It's so weird, my inspiration keeps fluctuating back and forth. I was one of the first to say that AV might not be suited for our list, then I tested it and thought there was something there, but now I realize that I just keep making the list more and more like the original Esper stock list. So yeah, the stock list looks pretty good right now, and I'm more and more inclined to forget about AV and move on (easier on the wallet too).
I think I'm on the same boat. Should we even stop using the Runed Halo tech for more cantrips?
I like having more Remands to some extent, but I think I'm likely to pick back up on my Esper Draw-Go list from a week or so ago, which mainboards a Halo. It is so much better to be Remanding AV's than to have your AV's Remanded against a deck where it matters (like against UW Tron). I may change stuff around after I see what everyone else at my shop is doing (like adding a 4th Snare if there's a lot of Thopter/Sword) or a 3rd Remand if my bud who plays Shardless BUG in Legacy decides to give BUG Visions a test drive in Modern.
By the way, if any of you happen to face a BGx shell online, I would very much appreciate if you'd record it so I can figure out what I've been doing wrong -- It seems 50/50 to me, but Esper is supposed to have a positive matchup. Either I am very bad at playing the matchup, or my shop's BGx veterans are very good at it.
@amalek0- Is gifts or teachings really good? I mean both are a lot of value, but 4 mana, THEN play our finisher is the way to go? I trust you, just making sure that's the correct route.
What are you using as a finisher in the teachings build, if you don't think white sun's is good enough anymore?
I think I'm on the same boat. Should we even stop using the Runed Halo tech for more cantrips?
Yes, well, sort of.
I'm on the original stock list, -2 shadow of doubt (those were the runed halo slots) , add 1 remand and 1 engineered explosives.
Donny did the same except add 1 remand and 1 Condemn. I think both of us are probably right.
EDIT:
Just jammed 10 game 1's against uw control (sort of the shaheen soorani style with vendillion cliques, 4 leak / cryptic, 3 snapcaster, elspeth 1, Gideon, jace aot)
I'm 9-1. The one game I lost was where I literally had a hand of 3 land and some think twices, drew 18 cards over the course of the game and never saw a 4th land. *variance*
The other 9 games I relentlessly esper charmed him, remanded his AV countless times (out of 10 games, he successfully resolved a total of 4 AV) baited him with eot snap > esper charm, untapped and revved for maximum. Etc. never felt in danger.
Post board, having thought seize effects and teferi we're so heavily favored I'm not going to waste time testing it right now.
About to jam a series of 20 post board burn games, plan on relying on teferi + Sphinx rev, baneslayers, and a one of spell pierce for mising those eot Boros charms. Duress should be ok here too
"He plays in a walk in humidor so keep his foils from bending. He once kept an all land hand just to know what it felt like to be mana flooded. He uses power nine for ante. He is the most interesting magic playing in the world." Old man, "I don't always tap basic lands for mana, but when i do, I tap Gurus."
4 Jund, 1 Abzan, 3 bug with visions bc I anticipate that getting big.
Tweaked the sideboard bc I kept getting blown out by maelstrom pulse on my big elspeth.
Anyway, I'm here to preach the good news about [card]GRAVE TITAN[\card]. I'm playing two. Great against gbx and zoo stuff. Still loving wurmcoil too. Love those fatties
4 Jund, 1 Abzan, 3 bug with visions bc I anticipate that getting big.
Tweaked the sideboard bc I kept getting blown out by maelstrom pulse on my big elspeth.
Anyway, I'm here to preach the good news about [card]GRAVE TITAN[\card]. I'm playing two. Great against gbx and zoo stuff. Still loving wurmcoil too. Love those fatties
I've been a fan of the gravy train literally since I started playing the deck. I've moved it from the main to the side and back again based on how the meta shifts, but I never leave home without it. Currently Elspeth 6 is better in the main because she's a bit more versatile in that she can kill stuff and is nearly immune to removal. But against fair decks like CoCo and jund grave titan is a million times better because they simply won't be able to kill it without losing a lot of their board to do so.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
While we're all considering the implications of Ancestral Vision being legal in Modern (and the different camps we fall in about whether it is good for us or not), I want to raise another point: Serum Visions.
Even in the primer it reads: "This is not a good candidate for the draw-go builds. That being said, its inclusion (along with 3-4 snapcaster mages) is excellent in more tap-out oriented builds, both to feed delve and smooth out the early game."
