There are few things more vilified in Magic than this metal man:

For the last few years, turn three Karn Liberated has been one of the major scourges of the Modern format. You've just played your second land and a fresh Tarmogoyf and WHAM, here comes seven mana worth of planeswalker on turn three to ruin your day.

Or even worse, you've just cast a Serum Visions and played a tapped Steam Vents, when the biggest, meanest seven mana Stone Rain ever comes to town to throw everything completely out the window. You wish you had kept that extra land on top, because now you're not likely to cast another spell before Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger shows up.

Or maybe you're having a great time putting a bunch of great Humans or Elves into play, building an awesome battlefield and getting ready to do battle, only to see it all swept away by a turn four Oblivion Stone.

One time my eight year old step-son John was watching me play Tron on Magic Online as I was preparing for an event. He made a very astute observation: "hey Jim, how come every time you play the Ugin card your opponent just scoops?" At this point I had to do the most difficult thing any parent can do; I had to explain to him what Tron was.

It's funny to laugh about, but for some reason the idea of Tron being a meme has taken on a life of its own.

Like hating Nickelback, it's just fun and cool to hate Tron.

However, unlike Nickelback, Tron doesn't really deserve the hate that it gets.

Sure, it can be frustrating to play against, but so are a bunch of other Modern decks. How does it feel to stare down a 14/12 hexproof, vigilance, lifelink, first strike, trample creature attacking on turn three? How does it feel when Dredge dumps half of its deck into the graveyard and 14 power worth of creatures onto the battlefield on turn two? Or when Storm just kills you on turn three? Or when Hollow One puts two copies of its namesake card into play on turn one? Maybe you're okay with turn two Infect kills?

Modern's a pretty hostile place, and Tron is simply one of the cogs in the machine.

There are two major reasons for the hatred toward Tron, beyond the fact that it's a meme at this point.

First off, Tron doesn't actually win the game when it plays Karn Liberated on turn three or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon on turn four. Unlike an actual combo deck like Storm which would just kill you, Tron instead leaves you in a often helpless board state but requires you to keep playing because technically Karn Liberated won't kill you and you can hope they never draw an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or Wurmcoil Engine. Those few helpless turns spent under the watchful eye of Karn feel awful and people don't forget them.

Frankly people should just get over it, and more importantly this is actually a bonus for the Tron player. When you play turn one Urza's Mine, people's heads go immediately to all the memes and times they got turn three Karned and already start to get annoyed.

Secondly, the deck is perceived as simplistic to play and "not requiring skill." While it's true that it's best draws often play themselves easily into game wins... isn't that a good thing? Don't you want your deck to be so overwhelmingly powerful that it wins you the game by itself sometimes? In a format as hostile as Modern, having access to possibly very powerful opening hands is awesome!

Furthermore, this "not requiring skill" notion is frankly misinformed. Tron is a highly redundant deck that attempts to do the same thing every single game as fast as possible. Play three different lands, play big things, win game. Every card in the deck leads to that end or is the best possible big-mana payoff. Between the search effects of Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map, the cycling of Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star, and the overall high power level of Ancient Stirrings, a full third of the deck is set to accomplishing this task each game. Sometimes putting it all together is easy, sometimes it's not.

Knowing how to sequence these cards, as well as maximize your odds at all times by understanding when you need to take risks is a lot trickier than it seems. Furthermore, learning how to play around the various hateful cards people will bring in against you and understanding how matchups need to play out is of utmost importance.

So, we've dispelled the memes, and we're ready to win some Modern matches... let's get started!

Mono-Green Tron | Modern | Jim Davis

• Creatures (9)
• 1 World Breaker
• 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 3 Walking Ballista
• 3 Wurmcoil Engine

• Planeswalkers (6)
• 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
• 4 Karn Liberated

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Ancient Stirrings
• 4 Sylvan Scrying

• Artifacts (18)
• 3 Oblivion Stone
• 3 Relic of Progenitus
• 4 Chromatic Sphere
• 4 Chromatic Star
• 4 Expedition Map

• Lands (19)
• 5 Forest
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Sanctum of Ugin
• 4 Urza's Mine
• 4 Urza's Power Plant
• 4 Urza's Tower

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 3 Thought-Knot Seer
• 2 Spatial Contortion
• 4 Thragtusk
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage
• 4 Nature's Claim

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Your goal as a Tron player, absent of your opponent's interaction, is to play one of each unique Tron land on turns one through three, and then start casting cards that seem better suited for Commander games than tournament Magic. Yes, that sounds very simplistic. However, maximizing your ability to hit this payoff when things don't go smoothly is what separates someone just playing Tron from a true Tron player.

Maximizing Your Odds

Because Tron is so linear and what it does is so different than a normal game of Magic, many of the basic tenants of Magic strategy go out the window. Card advantage isn't really important, because we aren't interested in a raw number of cards rather than a specific subset of cards.

Give me this hand...

Over this hand...

