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Hey Hellsau.... https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/comments/86eq0v/tron_deck_50_for_4_weeks
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Mar 22, 2018 23:42
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always be closing posted:Hey Hellsau.... lol the deck's delver match is actually good which is why I'm still playing the deck, the Pauper subreddit don't know poo poo about poo poo. Holy poo poo does MTGO like to do absurd poo poo like giving me 18 lands, 3 Maps and 2 Prisms in 30 cards, or having 3 Mulldrifters, 3 Walls, 2 Sea Gate Oracles and a Compulsive in the bottom 11 cards.
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Mar 23, 2018 00:06
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Hellsau posted:lol the deck's delver match is actually good which is why I'm still playing the deck, the Pauper subreddit don't know poo poo about poo poo.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:23
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Vital Signs posted:Tron is a very tough deck to play, but it has a lot of ways where the decisions you make and the grind you can do wins games. A string of really good plays can turn a game around pretty quickly. It's hard to play and easy to time out, so that's why people are dumb about it IMO. Oh yeah timing out is a real and present danger in basically every matchup. Fortunately the majority of MTGO players are super slow, even with aggro decks, and I'm absurdly fast at MTGO clicks so the only thing I need to worry about is client lag. Also I got another 5-0 tonight, gonna finish my write-up on the deck with sideboarding guides. The deck is exceptional specifically because I believe it has a favorable Izzet Delver matchup and a substantially favorable Mono-Blue Delver matchup while still crushing all the other grindy decks. The deck is so close to UW Flicker but the matchup tradeoffs are bizarre. Somehow the Swamp/Island matchups are much better (and they were already very favorable aside from Tron/Delver), the Forest/Plains decks are MUCH worse, and Burn is very difficult.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:33
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Hellsau posted:Oh yeah timing out is a real and present danger in basically every matchup. Fortunately the majority of MTGO players are super slow, even with aggro decks, and I'm absurdly fast at MTGO clicks so the only thing I need to worry about is client lag. So you're saying GW slivers is a good call for a Tron heavy meta? Because I'm trying to decide between that and Burn.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:38
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Hellsau posted:Oh yeah timing out is a real and present danger in basically every matchup. Fortunately the majority of MTGO players are super slow, even with aggro decks, and I'm absurdly fast at MTGO clicks so the only thing I need to worry about is client lag. I do kinda wonder what kind of decks are better or worse in paper, because of not having a time out or clicking issue. Have not been able to play many paper games, but it seems like some decks just will outright not be any good on paper when you take away those factors.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:40
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Cactrot posted:So you're saying GW slivers is a good call for a Tron heavy meta? Because I'm trying to decide between that and Burn. No, Slivers still gets owned really hard but Elves can just kill you on turn 3 or 4 on the play and you can't really stop them and sometimes you just have all Teachings, Stonehorns and Moment's Peaces on the bottom half of the library, and too many of your draw creatures are with them in the bottom half so you just peter out and can't ever lock them out. Vital Signs posted:I do kinda wonder what kind of decks are better or worse in paper, because of not having a time out or clicking issue. Have not been able to play many paper games, but it seems like some decks just will outright not be any good on paper when you take away those factors. This deck is probably soft-banned in paper because your opponents might just refuse to concede game 1, lose game 2 and take a draw game 3, and also slow play rules aren't really enforced in most places.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:50
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Is it possible that online vs paper will eventually have a different ban list? Seems unlikely, and most likely if a deck is too good or unfair on one platform, it will just stay banned on both.
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Mar 23, 2018 05:26
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Vital Signs posted:Is it possible that online vs paper will eventually have a different ban list? Seems unlikely, and most likely if a deck is too good or unfair on one platform, it will just stay banned on both. No? It's not like Sensei's Divining Top stayed unbanned online.
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Mar 23, 2018 05:42
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I just didn’t know if it was possible if/when Pauper has a paper ban list and gets recognized as an “official format.” I did also state I believed it to be unlikely.
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Mar 23, 2018 05:55
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What's a good sideboard for Affinity in a field that has a ton of Delver and Tron?
