[Modern][Tournament Report] GP Brisbane tournament report for 24th place finish with G/W Tron
Hi Everyone, Last weekend I had the pleasure of travelling to Brisbane GP with a bunch of friends and playing an interesting, surprise filled magic tournament and I thought I would share my experience with you. Please see below for some headings in the event you want to skip to certain points: Background - Intro/Deck decisions/List I ended up on Tournament - 15 rounds and what happened in them. Conclusion - Thoughts of event/What would I change/Overall takes from GP Background: Myself and a few friends flew into Brisbane on a bright and sunny day with only 1 purpose in mind - Finding some burgers, fries and beer. After a hike around an unknown city and some sub-optimal GPS-ing by a friend this was easily accomplished - Let’s just say that there was plenty of food on 'the stack' and my stomach was happy to let it resolve. We went back to the hotel, got a few beers and got some sleep awaiting a busy Friday where I hoped to score my 2 byes (personal break took me out for a year so no planeswalker point byes) and see how I felt about deck choices and the field. Friday started horribly for my infect deck as I got nut drawed out by Bant Eldrazi but I wasn't ready to give up yet, nut draws happen and you cannot accommodate for them. I started my next grinder (not sure if this term is used elsewhere for the GPT style events day before GP) and proceeded to go 4-0. This was perfect, I now had 2 byes for the GP and this was amazing... until it wasn't. I was informed that although it was advertised as go "4-0" in a grinder with more than 21 people in it, you got byes was not correct - You had to battle the other 4-0's for the byes and well of course one of my worse match ups and some mulligans ensured I was not going into GP Brisbane with any BYES. I was a little salty as per the advertising I thought I had locked byes - not a good start but I had to move on. I sat down with a friend I was travelling with and discussed the state of infect with him based on my experiences and my friend could tell it was not what I wanted to be doing for this GP - Why: The 'free wins' you once got with the deck usually in G1 were not as easy in a world of fatal push and wide creature decks like CoCo. It felt like much more of a grind and I felt myself too many times thinking "Topdeck, cmon, Topdeck!" or "Please no removal, please brick!" and that's not where I like to be when playing magic, especially over 15 rounds. My friend knew that I liked Tron as my "old faithful" in modern but I had let my girlfriend who has only recently started modern play it and it was all she knew and wanted it for GP. Whilst I am competitive I do not believe in breaking hearts - only the occasional dream crushing within the tournament (LOL)! My friend thought for a moment and said, "I have all the mainboard besides 1 Oblivion Stone... get that and your intended sideboard and let’s get you on it for tomorrow". My eyes lit up and it was getting late so I rushed off to the vendors, making it rain with the dollar bills like I was all up in a club ready for a good time... We don't have dollar bills we only have dollar coins, safe to say a few people may have not enjoyed that "rain" being made. Everyone has their version of a guardian angel or a knight in shining armour... mine was better described as a bearded wizard, just under 6ft with a foil miracles legacy deck that seemed to win by being overly shiny and full of value rather than solid magic play - Okay, maybe I was a little jealous of it too! Some discussion of the meta, some banter and a few beers later ... followed by a few more beers and this was the list I sleeved up: Mainboard: 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 4 Karn Liberated 1 Walking Ballista 1 Sundering Titan 2 Wurmcoil Engine 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 1 World Breaker 4 Sylvan Scrying 4 Ancient Stirrings 3 Path to Exile 2 Relic of Progenitus 4 Expedition Map 4 Chromatic Star 4 Chromatic Sphere 3 Oblivion Stone 4 Brushland 4 Urza's Tower 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 1 Sanctum of Ugin 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Forest Sideboard: 3 Nature's Claim 1 Crucible of Worlds 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 2 Thragtusk 2 Warping Wail 2 Blessed Alliance 4 Leyline of Sanctity Whilst this isn't what most would consider a "vanilla list" of this deck I made a few "spicy adjustments" for what I had observed the day before; greedy mana bases and lots of burn. This is how Sundering Titan got in the list and why I ran 4 Leylines in the board - 1 of Walling Ballista was replacing a spellskite which I believed dropped some of its relevance in the Meta and seemed like an easy swap. Only time would tell, but I felt like my list had a plan - Sometimes it is better to have a plan and aim to execute it than go in blind and hope whatever you do 'just works'. Tournament: I have done my best to remember as much as I can from the event. Whilst exact details may be off, the main understanding of how the game went and how I side-boarded should be very close if not exactly what happened. DAY 1: Round 1 (Unknown): I look at my pairings and notice my opponent is someone that I know who plays in the same area as me back home - He is a decent player and won't be getting the free wins from him... or would I? 10 minutes in and he didn't show up - I got the win (free) and whilst I was happy I got essentially a BYE, I was concerned as whilst he wasn't a close friend he wasn't someone I would think would just not show up. I was worried and asked people who knew him and they had no idea, the worry grew but I had a GP to focus on (turns out he was overseas last minute and couldn't make it - Thanks for the BYE). Record: 1-0 Round 2 (Soul Sisters): We start shuffling up and getting ready for the game and I present back my opponents deck to him. Moments later my opponent says, "Oops" and spills my deck across the table clearly revealing enough of the deck that my opponent knew what I was on. A judge ruled in the favour of "assuming accidental" and whilst it probably was it did not feel great. G1: He keeps a rather aggressive hand with lots of hawks and anthems and I am on the draw, I can get to Karn but it is too late and I don't have a board wipe or anything to follow up Karn. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Wurmcoil -2 Relic -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 warping wail + 1 Nature's claim ---- The thoughts here was relic didn't do much, warping dealt with creatures early and due to Path the instant lifegain from Thrag would probably buy me enough time for executing my plan in the event he had an aggressive start again. The 1 of nature's claim was a fill slot because of what I took out, potentially getting me some life off my own artifacts or stopping of the anthems. G2: Not a fast tron start but a decent amount of dig and search and a path + O Stone, I path early, search and dig, eventually getting O Stone and then Ulamog to finish it quickly. G3: Natural Tron with an Ugin and an O Stone - I felt fairly confident this was a win and it didn't take long for my opponent to prove this to me. Sidenote: I would never say that my opponent is cheating, but after a few rounds and finding out the "oops drop deck" routine had happened to a few friends already I was a little more cautious. Accident or not, it is not a nice feeling especially in some Match Ups having this information known to your opponent. Not everyone is custom to calling judges and sometimes people will do this till they get a warning then stop it. Record: 2-0 Round 3 (Nahiri Control): G1: Natural Tron but no threats - I draw only 3 threats throughout the game and 2 are met with a counterspell and 1 with a path. We grinded for quite a while to get a result and I was just drawing lands and search spells - safe to say the station had run out of gas! Sideboarding: Out: -2 Path In: +1 Crucible +1 Emrakul ---- The thoughts here are that path wasn't going to have many targets and incase of flum/GQ, crucible would help and Emrakul in case it grinded out and I wanted a way to win. G2: He kept an aggressive hand with Giest and Snaps, but I had an Ostone and 2 tron pieces with some search to blow up that game plan. After wiping his board, karn into Ugin quickly got him to scoop. G3: On the draw and I had to mulligan to 5 - This was looking like a loss. I had to keep 2 tron lands, 2 O Stones and a Karn. - The luck was in my favour and I got the 3rd tron land off the top and my opponent kept a double giest hand. After putting him off a low mana hand, I O stoned his board, placed another O stone with threat of activation which he played giest into and after a sanctum of ugin + karn I could clear his board, untap karn his land, search another tower, use the ulamog I got off Sanctum and he ended the game with 0 lands. It was a mulligan to 5, but lady luck was on my side. Record: 3-0 Round 4 (Affinity): G1: I mulled to 6 on the draw and kept a "turn 4" tron hand, but my opponent had the turn 3/4 infect kill and it was all a bit too late. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. G2: My sideboard plan meant very little after a mull to 6, got turn 3 O stone + a bit of dig ready for turn 4 but double cranial ensured this did not happen. Record 3-1 Round 5 (G/W Hatebears - Mostly white though): G1: I got on the play and got a very quick karn and he got a vial, he was able to get in a thalia before I karn -3 the vial and then ugin next turn to deal with the singular creatures entering the battlefield. Sideboard: Out: -2 relic -2 Wurmcoil -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 Nature's claim,, +1 Crucible of worlds ---- The reasoning I used here was that wurmcoil being pathed makes life irrelevant, Thragtask can creatre an additional body and give me some life immediately, claim to help beat vial/target my own things to survive and crucible for their onslaught of ghost quarters and possible Tectonic. G2: Fast hand with multiple ghost quarters and a vial - He had the pressure and the ways to slow me down, easy win for my opponent. G3: My opponent mulls to 5 and keeps a 1 lander, whilst my hand wasn't super quick and was hoping to stop the early vial, had O Stone waiting and stars/spheres to dig, the 1 lander proved very problematic for my opponent and whilst I stumbled, he stumbled much harder. My opponent was very favoured to win here and unfortunately some bad RNG got him good, I showed my sympathy towards my opponent and let him give me his "I had you if" story because truth be told he should of had me. Record 4-1 Round 6 (Tron G/B): G1: Unknown Match up, I keep a slower hand, my opponent kept natural tron and 3 maps + 1 star (approx), he GQ's me off a map search and proceeds to get his tron online, finding a karn before T4 Tron and using sanctum of ugin to ensure I had to lands to continue the game. Sideboard: Out: -1 Sundering Titan -2 Ugin In: +2 Thragtusk +1 Crucible ---- I didn't prepare my sideboard for Tron mirrors mainly because of how hopeless ANY sideboard planned for it can be, T3 karns and play/draw seem to get this match up worked out without sideboard being seen much to have any huge effect, so my SB was focused on other match-ups and not this one. Thragtusk was a better threat and crucible to get my lands back after a ghost quarter. G2: Play a tower and sphere pass, he ghost quarters + surgicals my tower. This isn't looking good. He then plays two tron pieces and a map, into crucible for ghost quarter rinse repeat whilst still being able to deploy threats. This was a quick loss and I didn't feel there was much I could do. Record: 4-2 Round 7 (G TitanShift): G1: My Opponent got the play and whilst he was looking on curve to win the game, a turn 3 Karn stalled this plan slightly. Eventually he got out a titan but I pathed it and GQ’d one of his valakut’s to reduce the amount of damage I took. He stumbled for 2 turns and an Ulamog was able to close out the game. I think I got lucky he didn’t have a scapeshift. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic – 3 O stone In: +1 crucible, +4 Leyline ---- The reasoning here was that leyline demanded an answer and he might not have brought in enchant removal. Crucible allows me to cycle ghost quarters keeping them off land and I didn’t feel like O stone was getting much besides Titan which path was able to get and relic was just a draw card in this match-up. G2: Leyline in opener, stumbled on 1 tron land for 4 turns, eventually getting a star to get another land and then eventually stirrings for the next land into a Karn and eventually ulamog. Kind of got lucky here, whilst I stumbled my opponent couldn’t get through Leyline and had no titan to get in early enough. After the game, I asked if he had an answer for leyline or he just didn’t expect it, he said he had 3 natures claims. He checked in front of me, 3 out of 6 bottom cards of the deck where claims… Shame he didn’t sac his tribe elders instead of pressuring me with them lol. Unfortunately, my bad luck was not as bad as his and it got me the win. Record: 5-2 Round 8 (Affinity): G1: I had two tron pieces, a karn, an O stone and 2 stars and started digging. I managed to get tron online as my opponent threw his hand at me early but cracked the O stone on 2 life to stabilise. I managed get all his artifacts and therefore his glimmervoid died. His land held him from being that little bit more explosive. Applied more pressure with wurmcoil and it was over. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: He kept a slow hand against me and I was able to nature’s claim early to avoid cranial plating/steel overseer pressure. I kept a no tron land hand, but it had green mana, 2 scryings, 2 stars and a nature’s claim. I felt like I had plenty of looks and eventual tron and that’s how it curved out. I stabilised with enough life to get back into it, ulamog got rid of the serious threats with a nature’s claim incase anything went wrong. I made him mill the 20 and saw a blood moon, clearly, I dodged a bullet on that one. Record 6-2 Round 9 (Grixis Control): G1: My opponent was on the draw and kept a hand with a lot of cantrip but not a lot of actual gas. I was able to get turn 3 karn, turn 4 sundering and 2-3 turns later an ulamog. This game didn’t have much interaction because most of his turns were spent using his cantrips. I had a pretty crazy hand, but I think maybe his nerves got to him and he didn’t keep an optimal hand – there was no pay off. Sure it may not have been a throwback 100% but I felt like going into an unknown matchup it was too risky. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Walking Ballista In: +1 Crucible ---- I didn’t feel like I could do much but hope I could get back lands with crucible. I didn’t feel like walking ballista did much against a kolaghans command and was too slow. G2: He kept a much more aggressive hand, building a graveyard into a tasigur. I was able to path the tasigur and resolve a relic which ensured I wasn’t getting blown out again. He cast a fulminator mage and disrupted tron, I followed up with a map and got a world breaker, getting rid of a land. I had a karn in hand and a sanctum of ugin and proceeded to get a sundering titan. He didn’t counter Karn and I knew sundering titan should lock it. I was unsure if I should of got an ulamog here, but if he logically went for tower, finding 1 tower was going to be bad enough, the extra 2 over titan seemed worse. He lost a fair few too many lands and terminated by sundering. He wasn’t happy with the result but my karn got bolted and my sundering was gone. I eventually got a crucible, got back a sanctum, cast a karn that was countered but got an ulamog and finished out the game after he spent 2 turns chumping on 2 mana with snapcasters. I was able to get another ulamog off crucible + sanctum, but he wouldn’t give up in the last round. Eventually I got there and finished the day off. Record 7-2 Finished Day 1 at 7-2 and was happy that I came back from some rather unfortunate loses. My friends had bombed out and wanted to go Casino, I decided to go and unfortunately, I went to bed quite late but it was heaps of fun and I felt like there was no weight on my shoulders. I had a good night and win or lose, still made day 2! Day 2: Round 10 (Eldrazi Tron): G1: Turn 3 karn with natural tron into turn 4 Ulamog, I had the nut, what more can I say. Sideboarding: Out: -2 ugin – 1 sundering titan In: +2 Natures +1 crucible ---- This was a similar reasoning to the tron debate earlier, I didn’t put in extra hate like surgicals as I didn’t think it was the best place to focus on during my 75 build. I want crucible in case he had ghost quarter with no back up surgical. 2 natures were for his crucible and also possible pithing needle. G2: He got on the play and had a GQ + surgical and proceeded to play a crucible and locked me out by turn 3-4. Not much I can do. He used his 3 mana to play mindstones whilst keeping me GQ locked and eventually was able to cast his TKS and Smashers. G3: This was probably my most unlucky game of magic in a very long time/ever. He got an early ghost quarter and surgical but didn’t have additional mana to back it up. I was sitting on 6 mana with 2 karns in hand and just needed any land to exile his 1 temple on the board and lock out the game. I had a thrag on board to apply pressure. 9 turns later I had not drawn a land and my opponent had gotten, land into mindstone into TKS, into crucible into TKS into land into smasher. I had an open window of 2-3 turns where he did nothing, but after turn 3 of this back and forth back pray for top deck, he started getting the gas and I was getting the wrong half of my deck. My window got smaller and smaller and eventually he was able to lock it down and take the win. Not a good start to day 2 at all. Record 7-3 Round 11 (Elves): G1: Search into turn 3 tron, turn 4 I pop off an O stone and he had a relatively slower start. I followed it up with an Ugin to wipe the board again. He was on 1 card and unfortunately was unable to get back after that. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering -2 Wurmcoil -1 relic In: +2 thragtusk + 2 warping wail ---- The reasoning here was that my opponent was playing a white splash and I felt like Thragtask provided a better alternative if being pathed to wurmcoil. Sundering and relic are rather useless so they went for warping on some of the problematic elves. I kept 1 relic over keeping in 1 wurmcoil as a way to dig further in the deck, this was about board wiping and finding them quick. G2: I kept a 2 tron land hand, karn and some stars, but no board wipe at all. I knew I had to keep it as it was too good to throw back, but If he got fast it could end bad. As I was digging for my tron lands, I got tron to play turn 3 karn. As I cast Karn on turn 3, my opponent chords and gets a revoker, naming karn and shutting down that plan. I play a tower for turn and draw a star. I went star into stirrings and used stirrings to find the world breaker. I targeted the revoker and was able to use karn again, getting rid of one of the lords. After him playing a few dudes I eventually got an ulamog and he had 1-2 lands and no real board. He scooped and we parted ways. When I milled him with Ulamog, I saw that he had a Gaddock Teeg in his deck. I was curious as to why he did not chord in his own turn, getting Gaddock and preventing me from having any play but path + follow up or an O Stone. I think this was probably a misplay from my opponent and probably caused him to lose this game. But I’ll take a win where I can get one. Record 8-3 Round 12 (Affinity): G1: My opponent saw tron and went all in on the infect plan, a timely path followed by an O stone meant that he wasn’t able to get lethal on me and I was able to get this game. Sideboard: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: After a mulligan, he kept a slow hand, I had 2 tron, search, 0 stone and a claim. This was compounded by the fact he stumbled a little and it didn’t take long to close it out. Record: 9-3 Round 13 (Mono Blue Tron): G1: Turn 3 Karn on the play, he didn’t counter it and from there it was basically over – wasn’t much to that game. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering titan In: +1 crucible ---- I didn’t see any blue so I didn’t know that it was actually mono U tron, he scooped after the karn taking 2 of his lands followed by a GQ. So I boarded how I thought best for Tron. G2: This game went a lot longer, I ghost quatered him earlier and was able to get tron, but before I could establish a play he ghost quartered me back. He then followed up with a spreading sea. Thankfully I was able to find that tron piece again and start jamming threats, eventually finding a map and found sanctum of ugin. I jammed a world breaker, turning his tron off and getting me an Ulamog. From here the game collapsed and it took a while but he extended the hand. Record 10-3: Round 14 (Jund): G1: I kept a bit of a slower hand, Tron by turn 4, my opponent plays 2 dark confidants and proceeds to follow up with a Liliana. This created a very hard match and it ended up with him on 2 before I won the game, having 60-70% of cards flipped as land saved him. Couldn’t do too much here. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. G2: My opponent mulligans to 5, and gets quite a nice 5 with dark confidant helping undo the mulligan. I get a Karn out turn 3 or 4 and go rid of the dark confidant, a bolt finished off my Karn. I proceeded to sundering titan my opponent, he then terminated it, he had 1 dark confident but had 0 lands. He hit me a few times and eventually I dropped to 2 but I played a Wurmcoil to stabilise, unless he had a bolt and I was dead. He drew for turn (only had a swamp in play) and he plays a raging ravine. I get another tron land and can get rid of a threat, the red source and swing with Wurmcoil for 6. I stabilise and close the game down within 2 turns. G3: Opponent manages to get a dark confidant and I get tron and Karn one of his lands, he follows up with a pithing needle, naming Karn. I get down to 3 life and I manage to get an ulamog, exiling his red land for bolts and pithing, so Karn could exile his Tarmo. He didn’t have any red sources left from a sundering earlier and fetches couldn’t help. The game was over in another 2-3 turns. I felt like this was a much harder game for my opponent as he didn’t see any fluminators or surgicals (or both) but after we had a disagreement on life totals (a judge resolved it), my opponent did not seem to want to be friendly. After clutching game 2, I said after shuffling up that I am sorry we had a disagreement on life totals and such, but I hope we can have a good game this time and wished him the best of luck. His response was “yeah k” (or something to that effect)… If there was ever a time to believe in Karma and after I lucked out of game 3, I felt like it was possible. If someone wishes you luck, please wish them luck back – We are all playing the same game we love, let’s keep a better community vibe going ! Record 11-3 (felt bad as my opponent was still live at 11-2 going into that round) Round 15 (Jund Deaths Shadow): G1: He played two goyfs, I cracked an Ostone, he followed up with 3 deaths shadow in the one turn whilst being on 8 life. Safe to say that was a quick GG. Sideboarding: Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. This was something in hindsight I would of changed and I probably gave a bit too much oversight to. I hadn’t had much experience in this matchup since the bannings and I probably would of liked the leylines in as it stops throughseize effects and turns off a lot of cards/life loss to make the deaths more potent. G2: This game seemed to go for ages, exchanging resources, fluminators on my tron, when I got it back, he had a K command to deal with it. This repeated until eventually I had 3 threats (Titan, ulamog, ugin) but no way to play them as I was on 5/6 mana. He top decks a deaths shadow and he is on 1, I am on 13. I draw an irrelevant for the turn and he crashes in for 12, its 1 to 1. I get a star for turn, a crowd had formed at this point as we were on the top 15 tables. I crack the star and say, “I will add a white” (Thinking path of bust), I proceed to draw a path and everyone in the crowd takes a deep, deep breath. I path as he attacks and my next draw is the missing tron land and I play Ugin and ping him for the game. G3: Game 2 took so long that this game doesn’t get too far, I am no longer playing for a win but merely playing for a draw. I see that I am stuck on lands a bit, got fluminatored. Got a O stone on board ready to crack. Find the next land to crack it, reset board and eventually turns makes it a draw. Record: End the day on 11-3-1 and take out 24th place of Brisbane GP. Conclusions/Takeaways: I felt pretty good about my finish and whilst it wasn’t the glorious Top 8, it was still a really good effort especially with how the Day 1 started and how Day 2 started. I got some cash and some pro points and had a smile on my face. It was important for me to keep in mind that due to personal reasons I had been out of the game for 1 year and that I only came back 3 weeks before the GP. Doing this well for me meant that I still had it, something, whatever it may be and it was time to keep going. Hopefully I can keep going and make America great again… or you know just do well at magic? My honest feeling on modern for the weekend was that it was “anyone’s game” and after finishing the weekend I believe it even more than I did before. People are going to play whatever they have in modern and even people with 2-3 decks are still somewhat limited. They are not going to snap change because their deck went from tier 1 down to 2, or tier 2 / 3 down to 3 / 4, they will continue to jam it and try adjust it for meta, so you can possibly fact everything and anything. Pick a deck with free wins. This sounds obvious but I think with the way modern is right now, free wins are so important. The amount of games that a turn 3 karn, followed up by an ugin/ulamog etc was GG lead to games that were just free. After looking around the room and watching others/discussing with others afterwards/looking at my groups experience, there was definitely a theme that enabled people to do “better than average” or even cash just based on a free win deck. Strategies that are more fair did not seem to be able to compete with unfair strategies. Play blood moons, play affinity and turn 3 nut your opponent, Ad Nas your opponent and GG it right then and therefore, force them to have the answer because often they won’t. This doesn’t mean that the fairer decks are bad or will not continue to do well with the right pilots but the experiences were that a lot of great players that lost to subpar players on the more unfair strategies. If your go to deck that you have played for years is available, jamming it can be fine because of the experience you have to get correct lines at most/all points in the game. What would I change and why moving forward: I think the maindeck 60 performed very, very well. I think I would be happy to lock this in for where I would stay. The only slight change there may be world breaker over titan depending on more/less multi-coloured decks are popular. The sideboard is probably where I would make the most changes and if I am honest I would probably change them, take it to a tournament and change them again, and repeat this process for a while because Tron has a few weaknesses we want to cover – it is going to help if you dodge the ones you didn’t prepare for during the day. I would do the following based on my experience + meta: -4 Leyline of Sanctity +2 timely reinforcements +2 Surgical extraction OR -2 Blessed alliance +2 Surgical extraction I would probably try the bottom one first because of how I see the meta going. I think that surgical is a very powerful card and really goes to work in certain matchups. I felt like I needed a better way to win the mirror, it won’t help a lot but because it can help with control strategies as well, I feel like I am happy to remove some “burn” sideboard to accommodate this. Burn feels like it isn’t in the best spot now in the meta and whilst I believe tron should prepare for it, I think we need to starting removing some of the burn protection, help other matchups and hope to avoid the burn. With the sudden rise of deaths shadow aggro, I don’t mind leylines out of the board. I think that having a way to stop them getting their life total lower and stop them stripping our hands can go a long way. An early strip on an ugin or O Stone can often be the difference between winning and losing and keeping hands without these cards do not feel safe. If you are able to Leyline and keep one of these answers to their earlier board, you feel in a good position to beat this. Keep in mind that they often don’t board in any enchantment removal against you either and it is likely going to cause them to get a clog of useless cards in their hand if you leyline. I do believe that blessed alliance under performed for me over the weekend but I am not sold it is a bad sideboard card. The reason I had it in the sideboard was for two match-ups that are not great for Tron; infect and burn. Fortunately, I dodged these two decks throughout the day and maybe my takeaway would be a little different if I had on this card, however I think surgical is still going to be more relevant over the course of a GP with the current Meta. Final Words: Thanks for reading my tournament report and I hope that you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything please feel free to comment or ask me a question, PM is available too and I will aim to reply to everything.
[Modern] [Tournament Report] GP Brisbane Tournament Report, 24th place with G/W Tron
Hi Everyone, Last weekend I had the pleasure of travelling to Brisbane GP with a bunch of friends and playing an interesting, surprise filled magic tournament and I thought I would share my experience with you. Please see below for some headings in the event you want to skip to certain points: Background - Intro/Deck decisions/List I ended up on Tournament - 15 rounds and what happened in them. Conclusion - Thoughts of event/What would I change/Overall takes from GP Background: Myself and a few friends flew into Brisbane on a bright and sunny day with only 1 purpose in mind - Finding some burgers, fries and beer. After a hike around an unknown city and some sub-optimal GPS-ing by a friend this was easily accomplished - Let’s just say that there was plenty of food on 'the stack' and my stomach was happy to let it resolve. We went back to the hotel, got a few beers and got some sleep awaiting a busy Friday where I hoped to score my 2 byes (personal break took me out for a year so no planeswalker point byes) and see how I felt about deck choices and the field. Friday started horribly for my infect deck as I got nut drawed out by Bant Eldrazi but I wasn't ready to give up yet, nut draws happen and you cannot accommodate for them. I started my next grinder (not sure if this term is used elsewhere for the GPT style events day before GP) and proceeded to go 4-0. This was perfect, I now had 2 byes for the GP and this was amazing... until it wasn't. I was informed that although it was advertised as go "4-0" in a grinder with more than 21 people in it, you got byes was not correct - You had to battle the other 4-0's for the byes and well of course one of my worse match ups and some mulligans ensured I was not going into GP Brisbane with any BYES. I was a little salty as per the advertising I thought I had locked byes - not a good start but I had to move on. I sat down with a friend I was travelling with and discussed the state of infect with him based on my experiences and my friend could tell it was not what I wanted to be doing for this GP - Why: The 'free wins' you once got with the deck usually in G1 were not as easy in a world of fatal push and wide creature decks like CoCo. It felt like much more of a grind and I felt myself too many times thinking "Topdeck, cmon, Topdeck!" or "Please no removal, please brick!" and that's not where I like to be when playing magic, especially over 15 rounds. My friend knew that I liked Tron as my "old faithful" in modern but I had let my girlfriend who has only recently started modern play it and it was all she knew and wanted it for GP. Whilst I am competitive I do not believe in breaking hearts - only the occasional dream crushing within the tournament (LOL)! My friend thought for a moment and said, "I have all the mainboard besides 1 Oblivion Stone... get that and your intended sideboard and let’s get you on it for tomorrow". My eyes lit up and it was getting late so I rushed off to the vendors, making it rain with the dollar bills like I was all up in a club ready for a good time... We don't have dollar bills we only have dollar coins, safe to say a few people may have not enjoyed that "rain" being made. Everyone has their version of a guardian angel or a knight in shining armour... mine was better described as a bearded wizard, just under 6ft with a foil miracles legacy deck that seemed to win by being overly shiny and full of value rather than solid magic play - Okay, maybe I was a little jealous of it too! Some discussion of the meta, some banter and a few beers later ... followed by a few more beers and this was the list I sleeved up: Mainboard: 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 4 Karn Liberated 1 Walking Ballista 1 Sundering Titan 2 Wurmcoil Engine 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 1 World Breaker 4 Sylvan Scrying 4 Ancient Stirrings 