AF: Thank you! It feels great to put up results with my favorite deck. It feels even more special to pull it off in my hometown with all of the locals cheering me on.

 

 

AF: I started playing in 2010 when my cousins dropped off a few long-boxes of bulk from Unlimited through 9th Edition. I learned to play the game with Prodigal Sorcerers, Mogg Fanatics, and Muscle Slivers. My brothers and I ate up the game, and built all kinds of tribal and theme decks; the classic kitchen table brews with kitchen table. The game that we played certainly wasn’t Magic. It was more of a nightmare permutation of Yu-Gi-Oh! using Magic cards. When I started my undergrad at the University of Maryland, College Park, I joined the Terrapin Gaming Club to try to keep the connection to the game and my brothers alive. Here, I met Phil Gallagher (the DnT guru), who taught me to play the actual game with Return to Ravnica guild theme decks that he had put together with the purpose of teaching new players. The club met every Monday and Thursday from 8 pm until they kicked us out of Stamp, the UMD student union. The schedule devolved into Magic around the clock all around campus for the entirety of my undergrad. It wasn’t necessarily the healthiest relationship with the game, but I certainly improved.

 

 

AF: I got my first taste of Tron in 2014, when a friend from Terrapin Gaming Club leant me the deck so that I could try out Modern for the first time. I immediately fell in love with it, despite the meta being flooded with difficult matchups (cough, cough, twin). I put down Tron for a year to play Pod, and had my world shattered immediately after I’d picked up my last Siege Rhino. I put Tron back together, and I’ve never looked back.   

 

 

AF: I’m a Timmy at heart. When I choose a deck, I want to play something linear that goes big or goes home. Nonlinear grindy decks feel like a boring slog when I play them, but casting a Karn Liberated is really the best feeling in the world. Tron itself hasn’t always been the best deck. Around the time that Oath of the Gatewatch was released, Burn was a ridiculously high percentage of the Modern format, and I was resigned to playing 4x Wurmcoil, 2x Thragtusk main with 2x more Thragtusk, 2x Feed the Clan, and 1x Pulse of Murasa in my sideboard. I play Tron even when it’s in a difficult position in the meta because its strategy feeds that spark that makes me love Magic. Playing through the difficult metas has helped me more than anything in learning how to win through the bad matchups. 

 

 

AF: I rarely play MTGO anymore. Baltimore’s Magic scene is absolutely fantastic for the paper player. I have always preferred playing in paper because of MTGO’s UI issues, but I think there’s a lot of value in playing face to face Magic. Learning to keep a strong poker face is such an important facet of playing Tron. The deck topdecks incredibly well because of its density of cantrips. The scariest Tron players will make you believe that they always have the turn three Karn, even if in reality they’re often drawing into it. A strong composure in paper is especially critical with this deck.

 

 

AF: The best matchups are fair decks and control decks: Jund, Junk, and Jeskai. The worst matchups are fast combo: KCI, Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Infect. The fast aggro matchups (Affinity, Burn) can be scary, but playing them with a very conservative approach to your life total significantly evens the playing field.

 

 

AF:

 

• If you get to the late game against U/W control or Jeskai, the best thing that you can do is to play multiple cards on the same turn or chain Sanctum of Ugin triggers. If you are in danger of dying, just take your draw steps and wait to cast your 14 mana worth of spells at the same time. These decks can handle the one at a time war of attrition, but can struggle with their mana against multiple spells.

 

• Against Burn, carefully time your life gain spells. Using a Nature's Claim on your own egg in response to a fetch so that they do not have enough mana to Skullcrack you can be the difference in the game.

 

• Dig deep with your eggs to maximize the value of your Ancient Stirrings.

 

• When deciding how to activate Karn, think about the match from your opponent’s position. The uptick can make your life total feel vulnerable, but often wins you the game. However, using Karn’s ultimate is nearly always incorrect. Balance your plus and minus activations.

 

• Karn is the face of the deck, but don’t be afraid to side it out in wide strategies where it doesn’t shine.

 

• It can be correct to allow an attack through when you have an active Oblivion Stone in favor of an end of turn activation. This strategy can save the day against post-combat disruptive spells, particularly Blood Moon.