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Mar 24, 2018 00:34
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 Welp, 5-0ed again tonight with Stonehorn Tron, and I'm on quite the winning streak. The deck is good, but weird. The Izzet Delver matchup is good, and the Mono-Blue Delver matchup is great. It beats all opposing non-Tron grindy decks very easily, the Tron mirror is a coinflip based on a race to Tron, the Boros matchup is easy, and it crushes all the Swamp decks. Strangely enough its worst matchup is Burn, because it doesn't run maindeck removal to punish a turn 2 Firebrand Archer, so I went up to the fourth Hydroblast which will help for the second-worst matchup, Kiln Fiend. This deck is weird because it feels like the Tireless Tribe matchup is fine, whereas it felt very bad for Familiars - yeah you can die turn 2 or 3, whatever, if they have the nuts most decks will lose to it, but you eventually get into a winning position which I didn't feel happened very often with Familiars. The green matchups also aren't even close to the slam dunks they were for Familiars, probably because Familiars had 4 Compulsive Researches to dig hard for a Stonehorn. Anyway gonna write a bunch of words to try to get my thoughts down, with sideboarding pictures! I brought in Deep Analysis out of the board in every match, so I put it maindeck over the third Dinrova Horror. More than likely I'm going to eventually add even more card draw to make finding Tron and/or Stonehorns easier, and to try to alleviate the games where MTGO puts 20+ mana sources in the top 30 cards of your library, but there simply isn't much room to cut. If I start cutting too much stuff, I'm going to end up with a deck full of air and not actually have inevitability in every match. I would really appreciate a maindeck Serrated Arrows, for instance, since that would give a maindeck way to kill Firebrand Archer or Shepherd of Rot or Priest of Titania and something to slam against Delver if they tap low, but there isn't space for something that doesn't swing a loss to a win like Moment's Peace would. I would also like a Capsize as very time- and mana-intensive way to combo out without using the graveyard, but it's so worthless so often that I had to cut it for what was at the time the third Horror but is now a Deep Analysis. Sideboard pictures have maindeck cards on the left, sideboard cards on the right. The cards near the middle dividing line are definite includes or definite take-outs, with the possible sideboard cards on the outside. Sometimes opponents have weird builds that necessitate some sideboard changes, or they've got a particularly spicy card that you'll want to board against. Control/Midrange Tron Mirror Whoever hits Tron first probably wins unless they flood out. You're disadvantaged because you have fewer counters maindeck and no Capsize to Teachings for, but it doesn't matter if they don't hit Tron and you hit Tron, or if you're on the play and hit Tron first. If neither player hits Tron in like 10 turns, you're disadvantaged game 1 from having a bunch of dead cards and no Capsize and few counters, but it rarely matters. It really feels like a race to get Tron and Mulldrifter first.  Post-board you get a bunch of Pyroblasts and Dispels and you can defend yourself from their stuff, but again if one player hits Tron and the other player misses it doesn't really matter how many counterspells one player draws, Tron will give such a large mana advantage that they can power through. Crop Rotation is pretty bad against Dispels and other counters but you do need to get Tron ASAP to win the matchup. Condescend is incredibly bad once both players get Tron up, and if I played more of them I'd want to side some number out, but one Condescend is probably fine as an early game counter or the final counter in a counter war. You would definitely play Ancient Grudge if you had it over Shattering Pulse, since if you get the eat a Map early it's nice and blowing up a couple Prisms can hassle the opponent, but it's pretty loose to play Actual Shatter and if you've got Tron, there's much more powerful things you can be doing. Some versions of Tron inexplicably play some number of artifact lands, apparently as Wrench Mind protection, and you should bring in the Shattering Pulse against that nonsense. Put in a Hydroblast if your opponent is playing Rolling Thunder, but don't bother siding them in solely to counter removal spells and Pyroblasts. Also this guide is for the Mulldrifter-based Tron decks. You absolutely slaughter mono-Green tron because you can ignore all of their threats with the Stonehorn lock, and the weird Rhystic Circle or Boros or Rebels Tron decks get wrecked pretty badly by your lock and you get Dinrova Horror to lock them out. UR Delver/Mono-Blue Delver Your goal in these games is to get your opponent to waste their Actual Counterspells on nonsense, avoid dealing into Spellstutter Sprite at all costs, and attempt to resolve a Mulldrifter. If you resolve a Mulldrifter you will typically win, because if one Mulldrifter resolved you can start resolving more Mulldrifters, and even if Izzet Delver can remove it you hopefully drew into other spells that do things. If you aren't playing into Sprite while doing it, you can start slamming Sea Gate Oracles and other dorks, which put pressure on your opponents Counterspells since if you get a board presence their Ninjas start clogging up their hand and mana. They can get a hit in but they need to cast, resolve, and keep a flying creature in play for a while, and then they need to commit two mana during their turn allows you to force through a Mulldrifter or other game-winning spell. Sometimes your opponent plays a Delver and blindflips and counters everything you play, sometimes they go Miscreant, Ninja, triple Miscreant or whatever, sometimes you don't draw any Mulldrifters or Walls and they beat you to death with fliers, but I do believe the Izzet Delver match is favorable. The Mono-Blue version is MUCH worse against you since they don't get Pyroblasts post-board and their way to beat past a Mulldrifter is to return it to your hand. Their Spire Golems and other nonsense fliers also hurt them since it makes them both much more vulnerable to a Stonehorn lock, and much less likely to be able to stop you since they're drawing a bunch of French vanilla creatures that they have to commit mana on their turn to get onto the field.  