Every workday while the set is new, Insight is taking a quick look at one deck featuring the latest additions from The Brothers' War. Flicker Tron was once the best control strategy in Pauper, from the printing of Pulse of Murasa to the banning of Prophetic Prism. Now Energy Refractor puts it back on the map!
may be able to bring the deck back into the high-stakes fold. If you are familiar with how Urza's lands and the related deck work in any other format, the kind of Tron variant that Pauper was famous for differs in a lot of ways. The most apt comparison is Modern's Monoblue Tron, which, like its Pauper cousin, also is a sort of control archetype.
The main difference between Modern and Pauper is the lack of any relevant colorless payoff aside from . For that reason the all-common Tron lists, ranging from midrange to control, all need colored mana throughout all of the game. was great at providing that and allowed Pauper Tron to keep effectively playing even after the ban of Astrolabe itself. A cantripping permanent that allowed you to cast a bunch of colored spells, in a deck most hungry for colored mana, was the centerpiece of the strategy. I expect Energy Refractor to work in a very similar way as Prophetic Prism did.
Generally speaking, playing Flicker Tron (also known as Fog Tron) is not much complicated: You have card advantage and interactive spells, so you try to go for the longer game helped by counterspells, life gain, and fog effects. The deck doesn't really require a proper endgame. You just loop your protection and answers an infinite amount of times with and targeting and another value creature.
The main issue you must be aware of, when you try to play or build the deck, is how to overcome the current meta: Burn and Blue-Black Terror are two of the most popular decks, leaving the traditional / game plan quite weak. However, the current meta is low on beatdown strategies, and for that reason I would say can be more relevant as a effect, partly replacing the previous. Working alongside , the deck may have a sufficient amount of answers to the most prevalent threats once again.
So my Day 1 decklist looks as follows:
| Flicker Tron, Pauper |
|---|
| Main Deck | Sideboard |
|---|
- 4
- 3
- 1
-
- 1
- 1
- 3
- 4
- 3
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 2
- 1
| | |
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.
