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Much Abrew: Mono-White Tron (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week, we had a super-close battle for most popular Instant Deck Tech, but in the end, it was Mono-White Tron coming out on top. Before you hear "Tron" and go running in the opposite direction, it's important to point out that our deck today is a lot different than a typical Tron deck. We're actually a Thalia's Lancers ramp deck (with the Tron lands being part of our ramp package) that's looking to use Thalia's Lancers to not just tutor up legendary creatures and lands but planeswalkers as well thanks to the legendary planeswalker errata. While we still have the potential to play a Karn Liberated on Turn 3, it's just as likely that we do some ramping with Solemn Simulacrum, tutor up an Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and go aggressive with endless 1/1 Solider tokens. Plus, being white means we get some of the best sideboard cards in Modern like Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, Rule of Law, and Leyline of Sanctity. Is is possible that Mono-White Tron can work in Modern? Let's get to the videos and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Mono-White Tron (Deck Tech)

Mono-White Tron vs. Eldrazi Tron (Match 1)

Mono-White Tron vs. UW Control (Match 2)

Mono-White Tron vs. Affinity (Match 3)

Mono-White Tron vs. Death's Shadow (Match 4)

Mono-White Tron vs. Grixis Control (Match 5)

Mono-White Tron (Wrap-Up)

Discussion

  • First off, the record. We played a competitive league this week, and after starting off 2-0, we ended up dropping three in a row to finish 2-3, which isn't horrible but certainly not great. 
  • Let's start with the good news: Thalia's Lancers was sweet. While it looks overcosted, a 4/4 for five actually dodges a reasonable amount of removal (Fatal Push, Lightning Bolt), and the first-striking body actually shuts down a few creatures (like Thought-Knot Seer, along with most aggro threats). Plus, being able to tutor up a legend is really powerful. While tutoring out a Karn Liberated or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is obviously strong, even just finding more white mana in Eiganjo Castle is often very important. 
  • We also have the typical Tron nut draw of just randomly playing a Karn Liberated on Turn 3, which is close to unbeatable in a lot of matchups. While this didn't actually happen in our matches, being able to pick up some free wins every now and then is certainly an upside of playing the deck. 
  • I was also surprised how well the deck functioned without Tron. Thanks to Talisman of Unity and Solemn Simulacrum, we had a lot of games where we just ramped into Turn 4 Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Turn 5 Karn Liberated naturally. 
  • The fact that our deck worked so well without Tron actually highlights one of the biggest problems with the deck: the mana is awful. While having the Turn 3 Karn Liberated nut draw is nice, we actually had quite a few games where we simply couldn't cast our spells, since we couldn't find enough white mana. A big part of the problem is that most of our white cards—Thalia's Lancers, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Wrath of God, Elspeth, Sun's Champion—are double white, and it's actually pretty challenging to have two white sources on the battlefield with 14 colorless lands. 
  • As such, it seems possible that the deck might be better without Tron, perhaps using a Mono-White Devotion shell for ramp alongside the Solemn Simulacrums and mana rocks. Considering most of the games we won didn't involve Tron and many of the games we lost involved being color screwed because of Tron, maybe we should just be a Mono-White Ramp deck to solve the problem.
  • Apart form the mana issues, there are two other big things I would change about the deck. First, it feels weird to be playing multiples of so many legendary cards when we have Thalia's Lancers to tutor up whatever we need. Rather than four Karn Liberated and two Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, maybe we can vary our tutor targets a bit and play more like a toolbox deck rather than a Tron deck that just happens to have Thalia's Lancers. Second, playing Stony Silence in our sideboard is probably a bit greedy; when we sideboarded it in, it often ended up hurting us just as much as (or even more than) it hurt our opponent. 
  • So, should you play Mono-White Tron? I'm going to say no. Instead, I'd recommend this Mono-White Devotion build, which happens to come from the same Magic-League player who built the Mono-White Tron deck we played today.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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