Mardu Blue (Modern)

Brew time! Mardu Control is a list that has seen some play and tournament results, but never really been anything but an off-meta pick. The main reason for this, in my opinion, is the lack of a good finisher in colors. This deck is my attempt to solve that problem by running Thopter/Sword combo.

Now wait, hold on. I know you think I'm crazy. But here are some of the benefits- you don't require any grave interaction other than your combo, you have excellent anti-aggro main and sideboard, unlike other control shells. Your card advantage options are insane between dark confidant, abbot of keral keep, and painful truths. You don't require the combo to win, since your burn spells plus incidental confidant/abbot damage can easily get you there. You have excellent, flexible removal for your opponents hand, creatures, and life total. By adding the thopter combo, not only do you have inevitability, you also get to run a few mainboard artifacts to help the thopter plan such as relic of progenitus and engineered explosives, which greatly affect the win %s against graveyard combo decks (grishoalbrand, dredge), decks that heavily abuse the grave (jund, junk) and decks with common cmc numbers (abzan coco, merfolk, affinity, infect, suicide zoo, regular zoo, etc.).

Some interesting notes: I've created a morphing sideboard where the combo can be taken out against artifact/removal heavy decks (jund especially) and become a nahiri combo. I think transforming sideboards are really cool, but without playtesting I can't say whether this is the best option or not.

The blood moon's in the side are yet another attempt to solve the potential weakness to tier 1 midrange decks, the idea being that as long as we know we have blood moon we can play around it while our opponent might not be so wise. Once again, without a lot more playtesting beyond the few games I've played I can't say definitively what the weakest matchups really are, just what I am projecting.

This deck is notably extremely soft to Tron, which is a weakness pretty heavily dedicated to removing in the sideboard.

I think this deck is really cool and interesting, and a very viable choice for Thopter/Sword combo if you have been looking for a home to play that. Good luck with your testing, and happy brewing!