u/TKOS7

09/09/20
Ver 0.1

MONO UTRON
THE BEST DECK IN MODERN

u/TKOS7
v2.0
08/09/20
Written with Thanks to the Four Naans:

Nick Brown
Calum Gillespie
Dan Cheshire

You guys are awesome.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 6

WHAT IS UTRON? 6
A WORSE GX TRON? 7
WHY PLAY UTRON? 8
A TOOLBOX 8
A PERSONAL STATEMENT 8
FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTABLE 9
CHECKLIST 9

DECK OBJECTIVE 10

NOT A TRON DECK 10

HOW THE DECK WINS 10

DECK CONSTRUCTION 12

MANABASE 12
CONTROL MAGIC 15
CARD ADVANTAGE AND UTILITY 17
THREATS AND STABILISERS 19

SIDEBOARDING 24

AGGRO WEAKNESSES 24
GRAVEYARD HATE 25
LAND HATE 25
COMBO MORE LIKE NONBO 26
CONTROL PILES 27

REJECTED CARDS 28

THREATS 28
CONTROL CARDS 30
LANDS 30
UTILITY CARDS 31

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HOW TO PLAY THE DECK 32

YOUR OPPONENT’S DECK 32

AGGRO, CONTROL, MIDRANGE OR COMBO 32
PROACTIVE VS REACTIVE 33
ESSENTIAL VS REDUNDANT 34
IDENTIFYING DECKS 35
UTRON’S ARSENAL 35
COUNTERSPELLS, BOUNCE AND REMOVAL 36
STABILISERS, THREATS AND WINCONS 38
CARD ADVANTAGE AND VALUE 44

KEY THREATS 48

PROBLEMATIC CARDS 48
TEFERI, TIME RAVELER 48
VEIL OF SUMMER 49
CAVERN OF SOULS 49
AETHER VIAL 50
THALIA, GUARDIAN OF THRABEN 50
THOUGHTSEIZE 51
JACE, THE MIND SCULPTOR 51
CARDS YOU CAN IGNORE 52
BLOOD MOON 52
ALPINE MOON 53
STONY SILENCE 53
DAMPING SPHERE 53
FIELD OF RUIN 53

EXAMPLE HANDS 54

GODHANDS 54
KEEPABLE HANDS 55
BORDERLINE HANDS 56
MULLIGANS 57

CLOSING NOTES 59

APPENDIX 1: MATCHUPS AND SIDEBOARDING 60

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AGGRO DECKS 61
BURN 61
INFECT 62
HUMANS 63
MERFOLK 65
PROWESS 66
BOGLES 67
MILL 68
DREDGE 69
MIDRANGE DECKS 70
JUND PILES 71
ABZAN PILES 72
ELDRAZI TRON 74
DEATH’S SHADOW 75
SOULHERDER 76
PONZA 78
DEATH AND TAXES 79
CONTROL DECKS 81
UGX CONTROL 81
8-RACK 83
BLUE MOON 84
MONO RED PRISON 85
MONO U TRON 86
COMBO DECKS 87
AD NAUSEAM 87
NEOBRAND 89
STORM 90
GXTRON 92
AMULET TITAN 93
GOBLINS 95
WHIRZA VARIANTS 96
LIVING END 97

APPENDIX 2: FURTHER READING 99

OTHER MATERIAL 99
AUTHOR’S TOURNAMENT REPORTS 99

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INTRODUCTION

Mono UTron is the misunderstood shy sibling of the Tron family of decks; going unnoticed at the dinner table while
its bigger brothers scream and throw Karns at each other. It is a deck that is often thought of as being inherently less
powerful, less linear, and less unfair than Gx or Eldrazi Tron, unless you put it in the hands of someone who’s spent a
great deal of time with their version of the deck. I like to think I fall into that category, and so want to try and put
down what I’ve learnt in the six years I’ve been playing Islands and hating Cavern.

This primer is long. So far, with the exception of the excellent FAQ put down by pierakor, Trellon’s WIP primer and
the original MTGSalvation thread with input from the deck’s creator, Shoktroopa, there exists very little searchable
content on this wonderful deck. I created this document to try and put together a centralised source of information
for both new and current pilots, with the aim of sparking in people the same affection for the deck that makes me
miss it when I try and play with anything else. Since all the currently available material focuses on typical primer
content (mainboard/sideboard inclusions, matchup ratings etc), this primer will try and describe more about
strategy when playing the deck, and how the different cards complement each other. Hopefully this goes
somewhere to putting UTron more firmly on the map of the Modern metagame. Failing that, I hope you enjoy
reading.

WHAT IS UTRON?

UTron is a slow, draw-go blue control deck that seeks to delay and disrupt the opponent’s strategy and then use
stabilising threats to take over the game. UTron is unique in that it generates more card and mana advantage
together than any other control deck in Modern. Anything that is trying to grind out value or play the long game is

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going to have an extremely hard time; playing threats into a stonewall of counters and slowly running out of gas
while we drown in card advantage and play giant stabilisers backed up by even more permission and a ton of mana.

Our mana advantage comes in the inclusion of Tron; the affectionate name for the combination of the three ‘Urza’
lands: Tower, Power Plant and Mine. When assembled, these lands give you a total of 7 colourless mana, and it
hardly needs explaining how generating 7 mana from three lands can put you in a very powerful position. More
conventional Tron decks use these lands aggressively, to play threats early and hope they’re good enough to win.
UTron uses the Urza lands to complement our control game with a massive mana advantage, allowing us to play
powerful colourless cards whilst always keeping our interaction live.

A WORSE GX TRON?

UTron is often thought of as a ‘worse’ or ‘budget’ version of its more infamous brother GxTron. In reality, it is a
completely different deck.

The green variants of Tron are linear decks. They want to get Tron online as soon as possible, usually by turn 3, and
play whichever threats they’ve drawn as fast as they can. They sometimes have interaction splashes in the form of
Fatal Push, Kozilek’s Return or Path to Exile, but these are there as a means of protecting the deck until it can enact
the primary game plan; to throw big colourless cards at the opponent. This game plan cannot be well adapted to the
deck you’re facing; getting turn three Tron is only good if the threats you have in your hand line up well against the
opponent’s deck. These threats are drawn largely at random, and also cannot be protected once they’re on the
board. The linearity of GxTron also means it performs a lot worse if the Tron element is removed, forcing it to tap a
fair number of lands for its threats. The deck doesn’t have enough interaction to stop any form of decent clock from
killing it before turn 7.

UTron is the least linear deck in Modern; everything our deck does revolves around our opponent’s strategy. Instead
of hurriedly assembling Tron and throwing whatever we have in our hand against the opponent, we’re in the
business of slowly delaying and dismantling their game plan, buying time until a specific stabiliser for their strategy
can be brought onto the table and protected. Our stabilisers are versatile in the type of attack they can stop,
allowing us to tailor our lines of play to exactly what the opponent is doing, only looking to complete Tron and play
large colourless cards when we’re sure we have the correct ones for that matchup. We can also do this without
Tron, since we are perfectly capable of protecting ourselves until we can get to turn 6+ and tap a fair number of
lands for whichever stabiliser we’ve found.

UTron is a completely different deck from conventional Tron. It trades linearity and aggression for insane resilience,
flexibility and inevitability. You still get to cast big colourless fun cards, but you get to choose the most effective ones
to cripple your opponent, and can make sure they stick.

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WHY PLAY UTRON?

UTron is quite possibly the most interactive deck in Modern. We have a huge amount of permission spells, counters
and bounce spells that all aim to delay the opponent whilst digging and gaining card advantage. While you slowly
disrupt and dismantle your opponent’s strategy, they’re also forced to watch you build up your inevitable huge
mana advantage until you either win on the spot or generate a board state that completely invalidates any
remaining threats. Successfully piloting the deck feels like playing the game with a loaded cannon pointed at your
opponent, watching as they get increasingly desperate to resolve any sort of pressure before your endgame comes
online and you completely take over. Most games end with the opponent out of gas, facing a hand of permission
spells and a stabiliser they can’t fight through anyway.

UTron is the best deck in Modern, the rest of the world just doesn’t know it yet.

A TOOLBOX

Playing UTron is different to playing with most Modern decks, in that you feel like you have your entire deck at your
disposal every game. The sheer amount of card draw and digging, combined with the number of tutors and
recursion effects creates a playstyle in which you’ll see a lot of your deck, allowing you to play a variety of different
stabilising control cards knowing that in the right matchup you’ll only need one of them to completely answer the
game. This style of deck means you’ll always have outs to your opponent’s strategy, and after the first few turns of
each game you’ll be able to work out which cards in your deck are effective and which are not. The dig spells then
allow you to play a toolbox style deck; carefully choosing the required stabilisation spells for each matchup whilst
you control the game, eventually creating a situation in which the opponent has no hope of winning.

A PERSONAL STATEMENT

UTron, more than other control decks, has a huge scope for personal deckbuilding choice. Whilst a good number of
the cards are staples (Thirst, Condescend, Ruins to name a few), there are a large number of flex slots, and a wide
range of cards that are completely playable. Our plentiful supply of colourless mana opens the doors to a lot of
weird cards that would normally only see the table during EDH games. Due to the huge level of digging and tutoring
the deck does naturally, these cards only need be included as singletons, meaning you can test and play whichever
few curveball inclusions you have a soft spot for without them detracting from the primary game plan. This allows
you to customise your deck for both the local meta and your personal style of control. You may prefer a more
prison-style strategy and include more Chalices and cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Silent Arbiter, or prefer an
tempo approach and play more Talismans to ramp into Thought-Knot Seer, Karn and Batterskull. This customisation
aspect is important for the deck’s competiveness, but mostly allows you to create a deck that you thoroughly enjoy
playing whilst still being effective.

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FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTABLE

A lot of Modern decks lose games as a result of their opponent playing cards that they just can’t deal with. Be it
cards like Rest in Peace against Dredge or Blood Moon against Shadow, a lot of matches can come down to ‘they
played a card that invalidates my strategy, so I just can’t do anything meaningful now because I can’t remove it’. This
sideboard lottery idea is a well-known curse in Modern that doesn’t really plague UTron. Our extremely high level of
interaction means that we’re virtually never in a situation in which our opponent has dumped a card that just shuts
us off forever. We have bounce spells, boardwipe spells and other types of removal that allow us to sit across from
the opponent’s prison cards, happily playing the longer game until the perfect moment to remove their hate and
drop the hammer. Even in games that UTron loses, it’s never the sour loss of having nothing to do and watching
your opponent just take free turns. You always feel like you have a decent number of outs when you’re on the back
foot, and due to the absurd digging power of the deck, you’re quite likely to find them. UTron has the ability to
adapt to any strategy, any deck, and come out on top.

CHECKLIST

UTron is the right deck for you if:

- You like drawing lots of cards,

- You like countering spells,
- You like having enormous amounts of mana to do both of these in the same turn,
- You like playing big, stabilising threats that are likely to immediately force a concession,
- You’re fed up of not being able to protect your win conditions,
- You enjoy using your entire deck as a giant digging, tutoring toolbox with lots of one-ofs,
- You’re happy to put in a lot of hours learning both your deck and every other one you need to stop,
- You enjoy the thought required to completely readapt your game plan multiple times each round,
- You like the feeling of always being able to do something, even if you’re still losing,
- You enjoy taking control of all your opponent’s turns and watching the light die in their eyes,
- You need salt for your chips.

UTron is the wrong deck for you if:

- You want to throw big colourless threats at your opponent as rapidly as possible and hope they stick,
- You like linear decks,
- You like fast decks,
- You prefer decks that prioritise how best to win, as oppose how best to not lose,
- You want a deck that you can just pick up fresh and take down a tournament with,
- You enjoy having friends.

Overall, the deck is one that rewards you for learning how to play it. A new player with UTron will lose a lot, but an
experienced player will seem invincible. This characteristic of the deck is due to its slow inherent power; being able
to have a free run with absurd card advantage spells and absurd lands once you’ve spent the time to master the
play lines of your particular brew. It’s one of the hardest decks in Modern to become competent with, but once you
do, the decks feels like you’re playing chess against draughts.

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DECK OBJECTIVE

NOT A TRON DECK

The main misunderstanding when playing UTron for the first time is in the belief that we are a Tron deck.

Tron decks are best defined as decks whose primary objective is to get the Urza lands out as soon as possible, and
perform optimally when they can do this. GxTron aims to do this by turn three, and drop Karn Liberated down so
early that he takes over the game. Eldrazi Tron is similar but also uses Eldrazi Temple as a ‘fourth Tron land’; it wants
as much colourless mana as it can to play the Eldrazi from Oath of the Gatewatch, then beat the opponent to death
with objectively more powerful creatures than they are facing. Both of these decks would ideally like Tron online
fast, and in the case of Gx, usually perform a lot worse if their Tron assembly is delayed or destroyed.

UTron is not a Tron deck. Granted, our manabase contains 4 of each Tronland and we have the ability to drop a Turn
3 Wurmcoil Engine if luck waves its hand on our opening 7. Against some aggro decks this can win a quick game.
However, getting to Turn 3 Tron is both not a requirement for our deck to work, nor is it something we can easily
capitalise on given that our threat choice is fundamentally different from GxTron. Our deck is designed to control
the game with blue spells, and our threats are designed to stabilise an advanced board state, not to be dropped
aggressively with no protection and hope they’re good enough.

UTron is better thought of as a control deck that has Tron included as a way to be better than other control decks.
Any control player knows the value of making sure you hit your land drops to sooner get into the stage of playing
slow threats whilst having countermagic up. The inclusion of Tron allows us to suddenly leap ahead on resource and
play multiple spells per turn with ease, slowly taking over the game with growing card advantage and always having
interaction up.

UTron is a blue deck that splashes Tron, not a Tron deck that splashes blue.

HOW THE DECK WINS

The generic game plan is similar to other control decks: Work out your opponent’s strategy, stop their key cards,
stay alive and gain card advantage until either they’re out of gas or you can just take over and win. To this end, we
include a number of counterspells, bounce spells, boardwipes and stabilisation cards, allowing us to prolong the
game into a situation where our card advantage matters, and we can use Tron to overwhelm their remaining threats
with a combination of bigger threats and more permission, whilst never having to tap out.

A key difference between us and other control decks lies in the idea that their threats are usually relatively slow or
incremental and need a cleaner board to win. With this requirement, the control parts of those decks need to
completely run the opponent out of gas and maintain an empty board for the threats to push through. Since we
have Tron included in the deck, our threats can be much bigger and focus more on stabilising developed boards

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single-handedly. With this in mind, our control cards need only to slow down the opponent and deal with cards that
the stabilisers cannot stop. This provokes a greater level of consideration when playing, as the objective turns from
‘stop everything’ into ‘does this card prevent me from stabilising or kill me too quickly? Can I just ignore it?’. This is
one of the reasons that UTron is considered one of the harder decks in Modern to just pick up and win games with.

Our early game is spent holding up countermagic to stop the opponent and dig, whilst using the end of their turn to
progress our game plan with Expedition Maps and Thirst for Knowledge. This early stage is the toughest part of the
game, as we try and remain in control of multiple early threats that may get underneath our permission spells.
Often the nature of your opponent’s deck and your hand will force you to pick and choose which cards to stop, and
it is here that knowledge of your opponent’s strategy is most required.

As we progress to the midgame our card advantage gained in the early game starts to matter. By this point the
opponent is usually trying to play their deck’s win condition, and if the early turns have done well we should be in a
position to stop this from happening. This is where most of the games are decided, as we aim to precisely cripple
their attempt to force through a win and leave them with little left to do. By this point we are usually at or close to
Tron, and can prepare to get to the tipping point where our card and mana advantage are both fully online and the
game swings dramatically in our favour.

The endgame is our playground. Here we usually have a stabiliser down, Tron online, supreme card advantage over
the opponent and can turn our game plan around to concentrate on winning over not losing. Usually a stabiliser or
two is enough to force through a victory, but if the game is dragged out further we will just eventually get to our
inevitability with Mindslaver lock. Either way we’re heavily favoured; we have more mana, more resources and our
topdecks are all strong, live cards. It’s our turn now, and we have a formidable endgame.

This is only a brief summary of the deck’s high level strategy, and is discussed in far more depth in How to Play the
Deck.

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DECK CONSTRUCTION

This section focuses on the core cards of the deck, and tries to explain the reasoning behind what is included. This
will always try to draw from the Deck Objective, and focus on explaining why our card choices differ from
conventional control decks and conventional Tron decks.

MANABASE

The manabase for UTron is the most important part of the deck, and often the one which is most abused by new
players trying new brews. When starting the deck for the first time, it’s tempting to think of all the awesome flashy
blue spells you could play, like Cryptic Command or Omniscience, whilst ignoring the fact that the most pivotal card
in the deck is, without doubt, Island.

Well, obviously. We’re a control deck and we need Islands to play our blue spells. So does UW Control, but their
primer doesn’t make a big song and dance about pointing out the obvious. We are not UW Control, however, and
crucially our manabase is locked into at least 12 lands that cannot ever produce blue mana. 13 if you count
Academy Ruins, which we are doing, and even more if you start considering other utility lands like Field of Ruin or
Gemstone Caverns, although these can be blue sources in their own way.

The point is, only half of our lands produce blue mana, meaning we are a ‘two-colour’ deck even with just blue
spells. Every opening hand you draw will be primarily defined by whether or not it contains a blue source. If your
opener had Mine, Power Plant, Tower, Wurmcoil and three other nonlands, it would be an acceptable keep, but you
should be very worried about not having a blue source, and it would immediately become the best thing you could
draw each turn until it appears. As said above, our deck’s primary strategy is playing blue control spells, not
throwing early Tron threats at our opponent. Our limited supply of reliable blue sources is the primary reason we
cannot play cards like Cryptic Command. Having UUU rarely happens through the course of an entire game, let
alone reliably by turn 4. This concept informs a lot of the card choices later on.

The core of our manabase looks like this:

12 TRONLANDS - Shouldn’t need much explaining, these give our deck its identity. Some variants play a few less than
4 of each in favour of more blue sources or utility lands, but they are few and far between, and usually have a very
good reason for doing so with regards to the rest of the deck.

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ACADEMY RUINS – This is both a very useful utility land and also half of our inevitability. This, Mindslaver and 11U
wins the game. Academy Ruins is probably our best land after Island for the reason that it allows us to recur so many
useful things. This is one of our most essential cards, and is discussed further in Card Advantage and Value.

6+ ISLANDS – Our most important land. The number of Islands that should be included varies based on a number of
factors: how many other blue source lands you’re playing (Oboro, Tolaria, Minamo), how many nonland blue
sources you’re playing (Talismans, Signets), and how many times you want to mulligan away hands that would have
been great with a blue source in them. It’s up to you to find the right balance of these cards, but as a base starter:

- You want to have about 10-12 cards that directly produce blue mana. Most should be lands.
- At least 6 of these should be Islands.
- Blue sources that are conditional or painful (Taplands, Shocklands) should be limited to 1 or 2.

As with most things in this deck, it’s not an exact science and people will show success with brews that seem wildly
wrong to others. However, it cannot be denied by anyone with experience that your blue source count and
availability is a fundamental consideration when building your deck.

With the core lands covered, some other good options include:

FIELD OF RUIN – This has shown itself as being straight up better than the older inclusions of Ghost Quarter or
Tectonic Edge in our deck. It doesn’t put us down a land drop, and it can turn itself into an untapped blue source.
The activation cost is also generic mana, which we will usually have ample supply of. Field of Ruin can also let good
hands without blue sources be keepable, which GQ and TE can’t do. The other two are both still very playable, but
most control decks as a whole have realised the benefits of FoR.

BLAST ZONE – A tutorable Engineered Explosives on a land is basically an auto-include in the deck. There is the
consideration that this doesn’t make blue mana, however the payoff is absolutely worth it and this card will win you
games by itself.

GEMSTONE CAVERNS - This card is used to offset the considerable disadvantage this deck sometimes faces on the
draw; not being able to counter a scary two-drop and remaining on the back foot for the rest of the game. It comes
with a steep cost – card advantage and having it be pretty bad when it doesn’t do its trick, but it is certainly playable
and very powerful when it works correctly. Also worth noting it can produce black mana for Dismember, EE and
Surgical.

OBORO, PALACE IN THE CLOUDS – This is here as a ‘non-Island Island’ that doesn’t get hit by things like Boil or
Choke, which people will occasionally bring in against us and can hurt a lot if they resolve. Oboro also has a number
of edge cases uses thanks to its second ability, including but not limited to:

- Using itself as double blue; tap Oboro, bounce it using some Tron mana then replay it, giving you UU from one
blue land. This can be used for playing something like a Treasure Mage on your turn then having blue to hold
up countermagic.
- Bouncing in response to ‘discard a card’ effects to save the last card in your hand.
- Bouncing to save from mass land destruction or Liliana ultimates.
- Bouncing to increase cards in your hand against 8-Rack.
- Putting abilities on the stack to deny your opponent access to sorcery speed plays when they have priority.

MINAMO, SCHOOL AT WATER’S EDGE – This is an Oboro with a less useful second ability. Played for the same reason
and can untap a Mindslaver or an Eldrazi titan in edge cases.

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TOLARIA WEST – A solid tutor for Lands, Chalice, EE and Walking Ballista whilst also being a blue source, this card is
often questioned as to why it doesn’t deserve a spot in the core lands. When you draw in such a way that the ETB
tapped stings you, you’ll realise why. It’s absolutely a very playable card and has the great advantage of turning your
late-game Maps into a threat in the form of Ballista, but the awareness needs to be there that the tapped clause will
get you from time to time, and it will hurt.

CASTLE VANTRESS – A low-cost-to-run utility land that taps for blue and allows us to dig for answers in the late
game. Most builds should run a single copy of this card if you have the space without dipping too low on Islands.

ELDRAZI TEMPLE – Used if you are running the full playset of Though-Knot Seer in the main to form a more
aggressive playstyle, similar to Eldrazi Tron. This strategy is strong against the UGx decks currently popular in
Modern however consideration has to be taken for losing the blue source this would otherwise be.

DUAL LANDS – Darkslick Shores, Watery Grave, River of Tears, Underground River. These lands trade life or
consistency for the bonus of less painful Dismembers, Surgicals and getting EE on more counters. If you’re relying on
EE, you can likely run 2 of these in conjunction with some Talismans. These likely aren’t worth it just to pay for the
phyrexian mana costs of other black cards.

The number of lands in the standard deck is usually dependant on your number of nonland blue sources, usually
Talismans or Signets. If you’re running those cards, you can go down to 23 lands. If you’re not, best to stick with
24/25. You really don’t want to miss land drops. These are advantages and disadvantages of both types of
manabase, and these can be readily realised when considering tradeoffs like ramp vs artifact removal. When
choosing an option, it’s also worth considering if you’re the sort of player who would prefer to tap out on turn 2 for
the ramp from a Talisman (to ramp into Thought-Knot Seer, Karn or Solemn Simulacrum and Wurmcoil Engine), or
play the deck more reactively and always be holding up counterspells.

The balance of your manabase after the Tronlands and Ruins should be based on trying to keep the blue source
count as high as you can whilst including the utility lands you would like to use. Much as most players would love to
mimic UW control and play 4 Field of Ruins, we can’t dip that low on Islands. Blue sources will always be the first
indicator of a good UTron manabase.

To explain this more fully, it’s worth considering our deck’s blue source bottleneck, which is something not
immediately apparent until you’ve played the deck a while and start to experience it first-hand. The concept is that,
due to our low ratio of blue sources to overall lands and especially given the nature of Tron, often our play lines are
limited not by overall mana (as would be the case with other blue control decks) but by the number of blue sources
we have out. If we have Tron and Island out, we’re still in the rough position of not being able to play a Treasure
Mage and hold up countermagic, nor being able to counter a spell then Thirst for Knowledge at the end of our
opponent’s turn. For this reason, the mana costs of cards we play are evaluated quite differently than other decks. A
card that costs 1U is far closer in ‘bottleneck mana cost’ to a card that costs 2U than it is to one that costs UU. The
extra generic mana for the 2U is usually readily available to us, whereas the extra blue source required in the UU
spell is often a tough requirement. This concept is very important, and is part of the reason why UTron plays very
few UU-costed spells, and never plays anything requiring UUU.

Despite being important, the UTron manabase isn’t too tricky to build. 12 Tronlands, Academy Ruins, 10 blue
sources, then any utility lands you want to run. Just remember how important those Islands are.

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CONTROL MAGIC

After the manabase, these are the cards that should merit the greatest consideration when deckbuilding. This
section of the deck allows us to implement the core part of our strategy – not to die to whatever our opponent is
trying to do. With the current wide-open Modem meta, the strategies you’ll face will vary considerably in the way
they try and blitzkrieg you to death or grind you out. This section of the deck aims to stop all of them as best it can,
buying time for your card advantage to matter and stabilising threats to land and do their job. The cards fall into
four main categories:

- Counterspells. These are how we stop most things, by ensuring they never hit the board. Nothing new here for
control.
- Bounce spells. If things we couldn’t or didn’t counter have hit the board and need to go away for a bit, we can
get them back to our opponent’s hand, and maybe even get to counter them later.
- Removal spells. If things really need to go away, we kill them. This includes boardwipes and cards like Though-
Knot Seer.
- Prison cards. Static cards, usually artifacts, that prevent a strategy from winning or seriously hamper it whilst
they’re on the field. This is mostly our sideboard suite.

Due to the nature of our manabase, and the fact that we inherently need to dig through our deck as much as we can
to get to the cards we need for that matchup, a lot of our control spells either cantrip or scry. This is why Remand is
usually favoured over Mana Leak, and Repeal over Boomerang. Our cards have the requirement of buying time and
digging for specific cards instead of having to completely stop anything the opponent does. This is the reason
Cyclonic Rift, which seems like it should be a 4-of in our deck, only takes up one slot in most variants. It’s a great
card, being able to bounce anything early and often being a complete blowout late game, but it doesn’t cantrip or
dig. So we can’t run too many copies of it or we run out of cards.

Our spells also have to be flexible. Vapor Snag is an example of a tempo card this deck doesn’t want. It only hits
creatures and it doesn’t dig. For the same number of blue sources tapped, we have Repeal, which hits everything,
cantrips and the X cost scales with Tron. Condescend is another card that is very good on Turn 2 and on Turn 8, as
the permission cost gets big fast with Tronlands. As a third example, you can readily see the flexibility of a card like
Supreme Will, functioning as a Mana Leak that is also an Impulse in the late game for the measly cost of one extra
colourless mana.

Being in Mono U and colourless, we don’t have a great suite of obvious removal to choose from. Blue has a number
of polymorph style options like Pongify or Reality Shift, but these cards leave bodies down on the board that we still
have to get rid of, and are thus card disadvantage. Some variants of UTron splash white for Path to Exile (along with
the Gifts/Rites combo) or black for Fatal Push, but the manabases for these decks are even tighter than ours and
have to be done exactly right to work well. As a result, our removal package is usually a combination of colourless
spot removal (Dismember, Spatial Contortion, Walking Ballista) and boardwipes like Oblivion Stone, Engineered
Explosives and Ugin.

Our prison cards are our way of answering decks that we otherwise have trouble with; usually hyper aggressive
decks that get under our countermagic and kill us before our card and resource advantage matter. The most
obvious and widely used candidate here is Chalice of the Void. This card is usually played on 1, and generates virtual

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card advantage by blanking only 4 of our spells (Maps) vs a good number of spells in the opponent’s deck, or just
outright winning the game.

Other ‘prison cards’ include sideboard cards like Silent Arbiter, Ensnaring Bridge, Spellskite, Grafdigger’s Cage, and
Pithing Needle effects like Sorcerous Spyglass. The majority of these will be in the Sideboard.

The card choices for the control section of the deck are as follows:

4 CONDESCEND – Our best counterspell. Scales with Tron and sets up our draws. Always a four of, as it’s very often
the best spell in your hand at all stages of the game.

3-4 REMAND – Another staple of control decks, buys time and digs. Remanding our own spells in grindy matchups or
control mirrors is strong to create card advantage.

0-2 SUPREME WILL – Your 9th counterspell. This is a great card that serves as a hard counter early on and a very
good dig spell late into the game.

1-2 REPEAL – Our bounce spell that scales with Tron and cantrips.

0-4 SPATIAL CONTORTION – Our normal mainboard removal spell, this kills all small creatures, even those with
regenerate or indestructible. Can also be used to gain more life with Wurmcoil Engine, pump a Though-Knot Seer for
lethal, and doesn’t cost us blue mana. Be careful of Blood Moon.

0-3 DISMEMBER – Dismember is our more suicidal mainboard removal. Costs 1 less than Spatial and hits more
things, but 4 life can hurt a lot in multiples. Very useful for dealing with scary 2 drops on the draw since it only costs
1 mana. The life loss can hurt, but it’s fair to think about how much damage your target will do to you before you
find another answer for it. A triggered Swiftspear attacking you is going to beat you for 4 life whether you
Dismember it or not, so you might as well get it gone. Against something less obvious however, a Thalia might not
be able to hit you for 4 before you get a blocker in the way, but the effect of her tax is probably worth taking the risk
to just get her off the board and let you keep playing your spells.

0-1 OBLIVION STONE – Very useful boardwipe that can be paid all at once with Tron or in instalments without, both
of which are equally effective. Is also recurrable with Academy Ruins for a board-lock and can put fate counters on
things to save our own permanents from the explosion. If you’re playing a more aggressive build with Karn and
Though-Knot Seer it’s acceptable to omit this card to not destroy your own board presence.