...any day of the week.

Remember our deceptively simple two goals:

1. Play a unique Tron land on each of the first three turns of the game
2. Start casting big, dumb stuff and win

It sounds stupidly simple, but notice how our seven card hand of lands and spells is going to make that plan very difficult. We have Forests in our deck but don't really want to play them if we don't have to, and we are far away from actually getting to assemble Tron. Every turn we have to play a Forest or a non-unique Tron land is a turn farther we are from casting our big, dumb stuff and winning. We want to either have unique Tron lands to play, or have access to ways of finding those unique Tron lands quickly.

This is why looking through each hand and play we make through the lens of these simple goals is a nice shortcut to optimal play with the deck.

The true keys to the deck, and frankly the deck-building epiphany that makes the deck work, are Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star. They serve the dual purpose of getting you deeper into your deck (they are essentially one mana cantrips as the second mana you spend you get back immediately) as well as fueling your powerful colored spells without the need to actually play those stinky Forests. Most hands with a Chromatic Star effect, at least one Tron land, and an Ancient Stirrings are excellent, as between your draw steps, the Chromatic Star draw, and Ancient Stirrings you are highly likely to put together Tron quickly. You can go from not much to playing Ugin, the Spirit Dragon really fast with just a couple of good draws, which is part of the allure of the deck.

Mulliganing

Making good mulligan choices with Tron is one of the most important facets of playing the deck.

As we said earlier redundant copies of cards are basically worthless, meaning we can easily win blowout-style games on as little as five or even four cards. The scry rule is your friend! Your ideal hand has at least two different Tron lands in it, but one can be okay as long as we have a number of Chromatic Star effects and/or Ancient Stirrings. When it comes to these one Tron land hands, you should always be prioritizing drawing cards before searching your deck for a land with Expedition Map or Sylvan Scrying - you should never do either one of these for the second Tron land without a plan for also getting the third! Let your draw steps and cantrips inform you of what land you need before you go casting one.

Matchups

One of the biggest draws to Tron right now is that it has a lot of great matchups in the current Modern metagame.

A few weeks ago at SCG Tour Dallas, both my Team BCW teammate Tannon Grace and I played the above listed deck, and while I had a rough event Tannon went on to the top four pretty easily. The deck is excellent against the format's newest bogeyman in Dredge, as they can't realistically beat an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or a Wurmcoil Engine, and you have multiple maindeck Relic of Progenitus. Tribal decks like Humans and Spirits bode well with Ugin and Oblivion Stone at the ready, and despite what Assassin's Trophy truthers will tell you, almost every fair matchup is great.

And even in your bad matchups, you can always just play turn three Karn! Wielding raw power is always desirable in Modern, as you can never have all good matchups but being able to present a fast and powerful clock will help you in your bad matchups when your opponent stumbles. A slower deck like Mardu Pyormancer or Jeskai Control will never have this luxury.

Sideboarding

Your most important sideboard cards are by far Nature's Claim and Thragtusk.

Nature's Claim is your answer to most of the annoying hate cards that opponents will bring in against you - Stony Silence, Blood Moon, Damping Sphere, Alpine Moon, and so on. It is also a way to interact with more fair artifacts and enchantments for a very low and efficient cost. The four life will almost never matter, meaning you've got the brutal efficiency you need and mana to spare to further your gameplan.

Thragtusk is your other ace in the hole against popular hate cards. Does your opponent want to waste time using Assassin's Trophy, Blood Moon, Ghost Quarter, or Field of Ruin to try and break up your Tron? Great! Just play Thragtusks until they die. Even if Thragtusk doesn't kill them outright, it will certainly tie them up and buy you time to start hard-casting Wurmcoil Engine and Karn, even if they are somehow able to turn off your Tron for good with something like Blood Moon or Surgical Extraction.

Remember, in post-board games if your opponent is going to try to interact with you everything is going to slow down, and we can just play lands and cast our big spells the old fashion way.

Also be aware that in less interactive matchups (think Storm, Amulet Titan), you are going to need to mulligan very aggressively to make sure you are applying maximum pressure. turn four Ugin, the Spirit Dragon isn't going to cut it against Storm, so make sure you're mulliganing to a powerful opener or some nice hate cards to slow them down. They aren't going to waste time with hate cards if their primary plan is just faster than you, so give yourself a chance by not settling for weak openers.

Being The Bad Guy

It's pretty clear that Tron players get a bad rap, but let's be real here... if you're winning do you care?

Tron is a powerful piece of the Modern metagame. It's here, it's not going anywhere, and if your plan is to win your next Modern event it is an excellent choice to do just that. Just don't buy into the memes - it's not a deck that operates completely on autopilot, and having the gall to go to five cards when necessary in a tough spot and beat those annoying hate cards is tough.

And you know what? Sometimes you'll just draw natural Tron and cast Karn Liberated on turn three, and that's great too! Enjoy watching your opponents squirm.