 

• Blood Moon can sometimes be your friend. Affinity is perhaps the most common offender of locking themselves under a Blood Moon against you, turning off their problematic creature-lands. Always evaluate whether the Moon needs to be removed or whether you can win through it.

 

• Ghost Quarter + Surgical Extraction is a frustrating combination of cards. Using Relic of Progenitus to target yourself can protect yourself from this play. 

 

• Chromatic Sphere’s activation is a mana ability. Know when your opponents have priority when activating this card; this has implications in the Lantern Control matchup, allowing you to always be able to draw the top card of your library with no chance for a response.

 

 

AF: The absurd power level of your cards vs. your opponent’s cards means that you can mulligan to ~5 and feel like you have a full 7. Mulligan aggressively into hands that have the ability to find tron. One land hands should be thrown back unless they have tron land + egg + Ancient Stirrings.
The most frustrating hands are ones that contain Map + one tron land on the draw. This is a trap. Throw it back unless it’s in a difficult matchup where your payoff cards are already in your hand and your only way to win is to get lucky. This hand is always a mulligan on the play.
One land Forest hands with multiple Ancient Stirrings and Sylvan Scrying are not good against your aggressive matchups, but fine against control.
Below 5, it gets a little scary only because actually finding tron becomes more improbable. I will keep a 4 card hand with a single tron piece and an egg. A 4 card hand without a tron piece isn’t passable unless it has two ways to find lands and enough lands to cast them. Below 4, I mulligan until I have any land.

 

 

AF: The obvious answer is of course, Ancient Stirrings. There really is no replacement for a card that can find your lands as well as your threats. If KCI ends up causing Ancient Stirrings to be banned, Tron will take a massive, possibly unrecoverable hit. The next closest replacement is Oath of Nissa, which is just not deep enough of a filter. For such a seemly innocuous card, Ancient Stirrings gives Tron the consistency it needs to push it over the edge.
The more subtle answer is Walking Ballista. Tron received a huge buff with the recent printing of this card. Walking Ballista’s function as a pre-tron removal spell and a post-tron payoff that is searchable off of Sanctum of Ugin, a win condition, and a mana sink makes it a home run. 

 

 

AF: The scariest sideboard cards are not Blood Moon, Damping Sphere, or Ghost Quarter and friends; very few decks can back these up with enough pressure to make an impact. The absolute best way to beat Tron is to shut off its artifacts or search effects. Stony Silence is Tron’s silver bullet. Playing against Stony Silence decks makes mulligans far more complicated, and improper sequencing of your first two turns can lose you the game. While not as effective as Stony Silence, Chalice of the Void is nearly as crushing. Tron plays 16-19 one drops, which is more than many legacy decks. If you can’t sneak an Expedition Map underneath the Chalice, your game becomes significantly harder as your deck’s most resilient trait, its top-decks, drop in profitability. Other scary cards include Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor. While B/W taxes isn’t a huge share of the Modern metagame, it is one of Tron’s scariest matchups with their combination of hand disruption, search disruption, artifact disruption, and pressure. 

 

 

AF: Anyone who is a Timmy at heart should give the deck a try. I would also recommend it to combo players. It feels very similar to an unfair deck in that you’re playing on an alternate axis of the game. I started playing constructed Magic with legacy ANT, and Tron felt like a very natural deck shift.

 

 

AF: I think Modern is great right now! Humans is certainly taking up more than its fair share of the meta, but I don’t think that it’s a problem. I love the broad nature of the format and the ability for every strategy, angle of attack, and brew to have a shot at the win. It feels more malleable than legacy, with people experimenting more deeply with their lists. I like the existence of very complex decks like KCI that reward high level gameplay. 

 

 

AF: Baltimore has a massive legacy scene, and I play a lot of local legacy. I played ANT for about 4 years, and moved off the deck because of Chalice of the Void. Recently I’ve been playing Eldrazi and Moon Stompy. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

 

 

AF: I just started my PhD in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, and it’s put a bit of a damper on my ability to go to tournaments. I have a ton of respect for the players with careers who manage to fly to tournaments every weekend; the grind is hard. I will be playing the Baltimore Opens in September and December, as well as the Invitational at the end of the year. StarCityGames puts on an amazing East Coast tournament series where I feel incredibly comfortable, and I hope to make a face for myself on the tour over the next few years. 

 

 

AF: Praise be to the Karn Father.