Sword of the Meek is unbanned, as is Ancestral Visions.
As a RG Tron player, we have now lost our tool to achieve the greatest inevitability in Modern; The Emrakul win through Eye of Ugin. Fetch Eye, get Emrakul, win against anything in the mid and late game.
How badly hurt is RG Tron?
Remember the ways we lose the game: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/07/the-modern-bible-of-rg-tron-chapter-23.html
#1: You don't get to Tron. This has not changed. We are still as capable to play a turn 3 Karn Liberated as we ever were.
#2: You play against a combo deck that is just faster than you are. I have no idea how fast Sword of the Meek decks can be but surely that can be a problem.
#3: You get to Tron but not to Emrakul, run out of gas and lose. This is the problem.
Emrakul has to go. A one-off 15-mana card does prove inevitability but there is a very realistic chance you never draw her in a game now. Earlier you had 12+ search cards that could find Eye of Ugin to search for Emrakul. Now you have nothing. That does not work.
The problem is that there may now be decks that have better lategames than us. Take Mono Blue Tron as an example - already equipped with a super powerful lategame (but not as good as Emrakul) they now get four Ancestral Visions as well. In fact, a whole new generation of control decks can pop up now.
Can they deal with us? We are already weak to aggro and combo and we are probably still very good against midrange. But how good is the control match now? Well, we still have potent threats. Their counterspells are still weak lategame. And we still have Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
Changes to RG Tron
Eye of Ugin is gone. It was never a land. It almost never gave us mana. It was a way to find Ulamog or Emrakul. I think replacing Eye of Ugin with a land is a mistake and shows a luck of fundamental understanding of what our deck is trying to do.
If we are going to rely on Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, we better draw him. We have to up the count of the great Eldrazi lord.
Could the solution be as simple as to replace Eye of Ugin and Emrakul with two copies of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger?
This breaks the principle of the 2-of that I wrote about here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/12/2-ofs_23.html
Looking at that article, Ulamog is certainly a 2-of. We want to be sure we can draw one copy of the card in the lategame and drawing two copies is not the end of the world (they do stack quite well - after they deal with Ulamog #1, Ulamog #2 breaks their back).
Playing three copies of the card seems excessive but Ulamog is so critical to us that I want to try it anyways. The correct solution is probably some other card, unless the whole deck should be reconstructed to be a bigger Eldrazi deck.
Having said all this, I will try this simple swap and see how it does.
An alternative solution - the big Eldrazi deck
I just saw this on mtgsalvation. Credit goes to user Dizdo for trying this.
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Forest
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Expedition Map
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Sylvan Scrying
2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Conduit of Ruin
1 Ruin Processor
3 Oblivion Sower
3 World Breaker
4 Karn Liberated
Sideboard
3 All Is Dust
2 Creeping Corrosion
2 Dragon's Claw
3 Nature's Claim
2 Ruin Processor
3 Spellskite
That is quite different from the pre-ban RG Tron decks. Its more like the love child of Eldrazi and RG Tron. I will be following Dizdo's result closely.
Next week I will publish the first tests with my new RG Tron build with the simple swap on https://www.youtube.com/user/magicgatheringstrat One video on Tuesday, one of Friday. Check them out if you are interested.
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