Tron can come in many forms. Some play all 5 colors, some play Temur and I have even spoken about a MBC version in the past. Today I want to talk about Mono Green Tron. If you have an itch to play Tron and big threats, you will like this deck. Very clear and straight to the point.

The list we will be looking at today was part of the 5-0 dump from 5/18/2022 and was piloted by the player Symsonic. Before we continue, I sort of lied. This list isn’t exactly Mono Green Tron because it plays a very small red splash, but I assure you it is for a good reason.

Mono Green Tron

by Symsonic

4 Fangren Marauder 4 Self-Assembler 3 Ulamog's Crusher 4 Crop Rotation 4 Fiery Cannonade 4 Ancient Stirrings 4 Chromatic Sphere 4 Chromatic Star 4 Expedition Map 2 Golden Egg 3 Cave of Temptation 2 Forest 2 Haunted Fengraf

1 Sejiri Steppe 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 4 Urza's Tower 3 Maelstrom Colossus

Sideboard: 3 Gorilla Shaman 4 Twin-Silk Spider 4 Weather the Storm 2 Tranquility 1 Relic of Progenitus 1 Bojuka Bog

Self-Assembler – I both loved and hated this card in Kaladesh limited. However I do enjoy seeing it make an appearance in Pauper. This is basically a cheaper and slightly easier to cast version of Aurochs Herd and although they are not as powerful as Aurochs, being colorless and only 5 mana can make it easier to cast 2 in the same turn. Once Self-Assembler gets going, it can end games very quickly.

Fangren Marauder – One of the biggest nightmares for the Affinity archetype, some forget that Marauder also hits really hard. You also have a good number of artifacts to trigger the life gain and that can be devastating against any aggro strategy.

Maelstrom Colossus – A big creature with Cascade. This is great for a Tron deck like this as not only does it hit hard, it also can generate a lot of card advantage as well. It does suck that it doesn’t have Trample but it is still fairly powerful. While this card is pretty good and works great with another card I will talk about a little later, I personally would like to test Annoyed Aultisaur in this spot as I think it is a better creature. However, without access to Prophetic Prism, acquiring double green for the casting cost may be too difficult.

Ulamog’s Crusher – Ah yes, I think we all knew this deck would play this card, let alone the full 4 copies. This is the big end game creature and the main win condition of the deck.

Ancient Stirrings – This is one one of the reasons to play a Tron deck like this. For just 1 green mana, you get to see 5 cards deep and get a colorless card. You have a lot of cards it can find. This includes your 2 big creatures being Crusher and Colossus.

Crop Rotation – The point of this type of Tron deck is to assemble tron as quickly as possible. Just be careful when casting this into open blue mana.

Chromatic Star and Chromatic Sphere – They draw cards, help you cast your colored spells and gain life with Marauder, These cards pretty much do it all for you.

Expedition Map – Here we again see Map make an appearance since getting unbanned. I am not surprised to see 4 copies in this deck.

Golden Egg – Not a great replacement for Prophetic Prism, but it does help with your game plan.

Fiery Cannonade – Every deck needs a board wipe and this is one of the best in the format. Here is the small red splash I was talking about.

The Manabase

Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Powerplant and Urza’s Mine – Do not ever play less than 4 of these.

Cave of Temptation – This helps you cast your spells and later in the game it makes one of your creatures bigger so the clock is faster. Overall a pretty good land.

Sejiri Steppe – A great counter to removal with Crop Rotation. Just don’t be like me and draw it every game.

Haunted Fengraf – A land that returns a creature from the graveyard. Although it does it at random, every creature you have is powerful.

Last but not least, we have a couple of Forest to round out the manabase. I like the manabase and I don’t think I would change anything so we are gonna move on to the sideboard.

The Sideboard

Bojuka Bog – A great form of graveyard hate. I like having it in the sideboard as I think game 1 most of the time Sejiri Steppe is a better land to have access to. However this is meta dependent.

Gorilla Shaman – Everyone needs some Affinity hate in their life.

Relic of Progenitus – More graveyard hate. Just be careful because it also hits your graveyard and that can mess up your Fengraf plan.

Tranquility – Hey Bogles, wouldn’t it be a shame if all of your enchantments got destroyed?

Twin-Silk Spider – This one is pretty interesting. Normally I would think we see Penumbra Spider in this spot. However, this gives you 2 blockers right away and that could matter against a deck like Faeries.

Weather the Storm – I am looking at you Burn and the storm is coming for ya!

Verdict and Final Thoughts

When you think of Tron in Pauper, we are all used to the 5 color variants by now. The builds that have Flicker combos, removal and cards like Moment’s Peace. For you Tron lovers, this deck might be a nice change of pace to have fun with.

There isn’t too much to critique in this build as I think the pilot built it very well and very clean. If you wanted to, you could add a couple copies of Boarding Party to the deck and shave some stuff. I am not opposed to the idea as Boarding Party is the kind of aggressive creature this archetype would want. However, the question to ask is, “what does it do better than what I already have?”. The answer to that may be nothing.

Should you play this deck? For the leagues this deck is going to be pretty fun and you will get games over with fairly quickly. I am sure you can also get some “free” wins just based on the power level of some of your cards. However, I don’t think this deck has great matchups against some of the top archetypes.

While most of your spells get around Spellstutter Sprite and Pyroblast does nothing to you, your Faeries Izzet matchup isn’t great as they can easily get under you so quickly that by the time you actually have a threat resolve, you are facing too much damage. Dimir Faeries does the same but with good removal as well. I also think Familiars and Affinity are both too quick and not great for you overall.

Tron hasn’t been doing to well these days and there are probably a number of reasons for that. The banning of Prism and Ornament hurt tron fairly well and the top played decks aren’t great matchups for the traditional Tron Control variants. Sadly in my opinion, it doesn’t get much better for this archetype either. For leagues yes, for challenges I would rather play the regular Tron Control decks and even then I would personally look elsewhere for now.

However, with all this being said, as always, do remember my words are not gospel. I will always encourage you to try a deck that I bring you despite my personal feelings. Remember that results will vary and always remember to practice!

Would you like to compete in a free Pauper tournament with some great prizes? Head on over to Gatherling.com on Tuesday nights at 8pm EDT and play in our weekly Pauper Classic Tuesday's event! Join the chat #PCT to chat with us and feel free to find most of the competitors on Discord!

Thank you so much for reading. Best of luck to you in your next tournament and I’ll catch you all next time!