Serum Visions is a card we are currently choosing not to play. It's benefits:
If you are on the draw, you have to tap out and cannot represent Spell Snare for a turn 1 play.
The manabase of the present list is such that we already have Celestial Colonnade, go as a turn one line.
It may bait us into using shocklands more aggressively in matchups where the life is very relevant.
On your second turn of being the active player, using it means letting down a fair amount of permission and the use of Think Twice/Remand/Shadow of Doubt.
The card selection may not be as relevant due to the necessity of using fetchlands for color fixing.
Now, almost all of the problems I have listed with Serum Visions come from the fact that it is a one mana blue sorcery. Ancestral Vision has these problems as well.
That said, I am wondering what the rationale is for people who feel that Ancestral Vision is playable in our deck (especially with regard to how we "curve out" with our reactive spells) who would never touch Serum Visions in the first place.
I do recognize the card advantage offered by Ancestral Vision is likely the big deal (drawing +2 cards over Serum Visions is not a small thing).
I also recognize that if we're altering the deck building constraints to accomodate Ancestral Vision (sorcery speed use of 1 blue mana on the early turns), would having Serum Visions available as a way to smooth out/filter for the things we need to survive to let Ancestral Vision trigger be reasonable?
@amalek0- Is gifts or teachings really good? I mean both are a lot of value, but 4 mana, THEN play our finisher is the way to go? I trust you, just making sure that's the correct route.
What are you using as a finisher in the teachings build, if you don't think white sun's is good enough anymore?
I don't really like teachings, it's slower than Gifts Ungiven imho.
The thing with Gift is that you play draw-go, and when your opponent do the tapout or you know he won't be able to do anything, you Gifts EoT and play your kill/threat/combo right after that.
Usually that's very surprising for your opponent because there are no board setup aside from having 4 mana and he doesn't see anything coming.
He could have been thinking "cool I'm wining" and then he lost out of nowhere (that's even more true when you Gifts against Burn with 3 life points left and choose Unburial Rites+Iona, Shield of Emeria).
It seems way easier to tutor Pearl Lake Ancient with Mystical Teachings than it is to tutor additional creatures after you tutor Teferi. It still seems way too slow (and PLA can be blocked by thopters forever, so it isn't even amazing in control matchups), but it is far less clunky than Teferi is.
Well I've tried various combinations of esper draw go + thopter sword and it has not gone well. The mana requirements are WAY more intense with another gold card added in, you need to play some academy ruins in the main which replaces GQ making you vulnerable to manlands even further. I even went as far as putting in main deck thoughtseize and going more midrangey and that was just abysmal.
The fact is that the combo has to be your "end game" because if you're dedicated to assembling the combo you're likely going to be dead by then unless you're lucky and get both pieces in your opener. Having to xmute muddle and then play out the second piece the following turn is too much mana and if they have an AD or Kommand the game is probably over. If you spend several turns not interacting just to set it up and they can interact you are just too far behind to come back. Also bear in mind that you're adding in 5-11 cards that to absolutely nothing on their own and if you get flooded on a bad combination of them you're either forced to mulligan, get opened up to any aggression/interaction, or just lose from a combination of things.
Bottom line in our typical esper shells, the combo is not something we want in the deck. Perhaps as a transformation SB plan, but that's very iffy and takes up so many of our precious SB slots that I don't think it's worth it.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Well I've tried various combinations of esper draw go + thopter sword and it has not gone well. The mana requirements are WAY more intense with another gold card added in, you need to play some academy ruins in the main which replaces GQ making you vulnerable to manlands even further. I even went as far as putting in main deck thoughtseize and going more midrangey and that was just abysmal.
The fact is that the combo has to be your "end game" because if you're dedicated to assembling the combo you're likely going to be dead by then unless you're lucky and get both pieces in your opener. Having to xmute muddle and then play out the second piece the following turn is too much mana and if they have an AD or Kommand the game is probably over. If you spend several turns not interacting just to set it up and they can interact you are just too far behind to come back. Also bear in mind that you're adding in 5-11 cards that to absolutely nothing on their own and if you get flooded on a bad combination of them you're either forced to mulligan, get opened up to any aggression/interaction, or just lose from a combination of things.