You don't sideboard very differently for these two decks. Hydroblast isn't worth bringing in against Izzet Delver, and Dispel sucks against both. It's so miserable having Dispels rotting in your hand that you can't afford to run out if you don't have Pyroblast backup because Spellstutter Sprite owns Dispel hard. Dispel always gets eaten by Sprite assuming you can't Gut Shot the Sprite off the field in response, and if you have two Dispels you can't even Dispel the Sprite since it's not an instant! Gut Shot whatever your opponent's 1 drop is on your turn after playing your land. If your opponent doesn't get to keep a threat in play when you hit 3 mana, you're substantially advantaged. Gut Shot also is good as a way to 'counter' Sprite if they don't have a surplus of Faeries on the board. If you have Arrows, try to test the waters to see if they have an Actual Counterspell, and if they don't then slam that Arrows because if it resolves you'll win. Sometimes these Delver deck will side in Annul, but whatever if they have Annul when you have the one Arrows good for them. Condescend is worthless against Izzet Delver, and very bad against Mono-Blue Delver on the draw, but it might be fine against Mono-Blue Delver on the play specifically to snipe an early Augur or 3-drop creature. Condescend is real bad against Pyroblast and Dispels, especially against a deck whose counterable spells cost 1 or 2 mana. Depending on the build of Mono-Blue you might want Shattering Pulse - if they have Bonesplitter, Spire Golem AND artifact-based graveyard hate, you might want to bring in a speculative Shattering Pulse. I like having all of the Stonehorns against Mono-Blue. Izzet Delver can burn you out so I like keeping one Pulse in against them and going down to 3 Stonehorns. Boros You'll usually lose from getting burnt out or by missing on Stonehorn. You can attempt to aggressively use Pulse to keep your life total as high as possible, but you might need a Pulse to dig up a creature that your opponents burn in response to a Flicker. Dig dig dig dig, find a Stonehorn, and try to combo off. The opponent only gets four Galvanic Blasts so if you have to, go for a naked Flicker on a Stonehorn and/or Wall, because one Lightning Bolt isn't enough to stop you. Some of the new Boros builds also struggle to keep Metalcraft active if they draw the wrong lands, so if your opponent's at 2 artifacts you should try to get in as many Flicker loops as you can before their Blasts are online. If your opponent casts Journey to Nowhere, Dinrova Horror becomes real stupid. Horror back their Journey, get your Stonehorn/Mulldrifter back. They can cast Journey, but do they target the Horror? If you have another Horror you own them, or maybe you play a Wall and Stonehorn lock them. If they target something else, you can Flicker the Horror and put them in a real bad spot. Try not to keep both your Flickers in the grave since most Boros decks do play Bojuka Bog, which if I can rant about a little is cargo cult idiocy. They're playing a deck with heavy mana requirements and multiple 1 and 2 drop white creatures and they're trying to play Radiant Fountain and Bojuka Bog? Come on, have some respect for the game. They can't even get an instant-speed Bog trigger, so the Bojuka Bog basically only helps against the weird Dredge decks and maybe a careless TortEx player, or a Flicker deck that drew a bunch of lands and had to blow both Flickers on Prisms and draw creatures.  Post board you want some number of Hydroblasts for opposing land destruction, Pyroblasts, and they can be used to counter burn spells if the opponent is trying to burn you out. I don't think the full four Hydroblasts is worth siding in unless you're sure they've got multiple Molten Rains and Pyroblasts. The Shattering Pulse is fine if you know your opponent is on the full four of each Ancient Den and Great Furnace but if they're playing 3-5 artifact lands it's not usually worth bothering with unless they're overloading with like 3+ Relics. If they're a particularly aggressive version with Seekers of the Way and other stuff, you can put all the Moment's Peaces in. Condescend is dorky, except if you can counter their first 2-mana artifact cantrip it sets them back a lot, and sometimes you can counter their only artifact and they don't get to grind until they topdeck another one. Condescend is certainly much better on the play where you can play a Tranquil Cove and have Condescend up for their two-drop. Having one Pulse is probably necessary to give you a life buffer for their burn plan once you've gotten a lock established but two is probably too many. If you think your opponent has to take out a number of burn spells to fit their sideboard cards in, then you can cut all the Pulses and rely on Hydroblasts and gainlands to avoid getting burnt out. Blue Grindy Decks Typically Mulldrifter decks like UB Flicker, but also creatureless Teachings decks or UB Delver/Delve/Exhume or other bad builds. Your job is to ensure you have inevitability. If your opponent has exactly 4 Counterspells, you have 3 Walls and 2 Pulses. If they counter your three Walls and your first Pulse, you get the Pulse back a Wall, Wall back a Pulse, repeat until you have three Walls and a Flicker ready to Flicker two Walls and fill your hand with your Pulses and Flickers to ensure you will win. If your opponent has 6 Counterspells, you have a Prohibit and a Condescend that you need to use to ensure that you resolve at least a Pulse or a Wall so that you will win. If your opponent has an absurd number of counters, like 10+ in some Teachings pile, you're going to get your stuff countered if you allow your opponent to act on their own terms. Use the fact that you will have a massive mana advantage over them with Tron to sculpt your hand such that, if you Teachings for Pulses/Counterspells/Flickers at the end of their turn and go above 7 cards, you can jam Dinrova Horrors, Mulldrifters, Flickers, Walls and Pulses and overload their mana and/or cards in hand to force through a Wall. If you have a Wall in play and a Pulse and Wall in hand after exhausting your opponent's resources, you're probably golden. This is also another matchup where you need to avoid getting both your Flickers exiled with a stray Bojuka Bog, which at least makes colored mana for your opponent. The Flicker decks can also Flicker a Bog to get an instant speed graveyard wipe, so try to provoke that out with a Wall on your first Flicker before running the second out, or Horror the Bog back before comboing out. Be careful with Teachings decks as well, since they can have any number of whacky instants available to them. If all your Walls or Horrors are in the graveyard, they can grab a Crypt Incursion to exile them. They also might have a Capsize to start bouncing a land every turn - don't miss out that you can Flicker your permanent they target with Capsize to fizzle the Capsize, since it'll go to the graveyard even if they paid Buyback.  