1-4 CHALICE OF THE VOID – Our salt-mining prison card. The number of Chalice played mainboard vs sideboard vs at
all is up for debate, but generally it’s accepted that playing 3 in some combination of main and side is a good
number. Your mileage may vary; Chalice is very meta dependant. The main advantage with Chalice in our deck is
that it is often played on 1, only blanking four of our spells (Expedition Map), which usually come down earlier than
the Chalice anyway, and can be discarded to Thirst for Knowledge to maintain value. Chalice is a very strong card,
and is discussed in further detail in Utility and Aggression.

0-1 CYCLONIC RIFT – Bounce spell in the early turns and can be a complete game-changer with Overload. Only seen
as a 1 of since it doesn’t cantrip and thus is card disadvantage.

0-2 PSIONIC BLAST – A direct damage spell that seems worse than Dismember until you realise it can go to face.
Sometimes seen sided in as a ‘gotcha’ against Shadow decks but rarely sees mainboard play.

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0-2 MANA LEAK – Despite not cantripping Mana Leak is still a strong early game imitator of Counterspell that only
requires one blue source.

0-1 FORCE OF NEGATION – A staple of other control decks, Force is a very powerful card that lets you tap out for a
threat and not have your shields completely down for the following turn. Whilst we just meet the criteria in most
builds for the 17-18 other blue spells you theoretically need to be able to run Force, the card disadvantage coupled
with the fact this this requires double blue to be hardcast means Force is limited to a singleton if it’s included at all.

0-1 SPELL BURST – A useful card for countering cheap spells that can get past Remand and Condescend, and also
can be a hard lock in the late game with Tron. However, this card doesn’t dig or cantrip, so space for it is hard to
come by over the staple counterspells.

0-1 WARPING WAIL – A colourless charm. This has an attractive mana cost and an interesting array of abilities that
are good in the right meta, but often just too narrow to be good, and doesn’t dig. The first mode is clearly the
strongest, allowing us to kill a whole bunch of creatures, but the counterspell and ramp can be relevant to. Overall a
distinctly average yet playable card.

0-2 SQUELCH – This card is only playable because it replaces itself. Although primarily used against fetchlands as a
cantripping Sinkhole, Squelch has a surprising number of relevant ways to delay your opponent.

This is not by any means of an exhaustive list of the control cards playable in this deck. However it serves to highlight
why we play the cards we do. Hopefully the themes of flexibility, single-blue mana cost and digging are readily seen,
and these concepts are useful for evaluating curveball additions to your own brews.

CARD ADVANTAGE AND UTILITY

This section of the deck (with some exceptions) gives living space to the greatest number of flex spots. It allows for
the most leniencies for personal preference, as the aim of this part of the engine is difficult to describe in a concise
way. However, in general, these cards aim to generate card advantage and prepare our late game strategy in
tandem with the control suite of the deck.

4 THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE – Our best nonland card in the deck. Thirst is always a 4-of and never boarded out. This is
the card you want in your hand at all stages of the game and is discussed further in Card Advantage and Value.

3-4 EXPEDITION MAP – This card’s purpose is fairly apparent, it helps us find Tronlands or utility lands and does so
extremely well. This is usually your best turn 1 play. Also pitchable to Thirst after you’ve put a Chalice on 1. Usually
a 4-of, but can be cut down to 3 and is often boarded out entirely against Death and Taxes decks.

0-2 TREASURE MAGE – This is our Fabricate with a blocker attached, which is the reason we play it over Fabricate.
This finds almost all of our threats and is card advantage if it trades with a creature or with a removal spell. Does
annoyingly give a target for opponent’s low level removal (Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay) which is otherwise largely
dead against us, but occasionally you’ll get an opponent waste a Path to Exile on this, which is great.

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0-1 TRINKET MAGE – The other side of the Treasure Mage coin, this card is normally used as part of a package with
a single Chalice, Engineered Explosives and Walking Ballista. Trinket can then find us a Map for lands, a Threat from
Ballista, a boardwipe from EE or a Prison from Chalice, turning the card into a very flexible tutor.

0-3 TALISMAN OF DOMINANCE – A mana ramp artifact and another way to include blue sources. A few of these
allow you to run more utility lands and are pitchable to Thirst in the late game, but can be destroyed to take you off
colours and do cost life. Often played in the more aggressive builds to ramp into Karn or Thought-Knot Seer.

0-3 MAZEMIND TOME – A low cost incremental card advantage engine that can be used aggressively to gain life and
be recurred with Karn, this card is an excellent addition to Thirst to help us stay ahead in card advantage and keep
up with decks running Uro and Mystic Sanctuary. Even in faster matchups, this is pitchable to Thirst for value.

0-4 THOUGHT-KNOT SEER – A strong colourless card that is our only realistic form of targeted discard. This card is
currently stronger than it’s ever been thanks to the abundance of decks relying on Force of Negation. Using this to
pave the way for your Karn or Ugin is very strong.

0-1 SOLEMN SIMULACRUM – A staple of EDH that has card advantage written all over it, whilst also fixing and
ramping our mana. This is one of the best early game creatures you can play against Shadow and GBx decks, and
curving Treasure Mage into this into the Wurmcoil you found is a strong line when you are nowhere near Tron.

0-1 SNAPCASTER MAGE – Although this is usually played as a 1-of since double blue to flashback spells is tough for
us to have reliably, this card needs no introduction in control decks as it allows us to play our spells twice whilst
blocking big creatures. Snapcaster is great.

0-1 FACT OR FICTION – This has a fantastic effect for a very easy mana cost for us. Fact or Fiction digs 5 deep and
often creates an impossible choice for your opponent. The strength of this card is twofold; you can always choose
to get the best card out of the top 5, and due to the tendency for opponents to have poor knowledge of our deck,
you will often get a much better pile of cards than you would allow yourself if you were sat the other side of the
table. Costing 4 mana to not affect the board is quite steep in Modern, however this card can dig you out of holes
and provides a good function as a fifth Thirst.

0-2 ANTICIPATE – A very serviceable dig spell that is our version of Opt, since it still only costs us 1 blue source and
dodges our own Chalice on 1. Generally regarded to be outclassed by Supreme Will thanks to the latter’s flexibility,
but Anticipate is still a very playable card if you’re looking for more dig.

0-1 TORRENTIAL GEARHULK – Snapcaster’s bigger brother. This card is a straight up value engine, allowing us to cast
a big flash blocker and get a free Thirst, Dismember, Supreme Will, Remand, FoF, the list is endless. Unfortunately
not as effective with our UX spells, but casting a Thirst for an extra 2U and getting a 5/6 tank on top is worth his
inclusion. Gearhulk is also tutorable with Treasure Mage and Karn, and very useful against reactive decks to try and
present a clock at the end of their turn as oppose to during ours.

0-1 KARN, SCION OF URZA – The overlooked iteration of Karn is a giant value engine that saw testing across a wide
variety of Modern decks as soon as he was spoiled. The only real issue with Karn in UTron is that we have only a
small number of artifacts that actually remain on the battlefield to allow Karn’s constructs (which are often the only
way we can protect him) to have any weight. Without this, Karn probably requires us to tap out for a turn and may
allow the opponent to break through with a threat. Useful if your meta is extremely grindy as he will bury the
opponent in cards if left unchecked.

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0-1 CRUCIBLE OF WORLDS – Given that our lands are a key part of our strategy, this has a fairly obvious use of
defending against land destruction. Crucible can also be used to pair with Ghost Quarter/Tectonic Edge/Field of
Ruin for a repeatable land destruction engine of our own as another way to lock opponents out of the game.
Crucible tends to be much better in longer, grinder games where you have time to get the engine online without
having to miss interaction. Given our inclusion of Academy Ruins the engine is very hard to stop, as the opponent
will need to kill both Crucible and Ruins on the same turn to stop one bringing back the other and the lock
continuing.

0-2 GIFTS UNGIVEN – Gifts can be a very strong card if the deck is built to take advantage of it. Our deck can use this
to find a suite of cards that all enact a variant of whatever answer we need at the time. Since our deck runs a lot of
one-ofs, the ‘different names’ clause of Gifts is not such a restriction, and our recurrence of cards and tutoring
allow for additional value packages. These include but are in no way limited to:

- Last Tronland, Map, Crucible: Whatever they give you, you’re getting the last Tronland. Could also include Ruins
in the package, but you open them to putting Ruins and Crucible in the yard, and suddenly you have no way to
Mindlock.
- Mindslaver, Academy Ruins, Crucible, Buried Ruin: You have Mindslaver Lock.
- Ugin, OStone, Cyclonic Rift, EE: You have a boardwipe. Could also include Walking Ballista or another good card
like Wurmcoil or Thirst.
- Snapcaster, Thirst, Condescend, Fact or Fiction: You have a whole bunch of great cards.
- Snapcaster, Gearhulk, Dismember, Spatial: Whatever they give you, you have a choice of both removal spells.
- Wurmcoil Engine, Treasure Mage, Academy Ruins: You have Wurmcoil. Could also put in Gearhulk/Angel for
additional fun.
- Pithing Needle, Sorcerous Spyglass, Phyrexian Revoker: A classic Gifts package of cards that all do the same
thing.

This just gives an idea of what can be done with Gifts. It can be quite readily jammed into a ‘standard’ UTron list,
however Gifts is best utilised by including more one-ofs and redundancy in card function, as well as more tutors and
recursion effects. Gifts can get even more fun when you have cards the opponent simply cannot beat, like Chalice,
since throwing these cards in the Gifts packages further restricts what the opponent can give you. Overall, instant
speed and the variety of value plays make Gifts Ungiven a perfectly playable card.

The cards listed above are a short sample of the most common card advantage and utility cards played. Other cards
that have seen play are things like Epiphany at the Drownyard, Glimmer of Genius and Pull from Tomorrow. As
mentioned earlier this is the section of the deck with the most flexibility, and with the exception of Thirst for
Knowledge, these cards are often temporarily removed to test new ideas and brews. Feel free to experiment, but
try to remember the purpose of cards here is to advance our game plan and generate card advantage.

THREATS AND STABILIS ERS

This is the fun part of the deck, and our reward for restricting our manabase with the Tronlands. Unfortunately, it’s
the part that a lot of brews miss the mark on. When you have a lot of colourless mana available, there is an
enormous pool of sledgehammer-looking cards to choose from that basically read ‘I win the game’. These can seem
tempting, however our threat choices have to be quite specific due to the fact that they’re often played into an
advanced board state, and have to stabilise that board as much as possible to allow us to start to turn the game

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around. It’s very rare that you’ll be in a position of complete safety when you drop a big threat, and a sledgehammer
isn’t very useful when your opponent already has a knife to your throat. Choosing a threat whose only role in the
game is offensive is not what we want.

Our threats have to be good enough to turn the game around when we’re losing. Unfortunately, ‘losing’ in Modern
takes on a wide variety of forms. It could be anything from one big creature about to beat you down (Death’s
Shadow), several little creatures about to chip you to death (Humans, Merfolk), our opponent about to combo off
(Storm, Ad Nauseam, Amulet) or get the last Burn or Mill spell in and kill us that way. The point is that not only do
our threats have to bring us back from near execution, they have to be flexible enough to save us against different
guillotines. An added bonus is if they can help us win after we stabilise.

Another important bonus for our threats is for them to be artifacts. Our inclusions of Academy Ruins, Thirst for
Knowledge and Karn/Treasure Mage make the reasoning for these conditions obvious; suffice to say that being able
to tutor up a variety of stabilisers for use against different strategies is a powerful tool.

Since War of the Spark, the threat suite of any UTron build starts with a single question:

Am I running 0 or 4 copies of Karn, the Great Creator?

0 OR 4 KARN, THE GREAT CREATOR – This card has changed the face of multiple decks in Modern since his printing.
Even after being de-fanged with the banning of Mycosynth Lattice, Karn proves his ability to provide a toolbox
sideboard of hate pieces, locks and wincons that cement his place as a ‘kill-on-sight’ card. Coupled with his static
ability to shut down artifact strategies simply by existing, Karn has earned his place in our deck just as rightfully as he
has in the relevant builds of Gx and Eldrazi Tron. Karn comes with a great deal of considerations for both the

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makeup of his ‘Karnboard’ and the right way to use the card. Karn’s sideboard and strategy are discussed more in
Stabilisers, Threats and Wincons, with the focus here being on answering the above question.

The decision to include Karn is entirely down to player choice. A number of advantages and disadvantages are
included here to help the reader make an informed decision, however it is in this author’s opinion strictly correct to
either not run the card at all or run 4; if you’re damaging your sideboard to make room for Karn’s toolbox, you want
the maximum utility out of it.

For this list, Karn has been compared to the traditional Treasure Mage packages that UTron classically uses.

Advantages:

- Raw Power: The greatest advantage to Karn is simply how powerful the card is. Karn is a hate piece, a lock
piece, a stabiliser and a wincon all in one card and can win games simply by existing. He starts on a high loyalty,
has a low mana cost and has a relevant uptick that allows you to pull tricks like Dismembering your opponent’s
noncreature artifacts. He is not a fair card and will up the overall power of your deck just by being in it.
- Versatility and Repeatability: Related to the above advantage, Karn has the ability to tutor far more than just a
6+ CMC artifact, and has the potential to continue to do so if our opponent cannot deal with him. This flexible
card advantage can be game winning and aligns well to our philosophy as a control deck.
- No blue-source required: A well known issue for UTron in the past has been a fast completion of Tron to leave a
main phase board state of Mine, Power-Plant, Tower and Island with the desire to begin pressuring the
opponent whilst holding up interaction. Previously, this was impossible, as Treasure Mage required us to tap
our blue source, and Wurmcoil left us with solely the Island or a Tronland untapped. Karn allows you to commit
a serious threat to the board (himself), whilst holding up 3U for relevant interaction and the promise of a huge
threat or crippling hate piece next turn.
- Reduced CMC Spread: Karn allows you to move higher-CMC threats into the sideboard to be fetched as
needed. This lowers the CMC cost of your win conditions, and improves the winrate of games where you are
far from Tron, as Karn can do a good deal of damage with Ballista and Liquimetal Coasting without having to
have buckets of mana for the Sundering Titan that would otherwise be stuck in our hand.
- Mainboard Stony Silence: You’re playing against Urza? Cool, their combo doesn’t work now. Ad Nauseum? Nice
Lotus Bloom with no text on it. Vial Decks? Our counterspells are relevant again. Karn has the ability to just shut
off random pieces of your opponent’s deck just by existing and will win you games because of it.

Disadvantages:

- RIP Sideboard: Karn’s obvious big disadvantage: to make him effective you will have to dedicate anywhere
between 7 to 10 cards of your sideboard to cards that are never really switched in. We are a control deck and
we need to have space for a range of relevant sideboard cards. Using Karn makes your sideboard incredibly
tight and you’ll have to sacrifice winrate percentages against some matchups.
- 4 Mana vs 3: Treasure Mage comes down one turn earlier. Sometimes you need a Wurmcoil Engine right now,
and you have 9 mana to spend. Other times you’re on 5 mana and have to wait another turn before being able
to advance your board state and hold up Remand.
- Karn Doesn’t Block: This is likely Karn’s second biggest disadvantage – against aggressive decks Treasure Mage
had the fantastic role of advancing your gameplan whilst chumping against a threat to buy you time. Karn does
the former brilliantly, but cannot do the latter and sometimes just sits in your hand as a dead card because you
cannot afford to tap out. This is coupled with the above disadvantage; in this situation you are forced to survive
one more turn before safely playing Karn whilst holding up a piece of interaction. This disadvantage is mildly

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 alleviated against poorer players who will tunnel-vision a resolved Karn to attack into it at times they should be
attacking you, but this cannot be relied on and giving the opponent the choice is always worse than having a
2/2 they have to spend a turn walking into.
- Karn Doesn’t Attack: Despite being a real disadvantage, this is often solved by Karn’s ability to +1 an artifact
(Map, Talisman) and provide an attacker. The trade-off here is that Treasure Mage passively tutors whilst being
able to attack, whereas Karn is forced to choose between the two. Karn’s attacker, however, will likely be able
to attack the turn Karn comes down.
- Force of Negation: This is a real consideration; Treasure Mage cannot be Forced and Karn can.

Overall, this author believes that Karn should be run as a 4-of. The card has real disadvantages and can feel stuck in
your hand in aggressive matchups, but the raw power combined with the current value-orientated Modern
metagame demands a threat that is both versatile and punishing, and Karn has the capability to provide a range of
roles all in one card. The current metagame sees our deck less able to simply tap out for an 8-mana threat and
ensure it will take over the game – rather we are required to ensure our threat both resolves and can be protected,
and Karn’s mana cost is perfect for us to be able to hold up our interaction whilst putting pressure on our opponent.

Once the Karn question has been answered, the rest of our threat suite can be considered:

1-3 WURMCOIL ENGINE – This card is our classic stabiliser against most forms of aggro. Decks that want to attack
with creatures or chip at your life total will have a hard time beating this. Wurmcoil also does extremely well against
midrange decks not running white, like Death’s Shadow or GBx decks. Here it provides such value as they get rid of it
that you can usually pull ahead in card advantage, which is what usually matters most in those matchups. Wurmo’s
natural enemy is Path to Exile, which is a very clean answer to it and stops both the split into tokens and the
recurring of Wurm with Ruins. Chalice on 1 is usually a good precursor to playing Wurm against white decks. Wurm
is also very castable without Tron, and delaying the game until we have 6 lands isn’t a problem for our deck. If Karn
is being run, Wurmcoil is usually run as a 0-1 in the main and 1 in the board.

1-2 MINDSLAVER – This card is primarily used to form half of our inevitability package and can be run either in the
main or in the Karnboard. This allows us to prolong the game indefinitely, knowing we will eventually win.
Mindslaver is also very strong against some decks as a one-shot, since even controlling a player for one turn can
allow you to completely cripple their game. Mindslaver is one of the most essential cards for our deck and is
discussed in more depth in Stabilisers, Threats and Wincons.

0-1 PLATINUM ANGEL – A single Platinum Angel is a staple is most builds, though some do cut it or relegate it to the
sideboard. Some decks just straight up can’t beat this card, and those that can might have to spend time drawing
into their removal, which could allow you to stabilise. Wonderfully, we’re a control deck and so once Angel is down
we can concentrate on protecting her. A number of games end up with the UTron player thinking ‘well, if I untap
with Angel, I probably win’. She can be a mainboard or Karnboard card.

0-1 SUNDERING TITAN – Previously omitted from most decklists, this card has made a strong recurrence with the
rise of UGx Uro control piles and their delicious fetch-shock manabases. Make no mistake, this card is a complete
blowout against greedy manabases and forms a gigantic wall that promises to repeat the one sided Armageddon if
it’s removed in any way. A lot of the power of the card comes from the second ability reading ‘leaves the battlefield’
as oppose to ‘dies’, not only ensuring the trigger always occurs but allowing you to start bouncing your own Titan
and replaying it to destroy more lands. Care is required as this will destroy our own Islands if the opponent doesn’t
have any. As it cannot be hit with Force of Negation this card is seen in both the mainboard and is a staple in the
Karnboard.

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0-1 BATTERSKULL – This card is best described as Wurmcoil Engine’s smaller brother. Very easily castable without
Tron and has a good array of abilities to latch onto another creature and bounce itself to protect or if we need it to
actually generate a threat again. Batterskull has two main weaknesses; CMC 5 means it can’t be found with
Treasure Mage, and the token is soft to Fatal Push, which is otherwise dead against us. Despite this, Batterskull is a
strong early stabiliser against aggro decks and is very playable, although likely not worth a spot in the Karnboard.

UGIN, THE SPIRIT DRAGON – A staple in all decks running Tronlands, Ugin is a complete house against strategies
that need coloured permanents to win. Typically, Ugin comes down, wipes the board with his –X, then ticks up
against remaining threats or the opponent’s face with his +2 until he needs to –X again or can win the game with his
ultimate. Despite being suboptimal against control or combo decks (which use spells or manlands to win instead of
permanents), Ugin is an enormously powerful card and very often one of the best things we can do with our
Tronlands. Even if we are running Karn, a singleton Ugin is pretty much always in the deck.

1-4 WALKING BALLISTA – Ballista is a removal spell, a threat, a direct damage spell, planeswalker killer and most
importantly a mana sink all in one card. Often one of the best spells to have in your hand, it can be used with Tron
as a giant wincon or played early then pumped at the end of your opponent’s turn if you have nothing better to do,
ensuring you’re always using your mana. Can also be recurred with Academy Ruins for repeatable direct damage
and can often provide a sacrificial alpha strike to snap you an unexpected win. Ballista is a fantastic card.

0-1 EMRAKUL, THE PROMISED END – A very powerful game-ender, New’mrakul is a great combination of
stabilisation with the on-cast Mindslaver, and a strong threat that you’ll hopefully be able to strip away any answers
to. Unfortunately we can’t take too much advantage of her discount clause, since (barring tactically discarding cards
with Thirst) it’s likely we have only instant, artifact and occasionally land or creature in the graveyard, meaning
Emrakul usually costs us 10 or 11. Despite this, Emrakul sees inclusion in a few brews and is definitely playable.

As with other sections of the deck, there are a lot of other cards that see play and see success. Cards like Myr
Battlesphere and Steel Hellkite are all viable inclusions in UTron, and there’s a good deal of room to customise your
threat selection to your meta. Just keep in mind the important requirement that these cards should aim to stabilise
a game you’re about to lose, not overkill one you were winning anyway.

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SIDEBOARDING

The sideboarding suite of any deck is hard to pin down in writing, due to meta shifts driving constant changes and
personal preference having a large impact. As we are a control deck with the potential to make a ton of mana, there
are a wide variety of cards available to us that can stop different strategies. With that in mind, this section will aim
to introduce a number of common sideboard cards and describe their roles to inform choice when brewing.

This section will refer to cards that are not specific to Karn, the Great Creator’s wishboard. The construction of the
Karnboard is discussed further in Stabilisers, Threats and Wincons.

AGGRO WEAKNESSES

It’s no secret UTron is weaker to fast decks. We have a number of sideboard options to try and shore up against
decks that are trying to kill us as soon as they can.

SPATIAL CONTORTION – As seen earlier in the maindeck, it’s an option to have more in the sideboard.

DISMEMBER – As seen earlier in the maindeck, it’s an option to have more in the sideboard.

SILENT ARBITER – A good stonewall against swarm aggro decks, this can often buy you enough time to stabilise fully
with Wurmcoil or Angel, or just win with Ugin. Toughness 5 is also very useful to block the one creature that can
attack.

CHALICE OF THE VOID – As seen earlier in the maindeck, it’s an option to have more in the sideboard.

ENGINEERED EXPLOSIVES – A low cost sweeper than can be a complete game winner against a swarm of tokens or
low cost creatures. EE also has good game against decks like Prowess, 8Rack and Bogles. It’s advisable to have a way
of producing colours other than blue when making use of EE, using UB dual lands like River of Tears or Underground
River. You can also pump colourless mana into EE’s cost to get it past a Chalice.

HURKYL’S RECALL – Fallen out of favour with the decline of aggressive artifact strategies, but this is still useful
against anything that needs artifacts on the board to win (Urza, Hardened Scales). This followed by Chalice on the
correct number can often trap a lot of spells in your opponent’s hand and win you the game.

BOTTLE GNOMES – Block, sac, gain 3. Toughness 3 is also nice to form a small wall for a bit, and pitchable to Thirst.

STEEL WALL – A small turn-one speedbump against smaller aggro decks and burn. Good mostly because it only costs
one mana, and is pitchable to Thirst.

BATTERSKULL – as this comes down a turn before Wurmcoil, it’s an option to run more of these in the side to try and
stabilise earlier.

AETHER GUST – A powerful card with a wide range of applications, most blue sideboards have adopted anywhere
from 2 to 4 copies of this. Most relevant in this section against the Burn and Prowess decks, this also has utility
against many other strategies and gets past things like Cavern of Souls.

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GRAVEYARD HATE

GRAFDIGGERS CAGE – This card is often seen as weaker graveyard hate, as it’s a ‘softer’ prison hate card than those
that directly exile everything. It can also be removed eventually. However its utility comes from it also stopping
cards like Finale of Devastation and Collected Company, the latter of which especially is a tough card for us if it
resolves. Overall it’s a wide prison card that we can protect if needs be, and is an artifact for Thirst, which makes it a
great sideboard card.

RELIC OF PROGENITUS – First ability can be clunky since the opponent gets the choice, however this cantrips when it
ultimates, making Relic a good inclusion.

TORMOD’S CRYPT – A cheaper Relic that doesn’t cantrip, but leaves our graveyard intact and isn’t stopped by Chalice
on 1, which is useful. Another playable option.

ASHIOK, DREAM RENDER – Repeatable graveyard hate whilst also having a static that turns off fetchlands, this card is
a staple in most sideboards that can run him.

LEYLINE OF THE VOID – This card is really, really good against graveyard decks. Too big for Abrupt Decay and not hit
by Ancient Grudge, this should stick around longer than the other options we have. The tradeoff for this is fairly
obvious – we basically have no way of casting it outside of it being in our opener, meaning it’s a dead card that can’t
be pitched valuably to Thirst. Used if your meta includes a lot of graveyard decks and you want to aggressively
mulligan towards this, but otherwise too restrictive to go in the average sideboard.

BOJUKA BOG/SCAVENGER GROUNDS – Slightly different manifestations of the same idea: restricting your manabase
to include a tutorable one-shot graveyard hate effect. The fact that one produces black mana over colourless mana
is fairly irrelevant over the much larger consideration of neither of these cards producing blue mana. The main
trade-offs here are:

- Bog enters tapped, but lets you keep the land as oppose to having to sacrifice.
- Scavenger lets you play the land as a normal land whilst holding up the exile effect at instant speed. To
effectively use Bog you may have to hold back on making your land drop with it.

With this in mind, this primer would advise Scavenger Grounds over Bog. The untapped clause is nice, but the main
aspect is being able to use the land as a land before committing to the exile effect. Doubled with the fact that you
can use the ability at instant speed, Scavenger Grounds’ flexibility gives it the edge over Bog. With that said, the
mana restriction of these cards mean that their inclusion is likely only warranted in a graveyard-heavy meta.

LAND HATE

SPREADING SEAS – This card is great because it cantrips. We can also move it onto other lands if they become a
bigger issue. Having a Tron opponent play another Tower after your turned the first into an Island lets you just
Repeal the Seas and put it on the Mine in your turn, whilst also drawing 2 cards.

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FIELD OF RUIN/GHOST QUARTER/TECTONIC EDGE – As discussed in Manabase, there are all very viable land
destruction options, with Field of Ruin the usual choice given that it doesn’t put us down a land and can become a
blue source. However, if you have a Field of Ruin in the mainboard it may be correct to play another option in the
side for flexibility. Ghost Quarter is also likely the better option to pair with Crucible of Worlds if you’re including
that package.

DAMPING SPHERE – This seems like a strange inclusion for our deck given that it stops our Tronlands too, but we
have a much better chance of winning without them than other decks that play Sol lands. Turning UTron vs GxTron
into a ‘fair’ matchup usually means we win with our counterspells. We can also Repeal the Sphere if we ever need
to, or we manage to take the opponent off their advantage. Sphere is also a good card against Storm.

COMBO MORE LIKE NONBO

PITHING NEEDLE/SORCEROUS SPYGLASS/PHYREXIAN REVOKER – Needle effects are all good choices. They can name
cards like Lightning Storm to completely stop some decks, or provide good utility against planeswalkers, manlands
and fetchlands. Spyglass is best suited to our deck, as the information gained is great for us as a control deck, and it
doesn’t get stopped by our Chalice on 1.

SUMMARY DISMISSAL/WHIRLWIND DENIAL – The counters to end all counters, these essentially read ‘Counter the
stack’. Dismissal in particular is very useful for dealing with uncounterable spells, activated abilities and cast triggers,
and also performs well letting a Storm player combo off then exiling 20 copies of Grapeshot. Expensive and
Dismissal does cost double blue, but these can often be a complete blowout.

SPELLSKITE – As it’s always been, Spellskite is a great card for eating your opponents spells, and performs well
against anything trying to point damage at your face. Usually flat out wins against Bogles and Infect and can also
protect your Angel. Can be used again Burn and Valakut to turn Bolts into Shocks.

SURGICAL EXTRACTION – A card that needs no introduction, Surgical has been stopping combo decks in their tracks
since it was printed by precisely removing the key piece needed for the combo to go off. Can occasionally be paid
for by your dual lands that produce black, but be careful of Chalice on 1.

ASHIOK, DREAM RENDER – This is included here again for its utility against Scapeshift and Titan decks. They cannot
use their cards effectively whilst this is on the field, and for that reason it is common play to not downtick the
Ashiok, ensuring they have the hardest time possible removing it.

AETHER GUST – This card also gains an additional mention here for its insane utility against Amulet Titan decks. Gust
is a great counterspell against their namesake card

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CONTROL PILES

CAVERN OF SOULS – This is used to force through Thought-Knot Seer, Walking Ballista and/or Sundering Titan, all of
which are very good against control piles.

FACT OR FICTION – As with the main, it’s an option to have an additional copy in the sideboard.

NIMBLE OBSTRUCTIONIST – This card forms a nice clock, a flash threat for planeswalkers and can be used as a cycling
Wasteland against fetches. This usually has something relevant to hit and if not, a 3/1 Flash body is a good clock.

RELIC OF PROGENITUS/GRAFDIGGER’S CAGE/TORMOD’S CRYPT – These are discussed in Graveyard Hate, but deserve
additional mention here due to the current popularity of UGx control piles featuring Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
and Mystic Sanctuary. Good graveyard hate will shut these cards down and the rest of the deck becomes a lot less
powerful without them. Relic is likely the best option here, as it cantrips and can do its job even if answered.

