[Deck] CounterTop Thopter
Pippo84's New and Awesome Thopter Foundry Primer, v1.1:
edited and maintained by me, Grahf
This primer will not give you a sample list, or a sideboarding guide. This primer is about how to build the core of a good CounterTop-Thopter list and give you an idea of how the deck works.
Index
What is CounterTop Thopter?
Building CounterTop Thopter
Card Analysis
Why should I play this deck?
Topics to Discuss
History
Match-Ups (to come)
What is CounterTop Thopter?
CounterTop Thopter is a deck that wants to get to the long game, and win by swarming the opponent with a bunch of 1/1's. The deck uses the well known Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top soft lock to gain the control of the match and then uses the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo to win. How does it work? When both cards are in play you can pay 1 mana and sacrifice the sword to create a 1/1 artifact creature with flying and gain one life. Since a 1/1 enters the battlefield the sword's ability triggers and the sword comes back to play equipped to the token. You can go on as long as you have enough mana. This deck is also very different from the other CounterTop lists because there are no creatures here, except from the token ones.
Building CounterTop Thopter
The core of the deck builds itself. It's commonly agreed that these cards must be played:
Artifacts:
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of the Meek
1 Engineered Explosives
Enchantments:
4 Counterbalance
1 Moat or Humility
Instants:
4 Brainstorm
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
Planeswalkers:
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
22 Lands: In addition to the usual fetch/dual suite, this deck can support a high basic land count, and it's recommended to do so. (6-8 Islands and 2 Plains is not uncommon)
This leaves 7 open slots.
Core Card Analysis:
4 Brainstorm: One of the best blue spells in the format, an automatic 4 of.
4 Force of Will: Probably the best counter ever printed.
4 Swords to Plowshares: the best removal of the format.
4 Enlightened Tutor: This 1 mana instant card is what gives the glue to the deck. It can grab most cards in the deck and therefore gives more consistency. You can get the 1 ofs that are played (eg. Moat) or the missing piece of the combo. Enlightened tutor is also very synergistic with Counterbalance because you can tutor the correct casting cost card in response to a spell: a 1 mana hard counter! A few lists have used Intuition instead of E Tutor, making for a deck with a slightly different play style - it's a little slower but doesn't create card disadvantage.
4 Counterbalance: This creates a soft lock that gives virtual card advantage and helps during the whole game. Nothing more to be said about it, every one knows what it is and how it works.
4 Sensei's Divining Top: Excellent card to check the top cards for Counterbalance and to acheive card quality during the whole game. It also works well with Thopter Foundry: you can tap the Top to draw a card and sacrifice it to Thopter Foundry (paying 1 mana). This gives you 1 card, 1 life and 1 token, tech!
1 Moat: Some people prefer Humility in this slot. It is really a meta call, but it's necessary. Moat is better against Tribal decks and Humility is better against decks with Qasali Pridemage or against Reanimator. I actually prefer Moat because if you don't find answers you can die from many 1/1's.
1 Engineered Explosives: A tutorable removal against most of the things out there. It can easily do a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1. It's an out against so many cards, very versatile.
2 Thopter Foundry: The question here could be why just 2? People usually play the 2/1 split or the 3/2 split between Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek. You can use the Enlightened Tutors to get the missing piece of the combo and playing a lower number opens some slots for versatility.
1 Sword of the Meek: The minimum necessary. If it's in the GY you can sacrifice another artifact to Thopter Foundry and make it come back (remember, the ability triggers when a 1/1 enters the battlefield under your control). Multiple Swords in hand aren't nice to have.
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor: This planeswalker is just the nuts! It wins the game alone and behind a Moat or with a CB+Top in play he will be likely to stick there and your opponent will stop playing because of the +2 ability. Try him if you're not sure!
The 22 land configuration usually has enough basic lands to support Back to Basics and also plays:
1 Academy Ruins: The only land in the deck that produces colorless mana. It's very useful to return your artifacts on top of your library: a countered/answered Thopter Foundry or a EE recursion.
1 Seat of the Synod: This slot is still not sure, it's a tutorable land if you're screwed (but you should have mulliganed then) and it's useful to sacrifice it to Thopter Foundry. It's a common choice in many successful lists.
