Madcap Experiment was one of the most exciting cards in Kaladesh that never really found a home. This is a card that only really needs you to be playing one super powerful artifact. There are lots of options for that across Vintage, Modern, and Legacy. Blightsteel Colossus is a pretty obvious choice, as are the likes of Myr Battlesphere, Inkwell Leviathan, and Sphinx of the Steel Wind. The problem with each of these is that they’re likely to leave you at a low life total where you are vulnerable to aggressive decks, rather than something like Tinker or Show and Tell which allow those cards to be stabilizing presences. Aphesis Bliss may have figured out a way to make this strategy work in Modern:

Blue-Red Madcap Experiment - Modern | AphesisBliss, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (9)
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 2 Platinum Emperion
• 2 Vendilion Clique
• 4 Snapcaster Mage

• Instants (19)
• 1 Dispel
• 1 Harvest Pyre
• 1 Negate
• 2 Burst Lightning
• 2 Electrolyze
• 2 Mana Leak
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 2 Spell Snare
• 2 Thought Scour
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Forked Bolt
• 1 Roast
• 2 Ancestral Vision
• 4 Madcap Experiment
• 4 Serum Visions

• Lands (20)
• 5 Island
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 2 Steam Vents
• 2 Sulfur Falls
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Ancestral Vision
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Negate
• 2 Anger of the Gods
• 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 1 Keranos, God of Storms
• 1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 2 Ravenous Trap
• 1 Rise from the Tides
• 2 Smash to Smithereens

Buy This Deck

The idea here is that you’re largely a stock Blue-Red tempo deck. You can win a relatively straightforward game by using Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique to apply pressure in conjunction with a suite of Lightning Bolts and Burst Lightnings. If you have to play a more controlling game, you still have access to Ancestral Visions, as well as Grim Lavamancer to control the ground against the likes of Infect and Affinity.

The difference here is that you have a way to just end the game against damage-oriented decks. It turns out that Platinum Emperion is the giant robot of choice in Modern, since Madcap Experiment is the only efficient way of cheating in a giant monster without a substantial amount of set up. Platinum Emperion prevents you from taking damage from your Madcap Experiment, since Platinum Emperion is in play by the time you actually take the damage. What this package does is give you a way to effectively end the game against decks like Affinity, Burn, and Death's Shadow that don’t always play Path to Exile in their main deck. Once you prevent their ability to interact with your life total, it will take them too much time and resources to overcome Platinum Emperion, so you should be able to leisurely lock up the game from there.

Something that I like a lot in the current metagame is that the combination of Platinum Emperion and cheap counterspells like Spell Snare and Spell Pierce are particularly great against Dredge, which is a very popular deck in the Magic Online metagame.

If you’re looking for a fair deck with a great way to turn the tables on non-interactive aggressive decks, then this is a great option for you to consider.