My First Blue Tron

Budget for Me

I have some paper pauper decks that I have been making to try and give my friends something they can play with when they visit so I can jam some games and they don't have to spend two weeks remembering how to build a deck.

One of the decks that I built is an Urzatron deck based on the fabled Urza lands to make huge mana fast. It turns out this deck isn't as 'budget' as I thought, but I had all of these cards just lying around. At any rate, here is what I have!

Deck: Blue Pauper Tron
Lands		Spells		Creatures
8	Island	4	Chromatic Sphere	3	Accomplished Automaton
4	Urza's Mine	3	Echoing Truth	4	Mnemonic Wall
4	Urza's Power Plant	3	Forbidden Alchemy	4	Sea Gate Oracle
4	Urza's Tower	2	Ghostly Flicker	4	Self-Assembler
		4	Prophetic Prism	1	Tilling Treefolk
		1	Remember the Fallen
		3	Scour from Existence
		4	Take Inventory
20	cards	24	cards	16	cards
Display deck statistics

The Urza lands themselves make up about $37 of this $47 deck. I picked up a playset of them in a bulk box for $2 when I was a kid and couldn't figure out how to run them. Now, they are paying off I guess!

How It Plays

To be perfectly honest, it needs work. I know I am not running the best payoff cards like Ulamog's Crusher, but the Automaton lines up better at 7 mana. Really, I need to pull some Scour from Existence and Remember the Fallen/Tilling Treefolk should change to Pulse of Murasa so I can dig out some lands from the graveyard and stabilize after the early game. Against most of the other decks I have though, it seems to be about the right power range.

The blue version I built here is mostly because I just don't have the pieces for the mono green build. I could use some Expedition Maps in either build, but the green Crop Rotation I just don't have. Some day soon though, I might pick some up so I can have a tier pauper deck.

The fact that most of the early game is blue mana with some minor splashes in the later game make islands ideal for supplemental lands. The artifact mana fixing package cantrips and goes for any color needed, which means that there is hardly any turn in which a spell can't be cast. I had tried an earlier run of the deck with Unknown Shores, but having a land filter to blue made the deck at least one turn slower all the time. I put in islands and immediately found that the deck was more smooth from one turn to the next.

There is a big issue with colored mana though. Even after changing to islands, I find that I run out of colored mana sources much faster than I run out of cards I want to cast! I have had turn 4s and turn 5s where I have untapped tron lands making 4 or 5 mana go to waste! I need a better filter into blue than these one time use or tap to filter stones or some colorless cantrips I can play instead of something like Take Inventory.

Final Thoughts

Before anybody goes too crazy in the comments, I have around a dozen paper pauper decks built so I have some on hand. Most of my blue cantrip spells are in other decks that I think need them more or get played more often. I am trying to get some more of these cards, but there just aren't enough Preordain to go around.

I am looking for turn 3 payload cards and I might just switch out to pauper's Crusher king. The Self-Assemblers are like big Squadron Hawks and I think it is fun to get turn after turn of 4/4s on the table.

I am sure I will be updating when I get around to buying some pieces for decks. Next printing on any of those key cards might be when I snag a few, but we shall see. If anyone has other fun ideas for this kind of super size colorless mana fountain, I would probably give it a shot!

As always, happy gaming!
-Zenfall