Cards to fill the flex slots:
Counter magic: Counterspell, Daze, Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, or the new Mental Misstep are all possibilities.
Counterspell: This is a controversial slot. Some people prefer Daze in it's place. For UU, Counterspell is not the easiest spell to cast, but having a stable manabase helps. The real advantage over Daze is that the opponent cannot play around it (leaving 1 mana open) and can counter everything on the long game (and most games will be long). After saying this the deck is quite mana hungry and you want to reach 4/5 mana asap, so missing a land drop is not so good.
Daze: Interacting in the early game is good, but slowing our mana development is not so good.
Mental Misstep: The new kid on the block. Promises to stop Lackies and Vials even better than Daze did, without bouncing an Island. Time and testing will tell what is the correct number to play.
Board Control:
Ensnaring Bridge: Since this deck is currently lacking a draw engine (but creates virtual CA through CB) the opponent's creatures aren't likely to attack with ES in play.
Oblivion Ring: A 3 CC tutorable drop for Counterbalance that's an answer to almost everything.
Vedalken Shackles: Another 3 CC tutorable spell. It can steal an opponent's creature and this is always very nice. The deck runs plenty of islands to support it. Some players say it's too slow, but it can be gamebreaking.
Ghostly Prison: Slows down the opponent's creatures. Probably sideboard material.
More Removals: Having removals is always nice! Path to Exile or Wrath of God would be the obvious choices, or perhaps Firespout if red is splashed. However most lists seem to prefer permanent-based answers.
Other Tutorable Answers:
Pithing Needle: A tutorable answer for Wasteland, Vial, Planeswalkers, Qasali, Mishra and so on. There are always plenty of targets to choose.
Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progenitus: A tutorable GY hate in maindeck. It can be useful against Reanimator, Dredge, Loam and so on.
Back to Basics: The deck has a very stable manabase to support it. It can be a good MD call if you expect many non-basic lands. It's a great sideboard card anyways.
Draw engine?:
Predict: A suggestion from Hanni. It works well with Brainstorm, Jace 2.0 and Sensei's Divining Top. It allows you to mill a card and draw 2, so you can look at 3 new cards with top the next turn. Good for card advantage and card quality at the same time. The hard part is fitting it in - does it take the place of countermagic, board control, or combo pieces?
Why should I play this deck?
This deck is really fun to play and controls the match enough to lock the opponent and win. An advantage is that it has no creatures, so all the opponent's removal are useless. This deck is also strong against aggro because if you have the combo down you have almost infinite chump blockers and gain life in the mean while. A positive point of the deck is that it's so versatile that you can get out of any situation and have many answers to everything.
Topics to Discuss.
a) The most important thing to discuss is the color to splash. The MD is almost (if not entirely) UW. What advantages does each other color bring?
b) Humility or Moat main?
c) After your testings do you prefer a 3/2 or a 2/1 Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek split?
d) What are the best cards in the open slots and why?
e) What type of sideboard cards are needed?
f) What weaknesses does the deck have, and how can they be addressed?
History.
This deck was born after the printing of Thopter Foundry (Alara Reborn) and had a huge success in the old Extended Format. Legacy players were more skeptical about it, but it's done quite a few placings in big tournaments. The first big result is probably from Carlos Santiago that was Undefeated Day 1 at GP Madrid. (see below for his list)
Match Ups.
To come.
------ END PRIMER ------
Grahf's Original Thopter Foundry Post: (for historical purposes and so the first few posts make sense. The list I brewed up with Standstill and Gifts is crap, don't play it.)
Hello everyone. This is the first thread I've bothered to make here on The Source. I'd like to talk about the Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek combo, in a Countertop Control shell.
I could have sworn there was a thread dedicated to Thopter Foundry already, but I couldn't find it. There are other decks which use the combo, but look substantially different:
Punishing Gifts, focusing more on a Gifts toolbox and the Punishing Fire / Grove of the Burnwillows combo.
Tezzeret Foundry, using heavier mana acceleration to power out Tezz and other artifacts.
