Torpor Orb (stops Sword from triggering, also very good against Persist combo), Leyline of the Void, Relic, Pithing Needle (on Foundry of course), Surgical Extraction (can respond to Sword trigger). Plus of course you just drop discard and rip Foundry before they can play it.

The answer is Leyline of the Void, Trevor. So far, my UB Faeries list is 56% against various Thopter decks (UW, Grixis and Jeskai).

I don’t know if I consider the answers to Thopter/Sword to be that narrow. If we’re talking about ultra-specific answers like Ancient Grudge, Night of Soul’s Betrayal, or Stony Silence, then sure – but we’re playing those cards in our sideboards for other match-ups already so it’s not like the combo is asking us to play cards specifically for that match-up.

Scavenging Ooze, Relic, Abrupt Decay, Pithing Needle, Izzet Staticaster, Quasili Pridemage, Kolaghan’s Command and more are all capable of answering a resolved combo (with varying degrees of success, mind you) and many of them can even be played proactively. In addition, all of these cards can answer multiple aspects of potential Thopter/Sword lists beyond just the combo itself.

I could write 10,000 words about the nuances of Grixis (and I probably already have by now) so I figured it best to give Grixis a whole article. Stay tuned!

The main strength of Foundry/Sword is it’s ability to slot into almost any deck, and force the opponent to bring in narrow answers to deal with it, besides counterspells. A good second plan of attack for control/midrange, I’m more excited to see what it does in those decks rather than dedicated Foundry/Sword lists.

I imagine Blighted Agent becomes their primary plan against Foundry/Sword, then again that combo really can’t come online until Turn 4 and if the Sword player is tapping out to play combo pieces they will be dead quickly. That matchup probably comes down to how well the Sword deck is built to combat Infect in the early turns.

As for the rest of the metagame, a control presence will make things difficult for Infect as well, but Infect does have anti-control tools if they can find the room. From a purely speculative level I’m not sure it will be “great”, but only a few things have to happen for that outlook to change drastically.

Faeries does benefit from Vision’s printing, but it seems like Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek is going to give it a lot of trouble. What good answers does U/B have for that archetype, besides counterspells? I’m not sure we want Hurkyl’s Recall against a control deck, that plays right in to their “virtual card advantage” they generate by forcing us to draw narrow answers that rot in our hand instead of threats. Something to think about

Too hard to interact with? Are we still talking about a combo that relies on the graveyard, artifacts, tokens, and 11 creatures? Because that would be an awful lot of ways to interact wouldn’t it? You know with cards people already play anyways? Stony silence, rip, nosb, grudge, surgical, staticaster, etc. Etc

I have been running games on untap.in (a mtg sim program) Thus far, sword combo is very good. The concensus seems to be that it might be too good, as it has been shoved into grixis, uwr, uw, 4 color and tezzerator with good success. It is powerful not only because it is hard to interact with, but because they must bring in cards to counter it, making them more vulnerable to normal win conditions.
Visions has seen play in all the above lists and also showed up in a crazy UG taking turns deck that basically wins on t3/4

My brother has had a similiar problem with his blue moon. He actually managed to save money. He cut snapcasters down to 2 ofs and cut a blood moon because AV would help him draw into them. Then, he replaced his keranos with goblin dark dwellers. You could cut a snap and two jace and maybe a thought scour or tasigur and add in 2 dark dwellers and 3 AV and be at a cheaper cost

On a more serious note I’m looking forward to your next article.