Mono-U Tron is a very strong tier 1.5 deck in Modern powered by the three Urza Land's (
Urza's Mine
,
Urza's Power Plant
, and
Urza's Tower
), with the capability to produce mana on turn 3. This is a control deck, the most important thing to keep in mind is the play-style attached to it, that being "you can't win until you don't lose," grind it out and stabilize. Knowing what to counter and when as opposed to just countering everything is a lesson in knowing not only your deck but the other decks in the meta and how they interact.
Early game control and finding of the Urza Land's is the main game-plan (IMPORTANT!!! FINDING TRON ASAP IS NOT THE MAIN GOAL OF THIS DECK, DO NOT OVER VALUE TRYING TO ASSEMBLE TRON, THIS IS A CONTROL DECK ft. TRON, NOT R/G TRON) before then finding a finisher depending on the state of the game. Many outlets for stabilization through the use of efficient counter-magic and can-trips will allow you to come back from a near loss many times within bolt range to win.
Card Choices
Cantrips: Each cantrip is built to guard while digging through your deck for the desired piece or tool to move towards victory. Low cost and deep mana pools allow you to cast multiple per turn and late game creating a "cancer-control" lockdown with Spellburst (not being one of the cantrips).
Remand
and
Repeal
are optimal counters with
Condescend
granting scry to set up future draws.
Tutors are on the low end but very important with
Fabricate
and
Treasure Mage
over
Trinket Mage
due to personal taste and the fact that it hits all artifacts in the deck allowing for smoother transition from early-game needs to late-game needs.
the counter suite is fairly robust running anywhere between 12-15 typical low cost counter spells. These counters are best if they cantrip for you. one trick to keep in mind is that you can remand your own spell if it is countered, this fizzles their spell and saves your spell.
Mana fixing is a key part to assembling tron on time, while not as necessary as in RG Tron, getting it sooner or later is the goal.
Talisman of Dominance
and Expedition Maps aid with early game mana fixing for hitting the needed counters before dropping threats.
Each creature, the applicable artifacts and Ugin, Planeswalker, work as a combined Swiss army knife style battle-plan to bring in against the right match-up ((eg. bringing out
Platinum Angel
against Infect asap locks out the entire deck).
The land-base is running full playsets of each "tron" piece along with an
Academy Ruins
for recycling artifacts, along with orobo, Palace in the Clouds for minor utility and untapped blue mana, a
Ghost Quarter
for land destruction against RG Tron There is also a singlt copy of
Tolaria West
as a 5th copy of
Expedition Map
(and some sweet flavor win with the
Academy Ruins
). 6-9 basic
Island
s round out the land for a typical 22-25 land control base,
Sideboard strategies are flexible but as this is modern a catch-all is the best strategy in a wide open format. My sideboard suggestions can be found below and are updated as applicable.
I've seen decks running big eldrazi but I find them too hit or miss, you can only get away with it a few times. Pact of negation is another interesting card, some decks running 1-2 in the side or even decks upping the platinum angels to 3-4 and having 3 pacts main along with upping the snapcasters to 4 for the recursion.
Batterskull is very meta dependant, sometimes its great for protecting and finishing, but against goyph heavy metas i like a second mindslaver as its one of the endgames of this deck.
The main win-con being a
Mindslaver
lock by getting 12 available mana and an
Academy Ruins
letting you mill your opponent by continuously taking their turn and tapping out their mana sources. Alternately, Punishing greedy land bases with
Sundering Titan
can give you huge tempo advantage even targeting non-basic lands in some cases.
Wurmcoil Engine
is always a solid card against aggro builds while
Platinum Angel
is a panic switch even shutting down decks that cant interact with it. (Essentially just get the ruins and count to 12, if you can count to 12 mana then you win.)
Sideboard options are very interchangeable depending on the local meta or your personal play-style. I will be updating a sideboard strategy guide for the current standard, check below for details.
If you enjoy the list please +1, any comments or suggestions will be taken in to consideration. With that said, have fun and good luck! This deck will be updated and reformatted to fit the current standard as optimally as possible and as often as possible.
Mono Black Tron is another interesting take on the Tron archetype.
