he comes down in the early game, he is a major threat because his presence prevents much board progression from your opponent until he or she has an answer for him. Hitting the board in the mid-late game, he wipes most of the progress your opponent has made; because hand sizes typically dwindle by this point, it is usually harder to bounce back from an Ugin played at this point for your adversary, excepting Jund, which simply attacks into Ugin with Raging Ravine and Treetop Village.
Sideboard Tech
2 AEtherize allows me to more cheaply remove threats on the attack, without access to Tron. This means that I can wipe the board sooner than a Cyclonic Rift in the aggro match ups, and it also gives me a way of bouncing man lands. Any bounce spell is powerful against tokens as well.
2 Bottle Gnomes come in in the aggro/burn matchup as a way to gain you much needed life as you stall into an answer. I have yet to see these in play, so they might be switched out for Monastery Siege, but I'm not sure yet.
2 Echoing Truth are designed to take care of token decks and decks like Elves that run numerous creatures of the same name. I'm not sure at this point that 3 is the right number of them, but because BW tokens is one of my losses with the build, I will keep them in for the time being. Note also that Echoing Truth bounces things more cheaply than Repeal and can be good in some match ups in which you do not have the Tron lands active soon enough. However, keep in mind that a can-trip is often what you need to dig to the cards you want.
2 Dismember allow me to combat a midrange deck before Tarmogoyf gets too big. Along with that, it takes care of Tasigur, the Golden Fang and many of the GBx threats.
2 Hurkyl's Recall is our hate for Affinity and the Lantern deck that is gaining popularity. It opens the door for you to win if you play it properly agains Lantern, and it saves you from the impending doom of Affinity.
2 Negate allows you a counterspell to combat other control decks, delver, and an assortment of other things you might face, including GR Tron. While it fails to hit creatures, it does hit a wide range of other spells, and it can be useful in many different matches.
1 Dispel comes in for the mirror or for control matchups.
1 Hibernation is in here strictly for Elves. I see it becoming a popular budget deck, and I know I'll need an answer for it.
1 Crucible of Worlds is helpful against any land hate such as Fulminator Mage and Ghost Quarter. It also means I can throw lands away with Thirst for Knowledge instead of losing threats and counters when I don't hit an artifact.
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| Date added | 9 years |
| Last updated | 9 years |
| Key combos | |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 3 - 0 Mythic Rares 9 - 2 Rares 31 - 7 Uncommons 8 - 6 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.81 |
| Tokens | Manifest 2/2 C, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink |
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