This post started as a report regarding my recent Magic tournaments. However, it later became something more...

I attended the Saturday Modern tournament at Ancient Wonders last weekend. I played my usual G/R Tron deck; this time with little success. I dropped out of the tournament after a painful first round loss to UWr Geist.

Sowing Salt is just annoying. I KNEW before the tournament that people would be packing Sowing Salt because of the previous success I had with Tron, so I tried to plan accordingly. However, my research revealed a fundamental flaw with any anti-Sowing Salt strategy; there's no good answer to Sowing Salt! Consider the following:

First, Sowing Salt exiles a land, so effects that make your land indestructible or effects that return a land from the graveyard to your hand or play simply are not effective against Sowing Salt. Second, unlike other cards that remove all copies of a card from the game (here I am thinking of Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Memoricide, Slaughter Games, Cranial Extraction, and so on...), Sowing Salt does not target a player, so Leyline of Sanctity (a common sideboard card in some Modern decks) simply does nothing to stop Sowing Salt's effect.

Second, it's insanely difficult in Modern (and in Magic in general), to retrieve a card that has been removed from the game. Thus, once Sowing Salt exiles one of your Urza lands, those lands are pretty much gone for good. The only Modern-legal cards I found that can successfully return a card from exile are Mirror of Fate, Pull from Eternity, and Riftsweeper.

*** Special note here. In the old days, Magic rules allowed you to use cards like Burning Wish, Cunning Wish, Glittering Wish, and Living Wish to retrieve cards that had been removed from the game. If these rules were the still the same, Living Wish would provide an excellent answer to Sowing Salt. These days, however, the rules have changed, and the "wishes" can only retrieve cards located in your sideboard. Of course, this rule change is completely irrelevant to this analysis because Burning Wish, Cunning Wish, and Living Wish aren't Modern legal anyway (Glittering Wish is; check out this deck), but hey, it's still worth mentioning.***

Anyway, back to Mirror of Fate, Pull from Eternity, and Riftsweeper. These cards are all possible answers to Sowing Salt, because they allow you to retrieve whatever land has been exiled. Unfortunately, each of these cards suffers from a fatal flaw.

Mirror of Fate is terrible. You exile your library. Enough said.

Pull from Eternity sucks because the land would go into your graveyard. Tron does not have any effective way to retrieve a card from the graveyard, aside from discarding an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, thereby shuffling the land back into your library and retrieving it again with Sylvan Scrying or Expedition Map. Obviously, this is a ridiculously convoluted way to retrieve and exiled land.

Riftsweeper isn't terrible. The land doesn't go to your hand, which sucks, but placing the land back into your library still isn't awful; you can fetch it again with Sylvan Scrying or Expedition Map. This is probably one of the best answers to Sowing Salt in the format. However, I didn't stop my research here. I kept looking.

Given the above considerations, I tried turning to non-conventional ways to answer Sowing Salt. My research revealed several possibilities, but none of them looked extraordinarily promising. I want to start with the biggest failure: Unstable Frontier. For about 2 seconds, this card looked amazing, until I realized it didn't actually give a land the supertype "basic." If only the card said: "Tap: Choose a basic land type. Target land becomes a basic land of that type until end of turn."---my problems would be solved. Instead, Unstable Frontier turns another land into a basic land type; it does not turn it into a basic land. Thanks for nothing, Wizards.

*** Special Note #2.  I found NO way in Modern to turn a non-basic land into a basic land using just one card. Please, if you can, prove me wrong.***

So my search continued. Next, I looked at Zuran Orb. Zuran Orb answers Sowing Salt because you can sacrifice the targetted land in response to Sowing Salt, effectively countering the spell. Zuran Orb has other good things going for it: it's colorless, so it can be fetched with Ancient Stirrings; it's about as cheap as cheap comes; its out before they can cast Sowing Salt; and it's a generally useful card. There's just one problem; Zuran Orb isn't Modern legal.

However, Claws of Gix is Modern legal, and acts similar to Zuran Orb. The are two problems with Claws of Gix, however. First, you're playing Claws of Gix. The card is almost useless and is completely reactionary. Second, unlike Zuran Orb, Claws of Gix requires you to leave 1 mana open if you think your opponent might cast Sowing Salt. This is sometimes difficult for the Tron player to do in the early turns because Tron has a ton of sorcery-speed type spells that need to be cast early(Chromatic Sphere, Chromatic Star, Expedition Map, Ancient Stirrings, Sylvan Scrying, etc.). Tron uses it's mana.

Here I should also mention Trade Routes and Edge of Autumn. Both spells can answer Sowing Salt in previously described ways, but neither seems worthy of a place in a Modern deck.

Next, I considered various counterspells: Spell Pierce and Turn Aside were given serious consideration. There are actually a number of spells that had effects similar to these cards: Faith's Shield, for example. However, these spells would requiring altering the mana base in some fashion, and it seems a bit unreliable to expect the deck to have a Chromatic Sphere or Chromatic Star at the ready to produce blue mana when my opponent casts Sowing Salt.

This led me consider Skyshroud Blessing, which seems like a decent answer, but it also is not Modern legal. Lame.

There is also Ghost Quarter, which seems to be the answer most players chose. Ghost Quarter is fetchable with Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map, so you can get it early and just keep it untapped any turn you think your opponent might cast Sowing Salt, with the intention of sacrificing the Ghost Quarter in response to destroy Sowing Salt's target. Of course, it's not a terrific answer: you destroy one of your own lands (net), so Sowing Salt acted as a simple land destruction spell. The fact that Ghost Quarter is a land is nice; its fetchable with so many cards in R/G Tron; but as far as answers go it's not perfect. It can only be used once.

Some people have also suggested Thespian Stage, the new land out of Gatecrash. I personally hate this idea. The idea would be that you can activate Thespian Stage in response to Sowing Salt to copy whatever Urza land they target. This idea suffers drawbacks similar to other ideas above---you have to leave an inordindate amount of mana open any turn you think your opponent might cast Sowing Salt.

So there you have it. A bunch of answers that aren't really answers. So what's the best way to proceed? Maybe Tron just gets owned by Sowing Salt and that's the way it is. If that's the case, maybe its a dubious strategy to play Tron. I'm curious as to your thoughts? Until next time....