There are a lot of powerful artifacts in Modern. Wurmcoil Engine, Aether Vial, Batterskull, and Cranial Plating are some of the cards people are more familiar with, but there are lots of other options. The problem is that those artifacts get hit by the Ancient Grudges and Stony Silences that people are playing just as much as Arcbound Ravager and Steel Overseer do, which makes it hard to justify playing powerful artifacts unless you can overload your opponent’s artifact hate. To this point, the only decks that have been able to do that are Affinity and Lantern Control. However, Zac Elsik is looking to change that:

Mono-Blue Artifacts - Modern | Zac Elsik

• Creatures (32)
• 2 Etched Champion
• 2 Master of Etherium
• 4 Chief Engineer
• 4 Etherium Sculptor
• 4 Grand Architect
• 4 Lodestone Golem
• 4 Mausoleum Wanderer
• 4 Signal Pest
• 4 Walking Ballista

• Artifacts (6)
• 2 Throne of the God-Pharaoh
• 4 Smuggler's Copter

• Lands (22)
• 14 Island
• 4 Blinkmoth Nexus
• 4 Cavern of Souls

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 2 Commandeer
• 2 Grafdigger's Cage
• 2 Phyrexian Revoker
• 2 Relic of Progenitus
• 2 Scrap Trawler
• 2 Thorn of Amethyst
• 2 Unified Will

Buy This Deck

The 1-drops in this deck may look kind of innocuous, but there’s a lot of power hidden there. Mausoleum Wanderer interacts nicely with Grand Architect to help stifle control and combo variants while Signal Pest lets you get ahead early and keep the pressure up later in the game, particularly in conjunction with Blinkmoth Nexus.

Smuggler's Copter gives you an evasive attacker early on in the game that lets you filter through your deck for more haymakers that matter, while Master of Etherium is a pseudo Overrun that also serves as a giant attacker. The most interesting thing about this deck is that there’s a lot of flex in how you build it. You could choose to go a little more all-in on Lodestone Golem effects, adding Thorn of Amethyst or Chalice of the Void in addition to more Sculpting Steels or Phyrexian Metamorphs. Or you can go a little deeper on mana big mana sinks, adding Hangarback Walker and Wurmcoil Engine in addition to Walking Ballista.

Perhaps the most exciting card in the maindeck is Throne of the God-Pharaoh, a card which may not seem to do much at a glance, but gives you a lot of play in matchups where the ground gets stalled out. It also lets you turn the corner and kill your opponent very quickly, since your deck is good at flooding the board. It’s great in races, since it can put you a full turn ahead of your opponent. Perhaps the most important thing Throne does? It gives you a relatively reasonable way to win under Stony Silence by combining Master of Etherium, Signal Pest, and Blinkmoth Nexus to get in for real chunks of damage with Throne backup.

All in all, this is an exciting deck with the potential for explosives starts, plenty of hateful options, and lots of flexibility in how you approach winning. This means that you’ve got plenty of space to customize the suite of threats and disruptive creatures to suit your metagame better.