It’s no secret that Tron lands are kind of busted. Fast mana has been a long time catapulting force in eternal formats. I’m not going to present you with boring old normal Tron today though – I wouldn’t do that to you.
Today we have a different kind of animal that’s also using the Tron mana base to propel its combo forward. This deck comes to you courtesy of the famous streamer AspiringSpike! It of course utilizes The One Ring. Now if you regularly digest my articles, then you know I like to start with the decklist. For your viewing pleasure, I present:
Creatures (4)
I’m sure some of these cards seem confusing, so let me start by going how this deck actually wins games. Then we’ll retrace our steps to look at the machinery that makes it all work.
We first start with Semblance Anvil imprinting an artifact or creature (it doesn’t really matter which, but artifact is preferred is the first part of the combo). From there we get to cast Grinding Station for free (the best price), as well as Myr Retriever for free. If we have a Myr Retriever already in the graveyard or another copy in hand then we have the win.
First place the Retriever, sac to Station, bring back other Retriever, play for free, untap Station, sac to Station to mill opponent and bring back retriever again. Perform this loop as much as you want but soon enough your opponent will end up with a whopping zero cards remaining in their library.
People have been playing Tron for some time and I dare say they have perfected the lines. Generally speaking, you want to keep mulliganing until you know you can have Tron online by turn three. The advantage of the Semblance Anvil combo is that this rule is no longer true. Or at least, it is slightly altered by the fact that we can keep hands that can also play Semblance Anvil on turn three. This in turn leads to less mulligans.
Some of my own twists on this original deck are to play cards like Ugin, the Ineffable, seeing as its static ability replicates Semblance Anvil’s effect. Ugin gives us additional copies of Anvil as well as answers pesky to things like Blood Moon and other disruption cards. Sometimes you’ll just win the old fashioned way with an army of 2/2’s as well.
Karn, the Great Creator is of course a powerhouse in Modern, especially now since it shuts down your opponents’ the One Ring (while keeping yours intact). Here it is also meant to be the additional copies of Semblance Anvil. This is why we have one copy of Anvil in the board to tutor.
There isn’t a whole lot of other trickiness to the deck. There’s also only a few cards in the sideboard you’ll ever actually bring in. Welding Jar is mostly for those Force of Vigor folks (literally almost everybody). Defense Grid is good against the decks with lots of pitch cards and also basic old Counterspell(s). The rest of the sideboard chills out exactly where it is in case you land a Karn, the Great Creator to give you more in-game flexibility.
Some people might ask, is this KCI reborn? Hell yeah it is! I doubt KCI would ever get the ban hammer in 2023 with the power level of cards as high as they are nowadays. Although make no mistake, this deck is not just some random fun deck. It is a high velocity machine and it’s ready to take down a tournament!
If you are prepping for a certain metagame here’s the breakdown of when you want to pull this deck out.
Good matchups: Azorius Control, Burn, Tron, Breach, Omnath, Hardened Scales, Hammertime (plus various other matchups that comprise of less than 5% of the meta)
Bad Matchups: Scam, Yawgmoth, Rhinos, Living End, Izzet Murktide
Yes I know a lot of the bad matchups are very popular decks in Modern. Modern is a huge format however, and you could dodge many of these matchups across a whole tournament. It still doesn’t preclude this deck from being an option. I would advise picking your battles and understanding what you are up against when making your deck selection. When a deck falls off the radar, it gets the opportunity to rise up and redeem itself.
You’ve been a good sport about reading me rambling on and on like an old man. Have fun out there and keep trying things out until this deck gets solved. Collaboration is typically welcome and I am on social media sites under my actual name. Stay frosty out there.