3 Path to Exile 2 Relic of Progenitus 4 Expedition Map 4 Chromatic Star 4 Chromatic Sphere 3 Oblivion Stone 4 Brushland 4 Urza's Tower 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 1 Sanctum of Ugin 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Forest Sideboard: 3 Nature's Claim 1 Crucible of Worlds 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 2 Thragtusk 2 Warping Wail 2 Blessed Alliance 4 Leyline of Sanctity Whilst this isn't what most would consider a "vanilla list" of this deck I made a few "spicy adjustments" for what I had observed the day before; greedy mana bases and lots of burn. This is how Sundering Titan got in the list and why I ran 4 Leylines in the board - 1 of Walling Ballista was replacing a spellskite which I believed dropped some of its relevance in the Meta and seemed like an easy swap. Only time would tell, but I felt like my list had a plan - Sometimes it is better to have a plan and aim to execute it than go in blind and hope whatever you do 'just works'. Tournament: I have done my best to remember as much as I can from the event. Whilst exact details may be off, the main understanding of how the game went and how I side-boarded should be very close if not exactly what happened. DAY 1: Round 1 (Unknown): I look at my pairings and notice my opponent is someone that I know who plays in the same area as me back home - He is a decent player and won't be getting the free wins from him... or would I? 10 minutes in and he didn't show up - I got the win (free) and whilst I was happy I got essentially a BYE, I was concerned as whilst he wasn't a close friend he wasn't someone I would think would just not show up. I was worried and asked people who knew him and they had no idea, the worry grew but I had a GP to focus on (turns out he was overseas last minute and couldn't make it - Thanks for the BYE). Record: 1-0 Round 2 (Soul Sisters): We start shuffling up and getting ready for the game and I present back my opponents deck to him. Moments later my opponent says, "Oops" and spills my deck across the table clearly revealing enough of the deck that my opponent knew what I was on. A judge ruled in the favour of "assuming accidental" and whilst it probably was it did not feel great. G1: He keeps a rather aggressive hand with lots of hawks and anthems and I am on the draw, I can get to Karn but it is too late and I don't have a board wipe or anything to follow up Karn. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Wurmcoil -2 Relic -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 warping wail + 1 Nature's claim ---- The thoughts here was relic didn't do much, warping dealt with creatures early and due to Path the instant lifegain from Thrag would probably buy me enough time for executing my plan in the event he had an aggressive start again. The 1 of nature's claim was a fill slot because of what I took out, potentially getting me some life off my own artifacts or stopping of the anthems. G2: Not a fast tron start but a decent amount of dig and search and a path + O Stone, I path early, search and dig, eventually getting O Stone and then Ulamog to finish it quickly. G3: Natural Tron with an Ugin and an O Stone - I felt fairly confident this was a win and it didn't take long for my opponent to prove this to me. Sidenote: I would never say that my opponent is cheating, but after a few rounds and finding out the "oops drop deck" routine had happened to a few friends already I was a little more cautious. Accident or not, it is not a nice feeling especially in some Match Ups having this information known to your opponent. Not everyone is custom to calling judges and sometimes people will do this till they get a warning then stop it. Record: 2-0 Round 3 (Nahiri Control): G1: Natural Tron but no threats - I draw only 3 threats throughout the game and 2 are met with a counterspell and 1 with a path. We grinded for quite a while to get a result and I was just drawing lands and search spells - safe to say the station had run out of gas! Sideboarding: Out: -2 Path In: +1 Crucible +1 Emrakul ---- The thoughts here are that path wasn't going to have many targets and incase of flum/GQ, crucible would help and Emrakul in case it grinded out and I wanted a way to win. G2: He kept an aggressive hand with Giest and Snaps, but I had an Ostone and 2 tron pieces with some search to blow up that game plan. After wiping his board, karn into Ugin quickly got him to scoop. G3: On the draw and I had to mulligan to 5 - This was looking like a loss. I had to keep 2 tron lands, 2 O Stones and a Karn. - The luck was in my favour and I got the 3rd tron land off the top and my opponent kept a double giest hand. After putting him off a low mana hand, I O stoned his board, placed another O stone with threat of activation which he played giest into and after a sanctum of ugin + karn I could clear his board, untap karn his land, search another tower, use the ulamog I got off Sanctum and he ended the game with 0 lands. It was a mulligan to 5, but lady luck was on my side. Record: 3-0 Round 4 (Affinity): G1: I mulled to 6 on the draw and kept a "turn 4" tron hand, but my opponent had the turn 3/4 infect kill and it was all a bit too late. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. G2: My sideboard plan meant very little after a mull to 6, got turn 3 O stone + a bit of dig ready for turn 4 but double cranial ensured this did not happen. Record 3-1 Round 5 (G/W Hatebears - Mostly white though): G1: I got on the play and got a very quick karn and he got a vial, he was able to get in a thalia before I karn -3 the vial and then ugin next turn to deal with the singular creatures entering the battlefield. Sideboard: Out: -2 relic -2 Wurmcoil -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 Nature's claim,, +1 Crucible of worlds ---- The reasoning I used here was that wurmcoil being pathed makes life irrelevant, Thragtask can creatre an additional body and give me some life immediately, claim to help beat vial/target my own things to survive and crucible for their onslaught of ghost quarters and possible Tectonic. G2: Fast hand with multiple ghost quarters and a vial - He had the pressure and the ways to slow me down, easy win for my opponent. G3: My opponent mulls to 5 and keeps a 1 lander, whilst my hand wasn't super quick and was hoping to stop the early vial, had O Stone waiting and stars/spheres to dig, the 1 lander proved very problematic for my opponent and whilst I stumbled, he stumbled much harder. My opponent was very favoured to win here and unfortunately some bad RNG got him good, I showed my sympathy towards my opponent and let him give me his "I had you if" story because truth be told he should of had me. Record 4-1 Round 6 (Tron G/B): G1: Unknown Match up, I keep a slower hand, my opponent kept natural tron and 3 maps + 1 star (approx), he GQ's me off a map search and proceeds to get his tron online, finding a karn before T4 Tron and using sanctum of ugin to ensure I had to lands to continue the game. Sideboard: Out: -1 Sundering Titan -2 Ugin In: +2 Thragtusk +1 Crucible ---- I didn't prepare my sideboard for Tron mirrors mainly because of how hopeless ANY sideboard planned for it can be, T3 karns and play/draw seem to get this match up worked out without sideboard being seen much to have any huge effect, so my SB was focused on other match-ups and not this one. Thragtusk was a better threat and crucible to get my lands back after a ghost quarter. G2: Play a tower and sphere pass, he ghost quarters + surgicals my tower. This isn't looking good. He then plays two tron pieces and a map, into crucible for ghost quarter rinse repeat whilst still being able to deploy threats. This was a quick loss and I didn't feel there was much I could do. Record: 4-2 Round 7 (G TitanShift): G1: My Opponent got the play and whilst he was looking on curve to win the game, a turn 3 Karn stalled this plan slightly. Eventually he got out a titan but I pathed it and GQ’d one of his valakut’s to reduce the amount of damage I took. He stumbled for 2 turns and an Ulamog was able to close out the game. I think I got lucky he didn’t have a scapeshift. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic – 3 O stone In: +1 crucible, +4 Leyline ---- The reasoning here was that leyline demanded an answer and he might not have brought in enchant removal. Crucible allows me to cycle ghost quarters keeping them off land and I didn’t feel like O stone was getting much besides Titan which path was able to get and relic was just a draw card in this match-up. G2: Leyline in opener, stumbled on 1 tron land for 4 turns, eventually getting a star to get another land and then eventually stirrings for the next land into a Karn and eventually ulamog. Kind of got lucky here, whilst I stumbled my opponent couldn’t get through Leyline and had no titan to get in early enough. After the game, I asked if he had an answer for leyline or he just didn’t expect it, he said he had 3 natures claims. He checked in front of me, 3 out of 6 bottom cards of the deck where claims… Shame he didn’t sac his tribe elders instead of pressuring me with them lol. Unfortunately, my bad luck was not as bad as his and it got me the win. Record: 5-2 Round 8 (Affinity): G1: I had two tron pieces, a karn, an O stone and 2 stars and started digging. I managed to get tron online as my opponent threw his hand at me early but cracked the O stone on 2 life to stabilise. I managed get all his artifacts and therefore his glimmervoid died. His land held him from being that little bit more explosive. Applied more pressure with wurmcoil and it was over. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: He kept a slow hand against me and I was able to nature’s claim early to avoid cranial plating/steel overseer pressure. I kept a no tron land hand, but it had green mana, 2 scryings, 2 stars and a nature’s claim. I felt like I had plenty of looks and eventual tron and that’s how it curved out. I stabilised with enough life to get back into it, ulamog got rid of the serious threats with a nature’s claim incase anything went wrong. I made him mill the 20 and saw a blood moon, clearly, I dodged a bullet on that one. Record 6-2 Round 9 (Grixis Control): G1: My opponent was on the draw and kept a hand with a lot of cantrip but not a lot of actual gas. I was able to get turn 3 karn, turn 4 sundering and 2-3 turns later an ulamog. This game didn’t have much interaction because most of his turns were spent using his cantrips. I had a pretty crazy hand, but I think maybe his nerves got to him and he didn’t keep an optimal hand – there was no pay off. Sure it may not have been a throwback 100% but I felt like going into an unknown matchup it was too risky. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Walking Ballista In: +1 Crucible ---- I didn’t feel like I could do much but hope I could get back lands with crucible. I didn’t feel like walking ballista did much against a kolaghans command and was too slow. G2: He kept a much more aggressive hand, building a graveyard into a tasigur. I was able to path the tasigur and resolve a relic which ensured I wasn’t getting blown out again. He cast a fulminator mage and disrupted tron, I followed up with a map and got a world breaker, getting rid of a land. I had a karn in hand and a sanctum of ugin and proceeded to get a sundering titan. He didn’t counter Karn and I knew sundering titan should lock it. I was unsure if I should of got an ulamog here, but if he logically went for tower, finding 1 tower was going to be bad enough, the extra 2 over titan seemed worse. He lost a fair few too many lands and terminated by sundering. He wasn’t happy with the result but my karn got bolted and my sundering was gone. I eventually got a crucible, got back a sanctum, cast a karn that was countered but got an ulamog and finished out the game after he spent 2 turns chumping on 2 mana with snapcasters. I was able to get another ulamog off crucible + sanctum, but he wouldn’t give up in the last round. Eventually I got there and finished the day off. Record 7-2 Finished Day 1 at 7-2 and was happy that I came back from some rather unfortunate loses. My friends had bombed out and wanted to go Casino, I decided to go and unfortunately, I went to bed quite late but it was heaps of fun and I felt like there was no weight on my shoulders. I had a good night and win or lose, still made day 2! Day 2: Round 10 (Eldrazi Tron): G1: Turn 3 karn with natural tron into turn 4 Ulamog, I had the nut, what more can I say. Sideboarding: Out: -2 ugin – 1 sundering titan In: +2 Natures +1 crucible ---- This was a similar reasoning to the tron debate earlier, I didn’t put in extra hate like surgicals as I didn’t think it was the best place to focus on during my 75 build. I want crucible in case he had ghost quarter with no back up surgical. 2 natures were for his crucible and also possible pithing needle. G2: He got on the play and had a GQ + surgical and proceeded to play a crucible and locked me out by turn 3-4. Not much I can do. He used his 3 mana to play mindstones whilst keeping me GQ locked and eventually was able to cast his TKS and Smashers. G3: This was probably my most unlucky game of magic in a very long time/ever. He got an early ghost quarter and surgical but didn’t have additional mana to back it up. I was sitting on 6 mana with 2 karns in hand and just needed any land to exile his 1 temple on the board and lock out the game. I had a thrag on board to apply pressure. 9 turns later I had not drawn a land and my opponent had gotten, land into mindstone into TKS, into crucible into TKS into land into smasher. I had an open window of 2-3 turns where he did nothing, but after turn 3 of this back and forth back pray for top deck, he started getting the gas and I was getting the wrong half of my deck. My window got smaller and smaller and eventually he was able to lock it down and take the win. Not a good start to day 2 at all. Record 7-3 Round 11 (Elves): G1: Search into turn 3 tron, turn 4 I pop off an O stone and he had a relatively slower start. I followed it up with an Ugin to wipe the board again. He was on 1 card and unfortunately was unable to get back after that. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering -2 Wurmcoil -1 relic In: +2 thragtusk + 2 warping wail ---- The reasoning here was that my opponent was playing a white splash and I felt like Thragtask provided a better alternative if being pathed to wurmcoil. Sundering and relic are rather useless so they went for warping on some of the problematic elves. I kept 1 relic over keeping in 1 wurmcoil as a way to dig further in the deck, this was about board wiping and finding them quick. G2: I kept a 2 tron land hand, karn and some stars, but no board wipe at all. I knew I had to keep it as it was too good to throw back, but If he got fast it could end bad. As I was digging for my tron lands, I got tron to play turn 3 karn. As I cast Karn on turn 3, my opponent chords and gets a revoker, naming karn and shutting down that plan. I play a tower for turn and draw a star. I went star into stirrings and used stirrings to find the world breaker. I targeted the revoker and was able to use karn again, getting rid of one of the lords. After him playing a few dudes I eventually got an ulamog and he had 1-2 lands and no real board. He scooped and we parted ways. When I milled him with Ulamog, I saw that he had a Gaddock Teeg in his deck. I was curious as to why he did not chord in his own turn, getting Gaddock and preventing me from having any play but path + follow up or an O Stone. I think this was probably a misplay from my opponent and probably caused him to lose this game. But I’ll take a win where I can get one. Record 8-3 Round 12 (Affinity): G1: My opponent saw tron and went all in on the infect plan, a timely path followed by an O stone meant that he wasn’t able to get lethal on me and I was able to get this game. Sideboard: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: After a mulligan, he kept a slow hand, I had 2 tron, search, 0 stone and a claim. This was compounded by the fact he stumbled a little and it didn’t take long to close it out. Record: 9-3 Round 13 (Mono Blue Tron): G1: Turn 3 Karn on the play, he didn’t counter it and from there it was basically over – wasn’t much to that game. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering titan In: +1 crucible ---- I didn’t see any blue so I didn’t know that it was actually mono U tron, he scooped after the karn taking 2 of his lands followed by a GQ. So I boarded how I thought best for Tron. G2: This game went a lot longer, I ghost quatered him earlier and was able to get tron, but before I could establish a play he ghost quartered me back. He then followed up with a spreading sea. Thankfully I was able to find that tron piece again and start jamming threats, eventually finding a map and found sanctum of ugin. I jammed a world breaker, turning his tron off and getting me an Ulamog. From here the game collapsed and it took a while but he extended the hand. Record 10-3: Round 14 (Jund): G1: I kept a bit of a slower hand, Tron by turn 4, my opponent plays 2 dark confidants and proceeds to follow up with a Liliana. This created a very hard match and it ended up with him on 2 before I won the game, having 60-70% of cards flipped as land saved him. Couldn’t do too much here. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. G2: My opponent mulligans to 5, and gets quite a nice 5 with dark confidant helping undo the mulligan. I get a Karn out turn 3 or 4 and go rid of the dark confidant, a bolt finished off my Karn. I proceeded to sundering titan my opponent, he then terminated it, he had 1 dark confident but had 0 lands. He hit me a few times and eventually I dropped to 2 but I played a Wurmcoil to stabilise, unless he had a bolt and I was dead. He drew for turn (only had a swamp in play) and he plays a raging ravine. I get another tron land and can get rid of a threat, the red source and swing with Wurmcoil for 6. I stabilise and close the game down within 2 turns. G3: Opponent manages to get a dark confidant and I get tron and Karn one of his lands, he follows up with a pithing needle, naming Karn. I get down to 3 life and I manage to get an ulamog, exiling his red land for bolts and pithing, so Karn could exile his Tarmo. He didn’t have any red sources left from a sundering earlier and fetches couldn’t help. The game was over in another 2-3 turns. I felt like this was a much harder game for my opponent as he didn’t see any fluminators or surgicals (or both) but after we had a disagreement on life totals (a judge resolved it), my opponent did not seem to want to be friendly. After clutching game 2, I said after shuffling up that I am sorry we had a disagreement on life totals and such, but I hope we can have a good game this time and wished him the best of luck. His response was “yeah k” (or something to that effect)… If there was ever a time to believe in Karma and after I lucked out of game 3, I felt like it was possible. If someone wishes you luck, please wish them luck back – We are all playing the same game we love, let’s keep a better community vibe going ! Record 11-3 (felt bad as my opponent was still live at 11-2 going into that round) Round 15 (Jund Deaths Shadow): G1: He played two goyfs, I cracked an Ostone, he followed up with 3 deaths shadow in the one turn whilst being on 8 life. Safe to say that was a quick GG. Sideboarding: Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. This was something in hindsight I would of changed and I probably gave a bit too much oversight to. I hadn’t had much experience in this matchup since the bannings and I probably would of liked the leylines in as it stops throughseize effects and turns off a lot of cards/life loss to make the deaths more potent. G2: This game seemed to go for ages, exchanging resources, fluminators on my tron, when I got it back, he had a K command to deal with it. This repeated until eventually I had 3 threats (Titan, ulamog, ugin) but no way to play them as I was on 5/6 mana. He top decks a deaths shadow and he is on 1, I am on 13. I draw an irrelevant for the turn and he crashes in for 12, its 1 to 1. I get a star for turn, a crowd had formed at this point as we were on the top 15 tables. I crack the star and say, “I will add a white” (Thinking path of bust), I proceed to draw a path and everyone in the crowd takes a deep, deep breath. I path as he attacks and my next draw is the missing tron land and I play Ugin and ping him for the game. G3: Game 2 took so long that this game doesn’t get too far, I am no longer playing for a win but merely playing for a draw. I see that I am stuck on lands a bit, got fluminatored. Got a O stone on board ready to crack. Find the next land to crack it, reset board and eventually turns makes it a draw. Record: End the day on 11-3-1 and take out 24th place of Brisbane GP. Conclusions/Takeaways: I felt pretty good about my finish and whilst it wasn’t the glorious Top 8, it was still a really good effort especially with how the Day 1 started and how Day 2 started. I got some cash and some pro points and had a smile on my face. It was important for me to keep in mind that due to personal reasons I had been out of the game for 1 year and that I only came back 3 weeks before the GP. Doing this well for me meant that I still had it, something, whatever it may be and it was time to keep going. Hopefully I can keep going and make America great again… or you know just do well at magic? My honest feeling on modern for the weekend was that it was “anyone’s game” and after finishing the weekend I believe it even more than I did before. People are going to play whatever they have in modern and even people with 2-3 decks are still somewhat limited. They are not going to snap change because their deck went from tier 1 down to 2, or tier 2 / 3 down to 3 / 4, they will continue to jam it and try adjust it for meta, so you can possibly fact everything and anything. Pick a deck with free wins. This sounds obvious but I think with the way modern is right now, free wins are so important. The amount of games that a turn 3 karn, followed up by an ugin/ulamog etc was GG lead to games that were just free. After looking around the room and watching others/discussing with others afterwards/looking at my groups experience, there was definitely a theme that enabled people to do “better than average” or even cash just based on a free win deck. Strategies