After sideboard you get to take out a bunch of garbage anti-combat cards and get 6 Counterspells. Pyroblast is especially insane because a lot of people inexplicably try to side in Curse of the Bloody Tome as a win condition against a deck with 2 Teachings, 2 Pulse, a Haunted Fengraf and 3 Mnemonic Walls, so the Curse will frequently enable you, and then you get to Pyroblast it away whenever you feel like it. Other than that it's all a matter of ensuring you will win eventually without timing out. Against the Gurmag Angler decks you can try to keep in Stonehorns or something but I'd rather merely block the Angler and Flicker, or chump it or take it and setup Pulse loops, or Horror it. Against the Delver decks they're liable to have multiple Dispels, and you should take out Crop Rotation, otherwise take out a Pulse. You don't need both Pulses for inevitability since you can force a victory with your counter suite, though having one is nice so you can run Walls into counters and Pulse them back, then Wall back the Pulse. Non-Blue Grindy Decks Including Mono-Black Control, the Rakdos Monarch decks, random LD decks, White-based control decks like Rebels, and a bunch of other unplayable jank. Stonehorn locks are typically great and you'll get plenty of time to set on up, and you'll also have a lot more mana than them when you hit Tron, but your main advantage is casting Mulldrifter and 3-for-1ing them. Like, MBC is nearly unplayable solely because Mulldrifter exists. If you resolve a Mulldrifter, they also can't really leave it in play since you can Flicker it later, but if they kill it you can get it back with Pulse or Fengraf and then it starts to get real ugly for them. Incidentally you have no sideboard for most of these matchups - I used to have a Deep Analysis to swap out for the Moment's Peace but that's maindeck now. Take out Moment's Peace if it seems real bad for some marginal card like Dispel or maybe Shattering Pulse to preemptively hit Nihil Spellbombs or Relics of Progenitus? Your matchup against the random grindy decks is so good that even having no sideboard, you're vastly favored in matches. Post-board be aware that they might try to steal a game with a bunch of Stone Rain effects, and try to keep up Flicker or Crop Rotation or Pulse to avoid getting locked under 3 mana. If you keep at least 3 mana in play your Maps turn into one-turn land tutors, eventually you can Pulse back destroyed lands, complete Tron and win very easily. Combo: Tribe Matchup's pretty good. If they have the turn 2/3 kill you're probably dead unless you've got a miracle Moment's Peace, and if they find an early Tribe and multiple Circular Logics before you hit Tron and can establish a Stonehorn lock or keep up multiple Moment's Peace casts and counterspells, you'll probably die, but whatever if they have one of their 4-of Tribes, one of their 4-of Inside Out, one of their X-of anti-blocker cards, and probably one of their 4-of Gushes, AND have counters on top of that, all before you setup Tron and can utilize it for a turn, then you're dead, oh well. Don't bother trying to bluff if you have an actual way to advance your board by the way. If you have the choice between jamming a Mulldrifter or bluffing a Moment's Peace/removal spell, just jam your card draw because they play Gitaxian Probe. An exception is if you have a Teachings, you might want to hold that up and if they don't have the Probe maybe they won't go for it and you still get to use your mana to set something up. They always have the Probe though, just like the always have everything else. This also applies to Kiln Fiend - Probe makes trying to bluff real dumb if it actually costs you anything.  After sideboard your entire gameplan is to ensure they can never afford to combo off. Serrated Arrows resolving is usually game over since their Tribes die instantly, but even Gut Shot is lethal if they're trying to combo - once Inside Out has resolved on a Tribe, the only thing that keeps a resolved Gut Shot from killing the Tribe is another Inside Out on that tribe swapping its P/T back, which stops it from being lethal either way. Everything else is just a bunch of Counterspells to stop them from going off before you can get enough colored mana sources in play to prevent Gigadrowse from tapping you down and letting them go off safely. Hydroblast is technically a one-mana counter for their Inside Out - if you have some reason to believe that Hydroblast for their Inside Out is more reliable than Moment's Peace, feel free to make that swap. Burn It's a combo deck. The creature plan that is so goddamn awful against literally every good deck in the format, and most of the bad ones, actually pulls its weight against the removal-less deck. I honestly have no idea why people are still playing the creatures in Burn when Izzet Delver gets to turn on their otherwise dead removal spells while tempoing Burn out, but whatever, this is the fate we're left with - bad players making bad choices that punish us. Anyway, game 1 is a lost cause if they resolve two creatures. If they resolve only one you might be able to grind through with enough Pulses to setup a Wall loop, with a Flicker targeting a Wall and a Tranquil Cove to effectively play the activated ability "2U: Gain 1 Life" but it's sketchy unless you can setup Flicker Wall/Wall for Pulse, AND have a Mulldrifter or Remote Isle or some other way to reliably get a Pulse target into your yard. Basically hope they don't have the creature, win easily with some gainlands and a Pulse, get a Horror down and remove any creatures/Curses they have and then Flicker them out.  