Bottom line in our typical esper shells, the combo is not something we want in the deck. Perhaps as a transformation SB plan, but that's very iffy and takes up so many of our precious SB slots that I don't think it's worth it.
While I don't play Esper (I play UW Gifts with a 1-land splash for Lingering Souls and Unburial Rites), I never really understood why people thought that Thopter Sword was going to be amazing. It uses more cards than the Gifts combo does, is less versatile, doesn't immediately stabilize you against decks like Infect, Burn, or Bogles, takes longer to win with, needs both parts to be deployed at sorcery-speed, is made up of two combo pieces that are completely useless without each other (while the Gifts combo involves one of the best card-draw spells ever printed), and is vulnerable to more hate. Outside of artifact-based decks like Tezzerator, Thopter Sword is just a worse version of the Gifts combo.
While I don't play Esper (I play UW Gifts with a 1-land splash for Lingering Souls and Unburial Rites), I never really understood why people thought that Thopter Sword was going to be amazing. It uses more cards than the Gifts combo does, is less versatile, doesn't immediately stabilize you against decks like Infect, Burn, or Bogles, takes longer to win with, needs both parts to be deployed at sorcery-speed, is made up of two combo pieces that are completely useless without each other (while the Gifts combo involves one of the best card-draw spells ever printed), and is vulnerable to more hate. Outside of artifact-based decks like Tezzerator, Thopter Sword is just a worse version of the Gifts combo.
While I'm still not sold on gifts, I can agree with your thoughts on thopter sword. A while ago I would've said it was in no way safe to be unbanned. Then AD was printed and then I thought it was at least up for consideration, but still dangerous. Then Scooze came in and I was surprised it wasn't unbanned after that, and now that we got Kommand and tron all over the place it was a joke to stay banned. It's a fine combo, but you need to be aware of how often people can interact with it and if you plan to tap out to assemble it, then you're still not 100%. So if you want to get in on that combo, be aware that you need plenty of interaction before hand so it's a finisher and not an A + B = Win like twin was.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Have people thought about going infinite with Time Sieve and Thopter Sword?
Yes, it's another card for the combo, but thopter sword functions on its own, and in a heavy artifact build with UB Tezz, it might be worth considering.
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When land screws you over, take revenge and screw it back.
@amalek0- Is gifts or teachings really good? I mean both are a lot of value, but 4 mana, THEN play our finisher is the way to go? I trust you, just making sure that's the correct route.
What are you using as a finisher in the teachings build, if you don't think white sun's is good enough anymore?
I don't really like teachings, it's slower than Gifts Ungiven imho.
The thing with Gift is that you play draw-go, and when your opponent do the tapout or you know he won't be able to do anything, you Gifts EoT and play your kill/threat/combo right after that.
Usually that's very surprising for your opponent because there are no board setup aside from having 4 mana and he doesn't see anything coming.
He could have been thinking "cool I'm wining" and then he lost out of nowhere (that's even more true when you Gifts against Burn with 3 life points left and choose Unburial Rites+Iona, Shield of Emeria).
It seems way easier to tutor Pearl Lake Ancient with Mystical Teachings than it is to tutor additional creatures after you tutor Teferi. It still seems way too slow (and PLA can be blocked by thopters forever, so it isn't even amazing in control matchups), but it is far less clunky than Teferi is.
You can still just play teachings and tutor white sun's zenith too, which is probably, but not always better.
I do agree that thopter sword is not as impressive in this deck as I had hoped. Its much more of its own deck, I think. Some of the more midrangey UW builds can slot it in though.
The idea of thopter sword is that people envision it as a turn 3 win, and it can just take over turn 4. Gifts is more of a turn 4 > 5 sort of combo, meaning its a good turn or two slower at best. In practice, thopter sword is a two card combo that shifts deck lists, where as gifts is a 1 card combo that fits in a bit easier.
The idea of thopter sword is that people envision it as a turn 3 win, and it can just take over turn 4. Gifts is more of a turn 4 > 5 sort of combo, meaning its a good turn or two slower at best. In practice, thopter sword is a two card combo that shifts deck lists, where as gifts is a 1 card combo that fits in a bit easier.