0-2 SHARK TYPHOON – Sharknado shines as a way to provide an uncounterable cantripping beater at instant speed.
The shark can threaten planeswalkers, provide a clock or simply provide card advantage if they have to spend a card
removing it. Our deck especially can use Tron to make the shark enormous and we have an added bonus of being
able to realistically cast the card and generate tokens as we continue the game.

There are many other cards that can see acceptable inclusions in sideboards, depending on your meta. Different
counterspells like Mana Leak, Spell Pierce/Snare, along with other utility and draw spells like Glimmer of Genius,
Frantic Inventory and Chemister’s Insight are all valid sideboard cards. Find out what works for you and get some
games in to test. As a control deck, your sideboard should be very dynamic and change with the metagame.

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REJECTED CARDS

Due to the green variants of Tron being more popular and more infamous than UTron, people new to building the
deck often mistake us for being a Tron deck that splashes blue, as oppose to a blue deck that splashes Tron. Both
new players and new opponents of the deck make the error of thinking we play the same threats and cards that Gx
Tron plays. You will often see inexperienced opponents name Karn Liberated with Meddling Mage.

Another pothole to fall into is forgetting that our threats are required to stabilise a board more than just beat the
opponent down. Our threats continue our early game plan of stopping our opponent’s deck from winning. Failing to
appreciate this fully can lead to a lot of incorrect threat choices, from cards that are too narrow, not effective
enough at stabilising or whose only role is to try and hammer the opponent to death.

Additionally, this section will include some cards that seem to fit the control and manabase sections of our deck, but
either violate the card advantage and digging style of control we play, or are not worth losing a basic Island for.

This sections aims to talk about a number of the cards newcomers would expect us to play, and explain why they
aren’t right for our deck.

THREATS

KARN LIBERATED

If you are playing GxTron, you play 4 Karn Liberated. The primary objective of your deck is to have this card resolve
on your turn three. Here, he starts exiling you opponent’s lands and eating through their hand before they’ve even
got into the game. Turn three Karn is the primary reason a lot of people dislike Tron; it is an absurdly powerful play
and either outright causes a concession or leaves you opponent with one land on their next turn, staring down 7
mana and a huge planeswalker, with the looming threat of additional powerhouse cards coming in the following
turns. So why doesn’t UTron play Karn?

The answer is pretty simple; Karn doesn’t stabilise an advanced board. We’re not in the business of reliably getting
him out early enough to play him aggressively like GxTron does, and in the later game Karn just isn’t very effective.
Chances are you’re facing down lots of creatures or your opponent is looking to combo off and you need a card that
stops them doing this. Exiling a single permanent or card in their hand is usually not going to stop a deck that’s
about to win, and next turn you’re probably losing your Karn. It’s just not a card that stabilises a developed board
and so doesn’t fit into our deck.

Karn is also not an artifact, so we can’t tutor for him. This fundamental requirement of our threat selection is only
relaxed for cards that are incredibly strong if they resolve, like Ugin or Emrakul, the Promised End. On top of this,
when we get to Tron we will basically always have at least one other land down in the form of a blue source, so
Ugin’s cost of 8 mana isn’t a huge difference to Karn’s 7, and Ugin is a much better late game stabiliser than Karn.

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ULAMOG, THE CEASELESS HUNGER

Karn on steroids. Ulamog is GxTron’s enormous game finisher. Coming down as an indestructible 10/10 that kills you
even if you can block and bringing his friend the essentially uncounterable double Vindicate is something that ends
games extremely quickly. Ulamog is very strong, however the issue with Ulamog is very similar to that of Karn; he’s
only that good if you can play him unreasonably early, or following up a Karn that your opponent has crippled
themselves having to deal with. We’re not doing either of those things. We are not in the game of getting Tron
online quickly and throwing big scary things at our opponent hoping they’re good enough. We control what our
opponent is doing until we have the right stabilising threat that their strategy can’t win through. Consider Ulamog
against an advanced swarm aggro deck about to kill us – he exiles two creatures and then the rest swing past him
for the win. Here, Ugin, OStone, Angel and even maybe Wurmcoil or Rift would be better cards to have. Against a
combo or control deck, a late Ulamog could exile some lands, but the combo deck just throws spells at us and the
control deck just Paths the Ulamog and keeps going. Here Karn TGC, Angel or holding up counters would be so much
better. Ulamog is by no means bad, but we have much better cards we could be casting for 10 mana given our
strategy.

EMRAKUL, THE AEONS TORN

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is the biggest, baddest, most scary thing you can do in Magic. Emrakul is the ultimate big
red button, and in 90% percent of situations simply reads ‘15: You win the game’. Given that we want to go on as
long as possible and have a completely reasonable chance of generating the mana to cast Emrakul, why don’t we
play her as our ultimate inevitability package?

Mindslaver and Academy Ruins. Slaver lock is our inevitability package. Not only does it win the game more reliably
than Emrakul, but crucially both cards slot into our deck far better and are very useful without assembling the lock.
Until you can cast her, Emrakul is a dead card. Slaver is very useful as a one-shot and can easily win the game that
way, and Ruins is our best land after Island. If either of those are ever banned (they won’t be) then perhaps the
Flying Spaghetti Monster will see play in our deck. But until then, she is simply outclassed in flexibility.

BLIGHTSTEEL COLOSSUS

Ok, so our threats should be artifacts, right? So let’s use the biggest artifact creature around! Blightsteel Colossus is
the phyrexian version of his predecessor Darksteel Colossus, and as a result gets bigger and has Infect, meaning it
can win the game in one swing against small blockers. Being an artifact and having CMC over 6, why don’t we play
this card to tutor up and close out games when we’re ahead?

The answer here is in the question – ‘when we’re ahead’. Blightsteel is a very strong threat, but it’s only a threat and
he’s only useful when we’re already doing well. The only stabilisation this card is doing is blocking one creature,
which is far too narrow to consider his inclusion. Apart from very odd theoretical cases, any game that Blightsteel
can win, any other of our tutorable threats can also win. But all those other threats can stabilise far more flexibly
and are a lot more readily playable without Tron than Blightsteel.

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CONTROL CARDS

REALITY SHIFT

This card is so good-looking that it sometimes takes playing with it for a while before its weakness is realised. The
benefits of Reality Shift are obvious; it’s an unconditional creature exile with a low blue requirement at instant
speed that dodges our Chalice on 1. It’s so annoyingly close to being good. If it made a 2/2 token, it would likely be
playable, but having that token be able to flip into a Tarmogoyf or a Death’s Shadow, or at the very worst letting
your opponent turn an otherwise dead next draw into a viable threat is not ok. Reality Shift is at best ‘card
disadvantage’, at worst ‘1U: to turn a Tarmogoyf into a bigger Tarmogoyf’. It is, very sadly, not playable.

LANDS

SANCTUM OF UGIN

Sanctum of Ugin in GxTron does a distinctly average job of filling the gap left by Eye of Ugin, a card that allowed
GxTron’s otherwise redundant land tutors to find threats after they’d found Tron. It lets them follow a threat with
another for the cost of a land, which is conducive to GxTron’s idea of going all out on throwing threats at its
opponent. UTron’s gameplan is longer and more patient, and our threats are chosen to do well by themselves
against an established board. Playing a Platinum Angel and being able to get a follow-up Wurmcoil is pretty good,
but is much worse than untapping with the Angel with a wall of counterspells in your hand, and not having just
sacrificed a precious land. Sanctum also only triggers from cards with a CMC of 7 or greater, so doesn’t fire off when
we play a Wurm, or Gearhulk, or Slaver. We also have better tutors in the form of Treasure Mage and Karn, and
plenty of dig to get to our bigger cards. It’s not worth taking out an Island for, and we really don’t want to be
sacrificing lands.

MYSTIC SANCTUARY

An arguably completely broken card, Sanctuary is a staple of nearly all other control decks for its ability to use your
graveyard as a second hand, lock players out the game with Cryptic Command and combo with fetchlands for
topdeck manipulation. Unfortunately for us, Mystic Sanctuary requires three other Islands to do its thing, and this
just isn’t a reliable requirement for us to satisfy. We also can’t exploit the card with fetchlands, and don’t include
Cryptic Command for the ability to combat-lock our opponents. Overall, Sanctuary is firmly in the stack of horrible
cards we can’t run but wish we could.

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UTILITY CARDS

SERUM VISIONS

Serum Visions is often used in control and combo decks to spend turn one sculpting their next few draws. The
reason it isn’t included in UTron is not solely because it makes playing Chalice on 1 a whole lot worse, but mainly
due to it being sorcery speed, and the fact that it pales in comparison to Thirst for Knowledge. On turn 1, we would
much rather play a Map than this, or even hold up Dismember. On any turn after, we have to have two blue sources
up to make any use of this card, since no UTron player is going to tap their only blue source for Serum Visions on
their turn and sacrifice being able to hold up, or at least bluff, interaction for the next turn. After turn 3, Thirst is just
better than Serum Visions, and castable at the end of your opponent’s turn.

OPT

Opt found its way into Modern thanks to its printing in the Ixalan block. The card is used widely as a version of
Serum Visions that trades dig depth for the ability to play it at the end of your opponent’s turn after holding up
interaction. This advantage should make Opt a possible inclusion in UTron, however the blue source bottleneck of
our manabase once against makes cards like Anticipate or Thirst better options, since they are much stronger and
still only cost one blue source. Opt is also blanked by Chalice on 1, and it doesn’t do a good enough imitation of
extra Thirsts for it to be worth including.

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HOW TO PLAY THE DECK

This section covers aspects of strategy and decisions when piloting UTron. Due to the flexibility of deck construction
making discussing specific tactics difficult, this section will assume a fairly ‘standard’ build, using cards described in
Deck Construction. Additionally, since UTron is anything but linear, this section does not have the luxury of being
able to concisely describe a detailed method of executing a single game plan and maximising its resilience. The
interactive style of our deck means it’s only realistic to provide a high-level guide of play lines and thought
processes, including some examples to demonstrate certain decisions.

YOUR OPPONENT’S DECK

Your opponent’s deck is your first and foremost consideration. Playing UTron effectively absolutely requires
knowledge of how your opponent is trying to win, and more specifically knowledge of their key cards that enable
that strategy. Since it’s rare that you’ll be able to stop every card they play, knowing which cards to interact with is
critical to maintaining control of the game. This section will describe a few categories of deck classification and give
a brief overview of how our deck can best deal with them.

AGGRO, CONTROL, MIDRANGE OR COMBO

Most decks you face can be characterised into one of these archetypes. This in no way fully defines the deck you’re
facing, but does give you a good idea of how the game is going to progress, the important high level concepts and
therefore which types of cards in your deck are more suited to the situation.

AGGRO decks are trying to overwhelm you with damage before you’ve had a chance to fight back. This requires you
to survive the initial onslaught until you can bring down cards their cheaper spells can’t compete with. The cards to
prioritise are those that either do the most damage (Reality Smasher), incremental, evasive damage (Eidolon of the
Great Revel) or compound the damage of other threats (Thalia’s Lieutenant).

Running the aggro player out of gas is important, as your card advantage won’t matter in the early stages of the
game where the aggro player is trying to fight. To this end, removal and boardwipes are the strongest elements of
our deck. If you’re on a reasonable life total when the blitzkrieg is over your cards are all stronger than one small
threat per turn, and you have more of them, so you can start to climb to your feet again and take over. Often they
will get a decent amount of damage through in the early game, and you should focus on denying them their reach
and maintaining your remaining points of life until you have a stabiliser down, at which point you can turn the game
around.

CONTROL decks are the opposite to aggro; you’ll have a great deal of time and the focus should be on making sure
you hit your land drops and maintain card advantage right from the off. Since we are also a control deck, the two
most important concepts are card advantage and clocks. The games are inevitably going to go on for a long time so
any threat serves as a respectable clock, as it forces the other player to play proactively, which isn’t something
control decks do well at.

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Important cards are therefore anything that can provide a clock (Snapcaster Mage, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath) or
provide card advantage for the opponent (Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Uro again). As we have a superior mana
advantage, we are happy for the game to go on as long as possible, allowing us to lever that advantage into playing
threats whilst never tapping out. We can also use this to initiate proxy counter wars, baiting the opponent to tap out
over a relatively minor threat and giving us a clear path to land either a much larger threat or Mindslaver lock.

MIDRANGE decks hover between aggro and control. They play a proactive strategy that cares about card advantage
and try to grind the opponent out of the game by playing lots of 2 for 1s like Lingering Souls, Kolaghan’s Command
and Bloodbraid Elf. Often a midrange deck will be defined as playing the most efficient value cards in the chosen
colour combination, ensuring their draws are all isolated gas.

Since midrange decks are trying to win by grinding out proactive card advantage, we have a very strong matchup
here. The only serious worry is the tendency for these decks to run a number of one mana discard spells, which can
hamper us quite severely as we need to hold cards in our hand. Apart from that, our normal game plan of gaining
value with our counterspells and drawing card advantage fares extremely well, as Thirst for Knowledge proves its
ability to dominate a grindy matchup. Other good card advantage engines like Solemn Simulacrum and Karn TGC are
dripping with value and so good choices. We also win on the threat front, as they match our style of playing isolated
singular strong threats, except that ours are just objectively more powerful, and we have Tron to cast them at the
same rate.

COMBO decks are trying to play a particular combination of cards that either outright win, create an unlosable game
state or provide an insurmountable advantage. This archetype stands slightly apart from the other three, but can be
sub-classified within them. Aggro-combo decks (Goblins, Storm) are usually trying to force their combo as soon as
possible whereas control-combo decks (Through the Breach, Yorion Scapeshift) seek to delay the opponent and
protect the combo as it goes through. Midrange combo decks (VizerDruid, Dimir Whirza) are usually primarily
midrange decks that have a combo element included within them to snap occasional wins out of nowhere.

Dealing with combo decks is where knowledge and quick recognition of the opponent’s deck is most vital. You have
to be aware of how the combo works so you can save your interaction for what matters. Usually the strategy is to let
them play their set-up cards that don’t directly enact the combo (Sakura-Tribe Elder, Phyrexian Unlife) and save
your counters for winning the war over their key combo pieces (Gifts Ungiven, Primeval Titan, Ad Nauseam). Always
bear in mind that a lot of these decks will have ways of forcing through their combos with cards like Pact of Negation
and Dispel, so Chalice always has a role to play in allowing you to win the counter wars. Since they have the ability to
win out of nowhere from an otherwise unthreatening board, tapping out is almost never advised unless you’re
completely sure they can’t kill you next turn. Overall, our plentiful interaction and array of counterspells make most
combo decks a good matchup. After they’ve failed to force the combo through we can prevent them digging for the
pieces again and win with any form of clock.

PROACTIVE VS REACTIVE

All games of Magic are defined by one side taking the form of the ‘beatdown’ deck and one taking the form of the
‘control’ deck. The beatdown role is to take the initiative with threats and kill their opponent faster, whereas the
control role is to survive the beatdown and prolong the game into a state where their inevitability will win. This is a
fairly fundamental concept, and is usually decided by which deck has the faster goldfish; which of the two would kill
a deck of basic lands first. Even in an aggro vs aggro matchup, one player will be inherently slower than the other

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and have to provide some form of interaction to stop the opponent’s quicker clock. Similarly, for control mirrors, the
deck that generally generates the least card advantage or has less inevitability will try and present a clock and force
the opponent to remove it.

UTron is as far toward the reactive end of the scale as any deck can be. We have superior card advantage and
formidable inevitability with Mindslaver lock. We do have the ability to present powerful clocks with the cards we
can power out with Tronlands, but this is usually just a way of harassing the opponent to stall the game further. This
means the opponent’s deck will very often take a proactive role; trying to end the game before we have our mana
and card advantage online and take over.

PROACTIVE decks allow us to play our control game unimpeded, safe in the knowledge that we’re likely not going to
be fought too hard on the stack. The games should largely consist of the opponent playing sorcery-speed cards into
our interaction, and is usually decided by them either getting a threat to stick or running out of anything meaningful
to do. Playing against proactive decks feels easier and safer for UTron, since we can comfortably organise our spells
knowing we won’t be punished at instant speed for tapping out on their turn. However, good pilots of proactive
decks will try and bait us into letting them resolve instant-speed haymakers like Collected Company or Whir of
Invention so it’s worth being wary of the opponent has a lot of unused mana at the end of their turn with cards in
hand. A VizerDruid player leaving three untapped lands and a Hierarch they didn’t attack you with passing the turn is
likely going to punish you for tapping out for Thirst.

REACTIVE decks require more thought. It is in these matchups that card advantage is most key, since the matches
are often decided in the late midgame or early endgame. Since both decks are best suited to reactive play, the
player who tries to resolve a key spell first is going to have a tougher time, as they’ll have less mana remaining for
the inevitable counter war. The general advice is to try and hit land drops every turn, concentrate on resolving
Thirsts and Maps to get towards your card and mana advantage, and force them to play proactively. The longer the
game goes on, the closer we get to our final inevitability with Mindslaver lock, so we can focus on drawing into a
stage where we’re ready to lock and then fighting over a proxy threat in their turn to bait them into tapping out.

ESSENTIAL VS REDUNDANT

It is important to know if the deck you’re facing has a few key cards are required for them to win, or are piles of
functionally similar cards that win once they reach a critical mass. Essential decks are usually combo-style decks or
decks full of specific hate or prison cards that are required to find the right one to stop whatever they’re facing.
Redundant decks can take on many forms, but examples are tribal aggro decks, Burn decks and conventional control
decks.

ESSENTIAL decks tend to be easier for UTron to control, since we can save our counters for the key cards that enable
the opponent’s strategy. These are not necessarily always combo pieces, but could include cards that compound the
threat of the other cards in the deck, like Amulet of Vigor. Decks that play in this way force us to have a very good
knowledge of their payoff cards, since these can quickly swing the game in their favour. The good news is that if we
can stop these payoff cards, the deck often has little else to do and we have a lot of time to win, meaning we can
concentrate less on having to build card advantage in favour of always having interaction ready for a combo.

REDUNDANT decks require us to lean on our card advantage. Here we need to have more answers than the
opponent has threats to prevent them building up a critical mass. This is theoretically more difficult, but the saving
grace here is that each single card they have is not an instant game winning threat in itself. This allows us to be

34
flexible and use our softer removal to hold the opponent from building up too big a board presence until we can
stabilise. When facing a lot of threats that are functionally similar, it’s vital to consider how your interaction lines up
with what you know you’re going to face. This could be a simple decision, like waiting for turn 2 to cast Spatial on a
Scavenging Ooze and thus saving your Dismember for an anticipated Tarmogoyf, or a more complicated idea, like
casting Supreme Will instead of Condescend to counter a spell, missing the scry because you want good target for
your Gearhulk, which is your next turn flash blocker for the Gurmag Angler currently beating on you.

IDENTIFYING DECKS

Correctly identifying an opponent’s deck is something that comes primarily with experience. In some cases it can be
simple; a fetchland into Soul-Scar Mage is very likely Prowess, however playing a Scalding Tarn and not fetching
could be anything from Temur Reclaimation to Storm. You won’t really know until they’ve cracked their land and
played a few spells. Despite this, in most situations you can at least gain an idea of how the opponent’s deck fits into
the archetypes above. Cracking fetches for Ux lands and leaving them untapped is likely some sort of control deck or
Uro pile, but could have a combo element as well in Through the Breach or Mystical Teachings, depending on the
colours. Opening with scry lands and spells like Serum Visions is likely a deck trying to dig for an essential combo.
Anything playing Thought Scour may well be fuelling a Delve spell or Delirium and so you’re likely looking at a
proactive midrange deck.

Identifying a deck into these archetypes, even before having perfect knowledge of the specific deck or variant your
opponent is playing, is very useful to start helping you realise the cards in your deck that stand out as the most
effective ways of stopping or stabilising, but also which cards are not so useful. This allows you to make better
decisions when digging, which your deck will start doing very early on. Our deck sees a lot of cards, but part of that
is having to temporarily reject some of our deck by either scrying cards to the bottom of our library or binning them
to Thirst. These decisions are heavily influenced by knowledge of your opponent’s strategy, and even against an
unknown deck, being able to recognise characteristics of these archetypes can help make correct choices, which can
have huge impacts on the later game.

UTRON’S ARSENAL

The knowledge of your opponent’s deck, or at least the classification of it into some archetype categories allows you
to which aspects of the game will help determine the win, be it card advantage, walls of counters or removal,
digging for threats or Tron, or just having a specific hate card like Chalice. We can then use this information to
decide on a lower-level which cards are worth digging for and keeping, and which are good to pitch to Thirst or scry
away.

UTron has a way of fighting on all types of fields. The insane flexibility of the deck can only be fully utilised by the
pilot if they’re experienced with their version if it and know how the cards behave in different situations. This
section aims to provide a more contextual description of how best to use the different cards in the deck, with brief
example scenarios.

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COUNTERSPELLS, BOUNCE AND REMOVAL

Our counterspells, bounce and removal are the way we control threats one at a time. Chaining these against a
proactive opponent is the primary method the deck gets ahead; slowing or stopping their strategy until we’ve dug
into a stabiliser. Whilst we include a lot of interaction, the nature of the deck will require you to choose which
threats to interact with as oppose to trying to keep your opponent’s board completely clean. Correctly making these
choices each game is drawn primarily from experience and knowledge of your opponent’s deck, but there are some
general guidelines if we consider that our deck wins by stopping threats, generating card advantage and playing
stabilisers. With this strategy in mind, the most dangerous cards your opponent can play are:

FAST THREATS – things that are going to kill you before you can stabilise. Whilst all threats are a form of clock, some
are clearly too strong or explosive for us to let hit us if we’re looking to play a longer game. The decision for what
comes under ‘too fast’ is dependent on how long you see the game going on. The expectation for a control matchup
to play a very long game and interfere with our ability to stabilise means a simple Snapcaster Mage can present a
worrying clock, as it forces us to play proactively to remove it. Against Grixis Shadow the same threat pales in
comparison to Shadow and Angler, and won’t have the time to kill us before we can reliably drop a Wurmcoil
Engine, which they can’t stop us casting pre-board and can’t really beat.

CARD ADVANTAGE GENERATORS – cards that allow your opponent to keep drawing into gas and compete with Thirst
for Knowledge. Generally this covers cards that keep generating whilst they’re on the board like Dark Confidant or
Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but also 2 for 1’s like Command cards, and things that hurt our card quality like Thought-
Knot Seer and Liliana of the Veil, although these are more scary as threats. These types of cards usually mean that
the opponent can continue digging into gas and eventually we won’t be able to stop them, however sometimes they
can be less impactful if we get to a stabiliser their deck just can’t beat. It doesn’t matter how many cards Prowess
draws pre-board if we have Chalice on 1 and Angel.

KEY COMBO PIECES – These cards are a fairly obvious choice since they usually win the game on the spot (Ad
Nauseam, Scapeshift), however the trickier cards to evaluate are those that could be combo enablers. Cards like
Garruk Wildspeaker in ToothandNail.dec isn’t going to kill us very fast, but could allow the player to generate
enough mana with Nykthos and Utopia Sprawls that we can’t counter a Tooth and Nail next turn. On the other hand,
Phyrexian Unlife is a card we can let sit about doing nothing, then either counter Ad Nauseam or Repeal the Unlife in
response to them drawing their whole deck and casting Thassa’s Oracle.

Choosing between types of interaction is also important. Our counterspells, removal and bounce spells all do slightly
different things and are useful in different situations. The choice between what to use for various threats is very
situational and quite complicated to work out, but for some general questions you should be asking yourself are:

- How does your interaction line up against this threat? Most of the time, cards that fall into the categories above
are best dealt with by a Condescend they can’t pay for. It’s a hard counter that also digs us up to three cards
deep. But there are situations where our other interaction can be better. If you only have the mana left up to
Condescend a Koth of the Hammer on 1 against Skred, maybe a Remand is a better choice here, as they could
have Simian Spirit Guide to pay the Condescend cost. Next turn you can hold up more mana to Condescend if
they play it again, which they likely will. If their spell has incurred an additional cost, such as Eldritch Evolution
or Collective Brutality, Remand is also useful to force them to pay the cost again and get some card advantage.
This also applies to the idea that hard removal is usually favoured over bounce spells. Needing to deal with a
5/5 Urza token is something that can be done with Dismember, but a Repeal is much stronger here to not cost

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 life and also draw a card. Repeal is also better against cards that are inefficient to play from their hand but are
free from the graveyard, like Bloodghast.

- How is the interaction in your hand going to fare later on in the game? If you have a fairly even choice between
Condescend and Remand for the current threat, consider which you’d prefer to have in your hand going
forward? They’re casting a Liliana and have a big graveyard with a Lingering Souls in it? Condescend is probably
better, since Remand is going to do well in the future against the flashbacked Souls and any Delve creatures
they might play. As a wider example, the idea of choosing to delay spells with Remand or Repeal instead of
hard removing them with Condescend or Spatial is strong if you’re confident of landing an Ugin or OStone in a
few turns, since you’re only looking to buy time and prevent these cards from hurting you until they get eaten
by your boardwipe, after which you’re left with your hard counters and removal for further threats.

- Does your interaction have the potential to be made redundant? Some decks run cards that are resilient against
different types of interaction. If you’re against Humans and have a choice between countering a threat or
letting it resolve for removal, the counterspell should probably be prioritised, as they could drop Cavern next
turn and then you’ll be happy you have the Dismember remaining and not the Condescend. On the other hand
if you’re facing Bogles and they tap out for Kor Spiritdancer, it’s better to let it resolve and hit it with Spatial,
since your removal is dead against anything else they play, whereas the Spell Burst you have is still useful.

- Do you need to dig? This is a core aspect of our strategy. Often your success rate will be correlated to the
number of cards into your deck you dig each game, and this can mean playing suboptimal interaction for an
early threat to make sure you hit land drops or to find a specific stabiliser. If you’re stuck on 3 lands and have
no Thirst, your choice between Dismembering a 3/4 Tarmogoyf and Repealing it EoT should often be Repeal.
You can likely still remove the Goyf next turn, but right now Repeal digs you further into your deck to find that
all important land. For similar reasons, sometimes it’s better to let smaller threats resolve if it means you can
freely dig at the end of your opponent’s turn and vastly increase the quality or size of your hand. As an example
of this, if you’re on the back foot with only a Supreme Will left for interaction and your opponent has managed
to commit threats to the board with a lot of mana, it’s better to not counter the last thing they tap out for and
instead dig for the chance of hitting the OStone, Ugin or Cyclonic Rift you have left. The likelihood is that
countering that last threat won’t slow them down sufficiently to let you naturally dig four cards deep, and
letting it resolve means getting a more valuable boardwipe if you do find one.

Our interaction is the most important part of the deck, and knowing how to use it effectively comes primarily from
knowledge of your opponent’s deck and exactly how it wins. However, since we are such a reactive deck it’s easy to
sit behind your interaction for too long and fail to progress your own gameplan. There is a big difference between
being ‘far away from losing’ and ‘close to winning’ the game, and your pattern of interaction should reflect a high-
level idea of how you plan to stabilise and turn the game around. This plan may change throughout the game based
on anything from incorrect assumptions of your opponent’s deck, the specific cards they draw, what you draw and
how long you see the game going on. Try and always be mindful of your best stabilisers, how reliably and quickly you
can get them out, and how close you are to Tron and the tipping point where you have both card and mana
advantage online. This lets you best line up your interaction with the opponent’s strategy and delay them just long
enough for you to create an insurmountable board state on your side, from which you can overwhelm the opponent
and win the game.

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STABILISERS, THREATS AND WINCONS

UTron’s stabilisers are the payoff cards for running Tron. These are cards that aim to invalidate the opponent’s
strategy and immediately create a state where their board presence and spells are much less threatening than they
were previously. In some cases, the stabilisation card can line up so perfectly against the opponent’s deck that they
can be cast without backup and without need to properly consider a subsequent game plan, since the stabiliser will
either cause a concession immediately or single-handedly hold their threat suite off for the foreseeable future. In
most cases however, if chosen well the stabiliser forms an enormous speed bump that the opponent has to commit
both time and resources into removing to allow them to continue to threaten us. This time is something we can
spend finding more stabilisers, getting to our inevitability or just using our interaction to prevent them dealing with
our threat and closing the game out.

To be effective, it’s important to dig or tutor for the right card to stabilise against the opponent’s strategy. Treasure
Mage and Karn allow us to tutor for most of our big artifacts, however cards like Ugin, Oblivion Stone and Cyclonic
Rift need to be dug for to find. It is therefore useful for the stabilisers chosen for the deck to be flexible and able to
turn games round against a wide variety of strategies. This is covered more specifically in Matchups and
Sideboarding, but each stabiliser is considered here with an explanation of their primary roles.