I'm particularly inspired by the following list which went undefeated on Day 1 of GP Madrid (see here):
2 Academy Ruins
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Plains
3 Polluted Delta
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
4 Dark Confidant
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterbalance
3 Daze
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of Will
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Spell Snare
1 Sword of the Meek
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Vedalken Shackles
Sideboard:
2 Counterspell
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Engineered Plague
1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Krosan Grip
2 Path to Exile
2 Perish
1 Planar Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
Now that's all very nice, and doing so well in such a big tournament is not an achievement to diminish in any way, but I'm going to transform the list a little to reflect my personal biases and card availability. The cards I'm not convinced about are Dark Confidant, Jace the Mind Sculptor and Vedalken Shackles (I happen to not own any of the three either, how convenient). I can see how Confidant's lifeloss would be offset by the lifegain of Thopter Foundry, but he has the drawback of being a magnet for the opponent's otherwise-blanked spot removal. I'm sure Jace 2.0 can do fun stuff, but I'm just not excited to tap 4 mana at sorcery speed for questionable gain. Nor should we need the pseudo-lifegain of soaking up an attack. (nor pay ~$100 for just two of him, but that's a different problem entirely). And Shackles, a lot of people are saying it's too slow for the current Legacy meta. I've never played with the card so I couldn't say for sure, but the argument seems reasonable. Maybe it's a sideboard card.
Basically, this deck is Landstill with the Thopter/Sword combo instead of Landstill's traditional bombs:
// 22 land
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Academy Ruins
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
2 splash color blue fetch
1 splash color blue dual
2 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Plains
1 Snow-Covered Plains
// 13 draw
4 Brainstorm
3 Standstill
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Gifts Ungiven
// 10 counters
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Snare
// 10 white cards
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Enlightened Tutor
1 Argivian Find
1 Humility
// 4 artifacts
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of the Meek
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Open Slot
// sideboard: I don't know yet, but let's assume it will be fairly similar to the original.
thoughts on the land:
I didn't like how the only route to victory in the original list was Thopter/Sword, so I added Mishra's Factories to mitigate that somewhat. Two Academy Ruins seems reasonable in a deck so dependent on artifacts. The basic/snow covered split is for Gifts, so we can get both if need be. I haven't decided about the splash color: keep black like the original list, go for red like my Landstill list, or no splash at all. Originally just 20 lands total, it's now 22; I think the slightly higher count is appropriate in a Landstill-style shell. There are more colorless lands, but the color splashes are smaller, so the manabase should be stronger overall.
thoughts on the rest:
Standstill seems like a reasonable substitute for Confidant. We can play Factories and make Thopters under it just fine. Squeezed for space, I went down to three. We can find it with E Tutor if necessary, an option that Confidant does not provide.
Gifts Ungiven instead of Jace, Mind Sculptor is probably the biggest change. It's like a Fact or Fiction that always finds what you need. The Argivian Find was added to make better Gifts piles: one of Foundry, Sword, Ruins, Find will get the whole combo straightaway.
Humility should be very strong here. Oh, our thopters lose flying, oh noes. In exchange, a vast number of things that would have scared the thopters, no longer do. Only one is necessary because we can find it with E Tutor when and if needed.
That open slot could be a lot of things. The 4th Standstill, Path to Exile, Counterspell, Muddle the Mixture (jank?), another Sword or Foundry, or a wedge for fitting Daze back in.
Things that are lacking:
The Dazes from the original list didn't survive my translation. Dropping them may not be correct, but I feel that I want to hit 4 mana as soon as possible, to start making lots of thopters and casting Gifts or Humility if necessary. I'm not sure what I'd cut to get them back in, either.
There is not a single card at the 3 casting cost slot for Counterbalance. This is actually a glaring omission, and on further reflection, is probably the primary reason that Shackles was in there. I'd welcome input on this; is acquiring a Shackles the best option? Any 3cc card I do add ought to be an artifact or enchantment, so that it's fetchable with E Tutor when Cbalance is on the table.
Lastly, I haven't played this deck against real people yet, but I'm thinking about taking it to a local tournament later this month if it works out well.
