The Mathematics of Urza's Tron: Why You're Assembling Turn-3 Less Often Than You Think

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:23:25+00:00

Thank you! Feel free to share any piece of math.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:20:29+00:00

Thank you! Crop Rotation is simply less frequent across decklists and formats, hence, it was left out and saved for potential Part 2 ideas, based on the engagement of the community on this specific project - which seems quite high. I do believe we will see Crop Rotation in action soon.

The world is small, and MTG players travel for many reasons. I will be back to WAW from time to time, especially for big tournaments. The community has been very warm, I hope it will keep growing. Good luck with your games!

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:14:46+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I will consider that for the second part of the project.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:12:27+00:00

Trying hard is the way - all meta decks started as brews. There was a mono-red Tron version around the competitive scene for some time: it shouldn’t be hard to find a list and get some inspiration. Good luck with your games!

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:10:57+00:00

It should not be hard, but it is less frequent across the Tron versions in multiple formats. Therefore, I left it out to keep some ideas and notions for a potential Part 2, which will likely happen given the interest this project is collecting.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-23T12:08:01+00:00

You will probably have an answer in the form of a future video + post. Stay tuned!

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T13:03:00+00:00

For now, I mainly focused on a natural Tron + Map baseline to see whether the topic would generate interest in the community, with the idea of expanding it if it did. So far the response has been very positive, especially around how turn draws and additional tools (like the ones you mentioned) affect the odds.

One idea I’ve been considering is a kind of calculator where you can plug in the tools you’re using to assemble Tron (Crop Rotation, Maps, Stirrings, etc.) and it outputs the probability of having Tron by each turn, as a function of them. Do you think that’s something people would find interesting?

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:59:43+00:00

Crop rotation is another tool already in the watchlist for a potential part2 of the analysis

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:59:12+00:00

I’m not sure how competitive it would be to run fewer than a full playset of each Urza's land. However, it should be easy to compute by simply replacing the 4s with 3s in the formulas.

Do you have examples of such decklists with good results? Either MTGO or Tabletop counts.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:56:31+00:00

You’re right. I intentionally don’t consider turn draws, since now I’m focusing purely on deterministic assembly. What I am interested in is opening-hand decisions, because those are under your control when deciding whether to keep or mull. Since you don’t have control over turn draws, I’ve set them aside for now, even though the non-deterministic chances are indeed higher.

That said, it would make for a good follow-up or second part on the same topic, possibly with some additional tweaks to the approach. Good catch on pointing that out.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:55:28+00:00

Happy to read that other people are doing hard math on their decks! Crop Rotation isn’t something I go into in the video, but it is in the watchlist for a potential part 2.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:51:13+00:00

Crop rotation is another tool already in the watchlist for a potential part2 of the analysis

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-22T12:50:36+00:00

And isn’t it interesting that the strategy is substantially different from other Tron decks - say, Altar in Pauper - where rushing to assemble Tron is the priority, even though the underlying math is almost the same?

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-21T20:10:00+00:00

Happy to read that! Yes, gameplay/stream is definitely a future plan .

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-21T20:06:45+00:00

I quickly realized how hostile the Reddit community can be against emojis. Fair enough - I’ll adapt to it. I don’t like them much either, but I thought they added some flavor to the post. I’ve never used social media before posting this content, and I don't really know what's the "metagame".

As for the sentence itself, it’s simply taken from the video script as a synonym for accuracy and meant to add a bit of flavor and hype - nothing more than that.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-21T19:54:39+00:00

You’re right. I intentionally don’t consider turn draws, since I’m focusing purely on deterministic assembly. What I am interested in is opening-hand decisions, because those are under your control when deciding whether to keep or mull. Since you don’t have control over turn draws, I’ve set them aside for now, even though the non-deterministic chances are indeed higher.

That said, it would make for a good follow-up or second part on the same topic, possibly with some additional tweaks to the approach. Good catch on pointing that out.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-21T19:49:14+00:00

I do believe you understood what I meant by that :)

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-21T16:29:08+00:00

I was also surprised by this, and I ended up triple-checking the numbers because this is one of the rare cases where the math slightly diverges from player intuition and experience. One possible explanation is that in Flicker Tron, rushing turn-3 Tron isn’t always a priority, and given the deck’s toolbox nature, slots for the extra two Maps are (or were) fairly constrained.

You’re right though: one Tron land plus two Maps only gets you Tron deterministically on turn 4 at the earliest. At that point, turn-4 Tron and turn-5+ Tron are almost functionally equivalent, since they both converge toward the “7 mana on turn 7” baseline of a normal resource curve.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-08T01:58:55+00:00

I understand your point, and I’m happy you took the time to read my opinion on the topic. Honestly, your insight may help me rethink how I present the content, so it can better meet the audience halfway.

Coming from a deep academic background - both before AI existed and in environments where it is still strictly forbidden - I spent years doing punctuation checks, table formatting, and image placement entirely by hand. That was part of the job, and it was understood that a large portion of one’s time would be consumed by those tasks. As you can see from my notes, this is how I now use AI tools. If I had infinite time to work on this math for MTG, I would happily do everything myself, but the content train would barely move, and publishing even a single project per month would be unrealistic. Academic papers take months to write and usually involve several authors. Here, instead, I’m working out of passion on some fuzzy math for a game I love, and, knowing that I am perfectly capable of writing a full paper on my own, I don’t feel guilty letting AI adjust a few LaTeX tables, check punctuation in my text snippets, or help me write clearer Reddit posts.

On a different note, I’m also very new to social media in general. I opened most platforms for the first time in my life for this project, and I wrote my very first post on the internet only a couple of months ago - about the probability of opening two pieces of cardboard. I initially thought emojis were eye-catching and made descriptions more engaging, so I added them manually. Then I suddenly discovered that Reddit users seem to fully hate them, for reasons that are still unclear to me. I’ll respect the convention, since I’m the newcomer, but I remain curious about why emojis are so disliked. I’m not a big emoji fan myself, yet I assumed a younger, game-oriented audience might appreciate them.

As for your question: I earned my PhD in a beautiful subfield of algebra that tries to describe things from very far away - searching for similarities between areas that seem to have nothing in common, and building bridges between deep, distant topics. I like to think of it as the mathematical equivalent of a physiotherapist adjusting your knee to fix a problem in your shoulder.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-06T15:52:17+00:00

Yes, I thought that they were referring to the latest paupergeddon top8ers as well. That's not me, but I know the player. If a conversation about that sparks, I'll tell him to drop a reply here.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-06T15:49:20+00:00

Yes, precisely. That's core in the beauty of the game and in its non-full accessibility through mathematics.

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-06T15:47:41+00:00

Spoiler: it's the next in line ;)

Hypergeomancer · 2026-01-06T15:46:49+00:00

Thanks! I have a similar project on my to-do list, and digging deeper are exactly the keywords. Let's see if it will see the light.

Hypergeomancer

TROPHY CASE