KARN, THE GREAT CREATOR is a card that drastically changes the way you build the deck. Included either not at all or
as a 4-of, if used Karn allows you to play at a lower curve and drag your higher-CMC stabilisers in from the
sideboard, minimising the potential for having dead 8-drops in your hand during the early and mid stages of the
game without Tron. The scope of playable inclusions for the Karnboard is wide and a subject to both continuous
debate and personal choice, therefore all that is provided here is this author’s opinion of the essential,
recommended and otherwise playable inclusions for new pilots building a Karnboard:

Essential:

- Liquimetal Coating: This is the baby brother of the banned Mycosynth Lattice, allowing us to turn lands into
artifacts and then kill them with Karn’s uptick. Once established this engine is hideously strong; destroying a
land every turn whilst requiring no extra investment of resources or mana and growing Karn puts you at an
enormous incremental advantage. Against some matchups this combo merits us mulliganning aggressively to
Tron and Karn, to start taking them off lands by turn 3/4. Coating can also be used as a Pithing Needle in the
opponent’s upkeep to turn of planeswalkers, and allows us to use our removal on any permanent in
conjunction with Karn’s animation. Overall, Liquimetal is the most powerful thing you can be doing with Karn if
you can’t resolve a big stabiliser and have no relevant lock pieces to fetch.
- Walking Ballista: Having tutorable removal and direct damage is extremely useful. Walking Ballista needs no
introduction and will likely only be omitted from the Karnboard if you are running 4 in the main.
- Ensnaring Bridge: This card isn’t fair and just straight-up wins against some decks. We have to do more work
than other Tron decks to get cards out of our hand to exploit this, however it’s a completely reasonable play to
cast Bridge and Condescend it on 0 twice just to dump cards out of your hand if the Bridge is going to prevent
you from dying. A lot of decks just can’t deal with this card, and we can win over the top of it.
- Grafdigger’s Cage/Relic of Progenitus/Tormod’s Crypt: Some form of graveyard hate is absolutely required in the
Karnboard, even if you run Relics in the main. The specific card is up for player choice, however these are the
usual options to choose between.
- Sundering Titan: If this isn’t in the main, it’s in the side. Sundering Titan is a staple of the deck in the current
metagame and is an excellent threat to have 4 virtual copies of with Karn.

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Recommended:

- Chalice of the Void: Other Tron decks either run all 4 Chalice in the main or not at all. Most UTron builds will run
1-3 in the main and so having another in the side to grab is extremely useful.
- Wurmcoil Engine: This card is usually in the main however it is correct to also include in the Karnboard, allowing
Karn to provide the Treasure Mage role of absorbing damage and finding us our classic stabiliser.
- Mindslaver: As with Sundering Titan, there is an option to put this in the Karnboard to lower the CMC curve of
your deck. In the very late game this allows Karn to provide an instant wincon with Academy Ruins.

Other Playable Inclusions:

- Trinisphere: This is more popular in decks that cannot run Chalice since it forms the same general role of
preventing your opponent from chaining multiple cheap spells. Can be lights out for some decks but does hurt
us slightly more than Chalice.
- Oblivion Stone: If this isn’t played in the main it’s an option to include here. The downside is that this will
probably take your Karn with it, since if you’re fetching this it’s likely that you need to pop it as soon as you can.
This will still win games by being in the Karnboard and is a worthwhile inclusion.
- Witchbane Orb/Orbs of Warding: Having hexproof is real good against Burn, and some combo decks just can’t
win while these effects are in play. Their downside is their high mana cost and relatively narrow utility, making
them very meta-dependant.
- Skysoverign, Consul Flagship: This is a staple in the Eldrazi Tron builds as a fantastic tempo card. A play pattern
of turn 2 Chalice, turn 3 TKS, turn 4 Karn into turn 5 Flagship is an incredible amount of pressure for your
opponent to deal with. This card can be animated by Karn without the need to be crewed and shoots
planeswalkers and threatening creatures while providing a strong clock. Whilst that’s everything ETron wants
to do, we have to consider that Flagship is far worse in the later game than many of our other stabilisers. If
your UTron build is more aggressive with an Eldrazi Temple and the playset of TKS then this is a viable inclusion.
- Crucible of Worlds: As discussed in Card Advantage and Utility, this is useful for both getting back your lands
against land destruction, but also for pairing with Ghost Quarter to slowly eat your opponent’s lands as they
run out of basics. In decks utilising this engine, there’s an option to have Crucibles in the Karnboard.
- Torpor Orb: This shuts down Primeval Titan and does well against Humans and Soulherder decks. It does stop a
few of our own cards, namely Sundering Titan, Torrential Gearhulk and Snapcaster Mage, but this downside
can be easily played around and Torpor Orb is a solid meta call.

There are many other choices that can be chosen based on your specific meta, however it is extremely important to
remember that we are a control deck and we need sideboard space for actual sideboard cards. This primer would
recommend limiting your Karnboard to a maximum of 8 cards, and an example of this is shown in the author’s
decklist in Appendix 2: Further Reading.

Using Karn is not as straightforward as it initially seems. Whilst it is sometimes obvious to tick him down to find
either a threat or a relevant lock piece, being left on 3 loyalty and subject to a Bolt or lethal attack is a realistic
reason to sometimes tick Karn up on playing him. This is likely more preferable if Karn’s static is relevant in the
matchup, as Karn himself becomes better than any hate piece or wincon you could fetch, and being able to untap
with interaction before downticking and weakening Karn is a viable strategy. The opposite of this is if Karn is very
likely to get removed before you untap, and here is it correct to downtick to find either a relevant big stabiliser
(Wurmcoil, Sundering) or a relevant prison piece like Bridge or Chalice. Since Karn is a pivotal card for the decks that
run him, it is useful to examine how best to use him against various different archetypes of deck. For obvious
reasons this is a very general analysis on how to use Karn and is completely subject to the specifics of the game.

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- Aggro: Generally Karn is best ticked down to find Chalice, Bridge, Ballista or Wurmcoil, depending on the
specific matchup. Here you are almost hoping to lose your Karn afterwards by having him soak up some
combat damage or eat a Bolt. Better plays might ignore the Karn and allow you to tutor up another relevant
artifact in favour of being more aggressive, but either way unless you have an artifact in play and need a
blocker, you should be using Karn to find something that stems the damage.

- Midrange: If you have Tron, you find Sundering Titan. If you don’t, you find Wurmcoil Engine. The best thing
here is just that Karn will likely cost them a card to remove and this 2 for 1 will be relevant. If Karn survives then
you get another card off him and the value train keeps going.

- Control: If you manage to resolve a Karn and do not have an opposing planeswalker you can animate an
attacker into, the best target is Liquimetal Coating. The control deck will likely have a hard time removing Karn,
and we should have the ability to force through a 2 mana artifact far more easily than an 8 mana Titan. If
Coating resolves you can hold up interaction for the rest of the game whilst destroying their lands. Other good
fetches are your graveyard hate to stop Uro, or Walking Ballista to kill planeswalkers.

- Big Mana: If you’re up against Tron and land a fast Karn that is likely to stick, it’s Liquimetal Coating. If you can
play it that turn you can stop them in their upkeep to at least remove the text from a land before you start
Sinkholing next turn. Primeval Titan decks are more soft to Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice on 0 or if they have Dryad
of the Ilysian Grove in play, Sundering Titan to destroy all their lands.

- Combo: If it’s artifact combo, tick Karn up. Nothing in your sidebard suite is going to help more than the one-
sided Stony Silence you just played. After you untap you can be a bit more reckless and start to find a way to
win with interaction up but it is likely in these matchups that Karn’s board presence alone swings the game in
our favour. For other combo decks, a selection of Chalice, Bridge, Liquimetal providing a Pithing Needle role or
Grafdigger’s is sufficient to at least cause them to stumble.

Karn is undoubtedly a very powerful card, but notwithstanding the relevancy of his static ability he doesn’t
immediately affect the board. Care should be taken when tapping out for Karn that you are not going to allow your
opponent to gain an insurmountable advantage in their next turn, whether that’s enacting a combo, committing
creatures to the board, knocking your life total down too low to recover or simply resolving something backbreaking
like a T3feri. Karn is always a tempting play as soon as you have the mana for him, and is often correct to just jam
onto an empty board to start pressuring your opponent, however its important to keep in mind that we are not
good at providing continuous pressure on our opponent like Gx or Eldrazi Tron, and when playing Karn you should
consider the potential for the state of play when you untap with him. That being said, Karn’s incredible flexibility will
usually mean that the card you fetch has the power to pull you very far ahead, and if cast with Tron and a blue
source online is an exceptionally strong card to play with interaction still available. Overall, Karn is absurdly powerful
and is often the best threat in our hand.

WURMCOIL ENGINE is our most versatile stabiliser, since it forms a big blocker, a threat, a life gain engine, removal
for big creatures and a value machine if they try and remove it. All of this for the low cost of six mana! Wurmcoil is
our answer to creature decks without excessive evasion or anything that wants to chip at our life total or grind out
card advantage. It’s also our strongest clock if we need to apply pressure. Against most of these decks, Wurm can
simply be dropped without much thought and will often take over the game. Wurmcoil is also resilient to our
boardwipes, allowing us to attack for a lifelinking 6 before blowing up an OStone and still be left with two decent

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blockers. Wurmcoil’s weak spots are anything that can remove it efficiently (the most flagrant offenders here being
Path to Exile and planeswalkers), or creatures that somehow invalidate its keywords, like a big Bogle with first strike.

Wurmcoil Engine is rarely a pure wincon. Against some creature decks, it can be thrown down as early as possible
and will immediately take over the game or force a concession. However, against most decks Wurmcoil is played as
a gigantic speedbump that says to your opponent ‘spend a few turns and 2-3 cards dealing with this, since you can’t
win whilst it’s on the board’. While our opponent scrambles around for a bit answering Wurmcoil, we likely gain
some life, trade Wurm and the tokens with some creatures, and run our opponent down on resources. All these
things culminate to give us time. Mindslaver lock dictates that all our deck really needs to win is time. Wurmcoil is
our main way of getting a few free turns and climb back into the game. By the time our opponent is threating us
again, we have likely found another stabiliser, interacted with their board enough to slow them down even further,
got to Mindlock or even just used Ruins or Karn to bring the Wurm back for another go.

SUNDERING TITAN is a meta-dependant threat that is currently very strong. With the recent WOTC police of printing
cards that are very good by themselves (T3feri, Uro, Field of the Dead, Mystic Sanctuary), and the banning of
Arcum’s Astrolabe, the Modern metagame has shown a fast rise in UGx control/midrange piles that use a fetch-
shock manabase. Sundering Titan is tutorable with Karn and Treasure Mage, uncounterable by Force of Negation
and is an absolute death sentence for these decks. Usually you can take them off a colour or two, prevent them
recurring Uro and set them back 3 turns, all whilst presenting a 7/10 body that they can’t remove without losing
another three lands. A bonus here is that if the opponent is in blue, we don’t even lose our own island. Sundering
Titan is the best thing you can do against these greedy manabase decks, and should be your main priority for threat
selection when tutoring with Karn or Treasure Mage. Some builds even run a Cavern of Souls in the side to allow you
to mulligan aggressively to this card and force it through.

PLATINUM ANGEL is very matchup dependant. Sometimes she can win a game on the spot if our opponent has no
removal for it, other times our opponent’s win condition invalidates having Angel as a defence (Storm, Valakut).
However, despite this variance she’s still powerful and completely requires removal for your opponent to win. For
this reason, there are two main lines of play with Angel once you exclude decks that just can’t beat her anyway:

- Play Angel with a healthy life total and protect her with counterspells and Chalice until she beats them to death
or you find another wincon,
- Play Angel as a last resort against a deck that’s a turn away from killing you, and hope they don’t get removal
until you can stabilise properly or find some way of protecting her.

Even against decks whose removal lines up well against Angel, this strategy of ‘protect the queen’ is perfectly viable
and can buy you enormous amounts of time. However, a key point to understand is that Angel won’t improve your
situation; she’ll just prevent that situation from killing you whilst she lives. Angel does have the advantage over
Wurmcoil of not needing to connect with something to save you (which is why she’s a better ‘last resort’ tutor than
Wurmo), but she won’t let you climb back into a stable position by herself. You’ll need to find something else if you
want to get back into a position where you’re not one resolved removal spell away from losing the game.

Overall, Wurmcoil is generally better if you have time and the lifelink is relevant, Angel is better if you’re circling the
drain and Wurmcoil won’t save you, or you can protect her and a 4/4 flyer is a decent threat for that matchup.
Angel is boarded out against decks that have multiple different ways of getting her off the board.

UGIN, THE SPIRIT DRAGON is a card that owns any board he lands on. It will be very difficult for your opponent to
establish any kind of board presence whilst Ugin lives (unless they’re playing with colourless things). The usual line
with Ugin is to cast him, -X to clear away anything dangerous and then tick up against any remaining threats or go to

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face. The combination of these two abilities is what allows Ugin to single-handedly completely control the board,
deterring your opponent from committing any more threats whilst forming a clock in the form of direct damage or
growing towards his game-winning ultimate. Ugin’s -10 is obscenely powerful; stabilising us with some lifegain and
letting us dump our hand +7 new cards onto the field. Sometimes this finds you a free Mindslaver lock which just
wins, but most of the time just lets you put down a Wurmcoil or two, a bunch of lands, and maybe a few ETB
triggers like Gearhulk or Treasure Mage, digging you into even more gas. It’s enormously difficult to lose after Ugin
has ultimated, and most opponents just concede.

Choosing to tick Ugin up or down when he is cast can be tricky. Usually, the choice is obvious; if Ugin comes down
against multiple threats then you should –X for whatever is needed to reset the board. However, landing an earlier
Ugin vs two smaller threats (Scavenging Ooze and Dark Confidant for example) could mean it’s better to shoot the
Confidant for 3 and race Ugin ticking up against the Scooze. If they attack Ugin, you’re not taking damage and
Scooze likely dies next turn. If they attack you, Ugin keeps his higher loyalty. Even if they attack Ugin and play
something that requires Ugin to –X next turn (like a Liliana), he ends up with more loyalty than he would have if he’d
wiped twice, and everything’s still dead. Now you have an Ugin that’s out of bolt range and about to tick up again
next turn.

Ugin’s power over the board cannot be overstated, however not all decks fight in that way. Ugin is not as strong
against decks that are trying to win with spells in their hand, most notably control and spell-combo decks (Ad
Nauseam, Through the Breach, UGx Control, Storm). Against these, Ugin only forms a two-turn clock to his ultimate,
and that usually isn’t worth tapping 8 mana if we hamper our ability to play counterspells on the following turn. This
draws from the idea explained in Threats and Stabilisers; big colourless cards that provide nothing but a threat in
that matchup are not worth tapping out for. Ugin is still a good card, since sometimes these decks need a few cards
on the field for their combo to go through (Storm needs Baral/Electromancer, Ad Nauseam can need Phyrexian
Unlife) and Ugin still has some stabilisation role to play by delaying these decks.

MINDSLAVER is our top-end wincon. This card, combined with Academy Ruins, is our way of punishing opponents
that let us drag the game on too long. To explain the package, Mindslaver with Academy Ruins and 11U worth of
other mana allows us to play and pop Slaver, take our opponent’s turn, then at the end of their turn activate Ruins
to put Slaver on top of our library, draw it, and do the same thing again. Essentially we take over all of our
opponent’s turns. The wincon is usually to mill them out, since we draw Slaver every turn so our deck doesn’t get
any smaller whilst theirs does, however you can also try and use their deck to kill them to save on time. This strategy
allows our deck to beats things life infinite life, which opponents may not be aware of when they use these
strategies and claim they have won.

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When Mindlocking a player, you want to spend their turn tapping them out and ensuring they can’t stop the lock,
which there are very few ways to do once it’s started (watch out for Force of Negation). In some cases, it is correct
to try and kill the opponent with their own deck if you think you can, or stop locking once you’ve run them
completely out of resources to try for a quicker kill from threats you might still have in your hand. These ideas are
used to save time if the opponent is making you play the lock out, instead of conceding as most people do.

Mindslaver is also very useful as a card even without the lock, as a lot of decks can be completely crippled by
controlling them for a turn. You get to attack their creatures into yours if you have them, waste their spells and
removal and generally run them out of a lot of resources. Sometimes you can just win the game on the spot.
Examples of this include:

- Blasting through all of Infect’s pump spells then not attacking, leaving them with nothing,
- Killing a Storm player with their own deck,
- Ultimating a Liliana on the Jund player and choosing for them to put everything in one pile, then sacrifice it,
- Playing a Ravager and sacrificing a Hardened Scales player’s entire board to it, including Glimmervoid,
- Surprise Slaver a player after they’ve played a Pact spell and choose not to pay the upkeep cost,
- Using GxTron’s hand and board to exile their own Tronlands and threats, crippling their game,
- Casting Scapeshift and sacrificing all their lands to it, then either killing them or failing to find anything,
- Casting Spoils of the Vault naming Black Lotus/Storm Crow/Splinter Twin/Charizard.

Optimally using Mindslaver on an opponent is extremely difficult, especially against decks with a high spell to
creature ratio. The best advice to take on board is to take the time fully establishing your line of play. It’s easy to get
excited and play suboptimally by flying through the first obvious steps of Slavering someone (Push their creature,
Thoughtseize themselves) and not looking ahead because oh whoops you needed that Maelstrom Pulse the
Thoughtseize took to deal with their Liliana. Make sure you establish your line to its entirety, including other lines
you’re considering, before making actual plays. Some ideas to consider:

- Try and play a Tutor to look at their deck. Fetchlands are a good way of doing this and it gives valuable
information about what variant they’re playing, what you might still have to deal with and any sideboard
choices they might have made. Plus you get to waste the Tutor by failing to find.
- Keep referencing your hand. If you have a Wurmcoil in hand and a choice between wasting a kill spell on their
only creature or a scry spell that might let you put lands on top of their deck, the scry spell is probably the
better choice, as your Wurmo can hold their board off and is probably too big for their removal to matter. They
might have some cards you can counter and some you can’t. Try and get rid of whatever you’ll struggle to deal
with when they get control back. Remember you can run their spells into Condescend on 0 and choose for
them not to pay.
- Think about your follow-up play. Remember you get another turn straight after this. Do you have anything
meaningful to do after Slaver? You might be able to clinch a win against Death’s Shadow by making their
creatures attack you down to 1 life if that opens to door for your Gearhulk with Spatial cast on it to finish them
off. You might have nothing and so just need to slow them down as much as you can. Try and think about the
cards they have that stop you stabilising most effectively, and any cards you can use against them for free 2-
for-1s.
- Holding back on casting Chalice of the Void until after you’ve Slavered a player can be backbreaking if you play
their hand in a way that allows you to untap and just nullify the remaining cards in their hand.
- Tap them out at the end of their turn. You get a free turn of resolving anything you like.

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The last thing to consider in Mindslaver turns is that the card gives you control over ‘target player during that
player’s next turn’. You control the player, and they play their spells. Some opponents may be quite happy to just
give you their hand and watch, but some may not want you to grab their expensive cards and start throwing them
around the table whilst laughing inanely. Always be polite, and it’s a good idea to phrase plays in the form of
instructions to that player, for example ‘tap Overgrown Tomb to cast Fatal Push targeting your Tarmogoyf’, not ‘I’ll
kill this with that’. Manners and clarity go a long way into avoiding hostility and judge calls during one of the more
complicated modes of Magic gameplay.

Overall, Mindslaver is incredibly powerful and one of the most demoralising things you can do to your opponent.
It’s also part of your wincon. For this reason, it is included in pretty much every build.

CARD ADVANTAGE AND VALUE

This section gives further discussion about our card advantage and value engines. These cards are how we pull
ahead in the mid and endgames, by ensuring we always have more answers than the opponent has threats, and
allowing us to dig into our finishers. Although this part of the deck has a lot of room for personal variety, here only
the most essential and most common cards will be discussed, with the aim of both explaining these inclusions and
giving pilots a good understanding of the objective of this part of the deck when evaluating their own choices.

The main card advantage we have in UTron is an absurdly powerful, three mana instant that reads:

THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE was restricted in Vintage for a time. It only takes a few tries with the deck to appreciate
how obscene this card really is, but on the face of it, the reasons for it being a permanent 4-of staple are:

- It says ‘draw three cards’,

- Its instant speed,
- We have a large number of artifacts in our deck that we can pitch to this, most of which we can get back with
Academy Ruins,
- The cards you discard don’t have to be from the ones you’ve drawn; this card can completely transform a bad
hand,
- It only costs one blue source,
- It says ‘draw three cards’.

Thirst is the best nonland card in the deck. It is our primary way of both generating card advantage and digging
through our library. Thirst is best cast at the end of your opponent’s turn if you have the spare mana, but can be
cast main phase and even chained in multiples if you have Tron and enough blue sources. If you manage to discard
an artifact (which you should be aiming for unless you have lots of other dead cards) Thirst nets you strict card
advantage along with the virtual advantage of improved hand quality.

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The inclusion of Thirst also drives home the importance of our deck’s artifact count. In Legacy card evaluation, if a
card is blue, it gains a deckbuilding advantage simply because it can be pitched to Force of Will, the defining card of
the format. The defining card of our deck is Thirst, and so any artifacts we consider gain a similar bonus when being
evaluated. This is part of the reason our threat suite is mostly artifacts, and why we can run seemingly odd one-ofs
like Solemn Simulacrum and Mazemind Tome as well as multiples of Chalice and Talismans. These have the
potential to be dead cards by themselves, but can provide us with indirect card advantage by being available to
pitch to Thirst.

Never board Thirst for Knowledge out. Never run less than 4. It’s our best nonland card and it wins us games we
have no right winning.

The rest of the cards that gain us card advantage are less direct than Thirst, and are dependent on the matchup.
Cards like Solemn and Wurmcoil are card advantage against ‘fair’ decks like Jund and Abzan, as they gain value
when they trade with creatures or are removed. Academy Ruins recurring Wurmcoil every turn often causes a
concede, since playing aggressively with the big Wurm forces them to kill it, letting you bring it back and get an ever
growing supply of little Wurms. Fair decks just can’t deal with this level of continuous gas.

In a non-Karn deck, the two Mages are straight card advantage. Treasure and Trinket Mage give us both a blocker
(or threat, if it’s a control matchup) on the board, and replace themselves with a big artifact in our hand. If these
cards somehow manage to trade with a relevant attacker (Dark Confidant, Meddling Mage, Goblin Guide) then we
gain a strict 2 for 1, but even just chumping with the Mages is fine to buy us time towards the threat they found. As
an example, sometimes a great line against creature decks is Treasure Mage (finding Wurmcoil), chump block into
Solemn (get an Island), then chump block into Wurmcoil. To explain fully, here we spent two cards (Treasure Mage
and Solemn), got three cards back (Wurmcoil, Island and Solemn redraw), ramped for a turn 5 Wurmcoil and
bought two turn’s worth of life with the chump blocks. All of this from just two cards and without requiring Tron. If
we managed to play a Chalice on 1 before the turn three Treasure Mage, we’re in an even better position of having
a more secure Wurmcoil. This line is a good way to play when faced with cards that stop our usual interaction, like
Cavern of Souls or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.

The rest of our value and card advantage/quality comes from our interactive spells cantripping or digging. The
staples of Condescend, Repeal and Remand all dig you a couple of cards deep and are card neutral, which is why
they’re the core of our deck’s engine. Rejected cards like Unsubstantiate and Vapor Snag both fail to dig and are
card disadvantage, so (despite their attractive mana costs) cannot be included. We’re a slow control deck, not a
quick tempo deck, and we need to dig through our library for continued answers to whatever we’re facing.

CHALICE OF THE VOID is one of the deck’s greatest assets. This card is very often a virtual X-for-1, blanking a good
number of very relevant cheap cards that our opponents have versus very few of ours given our wide CMC curve.
Chalice is usually played on 1, hitting only our four Expedition Maps, which are usually played most usefully on turn
1 before Chalice hits the field. Too contrast this extremely minor drawback with the advantage Chalice gives us, it is
worth showing the effect of the card on a number of decks in the format, with the recommended number of charge
counters shown in brackets. In a usual game 1, Chalice:

- Straight up wins unless they’re specifically ready for it:

o Infect (1), if you can counter Become Immense which we can,
o Living End (0),
o Storm (2),
o Bogles (1), if it’s early enough,

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- Is very strong, usually requires removal for the opponent to continue their game plan:
o Death Shadow (1),
o Burn (2),
o Gx Tron (1), unless they’re already there,
o Prowess (1),
o Pyromancer Ascension.dec (1),
o Lantern (1), unless they’re already there,
o 8Rack (1),
o Jeskai Ascendancy (1),
o Amulet Titan (1), if you can Repeal Amulet of Vigor,

- Blanks a good number of their cards and creates dead draws:

o Through the Breach.dec (1)
o Burn (1),
o Ad Nauseam (0),
o Storm (1),
o Neobrand (0), postboard
o Lantern (1), if they’re already there,
o Amulet Titan (0),
o Blue Moon (1),
o Whirza (1), if more midrange
o Whirza (0 or 2), if more combo

- Blanks more cards than our 4 maps, but most likely sided out game 2/3:
o Jund (1),
o Abzan (1),
o Death and Taxes (1),
o Ponza (1),

- Is bad, either due to a wide range of CMC, the opponent also playing Chalice, or ‘can’t be countered’ effects:
o Tribal decks running Aether Vial and Cavern of Souls (Humans, Eldrazi, Merfolk),
o Uro piles,
o Eldrazi Tron,
o Mono U Tron,
o Mono Red Prison,
o Dredge,
o Scapeshift (unless you manage to put it on 4).

As can be seen, Chalice is often more useful than not, which is why it deserves a mainboard slot. Chalice also has a
protection role to play, primarily found with blanking Path to Exile to allow Wurmcoil Engine to rampage over White
decks, and stopping things like Pact of Negation in combo decks (Ad Nauseam, Titan). Chalice is a very strong card
and forms a decent chunk of our ‘anti-aggro’ plan, but tied to its strength is knowledge of which number to play it
on given your matchup.

Our other prison cards are mostly sideboard cards, which are explained better in Matchups and Sideboarding, or
Karnboard cards.

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THOUGHT-KNOT SEER allows us to play a more proactive gameplan but often being cast on turn three after a
Talisman. Generally, this card is good if it’s the biggest creature on the board, but also allows us to rip their
interaction out of their hand and clear the way for landing other threats and is especially good against Force of
Negation. TKS can also be used aggressively to strip their removal out from their hand and then just beat down for
4 damage each turn whilst your interaction fights over them stopping it. This card in particular is backbreaking in
multiples. Just watch out for Blood Moon.

EXPEDITION MAP is a card that deserves special mention. This is our third 4-of, and is only really boarded out against
Death and Taxes decks. Much as we can play our game perfectly well without Tron, having access to a low
investment, artifact, EoT tutor for our Tronlands and utility lands is our main way of ensuring our late game is a
strong as it should be. Expedition Map is your best and often only option for a turn 1 play, and it gives you the
benefit of having something very relevant to do with your mana at the end of your opponent’s turn if they didn’t
play anything that required our interaction. If you have a lot of time in the early turns (against control, for example),
then Map has the additional advantage of being recurrable with Ruins to find all three Tronlands. The first activation
finds the Ruins, then we can use the end of our opponent’s turn to alternately crack Map and activate Ruins, slowly
tutoring into Tron whilst keeping our interaction live in their turn. This exemplifies our gameplan; protecting
ourselves whilst building up our advantage in the background, ready to start taking over the game. There is worth in
delaying your Map activation until you draw the second Tronland, since before cracking you have 8 draws to get to
Tron, whereas after cracking you limit yourself to 4, however this is often overshadowed by the more fundamental
principle of ensuring you use your mana most effectively each turn.

ACADEMY RUINS is the best land in our deck after Island. Obviously the primary role of this card is for Mindslaver
lock, and as this has been discussed in Stabilisers, Threats and Wincons, this paragraph will briefly showcase a few
other uses for this incredible land:

- OStone lock; getting Oblivion Stone back and playing it every turn to deny your opponent a board until it
doesn’t matter what they play. This is often a complete victory against most permanent decks, and will very
likely cause a concession. This strategy is only weak to manlands, since they won’t be hit by the OStone, and
does also force you to eventually stop the lock to draw yourself into a way to actually win the game. The good
news is you can restart the lock at any time if you don’t draw well initially.
- As mentioned earlier, if you’re sure of a slow game you can get Ruins with your first Map activation with the
aim of recurring the Map over and over to get to Tron.
- Getting back Walking Ballista every turn and shooting your opponent with it for repeatable damage. Similar to
OStone lock but better against a threat-clear board, this is a way to win against Ensnaring Bridge or other
prison decks that may have found a way to stop you Mindlocking.
- As mentioned earlier, you can play very aggressively with Wurmcoil Engine to force your opponent to kill it,
then recur it with Ruins and repeat, giving you a growing supply of Wurm tokens. This is usually a complete win
against fair decks.

Overall, Ruins is a very strong card that often attracts removal over our Tronlands. For this reason it is usually
correct to hold Ruins in your hand over other land drops, keeping it safe from removal until it can start doing its job.
It is never correct to board Ruins out.

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KEY THREATS

This section aims to describe two types of cards; cards that are strong against our deck, and cards that opponents
think are strong against our deck, but aren’t. This aims to help players with their decisions in game, by giving a few
notable examples of cards can be left to resolve and dealt with later, and some cards have to be removed right now
or risk the game going downhill fast.

PROBLEMATIC CARDS

The cards listed here are from a variety of decks, but are special in that they give the opponent a huge advantage,
will quickly take over the game, or just straight up blank our strategy of stopping them. This isn’t an exhaustive list,
but the cards showcased here should serve to inform the types of strategies and cards we have trouble dealing with.
For this section, it is assumed that these cards have resolved, since repeatedly adding ‘but try and counter this’
serves little purpose.

TEFERI, TIME RAVELER

This card is the single worst designed card ever introduced into the game. Banned in several formats and widely
despised in the formats in which he remains legal, T3feri has been ruining control matchups and obnoxiously forcing
through combos since his creation and continues to destroy meaningful gameplay and interaction on any board he
hits. To explain for those unaware, T3feri’s static ability removes the use of the stack, but only for one player. This
turns the game into Magic vs Hearthstone and has a number of effects that aren’t immediately realised upon facing
the card:

- Your counterspells have no text on them whatsoever,

- All your opponent’s spells are uncounterable,
- You cannot back up resolving your threats with interaction,
- Various random cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Torrential Gearhulk and Suspend cards no longer work,
- Spell Queller’s return ability doesn’t work – the spell is just exiled forever.
- Delay reads: 1U: Exile Target Spell.
- ….the list goes on.