Not entirely true. Both "combos" require you to alter your deck in less than optimal ways just to accommodate them. Thopters requires you to run more search like muddle or tezz which takes you down 1 path and gifts requires you to play more 1-ofs, many you never want to ever draw, in order to be fully effective. Meanwhile just shoving either combo into an existing deck is not something that can be done with any amount of success because then you're very all in with little to no support.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
OK. I've put in about 100 games between self testing and playing with some of my testing buddies. Here's what I've come up with:
1. Ancestral Vision is a powerful card. It's also not ideal for the draw-go shell. It sits simultaneously in two spaces--On one hand, it is the late-game payoff spell that requires some early setup--AKA, our sphinx's revelation. On the other hand, it also sits in the same spot as Esper Charm, by being a card to help push the midgame velocity of land drops. The problem is that it's actually worse at both of these roles than their respective cards, and it's trying to make up for it on sheer power level. I've tested it a bunch over think twice as a straight up swap, and it hasn't performed well. I'm not noticing that the deck is winning less, but rather that everything feels more clunky, more luck based, etc. Lots of having to stabilize repeatedly in the same game. As most others have said, it doesn't do the same thing as think twice in the midgame.
2. remand is disgustingly good right now. Everybody and their mother is trying to jam AV or the Thopter/sword combo (or both) in just about any blue shell. Most of them are doing so in a really poor manner--either they don't actually understand how to build a deck to use that card advantage (because modern has never had it in spades before) or they overestimate how much card advantage these engines provide. Either way, they think they can either fight over them (and let a rev through) or don't understand HOW to fight over them, and just lose.
3. Ancestral Visions and the thopter/sword combo don't belong in the same deck. People are trying to jam both into one deck, and they're going to fail. The cards just don't have the synergy to fit together in a cohesive deck--one wants to grind out raw card advantage, the other wants to win by grinding out a lock. If you put both plans in the same deck, you either die before either gets online, or neither ever get online to begin with.
4. Gifts Ungiven is, in my estimation, the best card to enable thopter foundry and sword of the meek. It finds both halves of the combo, while also setting up alternative lines of attack. The trick with gifts is to not actually go all-in on gifts--make sure your deck has a reasonable game plan for just winning the game without the graveyard at all. Everybody remembers the double entomb mode, and they remember the 4-card recursion package mode, and they all know about the value mode (gifts for gifts, snapcaster, cryptic, other spell). Nobody ever thinks about gifts as the disgusting win the game button: grave titan, wurmcoil engine, iona, elesh. Most midrange, and even most of these new AV based "control" decks can't actually win a game in which you get two of those cards into your hand with mana to cast them.
5. mystical teachings is probably the best card in the modern arsenal to pair with ancestral visions on a strategic level, in theory; visions is good at providing a burst of advantage later in the game, but doesn't smooth the path to getting there. Mystical teachings is the ultimate weapon for ensuring you actually stabilize in a game. AV provides raw card quantity, similarly to treasure cruise, and teachings provides the quality. Glue them together with esper charm, and you have an engine that should be able to generate the card advantage you need while also giving you the selection to ensure you have the RIGHT tools in the late game. An esper engine based around these cards is probably better at avoiding the "wrong half of deck" problem that current draw-go lists have, but probably isn't quite as smooth as current lists are at fighting an attrition game. Also, I've often been of the opinion that in any format slow enough for teachings to consistently get online, some version of a teachings deck is the best deck in the format. I think that IF someone breaks the format with gifts/thopterSword, then the best deck will actually be the teachings shell. Traditionally, teachings shells fail when they can't find the right cards for a matchup. I've got some ideas on that front that I'm working on right now, and if they pan out you can be sure I'll follow up with you guys about them, but I really just don't know. I'll leave you with a hint though--these ideas are forcing me to re-write my manabase code and re-think the entire structure of my model on that front.
I've got a friend who wants a gifts-based control list for the Invitational; he's never been a modern player before, gifts was his favorite standard deck ever, and he's basically brand new to modern now (though he's been heavy into legacy for a decade--he knows his way around a control deck). Therefore, I will be putting my efforts into tuning a list for him for the invitational. I'll share my progress on that with you guys as it goes along.
Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
3. Ancestral Visions and the thopter/sword combo don't belong in the same deck. People are trying to jam both into one deck, and they're going to fail. The cards just don't have the synergy to fit together in a cohesive deck--one wants to grind out raw card advantage, the other wants to win by grinding out a lock. If you put both plans in the same deck, you either die before either gets online, or neither ever get online to begin with.
