Pauper: Altar Tron Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

I'm Tiago Fuguete and I finally found a pretext to write an article talking about Tron.

As we have seen recently, Altar Tron won the Paupergeddon Tournament, in Italy, and it was well talked about, so today we are going to talk about this Tron variant and also explain how the combo works.

We usually see a lot of Fog Tron playing on Pauper. It is a well-known deck that plays very well, protects itself and can play against any opponent in the format with its infinite Fogs, or skipping combat phases and causing despair. Because of this, many people dislike it.

But today we're going to discuss a "cousin" Tron, and that instead of being a good part of the family, it manages to be even more evil even without using Fogs or Stonehorn Dignitary, as it goes infinite with a combo!

This is one of the most hated decks of all time, and I believe that in any format he plays and has a reason for it, or rather 7 reasons: the famous Urzatron!

The Urza Lands

If you're familiar with Urza's Mine, Urza's Tower and Urza's Power Plant, you already know that each one individually generates 1 mana. But when you have all 3 in play, they add up to 7 colorless mana, since Urza's Mine and Urza's Power Plant now generate 2 mana each and Urza's Tower generates 3.

After each of the three Tron pieces on the field, just count on the help of some “mana rock” to filter and have colored mana and that’s it, we can now cast more spells per turn, generating more value than the opponent.

To start talking about the combo, I'm going to say that there's a lot of difference between playing with this deck on tabletop and on MTGO, and it's clear that it's much easier to pilot on tabletop, at least the combo part, as you don't have to click many, many times.

Understanding the Combo

The combo is “simple”, but needs several cards at the same time. Let's go to them:

In play, we need to have: 1 Ashnod's Altar, 1 Golem Foundry and 1 Myr Retriever.

At the Graveyard: 1 Myr Retriever.

At least we need 4 cards and that our opponent doesn't interact with our graveyard, in addition to not destroying Ashnod's Altar and Golem Foundry.

If you already have practice with the deck, it is possible to try to circumvent a move, and it's also possible in this combo to replace one of Myr Retriever with a card that just released in Phyrexia, Myr Kinsmith, which works as a tutor.

How to combo:

The best way is to have Myr Retriever in your graveyard and have 1 Ashnod's Altar and 1 Golem Foundry in play.

We'll need to sacrifice a creature to Ashnod's Altar and generate 2 mana, and if it's a Myr Retriever, it will trigger an ability to return an artifact from the graveyard to our hand. Let's target the other Myr Retriever that's already there.

With the 2 colorless mana generated in the sacrifice, we will cast Myr Retriever again, which will trigger Golem Foundry, where we will place a counter and after that, just repeat the process as much as necessary. For every 3 counters in the Golem Foundry, we would generate one Golem, and with them end the game.

Playing with the deck in MTGO I don't find it so easy, since all this combo is done click by click and time is a big enemy. Of course, the more Golem Foundry we have in play, the more help, and on the tabletop, we will be explaining to the opponent what is happening and what is the combo - and if they don't have an answer, it's game over.

The Decklist

We have some “support” cards, which will help us buy time. In game 1 we have Weather the Storm to deal with Aggro and on the side we will have Breath Weapon to deal with small creatures, such as elves, Boros Bully and Mono Red Kuldotha.

Our biggest weakness is perhaps graveyard hate, as it is a critical part of our combo. To deal with this, we have some side cards to try to prevent it, such as Masked Vandal, Smash to Dust and Ancient Grudge to destroy artifacts and also Duress to look at the opponent's hand and try to discard those cards, as well as being useful for playing against counterspells.

I would be lying if I didn't say that our stance is to attempt to close Tron and combo as quickly as possible, period, but it doesn't always happen so quickly.

Our posture is, indeed, going all-in for the combo, but we have to have a different posture for each situation. Let's be more cautious against counterspells, try a big Storm against Aggro and be a little more conservative against Midrange.

Knowing how to mulligan when playing combo is essential. Knowing if we're going to have draws to get what's missing, if we will have an answer for the opponent, and if we have more than one piece of the combo already in our hand. In addition to all this, we are still from Tron and want different lands to close the trio and have more options.

If I were to choose a great hand, it would be the closed tron or at least 2 Urza Lands + Expedition Map, plus some Chromatic Star, Ichor Wellspring and/or draws to get the combo cards and have mana resources. In addition to Expedition Map, which helps to speed up our mana base, Weather the Storm is a great card to be used well in the first turns, being good against almost all decks, since the current Metagame is faster and leaned towards Aggro decks,

So, you are very wrong if you think it's just trying to combo off and that's it. The deck will require a lot of training and several mistakes in the beginning until you get the hang of it and make the sequences in the best possible way.

I imagine that our opponent should be more concerned about that than we are, but we still have to be careful. Our sideboard is very complete against the current main decks.

vs. Mono Red Kuldotha

This match is complicated with any deck, and it's no different here, so our plan is to combo as quickly as possible, always trying to use our best card: Weather the Storm.

Nowadays, gaining a bit of life doesn't solve the game against this new Mono Red, but in our case, we want to gain 2, 3 or 4 turns to find the combo.

A problem I found when during the sideboarding is what to remove from the deck, since we have plenty of cards to put - and remembering that we have a combo strategy here, and the more we change, the worse it gets.

Side in:

Side out:

vs. Grixis Affinity

Despite our opponent having one of the best decks in the meta, I don't believe this matchup will be that complicated for us. Usually Affinity is “too slow” and if that happens, it ends up helping us.

Another factor is that our opponent doesn't interact much, apart from its counterspells, which won't disturb us much if we play around it.

Post-side, we have some cards to annoy our opponent a lot and grant us the victory, like Fangren Marauder and Smash to Dust.

Side in:

Side out:

vs. Orzhov Ephemerate

It's not the first time I've commented on how strong Orzhov Ephemerate is, and I think it's a tricky game.

In game 1, our problem will be the number of creatures the opponent makes, so fitting a Weather the Storm will be critical to gain time.

But I think the post-side will be worse, since Dust to Dust can hinder us a lot, so it will be vital to know how to get around it and maybe try to keep the combo pieces in the hand to use them all at once.

Side in:

Side out:

vs. Dimir Poison

It's wonderful how Poison has been growing in Pauper's scene, and I was very surprised to see it among the 5 most played in the meta here on the site on the day I was writing the article. So let's think about how to make this side, as our opponent's deck is "new" and we will have to be creative.

Side in:

Side out:

vs. Mono Blue Faeries

Perhaps among the decks mentioned today, this is the worst one to play against, as Faeries are very favored against combo decks.

An important detail in our opponent's deck is to think that, they are very aggressive and will bother us a lot with their counterspells, so we need to play some "baits" and try to solve our combo.

Side in:

Side out:

Finishing another article, I say that I played a few times with the deck, it is exhausting to play in MTGO, it demands a lot of time for each game and I don't believe it is one of the main ones in our meta. But I would still like you to play and get the feeling of trying to perform this combo, going through the experience of piloting such a different deck!

If you have any questions or suggestions, just leave them in the comments, and I'll be back to talk about it!

Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed the reading.