There are far more nightmarish/unintuitive effects this card’s static has, and wrapping it up on a cantripping, three
mana planeswalker that bounces anything that could threaten it and is also a Leyline of Anticipation results in a card
that is obnoxious to the point of being a straight-up design mistake. However, until it eats the inevitable
banhammer, Modern players are here to suffer.

T3feri has the ability to completely shut off half of our deck just by existing and is a card type we typically have
trouble dealing with. Against any deck that looks to be reactive in Azorius colours this card should be top of your list
of considerations at all stages of the game. If it resolves and we aren’t about to do something stupid with Tron the
game swings obscenely far in our opponent’s favour and our gameplan resorts to ‘play cards at sorcery speed and

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hope they stick’, which our deck is not very well equipped to do and the opponent’s deck is likely very well equipped
to handle. If the opponent’s deck is playing T3feri to freely combo off the following turn, your only hope is to have
already played a Walking Ballista or be about to win.

Our best strategy against a resolved T3feri that we cannot immediately remove is to abandon the interactive side of
our deck and focus on completing Tron and repeatedly hammering down threats. If we are able to do this it is likely
T3feri will fall into irrelevancy and we can push through the win. In short, T3feri is bad against Gx and Eldrazi Tron,
and therefore if he resolves we need to use our deck to best imitate either of those, since our deck’s interactive USP
doesn’t exist any more. Failing that, another strategy is to follow this author’s example of complaining about the
card on Reddit until they ban it.

VEIL OF SUMMER

Also banned in multiple formats, Veil quickly gained deserved infamy under the tagline ‘why does green get a one-
mana Cryptic Command?’ An unintuitive card at best and an egregious hoser at worst, this card hits a lot of our
interaction and will very frequently lose you games by being a cantripping one mana counterspell. Thankfully this is
stopped by Chalice on 1, but against any green deck that cares about interaction you should be very careful about
them having untapped green sources when trying to resolve any of our blue or black cards. Remember to fight it
whilst it’s on the stack, as once it’s resolved none of your interaction does anything for the rest of the turn. Spatial
Contortion and Ugin/Ostone/Ballista do all get past it though.

CAVERN OF SOULS

Cavern is the king of cards that do powerful things with no drawback. Fixes colours, enters untapped, makes all your
creatures uncounterable and can even be used to pay for noncreature spells; Cavern of Souls has nothing in the way
of disadvantage apart from forcing you to lock into a specific, usually already strong, tribe. Our main issue with
Cavern is clearly the uncounterable clause, immediately blanking a great deal of the most important part of our deck
and often resulting in us having to change game plan completely to try and rush a stabiliser down.

When you see a Cavern, make note of the named creature type. This tells you a lot about the type of attack you’ll be
facing and lets you revaluate your hand based on both the tribe you’re dealing with and the presence of Cavern.
From here on, your plan will normally change into one of three ideas:

- Remove Cavern as quickly as you can to try and make your counterspells relevant again,
- Ignore Cavern and use other types of permission to control the game as best you can whilst using your
counters to dig (usually this is the case if you have few or no counters in your hand anyway),
- Rush to a threat or Tron and try and stabilise before they can kill you.

Choosing between these strategies (and others) is completely dependent on your build, your sideboard choices, the
deck you’re facing and most importantly how many still relevant cards you now have in your hand given the
presence of Cavern. You may have a hand full of good removal for Humans and that could buy you time to land an
Ugin, or you could have a Platinum Angel and Tron vs Eldrazi so can play that and use your counters to protect it
from spells Cavern can’t force through. You might have a Field of Ruin ready to crack on Cavern and continue right

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away with countering creatures. Despite these all being realistic and viable ways to manage Cavern, it’s no secret
that the card can just completely wreck our day.

AETHER VIAL

Aether Vial is in this section for similar reasons to Cavern; it makes spells uncounterable. It also has the benefit of
allowing the Vial player to ‘play’ two creatures a turn, or Vial in cards at instant speed for both combat tricks and
blink effect shenanigans.

Despite Vial’s obvious benefits against us, it’s less scary than Cavern. Firstly, it’s a terrible card in the late game, as it
has to build counters on it to be useful. For this reason, our bounce effects (Repeal being the best) are a good way
of making this card largely redundant. Vial also has the strange effect of being worse the more of them you have,
since you can only bring in creatures if you have them in your hand to begin with, which you won’t have if your
hand is full of Vials. A Taxes player showing us three Vials is usually not such scary news, since that’s three less
Thalias, Arbiters or Thought-Knot Seers they could have had.

Vial is a tricky card to play around. Chalice on 1 isn’t quick enough unless you also have Repeal (but then it’s great),
and bringing in Needle effects just to name Vial is often quite a narrow solution, potentially leaving you with a dead
card in hand if they don’t have Vial. Our main solution to this card is just to play Karn TGC, but aside from this, the
best way of dealing with Vial is just to be mindful what could be coming in each turn, and play in a way that
minimises the impact of these cards. This is much easier said than done, but doing things like tapping the last of
your mana to crack Maps EoT and opening yourself up to a Vial’d in Arbiter you can’t pay for is lazy play. As above,
the good thing about Vial is that eventually they’ll be topdecking for creatures, and then Vial gets a lot worse, so if
you can minimise its impact for a few turns you should be ok.

THALIA, GUARDIAN OF THRABEN

This card is bad news for us. She comes down early and stops us playing our blue spells effectively. As mentioned
previously, our early turns are the most crucial and we need to be able to get our interaction under the first few
turns’ worth of threats so we’re not on the back foot. Thalia essentially forces us to play with one less land. If we’re
on the play, we’re now on the draw. If we’re on the draw, we’re in serious trouble.

The best thing to do against Thalia is to use removal to get her off the board as fast as possible. Dismember is the
best here, as it only costs us 1 mana, letting us play it turn 2 and not get completely out-tempoed. If you can hit her
with a counterspell, use Condescend and Supreme Will over Remand; we want Thalia gone for good.

The second strategy against Thalia is just to try and make her ability redundant by playing lines that only use
creatures. Curving Treasure Mage into Solemn Simulacrum, Thought-Knot Seer into Wurmcoil or Gearhulk is a great
way of getting a threat down and still having good blockers, all whilst maintaining card advantage and rendering
Thalia’s tax useless. Walking Ballista exemplifies this idea and is an excellent answer to the card, as Thalia’s tax
doesn’t stop us casting it on turn 2 and even then it can just be used as a removal spell to unlock your interaction
again. Another option, as always, is to just have a fast way to complete Tron, after which the Thalia tax is easily paid
for and a 2/1 body is irrelevant.

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THOUGHTSEIZE

One mana targeted discard is a staple of many, many decks in Modern. So much so that even the land they’ve
played T1 can’t always tell you which deck you’re up against. It could be midrange, like Jund or Rock, it could be
Sultai, 8Rack, Whirza, could be Shadow or Taxes. Either way, Thoughtseize effects are quite good against us, but can
be devastating if they come in multiples very early on. Simply put, we need spells in our hand to win, and having
three discard effects go off by turn 2 turns the game into a tough affair by often leaving us with just lands and one
irrelevant spell. Even if your opponent only has one threat after they’ve burnt through their discard, that’s usually
enough once they’ve taken all of your answers. Chalice on 1 is a great way to provide insurance against last game
discard, but this is usually way too late for the initial barrage.

Discard can’t really be played around, however, the more discard your opponent hits you with, the less they have in
the way of actual threats to stop. Best hope we topdeck well or they’re not smart enough to take Thirst. If you’re
facing a discard-heavy deck, be really careful about mulligans and about keeping land-heavy hands. Don’t do their
job for them.

JACE, THE MIND SCULPTOR

Jace has a staggering range of very good abilities that let him both control the board, improve and grow its owner’s
hand and ruin its opponent’s draws, all whilst presenting a clock. Since his release into Modern he’s become a staple
of UGx control decks that have cards like Ice-fang Coatl and Force of Negation to protect him. We, unfortunately,
can’t reliably protect Jace as well, and when combined with him costing double blue early on in the game, this
means he just doesn’t fit well into our deck.

Jace is good against us for two main reasons – he allows the opponent to both draw an extra card every turn and
maintain a good quality hand – and his bounce mode is very good against our single creature stabilisers like
Wurmcoil and Angel. We aren’t so fussed about the fateseal since we have enough tutors and card draw to make it
comparatively weak, but even that gives Jace two more loyalty counters, which is fairly absurd given the minute
costs of his other abilities.

Since Jace is so powerful in long games, and since we can’t really play him and so many other control decks can, he
often becomes a pivotal card in control matchups. Where previously we had both superior mana advantage and
card advantage through Tron and Thirst in the endgame, with the printing of T3feri, Field of Ruin, Uro and the
release of Jace, these decks can deny us our mana advantage and compete with us on the card advantage front. For
this reason, we really need to stop Jace landing, or have a very strong counterplay on our side (Ugin, OStone, Slaver
activation) ready to punish the opponent for tapping out. We also have Pithing Needle effects to bring out of the
board to fight Jace, and usually these can hit a number of other cards in the decks that run him. Luckily for us, Jace is
4 mana, so we’re well placed to counter him if you’re not reckless about tapping out.

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CARDS YOU CAN IGNORE

This section describes cards that opponents unfamiliar with UTron think are good against us, but are not. These
players will bring these cards in from their sideboards, and this section will explain why you can largely just let them
resolve and deal with them later.

BLOOD MOON

The original and most iconic way to shut off unfair lands and greedy manabases, Blood Moon is played all over
Modern and is the normal answer to Tron decks. Against GxTron, Blood Moon does what it says on the tin and
forces them to remove it or pay the fair cost for their big threats. If the Blood Moon player can apply sufficient
pressure before the Tron player gets to 6/7 lands, they’ll win. This strategy is usually successful and Blood Moon’s
utility against greedy manabases like Shadow, UGx and Humans often put it in the forefront of players’ minds when
sideboarding against anything running scary lands. This is excellent news for us.

People will board in and slam Blood Moon against you with the same vigour that they would against GxTron,
thinking that they’ve gained a great advantage now it’s resolved. And it’s very true, this card turns our Tronlands,
Academy Ruins and other utility lands into basic Mountains until it’s removed. However, we have two reasons why
we rarely care about Blood Moon, and one reason we sometimes love to see it played:

- We run 6-10 basic Islands. We can still easily play blue cards through Blood Moon.
- We don’t need Tron to win, by any stretch. Wurmcoil is only 6 mana, even if that mana is red.
- If the opponent has played Blood Moon, they haven’t played a threat that could have done us damage.

These points are summed up by saying that Blood Moon doesn’t stop our deck doing what it does (because we are
not a Tron deck), and because Blood Moon can’t kill us. It’s not a Goblin Rabblemaster, a Chandra, or a Bedlam
Reveler, or any other actual threat we would have needed interaction to stop. Coupled with the fact that we have a
number of decent ways to remove it later on in the game, this means that Blood Moon is often a three mana do-
nothing spell that has the added bonus of shutting off your opponent’s manlands. We just enjoy the fact that the
opponent has essentially skipped their third turn, maybe get a Thirst for Knowledge in, continue playing a control
game then either win by hardcasting threats or bouncing the Moon at a later stage to turn our lands on again.

There are occasions where Blood Moon is dangerous or worth countering. If you have Island, Mine and Tower in
play, Condescend, Power Plant and Ugin in hand then it’s usually completely correct to counter the Moon and slam
Ugin whilst they’re tapped out next turn. Blood Moon is also worth stopping if your only blue source isn’t a basic
Island, like Oboro, Tolaria West or River of Tears, because if you let Blood Moon resolve you’re going to be
completely stuck until you find an Island, Map or Oblivion Stone.

The last thing to consider with Blood Moon is that whilst it doesn’t shut our Islands off, it will shut off cards like
Spatial, Thought-Knot Seer and Warping Wail, since we can’t pay the colourless mana costs. It is not even slightly
worth running a Wastes to try and mitigate a fringe problem like this. If you suspect Blood Moon, shift Spatial into
the sideboard for Dismember mainboard.

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ALPINE MOON

A more recent addition, this was probably released in response to the complaint that Blood Moon on the draw
wasn’t quick enough to stop Tron. While this can still be Nature’s Claimed, this card is reasonably good against
GxTron, which is great for us for the same reason as Blood Moon; people think we’re a Tron deck.

People playing this against us should name Academy Ruins or Blast Zone. Whilst that’s a far better use of this card
than naming Tower, this is still something we really don’t care about, for the same reasons as Blood Moon. We can
remove it, Repeal it and trap it behind a Chalice, or just ignore it, and it’s one more card in their hand that wasn’t a
threat. This card has the added bonus of giving us another blue source and some other colours for EE and phyrexian
black cards, as oppose to useless red mana from Blood Moon.

STONY SILENCE

Stony Silence is a heavily-played sideboard card that does well against GxTron by shutting off Maps, Stars, Spheres
and OStones - usually about 15 cards. As with Blood Moon, opponents will bring this in against you and assume it’s
just as good. Against our deck, however, this shut off 4 Maps, OStone, Slaver, and Ballista – 7 cards, making it
literally less than half as good. Sometimes it has the added bonus of shutting down opponent’s cards too, like Aether
Vial in Death and Taxes.

As with Blood Moon, depending on your hand and your plan for the game, you can usually ignore this and bounce it
later on, if and when it becomes a problem. Stony’s biggest crime against our deck is shutting off Mindslaver, Karn
targets and Oblivion Stone, and with it our inevitability and best boardwipe. Thankfully, we have many ways of
winning games without these cards, and Stony Silence doesn’t stop our key idea of using blue spells to control what
our opponent is doing. As with Moon, it’s also a turn 2 play that isn’t a threat; a Taxes player tapping for this over
Thalia on turn 2 on the play has thrown us an enormous lifeline.

DAMPING SPHERE

Damping Sphere is included here for the same reason as the Moons; it’s a way of turning off Tron that really isn’t
very effective against us, and isn’t a scary early threat. The second ability however, is very much worth consideration
when playing. This hampers our ability to play counterspells and Thirst at the end of our opponent’s turn, and also
makes things like Snapcaster and Gearhulk more awkward.

FIELD OF RUIN

If people are wasting time and mana to try killing our Urza lands because they believe we can’t function without
Tron, then we gain more time to play Thirsts and sculpt our hand to win the game with Islands because the
opponent isn’t playing as aggressively. We have ample supply of basics to fetch up, ensuring we never actually go
down a land, and we can just continue making land drops until we get to our stabilisers. Against control decks these
cards are more annoying, but hopefully the game should go on long enough to allow you to find Tron again and
lever your mana advantage to victory.

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EXAMPLE HANDS

This section will discuss a range of example hands, and explain the concepts that determine the strength and
keepability of different opening sevens. The decision to mulligan is heavily dependent on the deck you’re facing;
control decks make land heavy hands more acceptable, whereas aggro decks require quick interaction or Chalices.
Discard decks generally force you to have a very good reason to mulligan and give them a ‘free’ discard, and combo
decks mean you want to see counterspells forever. This section won’t cover obvious cases, since the decision to
mulligan a 0-lander doesn’t require much in the way of explanation.

GODHANDS

These are the most absurd starters we can have. These hands have a blue source, are close to or at Tron, have early
game interaction, and have a good stabiliser or a way to dig for one. All of these hands can start controlling the
game from turn 2, whilst digging and using the imminent completion of Tron to quickly arrive at a point where we
can play stabilisers and hold up countermagic in the same turn. From here we can either push through for a win
with the threat, or hold the game long enough to arrive at Mindslaver lock. There is not much else to be said for
these hands, other than them nearly always being a keep.

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KEEPABLE HANDS

These are a few examples of hands that are good, but not great. These hands have a good number of lands,
including a blue source, have some interaction, some utility or threats, but crucially are missing a Thirst for
Knowledge, easy Tron, or more than one counterspell. These are the hands that need to have more interactive cards
on the top of the deck to continue our game plan, and will require you to be very careful about which of your
opponent’s plays you need to stop. To take these examples one by one:

1) This hand is the best of the three here. We have a turn one play, are reasonably close to Tron, and have our
best counterspell. Condescend is the best card in this hand and will hopefully dig us into more good cards.
Solemn is also nice here to try and ramp into a hardcast Wurmcoil Engine if Condescend doesn’t dig us into
a Tronland. Ideally here you would like to refrain from cracking the Map until you’ve found your second
Tronland, avoiding the issue of drawing the same land you just tutored with Map.
2) This hand is awkward, but still an acceptable hand. We have a counterspell, a decent threat, and Chalice
might just win by itself. This hand’s main issue is that we’re so far from Tron that Mindslaver is a long way
off, however given the Academy Ruins we can happily pitch the Mindslaver to any Thirsts that we draw for
card advantage, and hopefully we can draw more interaction from the Remand and get to Wurmcoil.
Thoughtseize taking the Remand is a real issue for this hand.
3) This hand is a long way from Tron, but has good interaction from the two blue spells. Gearhulk is a bit
awkward given that we don’t yet have a flashback target for it, but Oblivion Stone could be an excellent
card to base the game plan of this hand around and against most decks will likely see the board on turn 4.

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The majority of hands you will draw will fall into this category – hands that need some thought to play correctly.
Unfortunately, given the nature of control and the wide open Modern meta, it’s impossible to cover all the lines of
play. Some situations and opponents may make these hands perfect or completely useless, but as a rough guide in
order of importance, a good hand should:

- Contain a blue source,

- Have between 2 and 4 lands,
- Have some early-game interaction, the more varied the better,
- Be able to a reasonable pathway for getting to a stabiliser,
- Be close to Tron,

Occasionally some of these guidelines can be overlooked if you’re in a situation where your hand has a strong card
against the opponent, like Chalice against Living End or Ashiok against Titan. However, even in these scenarios, it’s
important to see if the hand has any real way of continuing our game plan after these cards have bought us time to
draw into something relevant. 6 lands and a Chalice is not a keepable hand.

BORDERLINE HANDS

The hands shown here are borderline keepable. These hands crucially are all lacking a blue source, but do have a
way of getting one, or have other cards to play in the meantime:

56
 1) This hand is more keepable than the other two – it has a turn three Wurmcoil Engine but cannot cast
anything else in the hand unless you draw a blue source, so for now relies entirely on the Wurm being
good. The playability of this hand comes from the fact that efficient removal of the lands (Field of Ruin,
Ghost Quarter) or the Wurm (Path to Exile) will probably give you a blue source and switch on the rest of
your hand. The dangers here are Thoughtseize and Stone Rain effects, or Wurmcoil just being irrelevant
(against Storm, for instance).
2) This hand lives on Field of Ruin, since at this point this is our only way of playing the rest of our hand.
Whilst this is a definite blue source, it could well be too slow to matter if your opponent has a way to
capitalise on you doing nothing for the first three turns. If you draw a blue source immediately, this had
becomes incredibly good. We also have the option of topdecking the third Tron piece and hoping Angel is
good enough until the blue source appears.
3) This hand is barely keepable. We are far from Tron, and have no blue source. This hand relies on drawing
the latter to get the Condescend online, and if this is done quickly this becomes a reasonably good hand.
Failing that, the plan here is to use Chalice and Spatial to slow the opponent down until we play Solemn,
which finds us a blue source and hopefully lets us get back into the game.

The choice to mulligan hands like these is completely dependent on the deck you’re playing. Hand 1 is good against
creature aggro decks that won’t be attacking your lands, and hand 2 is a perfectly acceptable keep against control,
since you’ll have time to get to the blue source before the game really starts. Hand 3 is a tough keep, but works well
against something like Prowess, where Chalice and Spatial could buy a lot of time and Solemn blocks effectively.
These are often the hands that require the most thought, and a good strategy is to plan your first few lines of play
and work out how many live draws you have versus useless ones given your hand.

MULLIGANS

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The hands shown here are pretty much unkeepable. Either they don’t have any spells we can play, or the hand is
completely dependent on immediately drawing good cards. This section only shows two examples, since diving into
the endless pit of theoretically unkeepable hands serves little purpose here. To explain each hand:

1) This hand has a decent array of spells, but the lands just don’t match them. We have no blue source and no
way of getting one, and are nowhere near Tron. If we topdeck a blue source then this becomes a viable
hand, but if we don’t then we just can’t play anything, so it’s usually too risky to keep unless you know
you’ll have a lot of time.
2) This hand a better group of lands, but the spells are poor. We have two copies of Chalice, which might be
good but also might just not do anything, and we’re a long way from playing Angel. Here, we need to
topdeck good blue spells every turn or the other two Tronlands to allow us to execute our game plan. As
with the other hand, if this fails then we just can’t do anything meaningful.

It is worth noting that these hands being unkeepable is not a result of the individual cards being bad. It’s easy to
think ‘hand 2 has two Chalices and is a bad hand, so Chalice is bad’, but this isn’t true. The hands here are bad
because the lands don’t match the spells, or because we haven’t drawn any of our control magic. A hand with
multiple copies of the same support card and nothing else is a bad hand for any deck, but it does not mean the
support card should be taken out.

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CLOSING NOTES

UTron is an extremely powerful deck in the right hands. Our insane card and mana advantages come at a steep
price; locking ourselves into a single colour without the bonus of being able to play aggressively costed ‘mono’ spells
like Cryptic Command. Blue is a strong control colour, but lacks in decent hard removal, making the deck seem very
fragile to those who are used to playing with blunter cards like Fatal Push and Kolaghan’s Command. To these
players, the deck just seems like a pile of bad control cards and Tron threats shuffled together, because their decks
are used to being able to straight-up remove anything that stops the proactive part of their gameplan.

Our deck doesn’t need to do this. The inclusion of Tron and the cards that come with it mean we are only required
to delay and disrupt the opponent’s strategy, keeping the pace and threat level of what they’re doing under control
until we can start dropping our stabilisers, then continue to disrupt them fighting through the bigger cards. The
strength of our mid-late game means that we don’t need to completely stop the opponent, only get them into a
place where they feel like they took too long and are now too low on gas to deal with the stabilisers. The longer the
game goes on, the more chance we have of winning, all the way up to an assured victory with Mindslaver lock.

This idea is exemplified by our normal strategy against aggro decks, using counterspells, blockers and bounce spells
to preserve our life total, then dropping a Wurmcoil on turn 6. They probably have a few threats remaining, but our
strategy of dampening their gameplan means that now they just can’t get enough damage through the Wurmcoil to
kill us. We didn’t need to fully stop everything they did with hard removal or boardwipes, as more conventional
control decks are required to do. We bought enough time to play a card that means they can’t win before we get to
our inevitability, and we can now continue to disrupt their game and ensure they can’t get back into a position that
threatens us.

This is how our deck works. We’re clearly a draw-go control deck, but could also be described as the slowest tempo
deck ever built. Our entire strategy revolves around playing cards that stop our opponent winning until we get into a
situation they can’t beat anyway. That situation could be just an Ugin, a Wurmcoil with Chalice on 1, a recurrable
Oblivion Stone, or a Karn finding a Liquimetal coating to never let them past 4 lands. These board states might not
always win on the spot, but they stop the opponent’s ability to just snatch a win over our ‘mono colour limited’
control magic. Our stabilisers complement our gamplan of disrupting our opponent, and ensure that the other
player just doesn’t have the card advantage or raw power to push through the stabiliser and the ongoing control
cards until we land another stabiliser, or just win with Mindslaver. Throughout the game we continue saying ‘no, not
yet’ until we turn around and win.

Once this idea is realised, suddenly the whole deck makes sense. Our control cards aren’t necessarily all hard
removal, but they all delay and disrupt very well, and all dig us towards our stabilisers. Our tutoring creatures allow
us to block and buy more time, and come with card advantage stapled to them. Our stabilisers are all enormous
road blocks and speed bumps that the opponent has to spend considerable time and resources dealing with before
they can start to get near threatening us again. We have ridiculous draw spells to keep ahead of the opponent in
card advantage, Tron to keep ahead in mana, and an unbeatable inevitability. UTron is an absolutely beautiful deck
when played with the correct mindset, as all the cards harmonise together into a single, adaptable, well-oiled
machine to get the job done.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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APPENDIX 1: MATCHUPS AND SIDEBOARDING

This appendix covers a brief look at how we match up against a wide range of established Modern decks that you
may face. The advice of both play lines and sideboarding strategies assume that the opponent is on a fairly standard
version of their deck and doesn’t take time to consider wildly deviating brews or otherwise ‘spicy’ inclusions. Each
section includes a categorisation of the deck respecting the ideas presented in Your Opponent’s Deck, along with
our favourability, lists of the telltale cards, and UTron’s best and worst cards in that matchup.

Since this section is large, a quick summary of each matchup is included here.

Matchup Rating Deck Type

Aggro
Burn Average Proactive, Redundant
Infect Average/Poor Proactive, Essential
Humans Poor Proactive, Redundant
Merfolk Very Poor Proactive, Redundant
Prowess Average/Good Proactive, Essential
Bogles Average/Poor Proactive, Essential
Mill Average/Poor Proactive, Redundant
Dredge Poor Proactive, Redundant

Midrange
Jund Piles Good Proactive, Redundant
Abzan Piles Good Proactive, Redundant (Midrange)/ Essential (Combo)
Eldrazi Tron Good Proactive, Redundant
Grixis Death’s Shadow Average Proactive, Redundant
Soulherder Good/Average Proactive, Redundant
Ponza Average Proactive, Redundant
Death and Taxes Average Proactive, Redundant

Control
UGx Control Average Reactive, Redundant
8-Rack Good Proactive, Redundant
Blue Moon Good Reactive, Redundant/Essential (if Through the Breach)
Mono Red Prison Very Good Proactive, Redundant
Mono U Tron Average Reactive, Redundant

Combo
Ad Nauseam Good Proactive, Essential
Neobrand Average Proactive, Essential
Storm Average/Good Proactive, Essential
Gx Tron Average Proactive, Essential
Amulet Titan Average/Good Proactive, Essential
Goblins Good Proactive, Essential with Redundant backup
Whirza Variants Good Proactive with Reactive elements, Essential
Living End Very Good Proactive, Essential

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AGGRO DECKS

‘Aggro’ stands for ‘aggressive’, and is the name for the archetype of decks that are trying to kill you as quickly as
possible. Usually this involves playing low cost efficient-by-themselves creatures or tribal creatures that synergise
with each other, but can also be done with spells. Aggro decks are tough for UTron whatever the strategy, since our
lack of cheap efficient kill spells and very early game interaction often mean these decks get underneath our
counterspells and we’re forced to play catch-up. Our card advantage also won’t matter during the early turns where
the aggro player is trying to fight. We have a number of speed bumps to deploy like Chalice, Spatial and Ensnaring
Bridge, and these can often slow the aggro down enough for us to make our card advantage matter and turn the
game around.

BURN

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Lightning Bolt - Sacred Foundry
Archetype: - Boros Charm - Inspiring Vantage
Proactive, Redundant - Goblin Guide
- Eidolon of the Great Revel
- Lava Spike

Burn covers all variants of red spell-based decks that want to get your life total to 0 as quickly as they can. They
utilise a combination of cheap red damage spells (Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike) and cheap fast creatures (Goblin Guide)
to hit at your life total and kill you before than you can enact your own game plan.

These decks come in a few variants:

- Mono Red Burn: Has a more consistent manabase and is a cheaper deck, but lacks access to Boros Charm and
white sideboard cards.
- RW Burn – The typical build, contains a balance of the strongest Burn spells available.
- RB/RWB Burn – A variant that splashes black for Bump in the Night and sideboard options.

Burn can be a tough matchup, but we have ways to fight back. The combination of fast, cheap spells and creatures
and a linear reliable game plan means our counterspells are awkward and we often don’t have the time to get our
wall up before our life total becomes too low. Our game plan doesn’t change too much with the variants of Burn
we’re facing, apart from those without white being weaker to Wurmcoil and Angel, which are the best stabilisers
we have against them. Even though our counterspells are tough against the multitude of cheap spells they have
that all do the same thing, we have Chalice as a good card to slow them down. Chalice is good on both 1 and 2 here,
with the edge slightly on 2, as their artifact removal is normally Smash to Smithereens. Getting a Chalice on both 1

61
and 2 is very strong. Our removal and bounce is good against their cheap creatures; Repeal, Spatial and Warping
Wail are all relevant cards, whereas Dismember’s life cost is usually just unacceptable. We also have blockers that
will often trade with their low toughness attackers.

Your game plan should hope to see Ballista, Spatial, Chalice, Angel and Wurmcoil Engine, as these are your best
cards here. Often a single Wurmcoil connecting can set them back long enough to steal the game, and if you can
untap with Angel or get a Chalice down, you’re in great shape as they’ll have to waste spells and time dealing with
it. Ugin’s strength here is largely dependent on whether you’re facing more creatures or more spells, although his
ultimate is obviously great. At 4 CMC, Karn is usually boarded out in favour of bringing in more Ballistas, Chalices
and Wurmcoils. You can use Mazemind Tome to aggressively scry and hit the 4-life trigger to deny them their reach.

Tips and tricks:

- Let Goblin Guide triggers resolve before hitting it with Repeal or Spatial, so you get the land if there is one.
- Scry lands to the top if they have a Guide to attack you.
- Eidolon is the card what will hurt you the most if you don’t have Tron, since it hits a lot of our interactive spells.
- Remanding a spell with Spectacle is a decent play if they have to work to retrigger Spectacle again next turn.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Chalice of the Void - Remand

- Wurmcoil Engine - Dismember
- Platinum Angel - Cyclonic Rift
- Repeal
- Spatial Contortion
- Walking Ballista
- Spellskite

INFECT

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Poor
- Glistener Elf - Inkmoth Nexus
Archetype: - Blighted Agent - Pendalhaven
Proactive, Essential - Might of Old Krosa
- Become Immense
- Vines of Vastwood
- Scale Up

Infect is an aggro-combo deck, whose game plan is to play a cheap creature with Infect, pump it as much as they can
and then win the game in one or two alpha-strikes. It has the capability to do this on turn 2 if it draws a good hand,
and even failing that is a blisteringly fast deck that can kill you before you’ve even got into the game.