Not entirely true, I've been working on a UW control list with the combo in it as the finisher. In my first few incarnations I'd agree, there was too many things that didn't do anything, but that was a quick fix. I lowered my curve significantly and put in a few cards that I can tutor up with muddle and it's now working out quite well for me. But in a vacuum I'd agree, just shoving them in and crossing your fingers won't result in a competitive deck.
EDIT: Another factor in getting them to work well together is altering how you play. Let the combo pieces sit in your hand while you cast your cantrips first. When I was racing to get them both online I'd usually end up dying to what was in play because I wasn't chaining think twice into action. Like I've mentioned before, the combo is a finisher that you set up once the game is stable in an average interactive game.
So Extirpate is the way to go on that angle of attack, then.
Currently trying to discover the quickest way to get the opponent from 20 to 0.
UWB Esper Draw-Go Control (clicky)
UW Azorius Control (clicky)
Currently pursuing a degree in Biochemistry.
EDH: I've decided I don't like multiplayer formats.
I like having more Remands to some extent, but I think I'm likely to pick back up on my Esper Draw-Go list from a week or so ago, which mainboards a Halo. It is so much better to be Remanding AV's than to have your AV's Remanded against a deck where it matters (like against UW Tron). I may change stuff around after I see what everyone else at my shop is doing (like adding a 4th Snare if there's a lot of Thopter/Sword) or a 3rd Remand if my bud who plays Shardless BUG in Legacy decides to give BUG Visions a test drive in Modern.
By the way, if any of you happen to face a BGx shell online, I would very much appreciate if you'd record it so I can figure out what I've been doing wrong -- It seems 50/50 to me, but Esper is supposed to have a positive matchup. Either I am very bad at playing the matchup, or my shop's BGx veterans are very good at it.
UWB Esper Draw-Go Control (clicky)
UW Azorius Control (clicky)
Currently pursuing a degree in Biochemistry.
EDH: I've decided I don't like multiplayer formats.
What are you using as a finisher in the teachings build, if you don't think white sun's is good enough anymore?
Yes, well, sort of.
I'm on the original stock list, -2 shadow of doubt (those were the runed halo slots) , add 1 remand and 1 engineered explosives.
Donny did the same except add 1 remand and 1 Condemn. I think both of us are probably right.
EDIT:
Just jammed 10 game 1's against uw control (sort of the shaheen soorani style with vendillion cliques, 4 leak / cryptic, 3 snapcaster, elspeth 1, Gideon, jace aot)
I'm 9-1. The one game I lost was where I literally had a hand of 3 land and some think twices, drew 18 cards over the course of the game and never saw a 4th land. *variance*
The other 9 games I relentlessly esper charmed him, remanded his AV countless times (out of 10 games, he successfully resolved a total of 4 AV) baited him with eot snap > esper charm, untapped and revved for maximum. Etc. never felt in danger.
Post board, having thought seize effects and teferi we're so heavily favored I'm not going to waste time testing it right now.
About to jam a series of 20 post board burn games, plan on relying on teferi + Sphinx rev, baneslayers, and a one of spell pierce for mising those eot Boros charms. Duress should be ok here too
On a scale of 1 to Jace, The Mind Sculptor, how good does remanding an AV feel?
When they lean on something so heavily for card advantage and you basically have a card that says 1U:Counter target spell, Draw a card
Bonkers value.
4 Jund, 1 Abzan, 3 bug with visions bc I anticipate that getting big.
Tweaked the sideboard bc I kept getting blown out by maelstrom pulse on my big elspeth.
Anyway, I'm here to preach the good news about [card]GRAVE TITAN[\card]. I'm playing two. Great against gbx and zoo stuff. Still loving wurmcoil too. Love those fatties
I've been a fan of the gravy train literally since I started playing the deck. I've moved it from the main to the side and back again based on how the meta shifts, but I never leave home without it. Currently Elspeth 6 is better in the main because she's a bit more versatile in that she can kill stuff and is nearly immune to removal. But against fair decks like CoCo and jund grave titan is a million times better because they simply won't be able to kill it without losing a lot of their board to do so.
