In any format, my favorite decks are the big mana control decks. Any control deck using cards like Explosive Vegetation, Cloudpost, or Urza Lands to pull ahead on mana and do something powerful is exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing. That’s part of why I’m so excited about jsiri84’s take on U/R Tron in Pauper, which is very much reminiscent of the U/R Cloudpost decks which dominated the format before its namesake was banned. Let’s take a look:

U/R Tron ? Pauper | jsiri84

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Mnemonic Wall
• 1 Ulamog's Crusher
• 4 Mulldrifter
• 4 Sea Gate Oracle

• Spells (27)
• 1 Capsize
• 2 Exclude
• 2 Pulse of Murasa
• 2 Repeal
• 2 Twin Bolt
• 3 Condescend
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Rolling Thunder
• 3 Flame Slash
• 3 Expedition Map
• 4 Prophetic Prism

• Lands (23)
• 3 Island
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Shimmering Grotto
• 2 Izzet Guildgate
• 4 Swiftwater Cliffs
• 4 Urza's Mine
• 4 Urza's Power Plant
• 4 Urza's Tower

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Hydroblast
• 1 Electrickery
• 1 Flame Slash
• 1 Echoing Truth
• 1 Negate
• 2 Curse of the Bloody Tome
• 3 Gorilla Shaman
• 2 Pyroblast

Buy This Deck

The core of the deck is very similar: Tron lands, value creatures, and color fixing backed by efficient removal and counterspells. The power of this deck is the enormous amount of flexibility in the cards you can play, particularly since this deck intends for the game to go very, very long. This means single card changes can have an enormous impact on how matchups play out. For example, a simple swap of Magma Spray or Electrostatic Bolt over Lightning Bolt can give you a huge edge against decks with Young Wolf or Myr Enforcer, particularly in builds that play Mystical Teachings.

This deck has become a huge contender in the new format due to two big changes. The first is the banning of the fast Cloud of Faeries decks capable of sneaking in underneath the taplands and Prophetic Prisms to pull ahead of the Tron decks and stay ahead.

The second change is the printing of Pulse of Murasa. This card is a powerful role player capable of shoring up a lot of weak matchups. First, it gives you a way to fight back against land destruction, which is not exactly common, but definitely exists. Second, it gives you time. This deck will frequently power out Mulldrifters and use them to trade off with early aggressive creatures. That’s a great position to be in, assuming you have time to leverage those resources. Pulse not only gives you the life buffer you need, but also lets you re-buy your value creature. This is especially powerful in conjunction with Mnemonic Wall, which lets you chain Pulses in the midgame to keep your life total out of the red and keep generating value.