Since all of Infect’s pump spells (with the exception of Become Immense) are CMC 1, our counterspells have a hard
time in this matchup. The silver lining here is that Chalice on 1 is incredibly strong against them. Untapping with an

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early Chalice means you can protect it, and only have to really worry about Become Immense, which is easier to
stop with counters. Certainly a good sign of them having the Delve spell is if they start aggressively wasting their
pump spells into Chalice.

Our removal is also good, but needs to be timed well against their pump spells. Dismember is one of the best cards
here since the life total payment is rarely relevant; the only creature than can attack your life total is Noble Hierarch.
Repeal is again strong as a response to them chaining pump spells, but be careful of Vines of Vastwood. Field of Ruin
and other land denial spells are very important here against Inkmoth Nexus, which is hard to deal with otherwise
since a lot of our spells specify ‘nonland’. Ballista is excellent here, as all their creatures are toughness 1 and you can
respond to their pump spells with further activations.

When considering stabilisers, perhaps one of the hardest cards to evaluate is Wurmcoil Engine. The card is still a big
blocker with deathtouch, but the lifegain (which is usually this card’s strong point) is completely irrelevant here.
Wurmcoil is therefore regulated to being a big chump blocker, but will not stabilise you against Infect as is therefore
acceptable to sideboard out. Platinum Angel is much stronger, as sometimes they just have no way to remove it and
will concede on the spot. Ugin is also great if you can get to him, and Walking Ballista can sometimes single-
handedly control the board.

Tips and tricks:

- Don’t take the initiative after they attack. Say ‘no blocks’ then let them show their pump spells before you start
tapping for removal.
- None of their creatures have haste. If you can get removal in on your turn whilst they’re tapped out, it’s better
to have it definitely resolve than to run into a hexproof spell.
- Unless you need to dig, try and save Repeal for when they go for an alpha strike so you get an X-for-1.
- Inkmoth Nexus is probably their best threat. It has evasion and is hard to hit when it’s not a creature. It’s worth
boarding in some more land hate cards solely for this threat.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Chalice of the Void - Wurmcoil Engine

- Dismember - Remand
- Platinum Angel - Solemn Simulacrum
- Repeal
- Spatial Contortion
- Walking Ballista
- Spellskite

HUMANS

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Poor
- Champion of the Parish - Cavern of Souls (Humans)
Archetype: - Kitesail Freebooter - Ancient Ziggurat
Proactive, Redundant - Meddling Mage - Unclaimed Territory
- Thalia’s Lieutenant

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Humans is a deck that appeared on the scene during Ixalan Standard, since the block added a lot of new utility
creatures. Humans is a tribal aggro deck that exemplifies Wizards’ trend for stapling good spells onto already on-
cost creatures. Cards like Meddling Mage, Kitesail Freebooter and Thalia are suitably costed for their stats and
keywords, but also come with decent interactive abilities on them. Humans also have synergistic cards like Thalia’s
Lieutenant and Champion of the Parish, which grow their creatures quite quickly.

Humans is a tough matchup for us, since they are an aggro deck that can seriously hamper our strategy with prison-
style interaction from Thalia and Meddling Mage, and discard effects from Freebooter. They can also run all sorts of
utility humans like Reflector Mage and Dark Confidant, to the point where Humans feels like a strong aggro deck
that gets to do everything else too.

Our saving grace is that the aggro from Humans is often marginally slower, and more about building up a synergy of
creatures over single threats that do well by themselves. Our interaction is therefore more effective at only stopping
the dangerous synergy cards, since a Meddling Mage or a Freebooter by itself isn’t going to kill us fast enough.
Humans is only especially dangerous if they build up a critical mass of creatures, and disregarding Aether Vial and
Cavern of Souls, we have many ways to prevent that.

Meddling Mage deserves special mention, since by way of our deck being the less popular deck with Tron, people
will often name cards like Karn Liberated, or go after your ability to get to Tron and name Expedition Map. For this
reason is it sometimes correct to let Meddling Mage resolve game 1, and hope they choose badly or narrowly. Even
them naming Mindslaver is far better than Spatial, Thirst, Ugin or Oblivion Stone, since they’ve stopped only one
card in your deck that (in this matchup) is only really good for your inevitability. Mage is worth stopping if they’ve
just seen your hand from Freebooter, since they’ll have a better idea of what to name.

Our aggro stabilisers are all quite good. Ugin is the usual house as all their threats are coloured and low cost enough
for Ugin to still be on a high loyalty after wiping the board. Wurmcoil and Platinum Angel are strong since their
manabase prevents them from running Path to Exile; the card to watch out for here is Reflector Mage. Oblivion
Stone is probably our best card in the matchup, as they have no way to really deal with it and we can cast it early.
Cyclonic Rift is also nice to reset their countered-up creatures, and Karn can both stop Aether Vial and tutor up and
Ensnaring Bridge, which they can’t deal with if we have a near-empty hand.

Tips and tricks:

- The way Kitesail Freebooter is worded means you can happily kill it in response to its trigger and not lose a
card. They’ll still get to look at your hand and choose one, but since Freebooter is already gone, the exile effect
doesn’t happen. This wouldn’t work against cards with separate triggers like Tidehollow Sculler.
- If you manage to get a Platinum Angel down then your game plan should immediately revolve around stopping
Reflector Mage, as they usually have no other way to kill her and only Mantis Rider blocks to stop her killing
them.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Spatial Contortion - Chalice of the Void

- Dismember - Solemn Simulacrum
- Platinum Angel
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Wurmcoil Engine
- Oblivion Stone
- Silent Arbiter

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MERFOLK

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Very Poor
- Cursecatcher - Mutavault
Archetype: - Master of Waves
Proactive, Redundant - Silvergill Adept
- Lord of Atlantis
- Master of the Pearl Trident

Welcome to our worst matchup. Merfolk is a tribal aggro deck that runs a multitude of ‘lord’ creatures to buff each
other up and beat you to death, along with the normal array of strong tribal cards like Cavern and Vial. The main
strength of Merfolk against our deck is their ample ability to gift their entire army with Islandwalk, rendering our
blockers useless. To compliment this game plan, they usually run mainboard Spreading Seas, and so can attack our
lands if we try and go for an early Tron. On top of this, being in blue they can fight us on the stack with counters and
bounce spells and other tempo plays, and some of their creatures have interactive effects, protection effects or card
draw stapled onto them. All in all, they have decent resilience against every way we could try and stop them.

Merfolk runs a number of functionally identical lord creatures; UU costing 2/2s that give all other Merfolk +1/+1 and
in most cases Islandwalk. These are the key cards of the deck, and ones that should be targeted with interaction, as
allowing them to build up and start applying the buffs to each other is a ticket to a quick death unless you have a
boardwipe ready to go. Thankfully these have low starting toughness and so get hit by all our removal.

Chalice is either fantastic on 2 if they have no Cavern or Vial, or average on 1 to stop Vapor Snag on your Wurmcoil
or Angel. This variance and their ability to ignore it here is usually not worth its inclusion postboard.

Ugin is our best stabiliser, doing his usual job of just eating the board and remaining on high loyalty. Oblivion Stone
can often do the same thing, whilst also hitting any Vials they have out. Engineered Explosives is very good if you can
get it on 2, as all their lords and the majority of their creatures are of CMC 2. Apart from boardwipes, Platinum Angel
is hard from them to remove, since you can save your counters for Echoing Truth, Vapor Snag and Dismember. Be
careful attacking with Angel, since this can turn on Harbringer of the Tides. Wurmcoil is a good beater but will very
often not be able to block, meaning it needs to survive a turn to stabilise, and often they’ll be able to race against
gaining 6 life per turn. Karn is good at fetching hate pieces like Ensnaring Bridge, as well as turning off Aether Vial
whilst he lives.

Our chances against Merfolk are largely dependent on how aggressive a hand they draw. If they have no Vial, no
turn 1 play and so have to play lords one by one, we should be able to use counter and kill spells to preserve our life
total until the midgame where we have a chance to fight them with our threats. However if they have a hyper
aggressive start with Cavern into Vial, Cursecatcher into lord, then sometimes all you can do is pray for a boardwipe
or sit back and wait for the pain to be over.

Tips and tricks:

- Combat tricks like letting them attack then targeting a lord with removal to turn off Islandwalk and open up
favourable blocks are a good way to gain advantage.

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Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Spatial Contortion - Solemn Simulacrum

- Dismember
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Platinum Angel
- Oblivion Stone

PROWESS

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Good
- Soul-Scar Mage - Steam Vents
Archetype: - Monastery Swiftspear
Proactive, Essential - Manamorphose
- Lava Dart

Prowess is a very fast aggressive deck that seeks to play creatures with its namesake ability and then chain cheap
spells and burn effects to swing for increasing amounts of damage. The deck is fast, resilient and with Bedlam
Reveler has the ability to grind out for its reach.

Prowess is more resilient to Chalice on 1 then it first seems. Despite playing ~25 one-drops, the nature of the
prowess mechanic means that a couple of creatures resolved under a Chalice still allow them to throw spells into
their graveyard just for the prowess triggers and swing for a large amount of damage. Chalice is still exceptionally
good here, but the priority is always to get their creatures off the board, as their spells are rarely good for direct
damage without also having the effect of triggering prowess. Here Repeal, Spatial, Dismember, Walking Ballista,
Warping Wail and Cyclonic Rift are all excellent cards, especially if you can bounce their creatures and trap them
behind Chalice next turn. The only creature to worry about after Chalice is Stormwing Entity, which whilst harder to
bounce is harder for them to replay and is a great Remand target to slow them down.

Wurmcoil and Angel are the best finishers here, with Ugin also doing well to clear all their creatures off the board
and potentially gain some life. If you have time to resolve a Mazemind Tome, use the scry ability every turn since the
life gain is very important. Thought-Knot Seer does very well to take a good spell from their hand and block
favourably, and Ballista can mow down their board if cast with a decent amount of mana. As with Burn, it is worth
boarding out Karn in favour of bringing in his relevant tutor targets as turn 4 is just too slow.

Tips and tricks:

- Remember when using Ballista, Ugin upticks and Spatial that they can play free spells like Mutagenic and Gut
shot to give their creatures enough toughness to survive. Usually it’s safer to just –X Ugin, even against
Stormwing Entity.
- If they have only resolved a single creature, tap out for Chalice. If they have multiple, it’s likely that you’ll die if
you don’t hold up interaction.
- Dismember is worth keeping in even given the painful cost, as their creatures are so dangerous if allowed to
attack and will very likely hit you for 4+ life anyway.

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Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Dismember - Karn, the Great Creator

- Spatial Contortion
- Walking Ballista
- Repeal
- Chalice of the Void
- Gemstone Caverns
- Wurmcoil Engine
- Platinum Angel

BOGLES

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Poor
- Slippery Bogle - Razorverge Thicket
Archetype: - Gladecover Scout - Horizon Canopy
Proactive, Essential - Kor Spiritdancer
- Dryad Arbor

Bogles, GW Auras, or BuildyourownEmrakul.dec, is a deck that wins the game by putting a mountain of Auras on a
creature with Hexproof, then beats down with their giant monstrosity. The deck runs 8 ‘Bogle’ creatures and has Kor
Spiritdancer to allow them to turn all their Auras into cantrips for continued gas.

Hexproof means our removal and bounce is much worse. The removal is still good on Spiritdancer, and the bounce
is still good at hitting the more powerful enchantments to slow them down, but this matchup generally revolves
around us getting either quick Tron and Ugin, or having Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, Bridge or
Spellskite. All of these hate cards are incredibly strong if they come down early enough; Chalice (on 1) blanks
roughly 30 of their nonland spells, including both their Bogles, EE destroys everything, Bridge quickly becomes an
impenetrable barrier and Spellskite is a wall that deters them from casting Auras.

Wurmcoil Engine is good against any Bogles that don’t have first strike, as that turns off Wurmo’s stabilisation role.
Platinum Angel is a strong card if you can defend against Path to Exile and Seal of Primordium from the board.
Oblivion Stone, Cyclonic Rift, Engineered Explosives and Ugin are all fantastic ways of completely resetting the
board, just watch out for Umbra triggers from the Stone and EE. Mindslaver by itself is very average, since they have
Leyline of Sanctity mainboard and their gameplan isn’t very soft to us controlling them for a turn.

Overall, it’s fair to aggressively mulligan to Tron, Chalice or other hate cards. Even a hand full of bounce won’t stop
them from killing you for very long, so these cards should be used to preserve your life total as much as possible
until you can get a boardwipe down or get an Ensnaring Bridge from a Karn. From there you can build back into the
game whilst they dig for more threats. Your blockers are also good to buy you time to get to the important cards.

Tips and tricks:

- Bounce spells are at their best hitting the sole Aura on a Bogle in response to Daybreak Coronet for a 2-for-1.

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- Kor Spiritdancer is a very high priority target due to its draw trigger.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Spellskite - Remand
- Chalice of the Void - Dismember
- Engineered Explosives
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Platinum Angel
- Ensnaring Bridge
- Oblivion Stone

MILL

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Poor
- Hedron Crab - Shelldock Isle
Archetype: - Mesmeric Orb
Proactive, Redundant - Glimpse the Unthinkable
- Archive Trap
- Jace’s Phantasm

Mill gets its name from the card Millstone, which can repeatedly deck the top two cards of a player’s library.
Modern Mill takes that idea and runs haywire with it, aiming to aggressively ‘mill’ the entirety of its opponent’s into
their graveyard before they can enact their gameplan. To protect itself, it runs a number of blockers that enable its
strategy like Hedron Crab and Manic Scribe, and makes use of Ensnaring Bridge to hold off the opponent.

Mill is weak to aggressive strategies that don’t care about or can remove Ensnaring Bridge, like Burn or Jund.
Unfortunately, we are not one of those decks; whilst we don’t care about Bridge, we’re not aggressive enough to
punish the Mill player for fielding a slow strategy. We push the game to go on as long as possible, which means the
Mill player has a free run for their idea without having to protect themselves. Mill’s strategy is good against us for
two main reasons; we need the cards in our deck for our endgame to work properly, and we help them count to 60
by cantripping, drawing with Thirst and turning on Archive Trap with our many search spells.

Our key card is Academy Ruins. Whilst this lives on the field, it’s enormously difficult for them to mill us out, and we
can recur things like Platinum Angel and Walking Ballista and get to Mindlock. Just be very careful when playing
around Mesmeric Orb and only activate after the triggers from that have finished. Mill uses a reasonable number of
Ghost Quarters and Field of Ruins mainboard, but they will use these aggressively to take us off Tron and trigger
Archive Trap if they’re unfamiliar with the deck. To encourage this, try and keep Ruins in your hand until they’ve
used up as much land destruction as you can bear waiting for. If they run out of ways to kill it, you have a very good
chance of winning.

Apart from Ruins, we need to aim to use our counterspells to hit their bigger Mill spells, and point our removal at
Hedron Crab and Jace’s Phantasm. Try to do as little tutoring as you can to leave Archive Trap in their hand, and get
a clock down fast since 20 life is less than 53 cards to count to. This is a tough matchup and we need to try and run
them out of cards.

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Chalice is best on 1, stopping a good number of their mill spells, and crucially Visions of Beyond, which rapidly
becomes Ancestral Recall, arguably the most powerful card ever printed in Magic.

Tips and tricks:

- Only tutor if the bonus you get is worth losing 13 cards, as they’ll nearly always have Archive Trap. Karn does
not trigger the trap.
- Snapcaster and Gearhulk become very strong, since they should always have good targets in the mass of milled
cards.
- If you sideboard any of the original Eldrazi titans, now is the time to bring them in.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Academy Ruins - Dismember

- Chalice of the Void
- Platinum Angel
- Snapcaster Mage
- Torrential Gearhulk

DREDGE

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Poor
- Shriekmaw - Blackleave Cliffs
Archetype: - Creeping Chill - Dakmor Salvage
Proactive, Redundant - Cathartic Reunion - Copperline Gorge
- Bloodghast -
- Narcomoeba
- Prized Amalgam

Dredge exists in some form in all nonrotating formats. The deck is based around using cards with its namesake
ability to fill up its own graveyard, then get free animation triggers from Narcomoeba, Bloodghast and Prized
Amalgam to generate an endlessly recurrable free board of small creatures. The deck wins by attacking you to
death, has Conflagrate’s flashback mode for reach and Creeping Chill to just randomly dome you for 3 throughout
the game.

Dredge’s gameplan is hard to interact with, since their creatures come into play in a way that we can’t counter.
Similarly, using our spot removal and even boardwipes on them is not a reliable plan, as most of their creatures are
just one land drop away from all coming back. Our only real option against them is graveyard hate or rushing to a
stabiliser. Wurmcoil is very strong against their smaller creatures, and they have to invest cards and time into
dealing with it, gaining us some life. Ugin is our best card, as he exiles everything to make sure they don’t come
back. Angel is useful, as they don’t run a mainboard way of dealing with her outside of Conflagrate, which is readily
answered by Remand. Mindslaver is only really good for the lock, since we can’t do much to damage them if they
already have a big board presence, outside Conflagrating them to death.

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A great option out of the board to buy time is Silent Arbiter. This can stall the board by itself, and toughness 5 is
bigger than all their creatures (and takes a lot to Conflagrate to death). Unfortunately, they have Ancient Grudge
and Lightning Axe coming out of the board, so our counterspells need to be ready to protect our Arbiter. Similarly,
Platinum Angel is something they won’t be able to beat with their primary strategy, and if you can protect it from
their sideboard artifact hate you’ll be in a good position. They only have the 1/1 Narcomoeba to block flyers, and 4
damage a turn is usually quicker than us running out of counterspells.

Chalice is worth boarding out here, it’s too slow a play and doesn’t hit many cards. This gives you more room to
board in graveyard hate.

Tips and tricks:

- Most of the time, we win by throwing blockers and graveyard hate in the way and rushing to Wurmcoil. It’s
acceptable to mull more aggressively towards this objective.
- Karn is very useful to fetch both graveyard hate and Ensnaring Bridge.
- Sometimes it’s better to leave a Bloodghast on the battlefield rather than killing it and letting a fetchland
trigger bring back a whole army.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Chalice of the Void

- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - Dismember
- Grafdigger’s Cage
- Silent Arbiter

MIDRANGE DECKS

Midrange decks are all about value. They are often a collection of the strong isolated cards in the colour
combination of the deck, and seek to grind out 1 for 1 trades to turn the game into a state where both players are
low on gas. Here, the midrange player has better isolated topdecks and will continue to grind out a win. Midrange
decks are usually a good matchup for us, since trying to grind value against Thirst for Knowledge is rarely a winning
strategy, and as the game progresses our threats are just stronger than theirs.

The strength of the matchup is dependent on how aggressive the midrange deck is in the early turns; a chain of
discard spells or a quick Tarmogoyf can do well, but a slower start with the aim of playing powerful three and four
drops is something we are well equipped to fight. Usually we’ll be aiming to drop a Wurmcoil Engine here, which
even if removed will buy us a great deal of time and card advantage. Sundering Titan is often the game-winner of
choice against the greedy manabases typical of midrange decks.

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JUND PILES

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Thoughtseize - Overgrown Tomb
Archetype: - Inquisition of Kozilek - Blood Crypt
Proactive, Redundant - Tarmogoyf - Stomping Ground
- Wrenn and Six
- Bloodbraid Elf
- Kolaghan’s Command
- Liliana of the Veil

Jund is the classic midrange deck. Named simply after the colour combination it plays, Jund takes the best cards that
black, red and green have to offer and puts them in a pile. The game plan of the deck is to trade 1 for 1, grind value
and run the opponent out of resources, knowing that each card the Jund player topdecks is very strong on its own.
The opponent is then left with no relevant cards to stop the Jund threats.

Jund’s scariest weapon against us is the array of one mana discard spells. We need to have cards in our hand and
often two or more of these in the first two turns can significantly cripple our ability to answer their threats. Chalice
often comes down too late to stop these, although often saves more important cards like Thirst by being infamous
enough for the Jund player to take with Thoughtseize. We have no real hedge against multiple early discard, apart
from hoping they make incorrect choices, we topdeck well or we have early Tron and can just start playing stronger
threats.

The rest of the matchup is good news. With the exception of Bloodbraid Elf our counterspells shine here, as their
game plan is just to curve their hand out as best they can and they have very little in the way of interacting on the
stack. Our normal idea of holding up interaction and progressing our gameplan in the background should work well.
Dismember is better removal than Spatial here, as Grim Flayer and Tarmogoyf quickly get too big for Spatial to
matter. However it’s worth keeping both in if you see them running lots of Dark Confidants or Huntmaster of the
Fells. Thirst for Knowledge serves its usual role as our best card to win against a grindy deck, and Fact or Fiction
allows us to leap ahead in cards and very often win us the game. Often their only real weapon to compete with our
card advantage is Lurrus, and the companion cat should be a primary target to save removal for if you either see
Mishra’s Bauble or see it in the companion zone.

Our best threat is Wurmcoil. This buys us a ton of time and often trades as a 3 for 1, which gains a huge advantage
on the exact platform of magic they’re trying to win on. It trades well with their creatures, gains us time and they
can’t remove it efficiently. The only minor worry is a Liliana tickdown followed by Maelstrom Pulse to wipe both the
tokens, but this is rare and can be stopped with counterspells.

Whilst Wurmcoil is very good, Platinum Angel is distinctly average, They have so many ways to remove her that
unless you’re at death’s door or have a wall of counterspells to protect her, she’s not worth tutoring up and is
usually boarded out game 2. Sundering Titan is a far better choice if for some reason you’re not getting Wurmcoil. It
usually destroys three lands and will be able to block all their threats. Karn is good in that it generates multiple cards
in hand and may eat a Goyf attack, but can be slow if they’re pressuring you. Ensnaring Bridge however can

71
sometimes be a house against Jund, as it gives us the time to complete Tron and just slam Wurmcoil and Sundering
Titan to victory.

Tips and tricks:

- Jund is as redundant as it gets. Every threat has the ability to kill you, however most are invalidated by
Wurmcoil Engine or Ugin. Our key to winning is just to lean on our superior card advantage and go over the top
of them with Tron.
- Playing any creature against a sole Liliana will usually make them tick down, which is useful to delay the
ultimate. If it’s a Walking Ballista as your only creature make sure to respond to the Liliana activation by
shooting her all the way.
- Bouncing a Liliana in response to her tick-up when your opponent is hellbent forces them to discard it.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Platinum Angel

- Sundering Titan - Chalice of the Void
- Torrential Gearhulk
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Karn, the Great Creator

ABZAN PILES

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Thoughtseize - Overgrown Tomb
Archetype: - Inquisition of Kozilek - Temple Garden
Proactive, - Noble Hierarch - Godless Shrine
Redundant (Midrange)/ - Lingering Souls
Essential (Combo) - Kitchen Finks
- Voice of Resurgence
- Liliana of the Veil

Abzan is Jund’s brighter brother. The deck usually works in the exact same way, by playing the best cards in green,
white and black and grinding the opponent out of resources. Abzan can have a number of variants:

- Midrange Abzan (Junk): Standard form of the deck obeying the idea of using the best isolated cards in the
colours and putting them in a pile. Basically, Siege Rhino and friends.
- Wilted Abzan: Still midrange, but uses more green and white creatures to make Wilt-Leaf Liege really good.
- VizerDruid: Variant that includes (or sometimes focuses around) the Vizer of Remedies & Devoted Druid combo
for infinite mana, using Duskwatch Recruiter to find either a Rhonas the Indomitable or Walking Ballista to kill.
Other combos with Vizer include Viscera Seer as a sac outlet for Kitchen Finks (infinite life) or Murderous
Redcap (infinite damage).

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- Abzan Traverse: Similar to Junk but plays Mishra’s Bauble and Lurrus to enable faster Delirium and cards like
Traverse the Ulvenwald and Grim Flayer.
- Abzan Company: Similar to Junk but leans harder on getting value out of Collected Company and Finale of
Devastation with various hatebears. Often uses the various combos with Vizer of Remedies to let Company win
out of nowhere.

For UTron, these variants boil down to one question; are they playing strictly midrange, or do they have the combo
elements included? This knowledge is fairly vital for our gameplay, since tapping out for Chalice on 1 and Wurmcoil
Engine is great against pure midrange, but not so good if they proceed to land both combo elements next turn.
Luckily, none of the combo pieces bar Kitchen Finks have any real reason to be played outside of enabling their
combo, so seeing any of these cards gives you the information you need to fight the combo element and worry a bit
less about value.

For the midrange versions, this matchup is very similar to Jund. All our value pieces (Wurmcoil, Sundering, Gearhulk)
and boardwipes still do their job very well, and Thirst continues to be an absurd card. The primary difference here is
that white allows Abzan access to Path to Exile, which gives them a very clean answer to Wurmcoil. It is for this
reason that Chalice is good in this matchup, whilst also blanking more spells than just the discard suite in Noble
Hierarch and Birds of Paradise. It’s a fairly safe bet that they’ll always have Path, so it’s worth holding your
Wurmcoils until you have Chalice down or have no other option.

Since Abzan does not have access to red, our artifacts (most notably Platinum Angel and Ensnaring Bridge) get much
better. Angel is as vulnerable to Path as Wurmcoil is, but Chalice on 1 and Angel is very hard for them to beat unless
they’ve brought in specific hate like Reclamation Sage, Anguished Unmaking or Naturalize. This also allows you to
play Mindslaver and Oblivion Stone in parts, which would be much more risky against red’s inclusion of Kolaghan’s
Command or Ancient Grudge.

The combo versions of the deck are trickier, since they can play a good midrange game but have the option of
winning out of nowhere. The two critical cards here (apart from the combo pieces themselves) are Finale of
Devastation and Collected Company, both of which have the ability to ‘oops, I win’ the combo onto the battlefield.
Company in particular is instant speed, meaning tapping out for Thirst at the end of their turn isn’t as safe. However
both of these cards are stopped completely by Grafdigger’s Cage, which is a popular sideboard/Karnboard card for
us, and can be played around if you have counterspells and keep mana open.

The combos themselves are sometimes not instantly gamewinning against us. Gaining infinite life simply doesn’t do
anything since we have Slaver lock to kill them eventually, however the Murderous Redcap element kills us stone
dead. Similarly, the version of VizerDruid that tries to win with Rhonas can be stopped by Platinum Angel, but the
version with Walking Ballista requires Karn. It’s important to let them combo off and actually wait for the effects, as
a lot of Abzan players might just say ‘infinite life, game 2?’, mistakenly believing our only way of killing them is by
attacking their life total. When trying to stop the combo elements, always respect the potential for them holding up
Veil of Summer.

Tips and tricks:

- Finale and Company are their best cards but are thankfully quite expensive and so soft to counters.
- Infinite life isn’t a problem for us unless for some reason you don’t run Mindslaver.
- Remand on flashbacked Lingering Souls or Eldritch Evolution is great value.

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Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Engineered Explosives

- Sundering Titan
- Platinum Angel
- Torrential Gearhulk
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Karn, the Great Creator

ELDRAZI TRON

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Matter Reshaper - Tronlands
Archetype: - Karn, the Great Creator - Eldrazi Temple
Proactive, Redundant - Thought-Knot Seer - Cavern of Souls (Eldrazi)
- Reality Smasher - Wastes
- Chalice of the Void

Eldrazi Tron is an aggressive deck born from the lower-cost Eldrazi that appeared in Oath of the Gatewatch. With
the combination of the Tronlands and Eldrazi Temple, Eldrazi Tron aims to power out these creatures earlier than
they were meant to be cast and beat the enemy to death with them. As the deck also has the Tronlands included,
they run four copies of Karn the Great Creator, alongside a few Ugin, the Ineffables and sometimes Emrakul, the
Promised End for some late game power or to abuse naturally drawn Tron.

Eldrazi Tron is a good matchup for us, as their restrictive manabase usually only lets them run 2 Cavern of Souls
mainboard. Our counterspells therefore shine against their 4+ mana big threats, even if they’re cast a turn or two
earlier, and them being an entirely colourless deck means that find it difficult to deal with our threats. Their scariest
cards are Though-Knot Seer for the discard effect, Reality Smasher for the clock and the card disadvantage for
removing it, and then the bigger Tron threats in Karn and Emrakul. Counterspells are the best way we have of
stopping these, and Dismember shines as being able to hit all their mid-sized Eldrazi creatures.

Our stabilisers are good, with the exception of Ugin, who can’t remove any of their scary creatures and won’t stop
them attacking. Wurmcoil Engine is the best of the bunch, as they can only really answer it with their big Tron
threats. If we can keep them off Tron (which we can fairly easily) then Wurmcoil Engine does a good job of
dominating the board and buys us loads of time to get to Mindlock. Mindslaver is only really good for the win
condition here, as they don’t have a great deal of interaction that works against their own board, but can still be
strong to walk their creatures into yours to give unfavourable blocks. They have Ballista, Karn, Ulamog and
Dismember to answer Platinum Angel, but a lot of these are counterable so Angel is not necessarily bad. Karn is
good to shut off their Karn shenanigans and can fetch an Ensnaring Bridge to stop their creatures or a Liquimetal
Coating to keep them off Tron.

As they run 4 Chalice of the Void, we should board ours out and be grateful that they mainboard 4 dead cards.

