The Modern Bible of RG Tron Chapter Eight: 20 or 21 lands?

This week we will talk about the bnumber of lands we have in our RG Tron lists.

First, lets get one thing out of the way. Never ever never play 19 lands.

Never play 19 lands!
Playing 19 lands can be tempting but it is a mistake. 20 lands is the absolute minimum for this deck. Remember that you need to be able to play through land hate and situations where you can not assemble your Tron. You can not do that without enough lands.

So 20 or 21 lands?
Remember, we have a core set of lands you should not change under any circumstance as long as your are Red Green.

That means no replacing the Grove of the Burnwillows! Get that Karplusan Forest out of here please!

The idea behind running 21 lands
There are two reasons to run 21 lands.
First, you are more likely to be able to hardcast stuff like Oblivion Stone, Wurmcoil Engine or All is Dust if you have 21 lands.
Secondly, you get to play one more utility land. Being able to both splash for Slaughter Games AND have a second Forest can be very useful.

The pros were all runing 20 lands at the Pro Tour
You will notice that all my deck lists have 20 lands. This is the main reason why. I could not find a single pro ronning 21 lands at the Pro Tour. I am not sure why yet, but I will defer to their greater play skill and assume that 20 lands is the correct decision for now.

A clever trick if you want 21 lands
This is a quote from mtgsalvation: "I like it (running 21 lands), but I won't hesitate to SB out 1 Forest/1 Quarter/1 Grove depending on which of the three is worse in the MU. Running the 21 is a pregame hedge as to the types of lands you'll need to see in that MU, so SBing one out shouldn't be something you feel bad about doing. Additionally, unless you replace the 21st land with a cantrip, it won't help you assemble Tron any more than if it was some other card (in fact, it's slightly better in the sense that they still let you hit land drops for Scryings/etc)."

What would that 21st land be?
The core lands are
12 Urza lands
1 Eye of Ugin
4 Grove of the Burnwillows

Few people would leave home without the 1 Forest and 1 Ghost Quarter, bringing us to 19.

So your final choice is a second Forest, a second Ghost Quarter (which you do not want), a land that produces black mana for Slaughter Games or some optional land (please check chapter two for a complete list of possible lands.)



For a full list of the chapters of The Modern Bible check out this link: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/02/the-modern-bible-of-rg-tron-part-1.html