After board you get Hydroblasts which you almost certainly should save for a Firebrand Archer or Thermoalchemist, but if they don't jam a creature turn 2 and play a turn 3 Molten Rain you probably have to counter the Rain. You side in Gut Shot because you have a LOT of cards to take out, and sometimes you get to play a Grotto turn 2 and have a red available to Gut Shot an Archer, and honestly paying 2 life isn't the worst outcome for killing a Firebrand Archer. You don't really lose this matchup from having too few cards - if you have a dead Gut Shot in hand because they never drew an Archer, whatever you were going to have some other dead card. Kiln Fiend You can beat bad opposing draws, but even your nut draw often isn't good enough against even their average draws. Sometimes they're on the play, they slam a Kiln Fiend on turn 2 and you really can't win. Even if they don't have an early kill, they might be able to play multiple creatures and kill you the slow way before you can establish a Stonehorn lock, and even if you do establish a lock they might be able to Dispel and power through before you can find multiple Flickers or Flicker+Counter. Game 1 is truly awful, much worse than even Burn.  After sideboard you get to bring in a whole bunch of stuff and your plan can morph from establishing a lock to killing literally every creature they play. If they're on the play and they slam a Kiln Fiend on turn 2, you're still probably dead unless you find a Hydroblast, but getting a pile of removal that also double as one mana hard counters makes it much less of a disaster. The fact that game 1 is so bad it rough - if you steal game 1, you are very likely to win the match, but otherwise it's tough to win two games in a row when they get to play first once. The Moment's Peaces are weird - if your opponent saw you Stonehorn them out, you probably want both Moment's Peaces to buy time. If they saw you Moment's Peace before, or didn't see a Stonehorn game 1, you might want to keep only one or zero Moment's Peaces in, to play around the Flaring Pain they probably will bring in. If the opponent thinks you're on a traditional Tron build they probably will jside in their Flaring Pains since most Tron builds have 3/4 Moment's Peace, and it kind of sucks getting your Moment's Peaces owned like that. It's not actually a complete disaster though - if you have enough stuff setup, you can lead with a Moment's Peace, and if they have a Flaring Pain you can Blast their creature and counter their protection and set them back really far in tempo. On the draw you probably have to eat the fact that Flaring Pain can get you since a Moment's Peace is too helpful in avoiding an early death. Either way, Horrors and Stonehorns aren't useful enough post-board, Fengraf is pointless and Pulse isn't great and is a 3 mana play that gets Dispelled, so you have a whole bunch of cards to ditch. Bogles If they draw perfect you're probably dead. Fortunately their perfect draw is very inconsistent - they need a Hexproof creature (since trying to loadup a non-hexproof creature is suicidally dangerous against a Horror or an expected potential Capsize from a Tron deck), they need a buff enchantment (Ethereal Armor/Ancestral Mask), they need a few land enchantments to turn them on (and frequently Utopia Sprawl is required to enable them to hit 3 mana on time), they need white mana for half their spells, AND they need a source of trample (Rancor/Armadillo Cloak) to prevent you from chumping for several turns. Any one of those pieces doesn't show up and you get plenty of time to setup a Stonehorn lock, which they cannot interact with in any way.  Post board, you get an extra Moment's Peace to buy time, but that's about it. What you actually get is a bunch of bad players (gotta be bad to play Bogles) siding in Relic of Progenitus and effectively discarding a card and sacrificing a land to keep that stupid, useless Relic active while you sit there, sculpting your victory and eventually Horroring the Relic back or by burning a Flicker, letting them sac Relic and then going off with a second Flicker. This is one of the matchups where you most benefit from your opponents relying on Relic and allowing their own Relic to strangle them. Keep Pulses in since if they have Relic you can use that to force them to crack it if necessary, or if they don't have that you can chump their creature and Pulse to delay. One-Land Spy Pulse something and you probably can't die. The deck struggles to deal more than ~24 damage. After sideboarding, put in anything that can trade 1-for-1 - Dispel for Songs of the Damned, Gut Shot for Wild Cantor, Hydroblast for Cantor and Anarchist and possible opposing sideboard cards, whatever you think will be able to trade depending on what kind of build you've seen, taking out your anti-aggro cards and Horrors and Fengraf and maybe the raw card draw cards since you probably don't want to tap low on your turn. If you stop your opponent from hitting 4 mana (including a Black mana) for long enough that you can Pulse up to a substantial life total, they're dead. They might side in Pyroblast so don't assume you can let them have all the mana in the world and you'll counter their finisher. Aggro decks: Elves If they draw perfect you're probably dead. Turn 2 Timberwatch into a Quirion Ranger or two can kill you before you even have 4 mana available, unless you spike a turn 3 Tron + Prism. Even once you've gotten them Stonehorn locked, they'll absolutely topdeck a Viridian Longbow within 2 or 3 turns to ping you to death, so you need to find a Horror or a second Wall and a Pulse to avoid getting pinged to death. The mono-green matchup is much better for you since they actually need to topdeck the Longbow. The Distant Melody decks can potentially play 20 Elves while you have them Stonehorn locked, drop a Distant Melody, find their Longbow and go ham on you.  