74
Tips and tricks:

- If you only have one piece of removal against a resolved Thought-Knot Seer, use it in response to the trigger so
you don’t lose it. If you have two, wait for the trigger to resolve and then kill it, so they don’t see the extra card.
- A Walking Ballista with a Basilisk’s Collar on it will stop you committing creatures to the board, so is worth
stopping.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Chalice of the Void

- Dismember - Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Spreading Seas
- Karn, the Great Creator

DEATH’S SHADOW

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Thoughtseize - Watery Grave
Archetype: - Inquisition of Kozilek - Blood Crypt
Proactive, Redundant - Death’s Shadow - Breeding Pool
- Stubborn Denial - Steam Vents
- Traverse the Ulvenwald
- Gurmag Angler
- Street Wraith

The variants of Death’s Shadow are a close to a Legacy deck as it’s possible to get in Modern. These decks exemplify
the idea of ‘Turbo Xerox’ decks; those that use cheap cantrips and free cyclers to dig into the cards and lands they
need for incredible consistency. The main focus is quickly powering out a ‘one mana’ big creature in the form of
Death’s Shadow or a Delve threat, then protecting it through to victory with Stubborn Denial, grinding into more
creatures with Traverse and interacting with the opponent’s strategy with cards like Abrade, Fatal Push and discard
spells. Most variants also use Temur Battle Rage for free wins with Death’s Shadow.

The most notable characteristic of the deck is its desire to aggressively lower its own life total. Using an extremely
painful manabase and cards like Thoughtseize and Street Wraith, the deck allows Death’s Shadow to very easily
become a one-mana 5/5 and above, which when attacking in multiples is a very quick road to victory. Shadow uses
lots of interaction to ensure it doesn’t get punished for putting itself in single digit life early on, and spells like
Stubborn Denial to protect its big creatures. Since the deck is also full of cantrips, Thought Scours and free cyclers
like Street Wraith, the graveyard can be quickly filled to make Gurmag Angler cost one mana and Tarmogoyf
become huge, giving Shadow access to three separate cheap fatties (although they only run 8 creatures total). This,
combined with the Turbo Xerox style of deck, allows them to run only 17 lands and still play all their spells, freeing
up space for more interaction, threats and removal.

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Shadow’s insane efficiency and consistency is a problem for us. They can fight us with torrents of discard, very cheap
powerful threats and effective interaction from Stubborn Denial. However, the ‘dumb’ nature of their threats allow
our counterspells and bounce effects to be good, our blockers to buy time, and Wurmcoil Engine to completely
dominate the board. As with most creature decks not running white, Shadow has a big problem with Wurmcoil
Engine. It’s bigger than most of their creatures and will trade very effectively with a Shadow.

Our other stabilisers are fairly average. Platinum Angel is soft to the red part of the deck, and Ugin has to cripple or
outright kill himself to exile the Delve threats (although he’s very strong against multiple Shadows and Goyfs). Karn
is very good, being able to find both Chalice and Ensnaring Bridge to prison them out of the game or Wurmcoil and
Sundering Titan to finish the job. Our usual value cards are good; Thirst, Repeal and Fact or Fiction provide great
value and get us back from the barrage of discard if they resolve. Spatial Contortion is much worse than Dismember,
as it’s only able to kill irrelevant Snapcasters or very small Shadows. Removal on Shadow is always risky, as they can
have uncracked Fetches or Street Wraith to lower their life total at instant speed.

Chalice of the Void is insane. Obviously this is played on 1, and blanks a disgusting 24-26 of their nonland cards. With
discard, Stubborn Denial and Ceremonious Rejection out the board it can sometimes be hard to resolve, but usually
just stops them doing anything except playing slow Delve threats and waiting to draw Kolaghan’s Command or
Abrupt Decay. If Chalice resolves the matchup swings dramatically in our favour, as they have no real way of
interacting with us and our counters and Dismember are amazing against the only threats they can play. Ensnaring
bridge is similarly devastating for their strategy of attacking with big creatures, and will straight up stop them from
winning until it is removed. Walking Ballista can also be used as a ‘gotcha’ if they lower their life total too far.

Tips and tricks:

- Play Chalice, play Bridge, play Wurmcoil Engine.

- Remand is strong against Delve Threats and Snapcaster Mage flashbacks.
- They don’t run a great deal of actual threats, but rely on cantrips and Traverse to find them. Often stopping just
two of their eight creatures can buy a lot of time whilst they go and find another one.
- Against the Jund variants it is worth bringing in graveyard hate to stop Tarmogoyf and Traverse.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Platinum Angel

- Ensnaring Bridge - Spatial Contortion
- Chalice of the Void
- Dismember

SOULHERDER

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good/Average
- Soulherder - Bant Fetch/Shock
Archetype: - Coiling Oracle
Proactive, Redundant - Venser, Shaper Savant
- Eternal Witness

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Soulherder is a deck designed to exploit blink effects on creatures with value ETB triggers. The namesake card paired
with Ephemerate allows them to gain multiple copies of the powerful triggers from cards like Eternal Witness,
Venser and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath whilst drawing cards with Coiling Oracle and Ice-Fang Coatl. The deck wins
by outvaluing its opponent, beating them to death with creatures and/or looping Time Walk effects to build up an
insurmountable advantage.

The card advantage generated buy their blink effects is very hard to keep up with, however against us this deck will
usually be punished for not applying sufficient pressure with their low-power creatures. A low-to-the-ground value
grind is effective against Jund and Uro piles, but not as effective against Ugin or Sundering Titan. Despite this, we
should be careful to not let them gain insurmountable card advantage over us, as they do run interaction in the
form of Path to Exile, Assassin’s Trophy, Force of Negation and blinking Venser to bounce lands.

Generally, it’s best to focus on denying them their two enablers, Soulherder and Ephemerate. The first can be
countered or removed as it only starts generating value at the end of their turn, and the latter is best stopped with
Chalice on 1. If we can successfully do this, then their deck just becomes a pile of distinctly average value creatures
that do not apply sufficient pressure to kill us before we can take over with Tron. Their painful manabase usually
prevents them running Field of Ruin and so Tron is a good thing to rely on to go over the top of their value game, as
the only ways they have of taking it apart are Assassin’s Trophy and Venser. Apart from that, be aware that they’ll
likely have Yorion as a companion, and this card can swing the game around by giving them a huge oneshot card
advantage boost on resolution.

Our stabilisers generally line up well. Wurmcoil and Angel are both soft to Path and Venser, Angel in particular is
also soft to Assassin’s Trophy and so should likely be boarded out. Sundering Titan is excellent against their greedy
manabase and as usual will be crippling for them to remove. Karn is good as a tutor for Sundering Titan and other
big Tron cards, since any prison artifacts like Bridge are soft to Trophy and Venser. Ugin is as good as he can be here;
they need a board presence for their deck to do anything and Ugin denies them this.

Tips and tricks:

- Removing creatures in response to Ephemerate is a good value play.

- Soulherder is soft to all our removal and should be the priority target over the value creatures.
- Since their card advantage is really strong, it’s usually acceptable to mulligan towards a fast completion of
Tron and just play bigger spells.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - Platinum Angel

- Sundering Titan
- Spatial Contortion
- Dismember
- Chalice of the Void

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PONZA

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Arbor Elf - Wooded Foothills
Archetype: - Utopia Sprawl - Stomping Ground
Proactive, Redundant - Bloodbraid Elf
- Pillage
- Blood Moon
- Bonecrusher Giant
- Klothys, God of Destiny

Ponza is Modern’s midrange land destruction deck. The idea is to use Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl to power out early
Blood Moons, Bloodbraid Elves and Klothys to attack its opponent’s manabase whilst playing aggressive value
threats that apply immense and continuous pressure on the opponent.

Ponza’s only scary cards cost 3 mana and above, however they will always get to play a 3-drop on turn 2. The
inclusion of 4 Arbor Elves and 4 Utopia Sprawls mean they will always have their ramp online, and destroying our
lands or landing an early Bloodbraid is bad news for us. For this reason, this matchup is largely dependent on two
things; if we are on the play, or if their first piece of land hate is Blood Moon over a Bloodbraid/Klothys. If we’re on
the play, we get to 2 lands before they can destroy things or land some pressure and can just use our counterspells
to stop them doing anything dangerous, then run the normal idea of progressing our gameplan until we land
Wurmcoil, which can usually win by itself. If they run Blood Moon, we can just ignore it and enjoy the fact that we
can now get our counterspells underneath whatever they plan to play next.

If these dependencies don’t hold up, then it’s a much tougher match. Usually they can either destroy one of our
lands and win with tempo threats, or just lean on Klothys and Bloodbraid Elf pressure to overwhelm our strategy of
trying to control the game. In this case it’s acceptable to try and counter a Blood Moon and race to Tron, hoping to
just land a Wurmcoil or Ugin and stop them in their tracks.

Our threats are all at least good. As it usually is against these types of midrange decks, Wurmcoil is the best of the
bunch here, as they have no decent way of removing it and it races or trades extremely favourably with all their
threats. Ugin exiles their whole board. Angel is strong if you untap with it, since Pillage is your only real worry.
Oblivion Stone shines here to knock out their mana advantage of Utopia Sprawl and Arbor Elf, often leaving them
with a few Forests and nothing to do. Karn is likely not going to survive more than a single turn but forms a useful
plan of getting a Wurmcoil Engine as follow-up play.

Chalice of the Void is distinctly average. Although it stops a number of important cards (Elf, Sprawl), these have
often come down before Chalice and already done their job. If you’re later in the game, their Elves and Sprawls are
redundant cards anyway, so the Chalice is still not blanking anything of importance and is destroyed by Pillage. It’s
worth perhaps keeping in one post-board, but Chalice ranks low over other sideboard choices, like more
countermagic. Ensnaring Bridge is also average, as it doesn’t stop Klothys damage and is also soft to Pillage.

Since the matchup is very dependent on who plays first, Gemstone Caverns is a big help and worth boarding in.

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Tips and tricks:

- Utopia Sprawl reads ‘Enchant Forest’. Spreading Seas on their Utopia’d lands causes all the enchantments
to fall off. This is also worth pointing out to an inexperienced player if they play Blood Moon and have
Sprawls on Stomping Ground.
- On the draw, you can mulligan slightly more aggressively towards Gemstone Caverns and counterspells.
- Unless it’s about to take you off blue or our only option is Tron, don’t waste a counterspell on Blood Moon.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Chalice of the Void

- Gemstone Caverns - Spatial Contortion
- Crucible of Worlds
- Spreading Seas
- Counterspells

DEATH AND TAXES

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Thoughtseize - Caves of Koilos
Archetype: - Inquisition of Kozilek - Concealed Courtyard
Proactive, Redundant - Thalia, Guardian of Thraben - Ghost Quarter
- Leonin Arbiter - Eldrazi Temple
- Aether Vial - Shambling Vent

Death and Taxes is a midrange deck that plays a suite of ‘hatebears’; small creatures that apply some form of
restriction to both players. These can be in the form of ‘taxes’ on Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, speedbumps on
Thalia, Heretic Cathar, or restrictions on certain aspects of play, like Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor. The idea
of the deck is that these restrictions hurt the opposing player much more than the Taxes player, and this combined
with good removal, hand disruption and clocks let the them crumble their opponent’s gameplan and beat them to
death with creatures, or use Stoneforge Mystic to throw sword triggers at you.

There are a few different types of Taxes decks, and while all of them have the same basic plan, they differ enough to
warrant a mention here:

- Mono White Taxes: Trades the removal and hand disruption black offers for increased consistency and the
chance to play a wider variety of taxation effects.
- BW Taxes: The classic build, utilising the best disruption the two colours have to offer, with a good suite of
removal.
- Eldrazi and Taxes: Comes in both W◊ and BW◊ colour combinations. This deck trades away consistency for the
ability to be more aggressive and increase pressure with the Eldrazi from Oath of the Gatewatch.

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All the Taxes decks have reasonable game against us, simply because their disruption effects are relevant. Thalia,
Guardian of Thraben stops us playing spells effectively, Path to Exile gets rid of our best creature, Stoneforge Mystic
is a cheap and must-answer threat, and the torrent of discard takes away our answers to the low cost beaters.
Aether Vial is also good as a way to get around our counters, and the Eldrazi versions sometimes run a singleton
Cavern of Souls, which needs no introduction as something our deck doesn’t enjoy seeing.

Despite this, we do have some ways of fighting. If we can get under their first few creatures, then we can play our
gameplan normally and use our spells in an effective way before Aether Vial starts to get their gameplan into action
anyway. They also have no real way of interacting with our lands outside of Ghost Quarter, so getting to Tron early
lets us play big threats that just go over their incrementally disruptive style of playing.

Our removal is usually as good an avenue of interaction than our counters, as they need creatures on the field to do
anything. Spatial and Dismember should be what you’re looking to draw for most of the early turns here, and
Dismember is especially good being only 1 mana, as this makes Thalia’s tax easier to deal with. Just watch out for
their flickering effects, as these can really swing a game if they get to save their creature and fizzle your precious
removal spell with a single card.

Chalice is good mostly to protect Wurmcoil against Path to Exile, but can be blanked with Flickerwisp. If you can
protect the Chalice, Wurmcoil becomes a really strong threat and completely counters their win condition of slowly
beating you to death. Our best stabiliser, however, is Ugin, who just eats their whole board and does so without
losing too many loyalty counters. Oblivion Stone is equally good, and will also work against the Eldrazi in that version
of the deck, which would otherwise still be around after Ugin has ticked down.

Another good line of play is to try and reduce how much their taxation effects hurt us, by aiming to play Treasure
Mage, Solemn Simulacrum into Gearhulk and Wurmcoil. Nothing they have taxes you playing creatures and your
2/2s are relevant blockers against their small guys. This plan is only really hampered by Leonin Arbiter.

This is probably the only matchup in which it’s acceptable to board out Expedition Map in the face of Arbiter’s tax.

Tips and tricks:

- The Eldrazi and Taxes versions are quite inconsistent, and taking just a few of their threats away can give
you a good amount of time whilst they fumble around finding more.
- You can’t pay for Leonin Arbiter whilst an effect is resolving, so do it in response to them activating Ghost
Quarter or casting Path.
- Batterskull is best answered by Repeal on X=0.
- Karn will prevent Stoneforge Mystic from doing anything meaningful.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Wurmcoil Engine - Expedition Map

- Dismember
- Spatial Contortion
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Oblivion Stone

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CONTROL DECKS

Control decks are generally the matchups that require you to think ahead the most, since the games are going to go
on a long time. The usual axes the matches rotate on are card advantage and clocks. As we are very good at the first
of these, we should try and steer the game into a state where the opponent is forced to find a clock or drown in our
card advantage and inevitability with Mindslaver lock. Control decks rarely do well at playing proactively, and we can
use this to get value counterspells in on their turns and use our remaining lands to advance our gameplan.

UGX CONTROL

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath - Hallowed Fountain
Archetype: - Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Breeding Pool
Reactive, Redundant - Teferi, Hero of Dominaria - Field of the Dead
- Cryptic Command - Castle Vantress
- Teferi, Time Raveler - Mystic Sanctuary
- Wilderness Reclaimation
- Growth Spiral

UGx Control covers a wide scope of draw-go control decks. The majority are piles based around Uro, Titan of
Nature’s Wrath and Mystic Sanctuary, since these are simply objectively better than anything else you are doing in
the value-pile camp. Variants within these are:

- Wilderness Reclamation decks (both Temur and Sultai): Decks that aim to use Wilderness Reclamation to allow
them to gain mana advantage, never tap out and chain Nexus of Fate casts combined with Uro attacks, Field
zombies or planeswalker activations to drown in value.
- Uro Control/Pile (Bant, Sultai, Temur): A pile of good 2019+ cards based around Uro. All the cards are
borderline broken and putting them in a vaguely synergistic pile is a good way to carry yourself through a
tournament.
- UW Control: The original Ux control deck, using the best spells in Blue and White without the tax of a three
colour manabase. Can also run Stoneforge Mystic to be more aggressive.

Sadly, thanks to Wizard’s recent policy of printing cards that are insanely good by themselves and/or all cantrip, we
are no longer favoured against control piles. Almost every card in the UGx decks replaces itself the moment it
resolves and generates further value if allowed to remain on the board. Their win conditions are either recursive
(Uro, Nexus) or completely free and impossible to effectively interact with (Field of the Dead). Their graveyard is a
second hand thanks to Mystic Sanctuary and they still run the ‘cannot-resolve’ suite of planeswalkers in T3feri, Jace
and Wrenn and Six. Overall, they have the upper hand with card advantage and interaction, and so we have to win
on threats.

This is one of the rare matchups where we have to play as the aggressor. We cannot afford to let their innate insane
card advantage climb over us to the point where we cannot commit anything to the board no matter how much
mana we have and they are defending an escaped Uro. To this end, our best cards are Thought-Knot Seer, Walking

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Ballista, Karn and the all-star Sundering Titan. If you run any Eldrazi titans, these will also be excellent here to at
least force through cast triggers. Cavern of Souls out of the board is extremely useful.

Our switch to being aggressive does not mean we rashly run our threats into counterspells. Try and get them to tap
out at the end of their turn by using Thirst for Knowledge or Fact or Fiction and then cast something that doesn’t get
stopped by Force of Negation. Running them out of cards in the mid game and getting them in topdeck mode is also
a good strategy, and can be accomplished by making them use their Forces in response to a fast completion of Tron.
Their manabase doesn’t allow them to run more than 1 or 2 Field of Ruin, and so our Tron completion is usually
safer and is a good way to gain a concrete advantage over their value engines.

Stoneforge Mystic is a strong aggressive option against us, since on the play it can come down earlier than our
counterspells and we don’t run a reliable density of removal to be sure we can destroy it on sight. Luckily however,
it takes a few turns before it is ready to swing with a sword attached, and we have a really good answer to
Batterskull in the form of Repeal. Karn also shuts off the Stoneforge payoff cards with his static.

Sundering Titan is probably the best threat we have. The weakness of these decks is their incredibly greedy
manabases and often they will stumble over colours and be unable to escape Uro or cast Cryptic Command, or be
forced to play out taplands like Field of the Dead or an early Mystic Sanctuary. This is where we can use Tron or
Talisman ramp to slam Karns and Though-Knots and force them to expend cards to Force of Negation or just steal
their remaining counters with TKS. It is possible to get them out of interaction this way and get to a resolved
Sundering Titan. This card completely takes over the game; it is bigger than all their threats and destroys their
already fragile manabase. You should likely prioritise taking them off green or double blue if possible, as the value of
an escaped Uro is tough for us to deal with.

Chalice of the Void is pretty much always played on 1, however its utility is pretty low. It blanks Path to Exile and
some cantrips, but the cards that win the game simply don’t care. Mazemind Tome is a much better turn 2 play, as it
allows you to keep pace with their card draw and push towards Tron or a greater density of threats. Graveyard hate
is extremely good against both Uro and Mystic Sanctuary, and will stall a good portion of the basis for these decks
and allow you to right more effectively on the card advantage front. If your meta is a ton of variants of these decks,
consider sideboarding in a Narset, Parter of Veils to stop their card draw.

Tips and tricks:

- If your non-critical spell is countered, Remand your spell, not theirs. You’ll gain 1 card’s worth of advantage
and this will usually matter more than getting a threat down right then, especially if you can fizzle a Cryptic
Command.
- Field of Ruin can be used to make their manabase even more strained, but should likely be saved for Field
of the Dead.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Walking Ballista - Platinum Angel

- Sundering Titan
- Thought-Knot Seer
- Karn, the Great Creator

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8-RACK

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- The Rack - Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Archetype: - Shrieking Affliction - Mutavault
Proactive, Redundant - Smallpox
- Raven’s Crime

8-Rack is a pure discard deck, aiming to rid both players of their hands as quickly as it can, and win by naming their
opponent with one of their 8 ‘rack’ effects; The Rack and Shrieking Affliction. The deck controls the board with
Smallpox, Ensnaring Bridge, Liliana of the Veil and has additional beats and blocker value from Mutavault, whilst
being able to draw cards with Castle Locthwain.

8-Rack is a good matchup for us, as their clock is slow and so we have a fair chance to gain back card with our draw
spells and our stabilisers all line up well with their idea of slow repeated damage. Whilst we are weak to torrents of
targeted discard, 8-Rack doesn’t reliably back it up with fast enough threats like Tarmogoyf or Death’s Shadow to
capitalise on us being crippled for a short while. We should have enough time to draw any of our card advantage
spells or a stabiliser, and these cards give us a great chance of coming back into the game.

Chalice of the Void is particularly strong here, as it blocks 25-30 of their discard spells, but crucially their main win
conditions in both Rack effects. If we get a Chalice down before a rack effect, then we have only Liliana, Smallpox
and Mutavault to worry about, all of which we’re in good shape to deal with.

Our stabilisers are all strong threats. Wurmcoil is probably the best for the cost here, as the discard often stops us
getting to more than 6 mana. Wurmcoil is tough for them to remove and mitigates the life loss from their rack
effects. Ugin can -1 to clear away Shrieking Afflictions, but is best used to tick up toward his ultimate, which is clearly
very powerful against 8-Rack. Mindslaver by itself is somewhat lacking in this matchup, as without the lock we can’t
do much apart from waste any discard spells on themselves or tick down Lilianas against their Mutavaults. Karn is
excellent, as they only really have Mutavault to remove it, and it can allow us to continue to dig for cards to offset
the discard effects. Our boardwipes are very useful here, especially Engineered Explosives hitting all their rack
effects. If you can fire off EE then get a Chalice down you’re usually in excellent shape and have a lot of time to
rebuild your hand.

Tips and tricks:

- Bouncing Liliana in response to her tick up causes them to have to discard it if they’re otherwise hellbent.
- Oboro has decent use here to keep you at over three cards in your hand when the rack effects trigger in
your upkeep. Apart from that, you can keep lands and any useless cards in your hand to take less damage.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Chalice of the Void - Dismember

- Thirst for Knowledge
- Engineered Explosives
- Wurmcoil Engine
- Karn, the Great Creator

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BLUE MOON

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Blood Moon - Desolate Lighthouse
Archetype: - Vendilion Clique - Steam Vents
Reactive, Redundant/Essential - Brazen Borrower - Sulfur Falls
(if Through the Breach) - Cryptic Command

Blue Moon is the most common name for a family of UR control/tempo decks that seek to use a less greedy
manabase and mainboard Blood Moon to cause the opponent to trip over their own lands and give the Moon player
an easier ride when controlling the game. The deck plays of blue control cards in Cryptic Command, Remand, Opt,
Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Mana Leak as well as some burn spells to control the board long enough for Brazen
Borrowers or Vendilion Cliques to push through the final damage. Some variants include more dig and a Through the
Breach/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn package to snap wins out of nowhere.

As our deck isn’t worried about Blood Moon in the early game, we have a good matchup here. Our counterspells
and supreme card advantage line up well against their cards, and as we push them to the late game we should have
ample opportunity to remove Blood Moon and immediately spring our mana advantage online too, quickly allowing
us to win the game.

All our interaction is good, even our removal against their tempo creatures, which when played aggressively with
backup is their best chance of winning. Spatial Contortion can be blanked by Blood Moon, so use it as quickly as you
can against anything they drop early. Chalice is great on 1, blocking a good number of their cantrips and Lightning
Bolt.

All our threats apart from Angel are good, as they maindeck artifact removal in Abrade. Wurmcoil is difficult for
them to kill, but they have ways of bouncing it with Thing in the Ice, Jace and Cryptic Command. A resolved Ugin is
very tough for them to stop, and will likely trade very well even if they do kill him, taking out their threats and a
Moon on the board and then eating some burn spells to gain card advantage. Karn is excellent to accrue value here
and also fetch bridge to stop Emrakul if it comes to that. Mindslaver is usually the best thing we can do, as their
interaction and burn can be wasted on themselves and we can usually just empty their hand.

If they’re playing the Through the Breach package, the game gets slightly more difficult, as you have to try and gain
card advantage whilst always having as much interaction up as possible. They have good ways of protecting their
combo with Dispel, Remand and Vendilion Clique to take your interaction, so it’s worth playing this matchup as a
combo deck more than a control deck. A few variants run Simian Spirit Guides to power out the combo earlier, and
these should be considered when choosing the X for Condescend. We can deal with Emrakul with Oblivion Stone,
and Ensnaring Bridge or an overloaded Cyclonic Rift, but it’s always better if she doesn’t land.

Tips and tricks:

- Punish them for tapping out in their turn for Blood Moon by casting Thirsts and Fact or Fiction. Card
advantage matters way more here and since they don’t run Uro or the UW planeswalker suite we should
win on this front.

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Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Chalice of the Void - Platinum Angel

- Thirst for Knowledge - Spatial Contortion
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - Thought-Knot Seer
- Fact or Fiction
- Karn, the Great Creator

MONO RED PRISON

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Very Good
- Chalice of the Void - Gemstone Caverns
Archetype: - Ensnaring Bridge - Ramunap Ruins
Proactive, Redundant - Blood Moon
- Simian Spirit Guide
- Karn, the Great Creator

Welcome to what is possibly our best matchup. Mono Red Prison is a deck that wants to sacrifice card advantage to
accelerate out a number of Modern-relevant prison cards, then capitalise on their delayed or crippled opponent to
have a free reign with planeswalkers or Goblin Rabblemaster. As can be imagined, the success of the strategy
revolves around how good your prison cards are against the deck you’re playing. Here, Mono Red Prison uses good
choices in Chalice of the Void, Blood Moon and Ensnaring Bridge. These cards, when landing on turns 1 and 2, can
be an enormous speedbump to a wide range of Modern decks, and when backed up on turn 3 or 4 with a good clock
like Rabblemaster, Koth or Chandra, form a ticket to a quick victory. A quick stumbling block backed up by a fast
clock is usually a good way to stop us too, so why is this such a good matchup?

Because their prison cards are all completely useless against us. In order:

- Chalice of the Void – we run it too,

- Ensnaring Bridge – we run it too in the board and we can Repeal it if it ever becomes a problem,
- Blood Moon – the most relevant card they run, but see Blood Moon.

A typical opener from Mono Red Prison sees them play a land, then use a ritual or couple of Simian Spirit Guides to
get one of these cards down turn 1. Here, they’ve gives us a 2/3 for 1 and played something we don’t really care
about. We are in a good position now to play our lands and start countering their actual threats (the planeswalkers
and Rabblemaster) a few turns later. After a short while, this initial card disadvantage catches up with them and
they run out of cards, giving us free reign to take over the game.

Their only real way of making us sweat is to use the Guides to get a threat out early as oppose to a lock piece. A turn
one Rabblemaster is going to really hurt unless we have Dismember or Spatial ready to go. Thankfully, most pilots
prioritise the Blood Moon part of their deck’s main strategy as soon as they see a Tronland.

All our interaction is live, and all our stabilisers are great. Angel is probably the weakest, since they have artifact
removal mainboard. As usual, Wurmcoil is probably the strongest for cost since they just can’t remove it smoothly,

85
especially if they’ve already sacrificed card advantage in the first few turns. Karn is excellent to both get us a
Wurmcoil and also stop their Karns from doing anything dangerous with Liquimetal Coating. Mindslaver is fun to
waste their rituals and Simian Spirit Guides and turn their planeswalkers on themselves. In general, this deck feels
like something ours was specifically constructed to beat.

Tips and tricks:

- Be careful of Simian Spirit Guide when playing Condescends, it’s usually correct to overpay if you can.
- Some builds run Hazoret the Fervent, who can be a pain if he lands but lines up nicely with Dismember.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Platinum Angel

- Dismember - Thought-Knot Seer
- Thirst for Knowledge
- Wurmcoil Engine

MONO U TRON

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Remand - Tronlands
Archetype: - Condescend - Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
Reactive, Redundant - Expedition Map - Island
- Thirst for Knowledge - Academy Ruins

Oh boy. This subsection will be fairly short, as hopefully from the rest of this primer it’s fairly apparent how this
works. Essentially, there are three main paths to victory for each player, assuming their builds are similar:

- Cast more Thirst for Knowledges than your opponent.

- Get to Tron earlier than your opponent.
- Start beating down with an early Mage or Thought-Knot Seer and force them to make the first move.

At a high level, these translate into getting either card or mana advantage over your opponent, or presenting them
with a clock. Generally, whoever accomplishes one of these strategies first will put themselves in a strong position,
and force their opponent to do something to prevent them being dead or outclassed in the endgame. However, the
way of pushing these advantages is somewhat different.

If you get to resolve a few Thirsts, you want to start trading 1 for 1 and have the game go on for a long time. This is
probably the easiest way to victory, as both decks are built to do this anyway. Card advantage, as it usually does,
matters a lot in control matchups. If you get to an early Tron, then start piling on the pressure and see if you can
force through a big card like Wurmcoil, Karn or Gearhulk. If you manage to land an early beater, you should either
do what you can to protect it and force it through for the win or make them tap badly to remove it. This is a
similarly aggressive plan to what goes on in option 2, but is here if you want to play aggressively without Tron. This
does risk your opponent getting to Tron first and playing something bigger.

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Our stabilisers are usually just ways of pressuring. Ugin and Wurmcoil are good here, however Angel is hard for our
deck to remove so can be a good option to protect and beat down with. Karn is fantastic, and you’re almost always
going for Liquimetal Coating to just start eating their lands (starting with blue sources unless they have Tron).
Thought-Knot Seer is a great clock if you can get it to land, since you can likely take any card that can get it off the
board. Mindslaver is very, very strong, as not only is your opponent playing an interactive deck, they’re playing your
interactive deck, so you should know how best to cripple whatever they’ve got going on. A single Mindslaver
activation is usually goodbye. Clearly, Chalice of the Void should be boarded out.

