For many years, Sword of the Meek was banned in Modern because of the powerful interaction between Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry. Immediately after the card was unbanned, many players were trying to put together powerful control decks that leveraged the combo as a kind of inevitability. These decks frequently featured cards like Gifts Ungiven and Muddle the Mixture, but never really had a strong breakout performance. This week, TheNobodys has a different take on Thopter-Sword Control:

Esper Thopters - Modern | TheNobodys, 5-0 Modern League

• Instants (4)
• 4 Whir of Invention

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Collective Brutality
• 3 Lingering Souls
• 3 Steelshaper's Gift
• 4 Ideas Unbound

• Artifacts (23)
• 1 Damping Sphere
• 1 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Time Sieve
• 2 Pithing Needle
• 3 Ensnaring Bridge
• 3 Mox Opal
• 4 Mishra's Bauble
• 4 Sword of the Meek
• 4 Thopter Foundry

• Lands (22)
• 1 Plains
• 4 Island
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Polluted Delta
• 2 Spire of Industry
• 3 Darksteel Citadel
• 3 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Flooded Strand

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Battle at the Bridge
• 1 Curator's Ward
• 2 Detention Sphere
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Invoke the Divine
• 2 Mechanized Production
• 2 Meddling Mage
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Phyrexian Revoker
• 1 Sorcerous Spyglass

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There are two exciting new pieces of technology in this deck. The first is Steelshaper's Gift. This card is a one-mana tutor for Sword of the Meek, and fills the role of Ancient Stirrings in the stock Lantern of Insight decks. The second exciting component of this deck is Ideas Unbound. Your deck is packed with both cheap artifacts and cards that don't care about being in the graveyard. This will consistently be a draw three that lets you put a Sword of the Meek or Lingering Souls into the graveyard where they belong.

The last really interesting card in this deck is Time Sieve. This is a powerful Whir of Invention target that lets you just close the door on games. If you have the ability to generate five thopters per turn, this card lets you take all the turns while netting life each turn cycle. Even if you don't have good attacks when you start comboing, you'll eventually find enough lands to net thopters on each turn cycle and attack for lethal.

This is an exciting new take on the Ensnaring Bridge prison archetype. This deck can very quickly assemble the powerful Thopter-Sword combo and use those thopters to great effect, powering up Whir of Inventions to ensure that your opponents are locked out of their combat step or key answers and combos. If you've been looking for a more aggressive and proactive take on the Lantern Control deck, this might be a great deck for you.