After sideboard you bring in Shattering Pulse as a simple answer to Longbow which also hits graveyard hate. Serrated Arrows is usually too slow to do anything but it is a quick way to close out games if they don't have a Spidersilk Armor out, since it takes a lot fewer clicks to loop Flicker on Arrows and Wall that it does on Horror and Wall. I always Gut Shot their 1 drop if it's a mana producer, but if it's a Ranger I'll try to hit a Priest of Titania. If it's a Birchlore I'll consider whether I think they're running Vines or Magnify, since if I think the coast is clear I'd rather let them try to cast an Elvish Vanguard or Priest and snipe that. Condescend is pretty awful on the draw since it's probably going to counter nothing until you've already won the game. I've been siding out one Dinrova Horror on the play, and the Condescend on the draw. Heroic If they draw perfect you're probably dead. Sound familiar? Fortunately they only have Cho-Manno's Blessing as ways to interact with you, so it's a straight race whether they can kill you before you can setup a Stonehorn lock. They also only get one playset of really dangerous creatures in the 4 Trailblazers - their deck is really slow if they don't slam Plains Trailblazer. Your creatures also might be able to chump block more often than they would against Bogles, but you should definitely take the earliest chance to chump that you're offered lest they draw an Emerge Unscathed before you've taken your chump.  Gut Shot takes out the 1/1 Flying Heroic, or the crummy 1/1 Provoke creature, but it's still pretty bad and if you think Dispel does anything, put that in instead. Sometimes the opponent sides in Standard Bearer, and then you Flicker your Horror and Wall and have to don't target their Standard Bearer because Standard Bearer doesn't affect triggered abilities. Incidentally the only thing Standard Bearer does anything against is Gut Shot, and hell against this deck Gut Shoting and trading 1-for-1 with anything hampers their ability to get you before you lock them out. RDW The Stonehorn lock isn't a complete lock, since they can burn you out, but unlike most other aggro decks you can play an Oracle, a Stonehorn, and a Mulldrifter without setting up an actual lock, and your opponent might not have an attack. RDW's creatures are not made to break through a board stall and if you can play two Stonehorns and Flicker them, you'll usually have enough time to Pulse up to a healthy life total and find a Wall. Counter basically anything - any 1-for-1 trade you make pushes them that much farther back away from being able to close the game out without consecutive topdecks on burn spells.  After sideboard you are heavily favored. RDW absolutely needs to apply constant pressure and if you can Hydroblast their first creature (or if they lead with Jackal Familiar, you can Hydroblast their Hasted 2 drop) they might not be able to deal much if any damage to you. Moment's Peace is still great even if they might have Flaring Pain, since you really want to trade 1-for-1 anyway. Try not to setup a big Moment's Peace if a possible Flaring Pain would kill you unless you have no other way through it. If you do see Flaring Pain, feel free to side out one or both Moment's Peaces for some marginal garbage like Dispel or Gut Shot. Gut Shot is good against the weird builds that play an above average number of X/1s. Yeah paying 2 life against a red aggro deck sucks but if it's stopping a hit from a big Heartlash Cinder and killing it, good enough. I'm assuming most RDW decks will migrate to playing Jackal Pup as additional 2-power one-drops. If you see Jackal Pups, Gut Shot should go in. Honestly, having any way to kill any of their early pressure is wonderful even if it costs you 2 life most of the time. As far as taking things out, Condescend is really bad against everything except Goblin Heelcutter unless you happen to spike the right lands to have a turn 2 Condescend on their 2-drop when you're on the play, and I typically take out the Condescend on the draw. Pulses are alright if you've got a target in the graveyard, which isn't exactly easy. If you play an Oracle they're more likely to Heelcutter it than anything, or they'll swing through and kill you, so it's difficult to get Pulses off before you're in a position to have already won. If they play Molten Rains then Pulse becomes awesome, reverting their sideboard plan while also giving you a life buffer. If you're keeping both Pulses, cut the Condescend and Deep Analysis as they're frequently too slow. Slivers Their bad draws are extremely bad, and they are usually vulnerable to the Stonehorn lock outside of a potential Vines of the Vastwood or Journey to Nowhere, which aren't great answers when you can play around Vines by Flickering two Stonehorns to have extra combat skips stored up, and Journey is extremely dangerous to play when you can Horror it back. If the Slivers deck doesn't have double Virulent Sliver early, or doesn't draw enough lords, you're going to have a lot of time to find the lock since chump blocking is pretty great against them.  Fengraf is bad, and Moment's Peace is great. Outside of that, you don't actually need Dinrova Horrors - it's unlikely that running a raw Horror out and bouncing a lord or something is going to save you if you don't already have a lock established, and you don't need Horror to win once you have a lock since you can win by decking them with Wall/Wall/Flicker/Research, and you're unlikely to lose to time since if you lose a game, it's going to be fast, so really Horror is only there for punishing the Journeys that bad players will keep in against you for reasons that I don't quite understand. Pulse is good for bringing back creatures you chump with, but a savvy opponent won't let you get Stonehorns back by allowing you to get a Stonehorn into the graveyard. However, Dispel is only useful against specifically Vines of Vastwood, and bringing in Shattering Pulse for opposing artifact-based graveyard hate is pretty loose when Slivers decks should be boarding in Faerie Macabre if anything since those play well with Lead the Stampede. You're probably better off only swapping Fengraf and Peace and enjoying your good matchup. Stompy If they don't kill you on turn 4 you're a huge favorite. If they don't draw a Rancor, you're a huge favorite. Yeah sometimes they'll go first and play Sentinel, Ranger into Rancor, Nest Invader into Hunger you're dead. If not, and assuming you find a Stonehorn eventually, you're going to win. They might be able to fizzle you out with Vines but that's easy enough to play around. If they don't have Rancor, your blockers are also pretty good at stalling them out. Basically, you can beat their nut draws with your nut draws, you can beat their nut draws with a reasonable hand assuming you're on the play, and their bad draws are beatable by casting a bunch of 1/3s and 1/4s. This matchup is not as good as it could be since sometimes you don't draw a Stonehorn or Moment's Peace or Teachings in 25 cards, but you're pretty well favored in normal circumstances.  