Even in the primer it reads: "This is not a good candidate for the draw-go builds. That being said, its inclusion (along with 3-4 snapcaster mages) is excellent in more tap-out oriented builds, both to feed delve and smooth out the early game."
Serum Visions is a card we are currently choosing not to play. It's benefits:
Some problems with it:
Now, almost all of the problems I have listed with Serum Visions come from the fact that it is a one mana blue sorcery. Ancestral Vision has these problems as well.
That said, I am wondering what the rationale is for people who feel that Ancestral Vision is playable in our deck (especially with regard to how we "curve out" with our reactive spells) who would never touch Serum Visions in the first place.
I do recognize the card advantage offered by Ancestral Vision is likely the big deal (drawing +2 cards over Serum Visions is not a small thing).
I also recognize that if we're altering the deck building constraints to accomodate Ancestral Vision (sorcery speed use of 1 blue mana on the early turns), would having Serum Visions available as a way to smooth out/filter for the things we need to survive to let Ancestral Vision trigger be reasonable?
It seems way easier to tutor Pearl Lake Ancient with Mystical Teachings than it is to tutor additional creatures after you tutor Teferi. It still seems way too slow (and PLA can be blocked by thopters forever, so it isn't even amazing in control matchups), but it is far less clunky than Teferi is.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
The fact is that the combo has to be your "end game" because if you're dedicated to assembling the combo you're likely going to be dead by then unless you're lucky and get both pieces in your opener. Having to xmute muddle and then play out the second piece the following turn is too much mana and if they have an AD or Kommand the game is probably over. If you spend several turns not interacting just to set it up and they can interact you are just too far behind to come back. Also bear in mind that you're adding in 5-11 cards that to absolutely nothing on their own and if you get flooded on a bad combination of them you're either forced to mulligan, get opened up to any aggression/interaction, or just lose from a combination of things.
Bottom line in our typical esper shells, the combo is not something we want in the deck. Perhaps as a transformation SB plan, but that's very iffy and takes up so many of our precious SB slots that I don't think it's worth it.
While I don't play Esper (I play UW Gifts with a 1-land splash for Lingering Souls and Unburial Rites), I never really understood why people thought that Thopter Sword was going to be amazing. It uses more cards than the Gifts combo does, is less versatile, doesn't immediately stabilize you against decks like Infect, Burn, or Bogles, takes longer to win with, needs both parts to be deployed at sorcery-speed, is made up of two combo pieces that are completely useless without each other (while the Gifts combo involves one of the best card-draw spells ever printed), and is vulnerable to more hate. Outside of artifact-based decks like Tezzerator, Thopter Sword is just a worse version of the Gifts combo.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
While I'm still not sold on gifts, I can agree with your thoughts on thopter sword. A while ago I would've said it was in no way safe to be unbanned. Then AD was printed and then I thought it was at least up for consideration, but still dangerous. Then Scooze came in and I was surprised it wasn't unbanned after that, and now that we got Kommand and tron all over the place it was a joke to stay banned. It's a fine combo, but you need to be aware of how often people can interact with it and if you plan to tap out to assemble it, then you're still not 100%. So if you want to get in on that combo, be aware that you need plenty of interaction before hand so it's a finisher and not an A + B = Win like twin was.
Yes, it's another card for the combo, but thopter sword functions on its own, and in a heavy artifact build with UB Tezz, it might be worth considering.
You can still just play teachings and tutor white sun's zenith too, which is probably, but not always better.
I do agree that thopter sword is not as impressive in this deck as I had hoped. Its much more of its own deck, I think. Some of the more midrangey UW builds can slot it in though.
The idea of thopter sword is that people envision it as a turn 3 win, and it can just take over turn 4. Gifts is more of a turn 4 > 5 sort of combo, meaning its a good turn or two slower at best. In practice, thopter sword is a two card combo that shifts deck lists, where as gifts is a 1 card combo that fits in a bit easier.
Not entirely true. Both "combos" require you to alter your deck in less than optimal ways just to accommodate them. Thopters requires you to run more search like muddle or tezz which takes you down 1 path and gifts requires you to play more 1-ofs, many you never want to ever draw, in order to be fully effective. Meanwhile just shoving either combo into an existing deck is not something that can be done with any amount of success because then you're very all in with little to no support.
