Even the Odds

With the current banlist the combination of Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek is the defining combo of the Peasant meta. It doesn’t win the game on the spot like other combos do but it creates a very advantageous scenario and stabilizes the game until it takes over the game.

Balance drawn: For 1 colorless mana you get 1 life and a 1/1 flying Token. Crazy!

There are currently two heavily played decks that use this combo, UB Thopter Control and Affinity Control. Both of them are excellent decks with good win percentages. That’s enough for us to take a closer look and work out some strategies to battle this mighty combo!

In total there are four different ways to attack the combo and we’ll address each of them separately. Many of these angles involve sideboard cards and as a result preparing your sideboard correctly is a major player in beating these decks. At the end of the article you are provided with an overview of possible sideboard options for each color.

1. Prevent Thopter Foundry from hitting the battlefield

This works by either countering or discarding Thopter Foundry. As a deck that runs counterspells of whatever shape or form you should always try to counter the Thopter Foundry if you need to win through regular damage. (If your win condition is Sphinx’s Tutelage or poison counters you might not need to counter the Foundry but the little fliers also provide a reasonably fast clock so you should always at least consider it based on the board state and cards in your hand.) Remember UB Thopter Control decks run counterspells themselves, usually something between 7 and 14, so prepare for counterwars. Always leave up enough mana to cast every counterspell you’ve got.

Never counter Sword of the Meek unless you can immediately exile it!

The same goes for discard spells. If you’re in the luxurious position of casting Duress and seeing a Foundry, always take it. The deck runs three Foundries and if you kill all of them, they can’t win. They often transmute Muddle the Mixture to find the second part of the combo. So if you don’t see any Thopters with your Duress you might want to take that.

2. Destroy Thopter Foundry

Foundry is an artifact and a blue permanent which allows a big variety of removal spells to be effective against it. The colors Green, White and Red have access to artifact removal (and Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast). If this is your plan against the combo remember they run counterspells and sometimes Welding Jar out of the sideboard.

Never destroy Sword of the Meek unless you can immediately exile it!

3. Gravehate against Sword of the Meek

If you take another look at the four steps that were mentioned in the beginning of the article you’ll notice that there are two opportunities of responding. You receive priority between steps 2 and 3 and between 3 and 4 while Sword of the Meek is in the graveyard. These are the opportunities for you to cast/crack your gravehate instants/artifacts. Remember though that in response to your gravehate ability/spell the Foundry player can activate Foundry another time if they control another artifact and still have 1 open mana to put another “create 1/1 token and return Sword from graveyard” ability on the stack above yours! In this case they can fizzle your spell. That means you should only use it if your opponent controls no other artifact (Vault of Whispers and Seat of the Synod are artifacts and Affinity Control always has other artifacts) or taps out (which they shouldn’t). This is the softest way to interact with the combo because the opponent can play around it. If you pilot an aggro deck for example you may be able to force the opponent to tap out to gain enough life or create the last needed chump blocker to survive. In that case it is handy to break their combo and likely win the following turn.

4. Breaking up the combo by neutralizing the combo

If you look through all the black decks that are being played right now you might notice that most of them dedicate at least one Uncommon slot to Engineered Plague. Besides randomly hating out Goblins and Elves, the main reason to run this card is to be prepared against the Thopter Sword combo. And here is why. If you name Thopter with Engineered Plague, a Thopter created by Thopter Foundry gets -1/-1 as a state based effect. This means that the Thopter Token gets this malus as soon as is exists and as a result enters the battlefield as a 0/0 creature and immediately dies. The best part about this is the fact that you prevent Sword from even triggering because there is no 1/1 creature entering the battlefield!

The UB Thopter Control brewers are no less clever though and they prepare for the black matchup by getting reinforcements in the form of Sunken City. You might want to board all your gravehate in addition to having the Plagues because of that. Note though that if your opponent plays Sunken City without there being a Plague on the battlefield, the Thopter Tokens enter the battlefield as 2/2 creatures, again not triggering the Sword’s ability!

Affinity Control has access to enchantment removal in Oblivion Ring and Nature’s Claim so Engineered Plague is once again not an auto-win!

Another way of breaking up the combo is the card One-eyed Scarecrow. It shows up in many sideboards, especially the ones that lack artifact destruction because of color requirements. It works the same way as Engineered Plague, as it prevents the Thopter Tokens entering the battlefield from triggering Sword of the Meek. It also only affects opposing creatures which makes it suitable in the mirrormatch as well.

Sideboard Options:

Ecrit par Zombie33