Gut Shot taking out their non-Sentinel one drops can put them real far behind. Moment's Peace buys a lot of time. Horrors and Fengraf are pretty useless. Past that, you've got some marginal cards to swap around. Dispel for their pump spells on their creatures or their Vines on your own is fine, Shattering Pulse hits Vault Skirge, Arrows doesn't even hit all of their creatures and costs a bunch. Pulses are medium since it's tough to get a creature into the yard, but if you think your opponent is bad and will let you get a Stonehorn into the graveyard, it's pretty great in that situation. Condescend is pretty pricey when you're on the draw since your opponents' spells don't cost much but it's really good if you can hit their 2 drop down on turn 2. If the opponent shows an above average number of artifacts, like they play Skirge, Bonesplitter and Relic in game 2, you can bring Shattering Pulse in as little more than a Shatter. Affinity You lose through Atog+Fling or by missing on Stonehorns forever. Fortunately you have a lot of resources to fight that. If you have the Stonehorn lock in place, you can Pulse yourself up enough life that they can't get enough artifacts in play to make Atog+Fling lethal. Your creatures are pretty good at chumping to let you find Stonehorn, assuming you're not up against some 4+ 4/4s on turn 3 nut draw.  You get to bring in four Hydroblasts to shut down Atog, while also hitting opposing Pyroblasts and burn spells. Shattering Pulse will end the game once you've locked them, and Moment's Peace will buy you time until you can establish the lock. On the other side, Condescend sucks since it becomes nearly dead real fast, Horror does nothing since you have Hydroblasts to kill Atogs, Fengraf is slow, and you don't need all of the Pulses though you might want to keep one in since chump blocking is still really good. If you saw Metallic Rebuke game 1 you have to take out Crop Rotation, and you might want to take it out even if you didn't since they're liable to bring in Dispels. __________ Holy poo poo that was a lot of words. Anyway, in the future I'm going to be trying out builds with 4x Stonehorns and 4x Moment's Peace. Tron allows you to win the grindy matches so easily, I wonder if I can overload for the aggro decks so much that I crush them and polarize my matchups even more. If such a build doesn't lose percentage against Delver I'll probably go with it, but there is so much Delver that it's difficult to justify doing anything to jeopardize that matchup. Then again a substantial number of people are still playing that poo poo version of Burn so maybe we should join the club of letting Delver run roughshod over the format? Also if you want to watch me crush someone who badly misunderstood the matchup, watch this (fourth match, 1:52:40 if the link doesn't work). That player is a reasonably entertaining guy, but man he really did not quite catch on that I allowed him to bring me to 1 because I was using my life total as a resource, to ensure that I would be able to establish and maintain the Stonehorn lock without being disrupted. Well that's not quite true - I whiffed on Stonehorns in the top half of my deck game 2, but game 1 I chose not to cast a Stonehorn and even had one in my opening hand. Also  at Nihil Spellbomb in the sideboard of the UW deck. Watching this back, I realize how insanely fast I play. Note how fast I play, and note that I have legitimately timed out twice with this deck. I've gotten a significantly higher number of time-out victories against my opponents, though.also imgur album for easy sideboard guide Hellsau fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 09:58
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Hellsau posted:Also Obviously it's better than Relic because you're spending a card to do nothing, instead of spending a card to Stone Rain yourself.
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Mar 24, 2018 11:18
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Wow, fantastic write up. I want to add that kind of stuff to the OP I think.
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Mar 24, 2018 12:44
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Hellsau, do you have any tips for getting your playing speed up?
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Mar 24, 2018 18:13
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3-0 with Mono White Heroic at Card Kingdom, including a 2-1 match against Bogles on a feature match.
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Mar 24, 2018 23:10
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CrazySalamander posted:Hellsau, do you have any tips for getting your playing speed up? Adderall. 
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Mar 25, 2018 21:13
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People on Reddit are still confused by Hellsau: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/comments/872268/what_type_of_tron_is_this/
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Mar 26, 2018 01:58
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 My opponent was playing win-conditionless Teachings with at least 3 Teachings, fueled by Think Twice and Accumulated Knowledge. AKA they were playing a deck that could never beat Tron in a million years, but they just had to give their reason why they lost. In a format where there's more than 30 semi-viable decks complaining about netdecking while netdecking is pretty loose. Anyway here's a bunch of tips on how to get faster and other general gameplay tips:
Playing fast is real nice, gotta admit. A lot of it is just practice - I know what I can draw and I mostly know what my opponents can possibly play, so I get a lot of F6 value. I also click quickly and accurately. Sometimes I still time out, but I win a lot more from time than I lose to it.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:19
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I'm pretty sure you've gamed the MTGO client harder than anyone else in the entire world has. Congratulations, I think?
