Sword of the Meek may be one of the most exciting changes Modern has seen in quite some time. For those who are unfamiliar, the combination of Sword of the Meek plus Thopter Foundry allows you to spend one mana and sacrifice the sword to generate a 1/1 Thopter. The Thopter triggers your Sword from the graveyard, which sets you up to repeat the cycle all over again. This engine is generally included in Artifact-centric control decks featuring something like Muddle the Mixture or Tezzeret the Seeker as a way to improve the consistency of the combo. Michael Majors has a different idea.

Puresteel Esper ? Modern | Michael Majors

• Creatures (11)
• 3 Spellskite
• 4 Puresteel Paladin
• 4 Stone Haven Outfitter

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

• Spells (25)
• 4 Path to Exile
• 4 Steelshaper's Gift
• 2 Ghirapur Aether Grid
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Mortarpod
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 2 Sword of the Meek
• 3 Thopter Foundry
• 4 Flayer Husk
• 2 Mox Opal

• Lands (23)
• 6 Plains
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Ghost Quarter
• 3 Marsh Flats
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Flooded Strand

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Mortarpod
• 2 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Sylvok Lifestaff
• 2 Worship
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Negate
• 3 Wear // Tear
• 1 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

This deck is something else. There is so much subtle synergy in this shell and I absolutely can’t wait to see something like it in action. The primary interaction is between the Thopter/Sword combo and Puresteel Paladin. With a Puresteel Paladin in play, each iteration of the Thopter/Sword loop nets you a card as well as a Thopter and one life. Once you’ve set this up, you can just draw through your deck until you find a Ghirapur Aether Grid to lock up the board and close out the game.

That’s not the only exciting interaction though. A key piece of this deck is the inclusion of four Steelshaper's Gift as a toolbox, allowing you to play powerful singletons like Sword of Light and Shadow and Batterskull. Perhaps more importantly, this allows you to utilize Mortarpod with Stone Haven Outfitter. Mortarpod is great in this deck as a way to lock down powerful X/1’s like Inkmoth Nexus, Glistener Elf, or Signal Pest. As soon as you have Thopters to start throwing around with Mortarpod, particularly with Stone Haven Outfitter to start cantripping, the game is not going to go on for much longer.

For more controlling matchups, a card like Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is a powerful role-player capable of not only helping you find missing combo pieces, but also applying fast pressure or functioning as a pseudo Fireball. Puresteel Paladin lends a lot of power to this shell and helps to buy time until you can set up the Thopter/Sword combo. Once that interaction is online, the deck has any number of ways to pull very far ahead.

While it may not have the same interactive elements as the controlling builds of Thopter/Sword, this deck is able to utilize Puresteel Paladin to power aggressive starts which can lead into combo goodness in the midgame. I don’t know if this is the shell Sword of the Meek ends up in, but I can’t wait to see something like it in action.