1. Ancestral Vision is a powerful card. It's also not ideal for the draw-go shell. It sits simultaneously in two spaces--On one hand, it is the late-game payoff spell that requires some early setup--AKA, our sphinx's revelation. On the other hand, it also sits in the same spot as Esper Charm, by being a card to help push the midgame velocity of land drops. The problem is that it's actually worse at both of these roles than their respective cards, and it's trying to make up for it on sheer power level. I've tested it a bunch over think twice as a straight up swap, and it hasn't performed well. I'm not noticing that the deck is winning less, but rather that everything feels more clunky, more luck based, etc. Lots of having to stabilize repeatedly in the same game. As most others have said, it doesn't do the same thing as think twice in the midgame.
2. remand is disgustingly good right now. Everybody and their mother is trying to jam AV or the Thopter/sword combo (or both) in just about any blue shell. Most of them are doing so in a really poor manner--either they don't actually understand how to build a deck to use that card advantage (because modern has never had it in spades before) or they overestimate how much card advantage these engines provide. Either way, they think they can either fight over them (and let a rev through) or don't understand HOW to fight over them, and just lose.
3. Ancestral Visions and the thopter/sword combo don't belong in the same deck. People are trying to jam both into one deck, and they're going to fail. The cards just don't have the synergy to fit together in a cohesive deck--one wants to grind out raw card advantage, the other wants to win by grinding out a lock. If you put both plans in the same deck, you either die before either gets online, or neither ever get online to begin with.
4. Gifts Ungiven is, in my estimation, the best card to enable thopter foundry and sword of the meek. It finds both halves of the combo, while also setting up alternative lines of attack. The trick with gifts is to not actually go all-in on gifts--make sure your deck has a reasonable game plan for just winning the game without the graveyard at all. Everybody remembers the double entomb mode, and they remember the 4-card recursion package mode, and they all know about the value mode (gifts for gifts, snapcaster, cryptic, other spell). Nobody ever thinks about gifts as the disgusting win the game button: grave titan, wurmcoil engine, iona, elesh. Most midrange, and even most of these new AV based "control" decks can't actually win a game in which you get two of those cards into your hand with mana to cast them.
5. mystical teachings is probably the best card in the modern arsenal to pair with ancestral visions on a strategic level, in theory; visions is good at providing a burst of advantage later in the game, but doesn't smooth the path to getting there. Mystical teachings is the ultimate weapon for ensuring you actually stabilize in a game. AV provides raw card quantity, similarly to treasure cruise, and teachings provides the quality. Glue them together with esper charm, and you have an engine that should be able to generate the card advantage you need while also giving you the selection to ensure you have the RIGHT tools in the late game. An esper engine based around these cards is probably better at avoiding the "wrong half of deck" problem that current draw-go lists have, but probably isn't quite as smooth as current lists are at fighting an attrition game. Also, I've often been of the opinion that in any format slow enough for teachings to consistently get online, some version of a teachings deck is the best deck in the format. I think that IF someone breaks the format with gifts/thopterSword, then the best deck will actually be the teachings shell. Traditionally, teachings shells fail when they can't find the right cards for a matchup. I've got some ideas on that front that I'm working on right now, and if they pan out you can be sure I'll follow up with you guys about them, but I really just don't know. I'll leave you with a hint though--these ideas are forcing me to re-write my manabase code and re-think the entire structure of my model on that front.
I've got a friend who wants a gifts-based control list for the Invitational; he's never been a modern player before, gifts was his favorite standard deck ever, and he's basically brand new to modern now (though he's been heavy into legacy for a decade--he knows his way around a control deck). Therefore, I will be putting my efforts into tuning a list for him for the invitational. I'll share my progress on that with you guys as it goes along.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Not entirely true, I've been working on a UW control list with the combo in it as the finisher. In my first few incarnations I'd agree, there was too many things that didn't do anything, but that was a quick fix. I lowered my curve significantly and put in a few cards that I can tutor up with muddle and it's now working out quite well for me. But in a vacuum I'd agree, just shoving them in and crossing your fingers won't result in a competitive deck.
EDIT: Another factor in getting them to work well together is altering how you play. Let the combo pieces sit in your hand while you cast your cantrips first. When I was racing to get them both online I'd usually end up dying to what was in play because I wasn't chaining think twice into action. Like I've mentioned before, the combo is a finisher that you set up once the game is stable in an average interactive game.