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Mar 26, 2018 04:25
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good lord that is intense
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Mar 26, 2018 04:31
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Have you considered doing a writeup on the pauper reddit so more people learn to stop being dumb about things or are you enjoying your gravy train too much?
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Mar 26, 2018 05:30
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The Shortest Path posted:Have you considered doing a writeup on the pauper reddit so more people learn to stop being dumb about things or are you enjoying your gravy train too much? I will never post on Reddit and the Pauper subreddit is terrible even by Reddit standards. There were a huge number of people who thought Drake shouldn't be banned months after it was clearly the best deck by miles, and plenty of people who thought it shouldn't have been banned when it finally was. People on that Pauper subreddit have no idea which matchups are good or bad for which decks, and they certainly don't know why the matchups are the way they are. Like there's people on there that think Delver of Secrets is the worst card in UR Delver.
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Mar 26, 2018 05:37
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y i k e s I didn't realize it was that bad.
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Mar 26, 2018 05:47
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Hellsau posted:Like there's people on there that think Delver of Secrets is the worst card in UR Delver. In the interest of being pedantic, an unflipped Delver probably is the worst card in the deck. That said, screw anyone who says that unironically.
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Mar 26, 2018 05:55
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The Shortest Path posted:y i k e s I didn't realize it was that bad. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/comments/86urm0/nerfing_ur_delver_science/dwakr37/  it's real bad like Cloudpost plus Glimmerpost is far and away more powerful and lower deckbuilding cost than Tron and would kill the format. Also how is MBC somehow beating Post any more than it could Tron. I'm not sure MBC is even favored against UR Delver since they can kill Cuombajj Witches.
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Mar 26, 2018 07:51
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Hellsau posted:There were a huge number of people who thought Drake shouldn't be banned months after it was clearly the best deck by miles, and plenty of people who thought it shouldn't have been banned when it finally was. jesus christ. in other news i bought the pieces i was missing for your build hellsau, so im gonna try and fumble through it next week with my friends.
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Mar 26, 2018 09:16
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I also attended the most recent Rags to Riches and made the top 8 with a big UR Flicker deck. It was extremely grindy and slow - my Swiss record ended up being 5-0-2, with 2 of my wins coming in turns. Here's a video of my quarterfinal match against UR Delver. I played pretty poorly here, which I'm attributing to a combination of nerves, unfamiliarity with the matchup/deck, and fatigue. I was pretty happy with the deck and my results. Ordinarily I drive up with a group of friends, but I went up alone this time. I promised them I'd play with the paper bag playmat all day. People loved it, but the play experience was... not great.
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Mar 27, 2018 21:31
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I think I saw the paper bag playmat on twitter, youre famous!
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Mar 28, 2018 03:26
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always be closing posted:I think I saw the paper bag playmat on twitter, youre famous! "The Ultimate Pauper Playmat" 
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Mar 28, 2018 08:45
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MisterOblivious posted:"The Ultimate Pauper Playmat" 
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Mar 28, 2018 08:53
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MisterOblivious posted:"The Ultimate Pauper Playmat" Hahahaha holy poo poo. This rules.
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Mar 28, 2018 12:26
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trillocity posted:I also attended the most recent Rags to Riches and made the top 8 with a big UR Flicker deck. It was extremely grindy and slow - my Swiss record ended up being 5-0-2, with 2 of my wins coming in turns. That playmat owns bones. Also congrats on the t8!
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Mar 28, 2018 16:05
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I went 3-2 in a league with Tireless Tribe. This deck is so bad. You need so many pieces and if you're missing those pieces your cards don't do anything, there's a lot of opposing cards that you stone cannot beat, and the only thing that makes this deck playable is 4x Probe 4x Gush, both of which are Vintage restricted, and Gush is banned in Legacy and Probe should be too. Basically I am only picking up wins because I lucksack into the perfect draw, or my opponent punts because I have Probe and they don't. Probe is such a stupid card. This deck isn't even better than Tron for relaxing because my opponents take for loving ever, god drat. Ban Delver, Ban Probe, Ban Gush, Ban Tron, they're all stupid and make blue have a stranglehold on the format. Ban Flicker because Displace is good enough and Flicker shouldn't be able to save lands from LD and Prism is already good enough as it is, and ban Rancor because it's roughly five times more powerful than the second best green card.
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Apr 4, 2018 09:38
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 This could be neat. Lots of decks that really do not wanna see their lynchpin creature removed on turn one.
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Apr 5, 2018 07:06
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You'll also get to randomly mana screw people who play artifact lands as wrench mind protection or whatever.
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Apr 5, 2018 07:19
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Decided to take the week off and let somebody else have your 5-0 decklist feature slot eh Hellsau? https://www.mtggoldfish.com/player/Hellsau
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Apr 5, 2018 11:38
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I love that the paper prices fluctuate between $60 and $17,000.
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Apr 5, 2018 17:14
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i just noticed that my pauper decks cost more on mtgo than my one modern deck, lol fortunately i got my ash barrens and pyroblasts and hydroblasts a while ago
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Apr 5, 2018 17:20
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MisterOblivious posted:Decided to take the week off and let somebody else have your 5-0 decklist feature slot eh Hellsau? Yeah someone played an outdated copy of my decklist. Honestly, I'm surprised someone's fast enough to play it. The deck is great.
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Apr 5, 2018 19:18
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