that are more fair did not seem to be able to compete with unfair strategies. Play blood moons, play affinity and turn 3 nut your opponent, Ad Nas your opponent and GG it right then and therefore, force them to have the answer because often they won’t. This doesn’t mean that the fairer decks are bad or will not continue to do well with the right pilots but the experiences were that a lot of great players that lost to subpar players on the more unfair strategies. If your go to deck that you have played for years is available, jamming it can be fine because of the experience you have to get correct lines at most/all points in the game. What would I change and why moving forward: I think the maindeck 60 performed very, very well. I think I would be happy to lock this in for where I would stay. The only slight change there may be world breaker over titan depending on more/less multi-coloured decks are popular. The sideboard is probably where I would make the most changes and if I am honest I would probably change them, take it to a tournament and change them again, and repeat this process for a while because Tron has a few weaknesses we want to cover – it is going to help if you dodge the ones you didn’t prepare for during the day. I would do the following based on my experience + meta: -4 Leyline of Sanctity +2 timely reinforcements +2 Surgical extraction OR -2 Blessed alliance +2 Surgical extraction I would probably try the bottom one first because of how I see the meta going. I think that surgical is a very powerful card and really goes to work in certain matchups. I felt like I needed a better way to win the mirror, it won’t help a lot but because it can help with control strategies as well, I feel like I am happy to remove some “burn” sideboard to accommodate this. Burn feels like it isn’t in the best spot now in the meta and whilst I believe tron should prepare for it, I think we need to starting removing some of the burn protection, help other matchups and hope to avoid the burn. With the sudden rise of deaths shadow aggro, I don’t mind leylines out of the board. I think that having a way to stop them getting their life total lower and stop them stripping our hands can go a long way. An early strip on an ugin or O Stone can often be the difference between winning and losing and keeping hands without these cards do not feel safe. If you are able to Leyline and keep one of these answers to their earlier board, you feel in a good position to beat this. Keep in mind that they often don’t board in any enchantment removal against you either and it is likely going to cause them to get a clog of useless cards in their hand if you leyline. I do believe that blessed alliance under performed for me over the weekend but I am not sold it is a bad sideboard card. The reason I had it in the sideboard was for two match-ups that are not great for Tron; infect and burn. Fortunately, I dodged these two decks throughout the day and maybe my takeaway would be a little different if I had on this card, however I think surgical is still going to be more relevant over the course of a GP with the current Meta. Final Words: Thanks for reading my tournament report and I hope that you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything please feel free to comment or ask me a question, PM is available too and I will aim to reply to everything.
[Modern][Tournament Report] GP Brisbane tournament report for 24th place finish with G/W Tron
Hi Everyone, Last weekend I had the pleasure of travelling to Brisbane GP with a bunch of friends and playing an interesting, surprise filled magic tournament and I thought I would share my experience with you. Please see below for some headings in the event you want to skip to certain points: Background - Intro/Deck decisions/List I ended up on Tournament - 15 rounds and what happened in them. Conclusion - Thoughts of event/What would I change/Overall takes from GP Background: Myself and a few friends flew into Brisbane on a bright and sunny day with only 1 purpose in mind - Finding some burgers, fries and beer. After a hike around an unknown city and some sub-optimal GPS-ing by a friend this was easily accomplished - Let’s just say that there was plenty of food on 'the stack' and my stomach was happy to let it resolve. We went back to the hotel, got a few beers and got some sleep awaiting a busy Friday where I hoped to score my 2 byes (personal break took me out for a year so no planeswalker point byes) and see how I felt about deck choices and the field. Friday started horribly for my infect deck as I got nut drawed out by Bant Eldrazi but I wasn't ready to give up yet, nut draws happen and you cannot accommodate for them. I started my next grinder (not sure if this term is used elsewhere for the GPT style events day before GP) and proceeded to go 4-0. This was perfect, I now had 2 byes for the GP and this was amazing... until it wasn't. I was informed that although it was advertised as go "4-0" in a grinder with more than 21 people in it, you got byes was not correct - You had to battle the other 4-0's for the byes and well of course one of my worse match ups and some mulligans ensured I was not going into GP Brisbane with any BYES. I was a little salty as per the advertising I thought I had locked byes - not a good start but I had to move on. I sat down with a friend I was travelling with and discussed the state of infect with him based on my experiences and my friend could tell it was not what I wanted to be doing for this GP - Why: The 'free wins' you once got with the deck usually in G1 were not as easy in a world of fatal push and wide creature decks like CoCo. It felt like much more of a grind and I felt myself too many times thinking "Topdeck, cmon, Topdeck!" or "Please no removal, please brick!" and that's not where I like to be when playing magic, especially over 15 rounds. My friend knew that I liked Tron as my "old faithful" in modern but I had let my girlfriend who has only recently started modern play it and it was all she knew and wanted it for GP. Whilst I am competitive I do not believe in breaking hearts - only the occasional dream crushing within the tournament (LOL)! My friend thought for a moment and said, "I have all the mainboard besides 1 Oblivion Stone... get that and your intended sideboard and let’s get you on it for tomorrow". My eyes lit up and it was getting late so I rushed off to the vendors, making it rain with the dollar bills like I was all up in a club ready for a good time... We don't have dollar bills we only have dollar coins, safe to say a few people may have not enjoyed that "rain" being made. Everyone has their version of a guardian angel or a knight in shining armour... mine was better described as a bearded wizard, just under 6ft with a foil miracles legacy deck that seemed to win by being overly shiny and full of value rather than solid magic play - Okay, maybe I was a little jealous of it too! Some discussion of the meta, some banter and a few beers later ... followed by a few more beers and this was the list I sleeved up: Mainboard: 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 4 Karn Liberated 1 Walking Ballista 1 Sundering Titan 2 Wurmcoil Engine 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 1 World Breaker 4 Sylvan Scrying 4 Ancient Stirrings 3 Path to Exile 2 Relic of Progenitus 4 Expedition Map 4 Chromatic Star 4 Chromatic Sphere 3 Oblivion Stone 4 Brushland 4 Urza's Tower 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 1 Sanctum of Ugin 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Forest Sideboard: 3 Nature's Claim 1 Crucible of Worlds 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 2 Thragtusk 2 Warping Wail 2 Blessed Alliance 4 Leyline of Sanctity Whilst this isn't what most would consider a "vanilla list" of this deck I made a few "spicy adjustments" for what I had observed the day before; greedy mana bases and lots of burn. This is how Sundering Titan got in the list and why I ran 4 Leylines in the board - 1 of Walling Ballista was replacing a spellskite which I believed dropped some of its relevance in the Meta and seemed like an easy swap. Only time would tell, but I felt like my list had a plan - Sometimes it is better to have a plan and aim to execute it than go in blind and hope whatever you do 'just works'. Tournament: I have done my best to remember as much as I can from the event. Whilst exact details may be off, the main understanding of how the game went and how I side-boarded should be very close if not exactly what happened. DAY 1: Round 1 (Unknown): I look at my pairings and notice my opponent is someone that I know who plays in the same area as me back home - He is a decent player and won't be getting the free wins from him... or would I? 10 minutes in and he didn't show up - I got the win (free) and whilst I was happy I got essentially a BYE, I was concerned as whilst he wasn't a close friend he wasn't someone I would think would just not show up. I was worried and asked people who knew him and they had no idea, the worry grew but I had a GP to focus on (turns out he was overseas last minute and couldn't make it - Thanks for the BYE). Record: 1-0 Round 2 (Soul Sisters): We start shuffling up and getting ready for the game and I present back my opponents deck to him. Moments later my opponent says, "Oops" and spills my deck across the table clearly revealing enough of the deck that my opponent knew what I was on. A judge ruled in the favour of "assuming accidental" and whilst it probably was it did not feel great. G1: He keeps a rather aggressive hand with lots of hawks and anthems and I am on the draw, I can get to Karn but it is too late and I don't have a board wipe or anything to follow up Karn. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Wurmcoil -2 Relic -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 warping wail + 1 Nature's claim ---- The thoughts here was relic didn't do much, warping dealt with creatures early and due to Path the instant lifegain from Thrag would probably buy me enough time for executing my plan in the event he had an aggressive start again. The 1 of nature's claim was a fill slot because of what I took out, potentially getting me some life off my own artifacts or stopping of the anthems. G2: Not a fast tron start but a decent amount of dig and search and a path + O Stone, I path early, search and dig, eventually getting O Stone and then Ulamog to finish it quickly. G3: Natural Tron with an Ugin and an O Stone - I felt fairly confident this was a win and it didn't take long for my opponent to prove this to me. Sidenote: I would never say that my opponent is cheating, but after a few rounds and finding out the "oops drop deck" routine had happened to a few friends already I was a little more cautious. Accident or not, it is not a nice feeling especially in some Match Ups having this information known to your opponent. Not everyone is custom to calling judges and sometimes people will do this till they get a warning then stop it. Record: 2-0 Round 3 (Nahiri Control): G1: Natural Tron but no threats - I draw only 3 threats throughout the game and 2 are met with a counterspell and 1 with a path. We grinded for quite a while to get a result and I was just drawing lands and search spells - safe to say the station had run out of gas! Sideboarding: Out: -2 Path In: +1 Crucible +1 Emrakul ---- The thoughts here are that path wasn't going to have many targets and incase of flum/GQ, crucible would help and Emrakul in case it grinded out and I wanted a way to win. G2: He kept an aggressive hand with Giest and Snaps, but I had an Ostone and 2 tron pieces with some search to blow up that game plan. After wiping his board, karn into Ugin quickly got him to scoop. G3: On the draw and I had to mulligan to 5 - This was looking like a loss. I had to keep 2 tron lands, 2 O Stones and a Karn. - The luck was in my favour and I got the 3rd tron land off the top and my opponent kept a double giest hand. After putting him off a low mana hand, I O stoned his board, placed another O stone with threat of activation which he played giest into and after a sanctum of ugin + karn I could clear his board, untap karn his land, search another tower, use the ulamog I got off Sanctum and he ended the game with 0 lands. It was a mulligan to 5, but lady luck was on my side. Record: 3-0 Round 4 (Affinity): G1: I mulled to 6 on the draw and kept a "turn 4" tron hand, but my opponent had the turn 3/4 infect kill and it was all a bit too late. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. G2: My sideboard plan meant very little after a mull to 6, got turn 3 O stone + a bit of dig ready for turn 4 but double cranial ensured this did not happen. Record 3-1 Round 5 (G/W Hatebears - Mostly white though): G1: I got on the play and got a very quick karn and he got a vial, he was able to get in a thalia before I karn -3 the vial and then ugin next turn to deal with the singular creatures entering the battlefield. Sideboard: Out: -2 relic -2 Wurmcoil -1 Sundering Titan In: +2 Thragtusk +2 Nature's claim,, +1 Crucible of worlds ---- The reasoning I used here was that wurmcoil being pathed makes life irrelevant, Thragtask can creatre an additional body and give me some life immediately, claim to help beat vial/target my own things to survive and crucible for their onslaught of ghost quarters and possible Tectonic. G2: Fast hand with multiple ghost quarters and a vial - He had the pressure and the ways to slow me down, easy win for my opponent. G3: My opponent mulls to 5 and keeps a 1 lander, whilst my hand wasn't super quick and was hoping to stop the early vial, had O Stone waiting and stars/spheres to dig, the 1 lander proved very problematic for my opponent and whilst I stumbled, he stumbled much harder. My opponent was very favoured to win here and unfortunately some bad RNG got him good, I showed my sympathy towards my opponent and let him give me his "I had you if" story because truth be told he should of had me. Record 4-1 Round 6 (Tron G/B): G1: Unknown Match up, I keep a slower hand, my opponent kept natural tron and 3 maps + 1 star (approx), he GQ's me off a map search and proceeds to get his tron online, finding a karn before T4 Tron and using sanctum of ugin to ensure I had to lands to continue the game. Sideboard: Out: -1 Sundering Titan -2 Ugin In: +2 Thragtusk +1 Crucible ---- I didn't prepare my sideboard for Tron mirrors mainly because of how hopeless ANY sideboard planned for it can be, T3 karns and play/draw seem to get this match up worked out without sideboard being seen much to have any huge effect, so my SB was focused on other match-ups and not this one. Thragtusk was a better threat and crucible to get my lands back after a ghost quarter. G2: Play a tower and sphere pass, he ghost quarters + surgicals my tower. This isn't looking good. He then plays two tron pieces and a map, into crucible for ghost quarter rinse repeat whilst still being able to deploy threats. This was a quick loss and I didn't feel there was much I could do. Record: 4-2 Round 7 (G TitanShift): G1: My Opponent got the play and whilst he was looking on curve to win the game, a turn 3 Karn stalled this plan slightly. Eventually he got out a titan but I pathed it and GQ’d one of his valakut’s to reduce the amount of damage I took. He stumbled for 2 turns and an Ulamog was able to close out the game. I think I got lucky he didn’t have a scapeshift. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic – 3 O stone In: +1 crucible, +4 Leyline ---- The reasoning here was that leyline demanded an answer and he might not have brought in enchant removal. Crucible allows me to cycle ghost quarters keeping them off land and I didn’t feel like O stone was getting much besides Titan which path was able to get and relic was just a draw card in this match-up. G2: Leyline in opener, stumbled on 1 tron land for 4 turns, eventually getting a star to get another land and then eventually stirrings for the next land into a Karn and eventually ulamog. Kind of got lucky here, whilst I stumbled my opponent couldn’t get through Leyline and had no titan to get in early enough. After the game, I asked if he had an answer for leyline or he just didn’t expect it, he said he had 3 natures claims. He checked in front of me, 3 out of 6 bottom cards of the deck where claims… Shame he didn’t sac his tribe elders instead of pressuring me with them lol. Unfortunately, my bad luck was not as bad as his and it got me the win. Record: 5-2 Round 8 (Affinity): G1: I had two tron pieces, a karn, an O stone and 2 stars and started digging. I managed to get tron online as my opponent threw his hand at me early but cracked the O stone on 2 life to stabilise. I managed get all his artifacts and therefore his glimmervoid died. His land held him from being that little bit more explosive. Applied more pressure with wurmcoil and it was over. Sideboarding: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: He kept a slow hand against me and I was able to nature’s claim early to avoid cranial plating/steel overseer pressure. I kept a no tron land hand, but it had green mana, 2 scryings, 2 stars and a nature’s claim. I felt like I had plenty of looks and eventual tron and that’s how it curved out. I stabilised with enough life to get back into it, ulamog got rid of the serious threats with a nature’s claim incase anything went wrong. I made him mill the 20 and saw a blood moon, clearly, I dodged a bullet on that one. Record 6-2 Round 9 (Grixis Control): G1: My opponent was on the draw and kept a hand with a lot of cantrip but not a lot of actual gas. I was able to get turn 3 karn, turn 4 sundering and 2-3 turns later an ulamog. This game didn’t have much interaction because most of his turns were spent using his cantrips. I had a pretty crazy hand, but I think maybe his nerves got to him and he didn’t keep an optimal hand – there was no pay off. Sure it may not have been a throwback 100% but I felt like going into an unknown matchup it was too risky. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Walking Ballista In: +1 Crucible ---- I didn’t feel like I could do much but hope I could get back lands with crucible. I didn’t feel like walking ballista did much against a kolaghans command and was too slow. G2: He kept a much more aggressive hand, building a graveyard into a tasigur. I was able to path the tasigur and resolve a relic which ensured I wasn’t getting blown out again. He cast a fulminator mage and disrupted tron, I followed up with a map and got a world breaker, getting rid of a land. I had a karn in hand and a sanctum of ugin and proceeded to get a sundering titan. He didn’t counter Karn and I knew sundering titan should lock it. I was unsure if I should of got an ulamog here, but if he logically went for tower, finding 1 tower was going to be bad enough, the extra 2 over titan seemed worse. He lost a fair few too many lands and terminated by sundering. He wasn’t happy with the result but my karn got bolted and my sundering was gone. I eventually got a crucible, got back a sanctum, cast a karn that was countered but got an ulamog and finished out the game after he spent 2 turns chumping on 2 mana with snapcasters. I was able to get another ulamog off crucible + sanctum, but he wouldn’t give up in the last round. Eventually I got there and finished the day off. Record 7-2 Finished Day 1 at 7-2 and was happy that I came back from some rather unfortunate loses. My friends had bombed out and wanted to go Casino, I decided to go and unfortunately, I went to bed quite late but it was heaps of fun and I felt like there was no weight on my shoulders. I had a good night and win or lose, still made day 2! Day 2: Round 10 (Eldrazi Tron): G1: Turn 3 karn with natural tron into turn 4 Ulamog, I had the nut, what more can I say. Sideboarding: Out: -2 ugin – 1 sundering titan In: +2 Natures +1 crucible ---- This was a similar reasoning to the tron debate earlier, I didn’t put in extra hate like surgicals as I didn’t think it was the best place to focus on during my 75 build. I want crucible in case he had ghost quarter with no back up surgical. 2 natures were for his crucible and also possible pithing needle. G2: He got on the play and had a GQ + surgical and proceeded to play a crucible and locked me out by turn 3-4. Not much I can do. He used his 3 mana to play mindstones whilst keeping me GQ locked and eventually was able to cast his TKS and Smashers. G3: This was probably my most unlucky game of magic in a very long time/ever. He got an early ghost quarter and surgical but didn’t have additional mana to back it up. I was sitting on 6 mana with 2 karns in hand and just needed any land to exile his 1 temple on the board and lock out the game. I had a thrag on board to apply pressure. 9 turns later I had not drawn a land and my opponent had gotten, land into mindstone into TKS, into crucible into TKS into land into smasher. I had an open window of 2-3 turns where he did nothing, but after turn 3 of this back and forth back pray for top deck, he started getting the gas and I was getting the wrong half of my deck. My window got smaller and smaller and eventually he was able to lock it down and take the win. Not a good start to day 2 at all. Record 7-3 Round 11 (Elves): G1: Search into turn 3 tron, turn 4 I pop off an O stone and he had a relatively slower start. I followed it up with an Ugin to wipe the board again. He was on 1 card and unfortunately was unable to get back after that. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering -2 Wurmcoil -1 relic In: +2 thragtusk + 2 warping wail ---- The reasoning here was that my opponent was playing a white splash and I felt like Thragtask provided a better alternative if being pathed to wurmcoil. Sundering and relic are rather useless so they went for warping on some of the problematic elves. I kept 1 relic over keeping in 1 wurmcoil as a way to dig further in the deck, this was about board wiping and finding them quick. G2: I kept a 2 tron land hand, karn and some stars, but no board wipe at all. I knew I had to keep it as it was too good to throw back, but If he got fast it could end bad. As I was digging for my tron lands, I got tron to play turn 3 karn. As I cast Karn on turn 3, my opponent chords and gets a revoker, naming karn and shutting down that plan. I play a tower for turn and draw a star. I went star into stirrings and used stirrings to find the world breaker. I targeted the revoker and was able to use karn again, getting rid of one of the lords. After him playing a few dudes I eventually got an ulamog and he had 1-2 lands and no real board. He scooped and we parted ways. When I milled him with Ulamog, I saw that he had a Gaddock Teeg in his deck. I was curious as to why he did not chord in his own turn, getting Gaddock and preventing me from having any play but path + follow up or an O Stone. I think this was probably a misplay from my opponent and probably caused him to lose this game. But I’ll take a win where I can get one. Record 8-3 Round 12 (Affinity): G1: My opponent saw tron and went all in on the infect plan, a timely path followed by an O stone meant that he wasn’t able to get lethal on me and I was able to get this game. Sideboard: Out: -2 Relic -2 Ugin - 1 Sundering In: +2 Warping +3 Nature's Claim ---- The reasoning here was simple, the 5 cards I sided out do close to nothing and the 5 I sided in align with my gameplan, stall, board wipe and rebuild. (same as Affinity earlier) G2: After a mulligan, he kept a slow hand, I had 2 tron, search, 0 stone and a claim. This was compounded by the fact he stumbled a little and it didn’t take long to close it out. Record: 9-3 Round 13 (Mono Blue Tron): G1: Turn 3 Karn on the play, he didn’t counter it and from there it was basically over – wasn’t much to that game. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Sundering titan In: +1 crucible ---- I didn’t see any blue so I didn’t know that it was actually mono U tron, he scooped after the karn taking 2 of his lands followed by a GQ. So I boarded how I thought best for Tron. G2: This game went a lot longer, I ghost quatered him earlier and was able to get tron, but before I could establish a play he ghost quartered me back. He then followed up with a spreading sea. Thankfully I was able to find that tron piece again and start jamming threats, eventually finding a map and found sanctum of ugin. I jammed a world breaker, turning his tron off and getting me an Ulamog. From here the game collapsed and it took a while but he extended the hand. Record 10-3: Round 14 (Jund): G1: I kept a bit of a slower hand, Tron by turn 4, my opponent plays 2 dark confidants and proceeds to follow up with a Liliana. This created a very hard match and it ended up with him on 2 before I won the game, having 60-70% of cards flipped as land saved him. Couldn’t do too much here. Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. G2: My opponent mulligans to 5, and gets quite a nice 5 with dark confidant helping undo the mulligan. I get a Karn out turn 3 or 4 and go rid of the dark confidant, a bolt finished off my Karn. I proceeded to sundering titan my opponent, he then terminated it, he had 1 dark confident but had 0 lands. He hit me a few times and eventually I dropped to 2 but I played a Wurmcoil to stabilise, unless he had a bolt and I was dead. He drew for turn (only had a swamp in play) and he plays a raging ravine. I get another tron land and can get rid of a threat, the red source and swing with Wurmcoil for 6. I stabilise and close the game down within 2 turns. G3: Opponent manages to get a dark confidant and I get tron and Karn one of his lands, he follows up with a pithing needle, naming Karn. I get down to 3 life and I manage to get an ulamog, exiling his red land for bolts and pithing, so Karn could exile his Tarmo. He didn’t have any red sources left from a sundering earlier and fetches couldn’t help. The game was over in another 2-3 turns. I felt like this was a much harder game for my opponent as he didn’t see any fluminators or surgicals (or both) but after we had a disagreement on life totals (a judge resolved it), my opponent did not seem to want to be friendly. After clutching game 2, I said after shuffling up that I am sorry we had a disagreement on life totals and such, but I hope we can have a good game this time and wished him the best of luck. His response was “yeah k” (or something to that effect)… If there was ever a time to believe in Karma and after I lucked out of game 3, I felt like it was possible. If someone wishes you luck, please wish them luck back – We are all playing the same game we love, let’s keep a better community vibe going ! Record 11-3 (felt bad as my opponent was still live at 11-2 going into that round) Round 15 (Jund Deaths Shadow): G1: He played two goyfs, I cracked an Ostone, he followed up with 3 deaths shadow in the one turn whilst being on 8 life. Safe to say that was a quick GG. Sideboarding: Sideboarding: Out: -1 Relic In: +1 Crucible --- I didn’t want too much to change as the matchup is already good, you are just hoping you can undo some flum damage with crucible and hope they don’t have a surgical. Relic is still good here, but I felt like it was probably the thing I felt the most comfortable taking out, I still had 1 mainboard and was happy with that. This was something in hindsight I would of changed and I probably gave a bit too much oversight to. I hadn’t had much experience in this matchup since the bannings and I probably would of liked the leylines in as it stops throughseize effects and turns off a lot of cards/life loss to make the deaths more potent. G2: This game seemed to go for ages, exchanging resources, fluminators on my tron, when I got it back, he had a K command to deal with it. This repeated until eventually I had 3 threats (Titan, ulamog, ugin) but no way to play them as I was on 5/6 mana. He top decks a deaths shadow and he is on 1, I am on 13. I draw an irrelevant for the turn and he crashes in for 12, its 1 to 1. I get a star for turn, a crowd had formed at this point as we were on the top 15 tables. I crack the star and say, “I will add a white” (Thinking path of bust), I proceed to draw a path and everyone in the crowd takes a deep, deep breath. I path as he attacks and my next draw is the missing tron land and I play Ugin and ping him for the game. G3: Game 2 took so long that this game doesn’t get too far, I am no longer playing for a win but merely playing for a draw. I see that I am stuck on lands a bit, got fluminatored. Got a O stone on board ready to crack. Find the next land to crack it, reset board and eventually turns makes it a draw. Record: End the day on 11-3-1 and take out 24th place of Brisbane GP. Conclusions/Takeaways: I felt pretty good about my finish and whilst it wasn’t the glorious Top 8, it was still a really good effort especially with how the Day 1 started and how Day 2 started. I got some cash and some pro points and had a smile on my face. It was important for me to keep in mind that due to personal reasons I had been out of the game for 1 year and that I only came back 3 weeks before the GP. Doing this well for me meant that I still had it, something, whatever it may be and it was time to keep going. Hopefully I can keep going and make America great again… or you know just do well at magic? My honest feeling on modern for the weekend was that it was “anyone’s game” and after finishing the weekend I believe it even more than I did before. People are going to play whatever they have in modern and even people with 2-3 decks are still somewhat limited. They are not going to snap change because their deck went from tier 1 down to 2, or tier 2 / 3 down to 3 / 4, they will continue to jam it and try adjust it for meta, so you can possibly fact everything and anything. Pick a deck with free wins. This sounds obvious but I think with the way modern is right now, free wins are so important. The amount of games that a turn 3 karn, followed up by an ugin/ulamog etc was GG lead to games that were just free. After looking around the room and watching others/discussing with others afterwards/looking at my groups experience, there was definitely a theme that enabled people to do “better than average” or even cash just based on a free win deck. Strategies that are more fair did not seem to be able to compete with unfair strategies. Play blood moons, play affinity and turn 3 nut your opponent, Ad Nas your opponent and GG it right then and therefore, force them to have the answer because often they won’t. This doesn’t mean that the fairer decks are bad or will not continue to do well with the right pilots but the experiences were that a lot of great players that lost to subpar players on the more unfair strategies. If your go to deck that you have played for years is available, jamming it can be fine because of the experience you have to get correct lines at most/all points in the game. What would I change and why moving forward: I think the maindeck 60 performed very, very well. I think I would be happy to lock this in for where I would stay. The only slight change there may be world breaker over titan depending on more/less multi-coloured decks are popular. The sideboard is probably where I would make the most changes and if I am honest I would probably change them, take it to a tournament and change them again, and repeat this process for a while because Tron has a few weaknesses we want to cover – it is going to help if you dodge the ones you didn’t prepare for during the day. I would do the following based on my experience + meta: -4 Leyline of Sanctity +2 timely reinforcements +2 Surgical extraction OR -2 Blessed alliance +2 Surgical extraction I would probably try the bottom one first because of how I see the meta going. I think that surgical is a very powerful card and really goes to work in certain matchups. I felt like I needed a better way to win the mirror, it won’t help a lot but because it can help with control strategies as well, I feel like I am happy to remove some “burn” sideboard to accommodate this. Burn feels like it isn’t in the best spot now in the meta and whilst I believe tron should prepare for it, I think we need to starting removing some of the burn protection, help other matchups and hope to avoid the burn. With the sudden rise of deaths shadow aggro, I don’t mind leylines out of the board. I think that having a way to stop them getting their life total lower and stop them stripping our hands can go a long way. An early strip on an ugin or O Stone can often be the difference between winning and losing and keeping hands without these cards do not feel safe. If you are able to Leyline and keep one of these answers to their earlier board, you feel in a good position to beat this. Keep in mind that they often don’t board in any enchantment removal against you either and it is likely going to cause them to get a clog of useless cards in their hand if you leyline. I do believe that blessed alliance under performed for me over the weekend but I am not sold it is a bad sideboard card. The reason I had it in the sideboard was for two match-ups that are not great for Tron; infect and burn. Fortunately, I dodged these two decks throughout the day and maybe my takeaway would be a little different if I had on this card, however I think surgical is still going to be more relevant over the course of a GP with the current Meta. Final Words: Thanks for reading my tournament report and I hope that you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything please feel free to comment or ask me a question, PM is available too and I will aim to reply to everything.
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