Tips and tricks:

- Thirst is probably the most key card in the deck, and is the best way to punish your opponent if you have
mana left at the end of their turn and they’ve tapped out.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Dismember
- Thirst for Knowledge - Spatial Contortion
- Mindslaver - Chalice of the Void
- Karn, the Great Creator
- Thought-Knot Seer

COMBO DECKS

Combo decks are a good matchup for us. They usually don’t do anything threatening for the first few turns, and
allow us to sculpt our hand into a wall of counterspells for when they try and force through a win. Our difficulty in
these matchups comes from balancing this wall with applying pressure, and getting to Tron can really help here to
allow us to do both in the same turn. You very rarely want to drop your shields against decks than can win out of
nowhere.

AD NAUSEAM

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Lotus Bloom - City of Brass
Archetype: - Pentad Prism - Temple of Deceit
Proactive, Essential - Phyrexian Unlife - Temple of Enlightenment
- Ad Nauseam
- Angel’s Grace
- Thassa’s Oracle

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Ad Nauseam is an all in combo deck; their only real way to win is to cast Ad Nauseam. When they do, they’ll use it to
draw their entire deck with one of their ‘can’t lose the game this turn’ effects in play, and use either Lightning
Storm, Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac to win the game right there with their entire deck in their hand. These
win conditions are very different:

- Lightning Storm: After they’ve drawn everything, they discard three copies of Simian Spirit Guide to cast
Lightning Storm. Since they have their entire deck in their hand the chances are they’ll be able to discard
enough lands to ensure you take lethal damage.
- Casting Thassa’s Oracle with no cards in your library wins you the game on the spot. This is probably their best
win condition as it costs the least mana.
- Laboratory Maniac: this is their backup win condition. It’s more fragile than the other two since both the
Maniac and their ‘can’t lose the game’ condition have to survive until their next draw step. Often they’ll try this
wincon in their upkeep so that Angel’s Grace can be used effectively.

They have two main ‘can’t lose the game’ effects. One is Angel’s Grace, which is fairly resilient with split second but
only works for that turn. The other is Phyrexian Unlife, which allows them to stay alive even after Ad Nauseam has
taken their life total far into the negatives. They also have Pact of Negation to force through their combo, Spoils of
the Vault to find their combo pieces, and mana acceleration from Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom to fix colours and
get their combo going off faster.

Our deck is well positioned to interact with their combo. Apart from the obvious lines of repeatedly countering Ad
Nauseam, we have Chalice to stop a lot of their key cards, and bounce spells to interact with Phyrexian Unlife and
reset their mana acceleration cards. Chalice is best played on either 0 or 1; 0 stops Pact of Negation and also any
suspended Lotus Blooms, and 1 stops Angel’s Grace and Spoils of the Vault along with about 8 other cantrips. Whilst
Chalice on 1 stops more cards, it’s recommended to put Chalice on 0 to stop Pact, which gives them free wins
against your counterspells. You need your counterspells to be live to stop a combo deck.

Karn, the Great Creator is fantastic at slowing them right down by turning off all their ramp artifacts. Pentad Prism
and Lotus Bloom have no text on them while Karn is on the field. They also cannot threaten Karn, so we can
aggressively get a Liquimetal Coating to start taking them off lands in conjunction with stopping their ramp, and
sometimes they never get enough mana to cast their namesake card.

Our bounce spells are also excellent if they go for the Phyrexian Unlife plan, since we can bounce this is response to
a wincon for a quick victory. We can also use Repeal on their mana acceleration cards, forcing them to either use
them to try and combo off in response or to replay them, slowing their game down.

When they try and go off, you’ll have a decision to make to counter either Ad Nauseam or wait and try and counter
the payoff. The second option is better if it works (since they’ll usually lose the game immediately afterwards)
however this line depends on them not being able to stop your counterspell with their whole deck in their hand. If
it’s game 1 and you have a Chalice on 0, then this is probably the best line as they can’t use Pact. However if it’s
post-board they may have brought in other interaction, so fighting over Ad Nauseam itself is a safer bet.

Since Ad Nauseam is a combo deck, our stabilisers are simply there to apply pressure in conjunction with us
stopping their combo. Any of our big colourless cards work well here, with special mentions going to Karn for his
previously mentioned ability to shut off their artifact ramp, and Platinum Angel, since thy can’t kill both it and you
with a single Lightning Storm and the other two wincons don’t touch her. Wurmcoil Engine can also be good if it
connects enough times to get your life total out of reach for Lightning Storm, but if this is the case then you’ve likely
already hit them to death with it.

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With the exception of Laboratory Maniac, which is sometime only a sideboard card, our removal is totally useless.
Even postboard it should be taken out, as we can rely on our counterspells and bounce to deal with Maniac if it
comes in.

Tips and tricks:

- Use bounce spells to delay their mana acceleration early game and draw you cards, but don’t bounce
Phyrexian Unlife just because you can. It’s far better to bounce it after they’ve killed themselves with Ad
Nauseam.
- Ad Nauseam is an instant, so be very careful about tapping out for Thirsts and Maps. They only need 5
mana to go off if they have a Simian Spirit Guide in their hand, or 4 mana if they also have Unlife in play.
- Chalice on 0 is much better than Chalice on 1 despite blocking fewer cards. Them being allowed to dig is
much more manageable for us than them being allowed to resolve multiple copies of Pact of Negation and
force their combo through whenever they like.
- If they go off with Lightning Storm, remember you can still try and redirect the damage by discarding lands.
Some players may also just say ‘Lightning storm you?’ and if you can get to say ‘Lightning Storm resolves’
then you have a reasonable argument for only taking 3 damage since they didn’t specifically announce
holding priority and discarding lands.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Dismember
- Chalice of the Void - Spatial Contortion
- Platinum Angel - Solemn Simulacrum
- Karn, the Great Creator

NEOBRAND

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Allosaurus Rider - Botanical Sanctum
Archetype: - Chancellor of the Tangle - Waterlogged Grove
Proactive, Essential - Griselbrand
- Eldritch Evolution
- Neoform

Neobrand is the fastest deck in Modern, when it works. Capable of a turn one kill, the deck goes off by paying the
alternate cost for Allosaurus Rider, then using Chancellor and Simian Spirit Guide to cast a quick Neoform or
Evolution to turn it into a Griselbrand. From there the deck uses the classic combination of Nourishing Shoal and a
big green creature to draw its entire deck and then win with Laboratory Maniac. If the stars align for them, best
hope you have Force of Negation.

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This matchup is usually over in the first few turns. Either they kill us and there’s nothing we can do about it, or we
counter their Neoform/Evolution and their strategy dies until the find all the bits of their combo again and we kill
them with any form of clock. To this end, our best cards are:

- Dismember, since it’s our cheapest way of killing Allosaurus Rider,

- Force of Negation (if you run it),
- Other counterspells (if they don’t just have the combo in their opening hand)

The rest of our deck is just used to either prevent them recasting combo pieces after we’ve stopped the initial
attempt and for killing them. Thought-Knot Seer is probably our best clock as it is the cheapest and does both jobs at
once. However anything fits the bill here, with a special mention to Platinum Angel for its ability to nullify their win
condition and their inability to remove it.

Most of their sideboard cards are methods of stopping interaction, like Pact of Negation, Veil of Summer (some run
this in the main) and Hope of Ghirapur. These are worth playing around but against a deck as fast as this, you just
have to do what you can and hope they don’t have it. Chalice on 0 can help against Pact.

Tips and tricks:

- Kill Allosaurus Rider as fast as you can, as the sacrifice is part of the cost.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Repeal
- Dismember - Wurmcoil Engine
- Platinum Angel
- Chalice of the Void

STORM

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Good
- Baral, Chief of Compliance - Spirebluff Canal
Archetype: - Goblin Electromancer - Shivan Reef
Proactive, Essential - Gifts Ungiven
- Desperate Ritual
- Pyretic Ritual

Storm is the Modern deck named after one of the oldest combo mechanics in Magic. The keyword allows you to
copy the spell you’re casting for every spell you’ve previously cast this turn. Storm decks in all formats are about
chaining a bunch of spells then casting something with storm to either win the game or gain a huge advantage.

In Modern, the two spells Storm uses to capitalise on the mechanic are Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens. The first
deals 1 damage per copy, and the second makes 2 1/1 Goblin tokens per copy. The deck gets a high storm count by
chaining ritual spells (Desperate Ritual, Manamorphose and Pyretic Ritual) along with cantrips (Serum Visions,

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Sleight of Hand and Opt) to keep making mana and drawing cards to continue playing more of the same spells. The
deck has two cards that compound this effect; Past in Flames to replay everything from the graveyard and Gifts
Ungiven to tutor for whatever is needed to continue the combo. The deck also uses four copies of Baral, Chief of
Compliance and Goblin Electromancer to make all these spells cost 1 mana less. These creatures are usually run out
on turn 2, and will be your first indicator that you’re facing Storm.

Our interaction gives us a good matchup against Storm. They usually have to resolve either a Past in Flames or a
Gifts Ungiven to win, and even then find it tricky to do so if we can get their cost-saving creatures off the field. These
four cards (Gifts, Flames and the two creatures) should therefore be in your sights from the start, as these allow
them to develop into a critical mass of cards and mana which stop our counterspells from being effective. To this
end, our removal is something that should be kept in, but Spatial is acceptable over Dismember as the creatures are
small. Out of the board, Summary Dismissal/Whirlwind Denial and Grafdiggers Cage are all great inclusions; the
former can eat a whole stack of storm copies and the latter stops Past in Flames working.

Our best card is Chalice. They run a single Repeal to try and deal with a Chalice on 2, which otherwise completely
denies them their gameplan. Chalice on 1 is also strong if you don’t have time to get to 4 mana, but generally our
plan revolves around delaying them until we can slam Chalice on 2 and protect it against Gifts and Repeal.

Whilst their usual plan is to storm off completely and get 20+ copies of Grapeshot, our deck is quite soft to their
backup of casting Empty the Warrens on a relatively low storm count. Even four or five copies of this card form a
two or three turn clock that we can only answer with a sweeper or a well-timed Whirlwind Denial or Summary
Dismissal. Engineered Explosives is a fairly narrow answer to bring in but could be worth including if you’re running
the Trinket Mage package to also try and tutor for Chalice. Apart from that, we have Ugin, Oblivion Stone and
Cyclonic Rift to deal with the Goblin horde.

Our normal stabilisers are varied in their use. Ugin and Angel are good against the Empty the Warrens plan, and
Ugin can get rid of their enabling creatures. Wurmcoil can pressure and get your life total out of reasonable
Grapeshot range, and sometimes race the Goblin tokens. Karn is good at getting Chalices and Engineered Explosives
for Goblins. Be careful casting the stabilisers, since (as with most combo decks) you really never want to tap out fully
unless you’re sure they can’t kill you next turn.

Tips and tricks:

- Don’t counter a storm spell with a normal counter spell, and especially not with a Remand. It’ll only counter
the first one.
- Similarly, Chalice on 2 will counter the first Grapeshot, but won’t trigger on any of the copies since it wasn’t
cast. Chalice on 2 is still ridiculously strong.
- Use your counters and interaction on their two creatures and two key cards. Let them use cantrips to setup
if they want to, it buys time for Chalice on 2.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Dismember
- Chalice of the Void - Solemn Simulacrum
- Grafdigger’s Cage
- Summery Dismissal
- Whirlwind Denial

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GXTRON

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average
- Ancient Stirrings - Tronlands
Archetype: - Chromatic Star - Grove of the Burnwillows
Proactive, Essential - Chromatic Sphere - Llanowar Wastes
- Expedition Map

Our linear brother. GxTron uses our favourite lands in an aggressive way as a primary gameplan. Their aim is to
assemble the combination of Mine, Power Plant and Tower as quickly as they can and play large colourless
haymakers one after the other, relying on the fact that playing a much more powerful card than your opponent
every turn is as winning strategy. It usually is; left unchecked Tron gets a Karn Liberated into play on their turn 3, and
can be followed up by World Breaker, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or even Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger if the stars align
for them. Some builds also run the Karn, the Great Creator package for the ability to apply pressure without Tron.

The majority of their deck is focussed around cantripping and playing land search spells. Their main three ways of
finding Tronlands are Sylvan Scrying, Expedition Map and Ancient Stirrings. The latter specifically is a very strong
card, allowing them to dig for both Tronlands and threats and is a huge boost to their consistency.

The widely understood recipe for stopping GxTron is to deny them their combo and apply a fast clock. We are fairly
well positioned to do the first, but can’t really do the second, since we don’t have a reliable way of applying fast
pressure to our opponent. Our gameplan is therefore focussed around trying to keep them off Tron or from landing
any scary threats, whilst building into Mindslaver lock or Karn. To this end, we want to be using Field of Ruin and
Spreading Seas out of the board to lock down their lands and our array of counters to try and stop their Karns. We
really want to keep them off Tron, as their colourless spells are very powerful and hard for us to deal with if they
resolve. The most dangerous threats are World Breaker and Ulamog, as even when countered the cast triggers are
free 2-for-1s when they take away our lands.

All our counterspells are great, with special mention going to Summary Dismissal and Whirlwind Denial for their
ability to deal with the cast triggers. Our removal is useless, with the possible exception of Dismember if they run
lots of Thought-Knot Seers or Spatial if they run Thragtusk, although these can both just be countered. Chalice of the
Void on 1 is very good, blanking 16 maindeck cards plus any Nature’s Claims or Fatal Pushes they may have in. If you
can get them to stumble on their early Tron and get a Chalice down, they’ll have a hard time getting back to the
combo and your counterspells should allow you to build a wall. In these situations you can usually try to beat down
with a Wurmcoil Engine or Thought-Knot Seer. Even Snapcaster or Treasure Mage can win games against them if
you can stop them getting back to Tron, and Thought-Knot Seer can be used to take critical search pieces for their
combo away.

Karn TGC can be used to turn off their artifact cantrips and Maps, and in conjunction with Liquimetal Coating can
shut their lands down as well. A turn 3 Karn into Liquimetal on the play is absolutely devastating and a good thing to
mulligan towards if you know the matchup. The rest of our stabilisers are usually just clocks. Wurmcoil’s lifegain
doesn’t mean much against a deck that fights with such enormous threats, and their way of removing it is usually
exiling with Karn Liberated, World Breaker or Ulamog, meaning Wurmcoil is usually only good for pressuring them
early on if they’re stumbling over our interaction. Ugin forms the same role; all their main threats are colourless and
so Ugin is simply a clock and a way to draw a bunch of cards with his ultimate. Angel is almost completely

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redundant. Mindslaver and Gearhulk are both very useful, the former can win even without Ruins, as we use their
power against them to cripple their game, and the latter is another counterspell with a clock attached to it.

Tips and tricks:

- If you have blockers to throw in the way of their Wurmcoil and suspect they have more dangerous threats,
don’t waste a precious counter on it. Them gaining life is irrelevant.
- Use Repeal to move your Spreading Seas around if they start playing multiples of the same Tronland.
- Mulliganning aggressively to Tron and Karn TGC on the play is a viable strategy.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Dismember
- Chalice of the Void - Solemn Simulacrum
- Field of Ruin - Spatial Contortion
- Mindslaver - Platinum Angel
- Karn, the Great Creator - Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

AMULET TITAN

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Average/Good
- Dryad of the Ilysian Grove - Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Archetype: - Amulet of Vigor - Simic Growth Chamber
Proactive, Essential - Sakura Tribe-Elder - Castle Garenbrig
- Primeval Titan - Field of the Dead
- Golgari Rot Farm
- Gruul Turf

The few variants of Amulet Titan all have the high level aim of use Primeval Titan to do broken things with lands. The
wincons are usually:

- Having a Dryad of the Ilysian Grove in play and searching for two Valakuts, usually resulting in a game-ending
amount of damage,
- Tutoring for Hanweir Battlements to give the Titan haste and continue tutoring lands,
- Finding multiple Field of the Deads and creating a ton of zombies.

Even without instantly winning a resolved Titan can tutor for a number of utility lands to help the Amulet player gain
advantage. Their land-base runs Tolaria West, Blast Zone, Field of Ruin and other utility lands to allow them to
interact effectively against the opponent. They also run Karn, the Great Creator simply because they are able to
generate lots of mana.

Conventional Titan decks used Search for Tomorrow, Farseek and Sakura Trible-Elder to ramp into Titan, however
Amulet of Vigor in conjunction with the Ravnica bouncelands and a way of playing multiple lands per turn allows the
Titan player to make large amount of mana as early as turn 2/3. Dryad of the Ilysian grove especially does the job of

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both allowing additional land drops and allowing Valakut to count all their lands (including itself) as Mountains to
pull off the classic Scapeshift kill.

The deck is largely trying to pull off its combo as soon as it can, which although can be very quick we are in a good
position to stop. They do however have strong backup plans in both Karn and just ramping into their threatening
lands, and interaction denial in Pact of Negation, Cavern of Souls and Veil of Summer out of the board to force the
combo through.

Playing against Titan requires us to lean on counterspells, Thought-Knot Seer, Chalice on 0 and win with Sundering
Titan. The only ramp spell worth countering is Dryad, but even this is sketchy as it dies to our otherwise useless
removal and whilst on the battlefield allows us to end the game with Sundering Titan. Apart from that, you should
aim to run them out of Titans and apply pressure before they can either naturally start bolting you with lands or
making zombies. We do this by playing Chalice on 0 to block both their Pacts, and get Titans out of their hand with
Thought-Knot Seer and countermagic. Field of Ruin is also useful to stop them trying the backup plan of killing us
with natural land drops.

Sundering Titan is the clear choice for our stabilisers. With a Dryad in play this destroys 5 lands, which is pretty much
always game over. Wurmcoil Engine sounds good to block Primeval Titan, but if they’ve got to a stage where they’e
been able to play and attack with it the game is likely going too badly for 6 life to matter. Angel is exceptional
against all but the Valakut kill, as they have difficulty removing it. Karn is good at finding lock pieces in Torpor Orb,
Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice, and can start taking out lands if dropped early with Liquimetal. Ugin is usually just a
wincon, as he’s not very good at stopping our opponent casting combo pieces. Mindslaver has the potential to just
win if we can kill them with their own Valakuts.

Tips and tricks:

- If you run Tectonic Edge, you can take out their sixth Mountain in response to a bunch of Valakut triggers
after they’ve resolved a payoff card. The triggers will then resolve, check their lands and only see 4 ‘other’
Mountains for each trigger, and you’re only taking damage from the triggers belonging to the Mountain
you killed.
- If you Mindslaver them, only play out their combo if you know you can kill them. Getting them to 1 life but
not being able to close the game is not good if they’re now left with Valakuts and a Primetime on the field
when they get back control. If you can’t kill them, you can at least use a Scapeshift (if they run it) to
sacrifice all their lands and then ‘fail to find’ any with the search. Be sure to scream wildly about how the
opponent is a scrub as you do this.
- Karn can plus an Amulet to allow us to kill it with removal, but this is often worse than just getting a
relevant lock piece.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Spatial Contortion

- Field of Ruin
- Sundering Titan
- Spreading Seas
- Chalice of the Void
- Thought-Knot Seer

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GOBLINS

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Conspicuous Snoop - Auntie’s Hovel
Archetype: - Goblin Matron - Cavern of Souls (Goblins)
Proactive, Essential with - Boggart Harbinger
Redundant backup - Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- Aether Vial

Goblins is primarily a combo deck with an aggressive backup plan. The primary win condition is the combo of
Conspicuous Snoop and Boggart Harbinger, putting Kiki-Jiki on top of their library for Snoop to copy itself a bunch of
times for a lethal swing with infinite Goblins. The rest of the deck is designed to both assist in tutoring up this combo
and provide a backup tribal midrangey-aggro plan by making a large number of cheap Goblins and tokens and
attacking for victory.

As Goblins sacrifices the more aggressive side of its previous iterations for the Snoop combo, this matchup is slightly
favoured for us. We have enough interaction to stop them comboing off and without that the majority of their
creatures boil down to 3 mana 1/1s, which is too slow of an aggressive plan to kill us before we can stabilise. As the
setup for their combo (without Vial) is all at sorcery speed, we should be able to use Thirsts to continue finding our
interaction, and even leaving a single mana open for Dismember should be sufficient to be sure they can’t combo
off after you’ve almost tapped out for a stabiliser.

Focus on getting Snoop off the board, as it’s the centrepiece of their combo. If you can get both Kiki-Jikis into their
hand or graveyard you no longer have to worry about the combo and can just play the standard defensive plan.
Even Field of Ruin can be used to force a shuffle in response to them attempting to combo off. Failing that all our
removal is live and our counterspells and bounce spells all serve to ensure they don’t get to keep a Snoop on the
field. Chalice is best boarded out, as they have a wide CMC spread and they can get around it with Vial and Cavern.

All our stabilisers are good. Ugin is the best of the bunch here, as he just keeps the board completely empty. Karn
can get Needle effects to name Conspicuous Snoop as well as Ballista as additional removal, and he stops Vial.
Wurmcoil Engine is good as a finisher to completely deny them the aggro plan once you’re in a position in which
they aren’t likely to combo off. They can kill Angel with Munitions Expert, so be wary of them building up a larger
board presence if you’re relying on Angel to protect you against the combo.

Tips and tricks:

- Just focus on removing Snoop. Their aggro plan isn’t very scary.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Repeal - Chalice of the Void

- Spatial Contortion
- Dismember
- Walking Ballista
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

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WHIRZA VARIANTS

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Good
- Urza, Lord High Artificer - Inventor’s Fair
Archetype: - Thoptor Foundry - Buried Ruin
Proactive with reactive - Sword of the Meek
elements, Essential - -Emry, Lurker of the Loch
- Witching Well
- Whir of Invention

Whirza decks are variants of trying to win with the combo of Thoptor Foundry and Sword of the Meek. Together,
these cards read: 1: Make a 1/1 Flying Thoptor and gain 1 life. This is a powerful engine in itself, but with the
introduction of Urza (allowing Sword of the Meek to tap for U) this combo immediately goes off, generating:

- Infinite 1/1 Flyers,

- Infinite blue mana (each Thoptor taps with Urza),
- Infinite life,
- An Infinity/Infinity size Construct token,
- The ability to use the mana and Urza’s last ability to wheel their entire deck into play at instant speed.

Needless to say, if the combo goes off, the Urza player has won. Granted, they now have to get through another
turn to be able to attack with their army, but being at infinite life with the ability to wheel Cryptic Commands out of
their deck for free tends to get you there. Some variants run a single copy of Time Sieve in the main to allow them to
definitely win the turn they finish the combo, and almost all builds run some number of Whir of Invention to tutor
up the combo parts at instant speed.

Urza decks come in a few variants:

- Grixis Urza – following on from the original builds, this deck is all-in on the combo and plays a Goblin Engineer
and a lot more prison artifact pieces. This should be treated as a pure combo deck.
- Dimir Whirza – A midrange/control deck that uses common blue and black control spells with Whir to find the
combo at a slower pace whilst playing a midrange game. Treat as a midrange deck with the combo as the main
wincon.
- Urzablade – a deck in Azorius colours that utilises the various synergies between the Urza combo and the
Stoneforge package, rounded out with the usual UW control cards and T3feri. Treat this as a Stoneblade
control deck with the combo as another wincon.
- Uroza – an Uro-based Bant control pile that just happens to have Urza included as another ‘good 2019+ card’.
Usually also runs a couple of Whirs for the combo but sometimes Foundry and Sword are omitted in favour of
just playing more goodstuff. Treat just as a UGx deck with the combo as another threat.

The difficulty in playing this matchup comes from the vastly different way these decks will play. All of them (with the
possible exception of Uroza) should be treated primarily as a combo deck, since that’s the most dangerous thing
they can do, but the value game has to be respected against Dimir, Urzablade and Uroza, as these decks are
perfectly capable of winning without putting the combo together and can punish you this way for tunnel-visioning
on the pieces.

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Our best card against the combo is usually Karn, since his static simply stops it from working and especially against
the Grixis variants can turn off a lot of the other elements of the deck as well. Unless you’re sure of his survival, Karn
should always be ticked up, as his static is very often far more valuable then whatever hate piece you could grab
from the board. Failing Karn, the combo is hampered by graveyard hate and Pithing Needle effects on Foundry.

The rest of our deck should be spent on fighting the rest of theirs. Most of the other cards in their decks will be the
standard control cards in the relevant colours, and our deck should be well equipped to fight on that axis. Urza can
be very damaging even unsupported, as it jumps them ahead in mana, comes with another body and can be used
for card advantage by wheeling extra cards into play.

Ugin and Sundering Titan are our best stabilisers here, as they both need permanents on the board to win and all
variants use greedy manabases. Angel is likely too soft to the controlling aspects of their game and so won’t survive
the full combo allowing them to wheel their whole deck out to remove her. Mindslaver is excellent if you time it
right – you can use the combo to waste their entire deck and then cause them to die to an empty library.

Tips and tricks:

- Protect Karn. He’s the best card we have by a long way.

- Graveyard hate is usually very good both against the combo and Sanctuary/Uro/Engineer. Remember that
if they have multiple artifacts out they can reactivate the Thoptor Foundry in response to singleton
graveyard hate and not lose the combo. Grafdigger’s Cage is likely your best bet to prevent this.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Karn, the Great Creator - Platinum Angel

- Grafdigger’s Cage

LIVING END

Favourability: Telltale Cards: Telltale Lands:

Very Good
- Horror of the Broken Lands - Blackleave Cliffs
Archetype: - Monstrous Carabid - Grove of the Burnwillows
Proactive, Essential - Desert Cerodon
- Demonic Dread
- Violent Outburst
- Living End

Living End is Modern’s turbo-reanimate deck. Their gameplan is to spend the first few turns cycling creatures, then
use one of their cascade spells with otherwise irrelevant effects to cast their namesake card for free, wiping the
opponent’s board and bringing back all the cyclers. They then use their massive board advantage to hammer their
opponent to death.

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A key part of Living End’s plan is that it restricts them to only playing spells that are CMC 3 or greater, to ensure that
their cascade spells definitely hit Living End and not something bad like Fatal Push. For this reason, their go-to
removal is Beast Within, which functions well for them; blowing up anything and leaving behind a token that gets
eaten by their combo. For us, this means their interaction is much easier for us to counter, however you have to be
sure you can still stop their combo if you tap out to counter Beast Within.

Living End is a great matchup for us. We have two effective weapons to stop their combo: counterspells and Chalice
of the Void on 0. The latter is fairly easy to use, however with the former all UTron players will make the classic
mistake of countering a cascade spell as oppose to the Living End it hits. It’ll happen once, and you’ll never do it
again. The only exception to this rule is countering with Summary Dismissal or Whirlwind Denial, which clear both
the cascade card and the trigger.

Chalice on 0 completely stops their deck working, so it’s worth protecting. If they’re only running Beast Within for
removal, you can safely use your counterspells to protect the Chalice knowing they can’t do anything scary with it
on the field. However some decks still mainboard Ingot Chewer, which is a very good answer for the Chalice and
often their only real way of beating us. If the elemental does eat your Chalice, just play patiently with counterspells
and go find another one. They cost 0 to play.

The standard build runs three Living Ends. Once you’ve countered these, their only way of winning is hardcasting
overcosted dumb creatures, so you can be much more relaxed about ensuring you always have countermagic open
and start playing threats against them to close out the game. If the worst happens and they do manage to go off, all
hope is not lost. We have Ugin, Angel, OStone, Bridge and Cyclonic Rift that can save us, and Wurmcoil Engine can
sometimes stall against their army long enough to let us find a more permanent answer. Angel here has the odd
role of being useless as a stabiliser before they’ve combo’d off, but very useful for protecting yourself afterwards.
Karn is also great if you have the time, as he can find an Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice and our graveyard hate.

Our graveyard hate options are less required here than they are for other graveyard decks, since we rely mostly on
counterspells and Chalice, however Relic, Tormod’s Crypt and even Leyline of the Void do good work against Living
End. Grafdigger’s Cage however, does not stop the combo.

Tips and tricks:

- Counter the Living End, not the cascade spell. Say ‘cascade trigger resolves’ in response to them playing
one.
- If you Mindslaver them, remember cascade is a ‘may’ ability, so you can waste some of their combo pieces
and fail to play the Living End. Another option if they have the mana is cascading twice, as this uses up two
Living Ends and still leaves them in the same position.
- If you think they’re going to be able to combo off, use Thirst to get some Wurmcoils or Platinum Angel into
the graveyard. You might just be able to hold off their horde.

Good Cards: Bad Cards:

- Counterspells - Dismember
- Chalice of the Void - Solemn Simulacrum
- Relic of Progenitus - Spatial Contortion
- Tormod’s Crypt
- Ensnaring Bridge

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APPENDIX 2: FURTHER READING

This section contains few links to some other sources of information about the deck, and also my decklist and a few
write-ups I’ve done whilst playing at tournaments. Due to COVID-19, the tournament reports are relatively dated
but still serve to demonstrate lines of play.

OTHER MATERIAL

THE MONO U TRON DECK THREAD ON MTGSALVATION

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/established-modern/control/220176-monou-tron-the-
well-oiled-machine

PIERAKOR’S FAQ

http://magicgatheringstrat.com/2015/09/mono-u-tron-faq/

MATCHUP WINRATE ANALYSIS BY PIERAKOR (WITH DATA FROM SHOKTROOPA)

https://www.reddit.com/r/TronMTG/comments/66lt0c/shoktroopa_vs_pierakor_mono_u_tron_matchup_data/

AUTHOR’S TOURNAMENT REPORTS

AUTHOR’S DECKLIST

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/07-06-17-utron/

PPTQ 1 ST PLACE (32 PLAYERS, 09/09/18)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/9em2io/report_pptq_first_place_with_mono_blue_tron/

FNM REPORTS

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/8lhz9k/40_last_night_with_mono_u_tron/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/8axu88/went_40_the_other_night_at_fnm_20_people_with_t
he/

99