Resurgence of Tron in Pauper: How a Little Stone Has Changed It All

Urza Tron lands have been such a pillar of MTG, and one could say they are infamous. However, they have stopped being played as widely as they used to.

Pauper, though, is a format where you can spread your Tron wings, and today I want to tell you what flavours of Tron you could play and what makes them particularly viable now. 

Spoiler: there is more than one way to make Tron work here!

What is Tron?

Very briefly, Tron is the name of an archetype that plays 4 of each Urza land, the point of which is to be played in at least one copy each so that together they add not 3 mana but 7. Tron decks typically consist of ways to assemble Tron and expensive payoffs. The strength lies in the fact that on turn three you could play a card that costs even 7 mana, presumably outmuscling whatever the opponent has played. Moreover, until the very end of the game, every turn you're going to have 3 or 4 times as much mana as your opponent. The trick, naturally, is to assemble Tron in the first place.

Flavours of Tron in Pauper

There have been numerous takes on how to play Tron in Pauper, but I think we can reasonably distinguish three main pillars of Tron decks.

Monster Tron

The first is Monster Tron. Its game plan is simple yet effective - assemble Tron as soon as possible and then slam big creatures onto the battlefield. Those creatures typically serve multi-purpose roles. Let's take Bramble Wurm as an example. It stabilises through its sheer size, life gain, but also reach for pesky flyers. Moreover, it can pressure very effectively thanks to trample. As a cherry on top, you can use it once more from the graveyard to gain a bit more life. It's all contained within a single card that, conveniently, costs 7 mana.

Maelstrom Colossus is another powerful payoff that is a 7/7 itself and cascades, hopefully hitting the aforementioned Bramble Wurm for the full blowout.

Flicker Tron

If the previous deck aimed at deploying a huge creature every turn and tap out, this is the complete other end of the spectrum. Flicker Tron is a toolbox prison-control deck. Let me break it down.

The toolbox aspect comes from playing Mystical Teachings and a variety of Instants, each with a separate function.

You can tutor for a fog effect, life gain, mass removal, counterspells, card selection, or even another copy of Mystical Teachings to make sure you never run out of tutors.

The control part now is pretty self-explanatory, as you're using all the above means of interaction to stay alive and thwart the opponent's plan.

The prison aspect though is particularly interesting. Thanks to Ghostly Flicker, you can blink two targets. If you blink two Mnemonic Walls, you get to return that same Flicker *and* some other control tool - for instance a counterspell. This way, you have an endless stream of interaction pieces, disallowing the opponent from ever meaningfully participating in the game. Finishing is a matter of taste. You can kill them with Mulldrifter or fire off a massive Kaervek's Torch.

Altar Tron

To make sure this list is very unique, now we're going to talk about a pure combo deck. This shell aims to loop two Myr Retrievers by sacrificing one to Ashnod's Altar, generating 2 mana, which is just enough to replay another Retriever that you'd picked up from the first one. You can now keep playing Retrievers, sacrificing them, and picking up the other. This is just infinite game actions with no net benefit yet. 

However, if you add a payoff like Golem Foundry or Weather the Storm, you can make infinite Golems or gain infinite life. There are also some other payoffs and sub-loops you could put into the deck, but that's the gist.

Why are Tron decks good NOW?

Let's get into the meat and potatoes. What makes them particularly good now? We've had these archetypes for quite some time in the format. What's changed?

The first recent moment was the unban of Prophetic Prism. It was said to truly revive Tron strategies. Mana fixing is really important, since in Pauper we don't have that many powerful colorless payoffs so sooner or later you do have to make coloured mana. For instance, Bramble Wurm in Monster Tron, Eviscerator's Insight in Altar Tron, or...the entire deck in Flicker Tron. And it was indeed thought that Flicker Tron would benefit the most - and benefit it did but not too significantly.

Later with Avatar, we got Barrels of Blasting Jelly. After it got adopted, it seemed like a complete game-changer! You can always play it early game, it fixes mana twice per cycle, and also provides removal for colorless mana that kills almost everything in the format. This was a huge addition and made Monster Tron quite a bit better than previously.

However, the real hard hitter was still to come.

I'll take the liberty of cynically putting these two cards next to one another. Arcum's Astrolabe has seen the banlists of numerous formats, and it likewise does in Pauper. Giant's Boulder from Hobbit is criminally close to it though. While we can have a full conversation on how many cards you need to be able to scry to equate to drawing a card straight up, the fact is that you can play a turn one mana fixer that filters the top of the deck to help you find more Tron pieces. By turn three, you may have played 2 or 3 Boulders, maybe some Crop Rotation or Ancient Stirrings - and the chance that you have turn three Tron with a colour filter already on the battlefield is crazy high.

This is an unspoken increase in consistency, thanks to it being both a way to find Tron and mana fix. If that wasn't enough though, it's also a removal if you ever need to. Crucially, it tags any permanent, so you could straight-up turn into a Land Destruction strategy on turn three, denying the opponent the mana while having all the mana in the world yourself.

The true strength comes from the fact that you can play all the cards I've mentioned at the same time. And suddenly, when you have 4 Barrels and 4 Boulders, you have super cheap ways to set up and mana fix, while having hard removal just waiting to be used in case you need it.

Conclusion

If you've ever thought about playing Tron, Pauper is your place. Not only can you choose from among vastly different sub-archetypes, but your consistency is through the roof. Have fun drawing the full Tron in your opener!