When Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek were unbanned in Modern, many of us thought that these cards were just great, and it wouldn't be long before they were both widely played. As it turns out, building decks with the two cards has proven very difficult despite their relative power level. Ancestral Vision has been difficult with regard to finding the proper cards to mitigate its downside, and Sword of the Meek has been difficult in regard to finding the most cohesive shell without further pronouncing the card's downside. Stony Silence becomes a huge problem as the deck becomes more about Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, and the Gifts Ungiven shells have proven too inefficient. The Thopter Sword list that Marc-31 used to 5-0 a recent Modern league completely blew my mind.

This build is saying "I'd rather play Thirst for Knowledge than Ancestral Vision but I'd also rather have real spells than commit to Tezzeret". This deck has plenty of tools to wear an opponent down the way other Grixis Control decks do with a full set of Kolaghan's Command and Snapcaster Mage in addition to a pair of Pia and Kiran Nalaar as the go-to creature to recur. If looping the Nalaar family doesn't get there, the deck is able to set up Thopter Sword and bury opponents that way. I really like Pia and Kiran as a way to sacrifice extra Thoper Foundries, in particular in the face of post-board Stony Silences.

Being able to use Muddle the Mixture to find Snapcaster Mage or Terminate is pretty significant utility on top of finding either combo piece, and while I'd like to see another option or two- something like Spellskite- it makes sense not to go too deep with only one copy of Muddle in the deck. Muddle is relatively slow and narrow, after all.

What this list accomplishes is harnessing a lot of the power of earlier attempts at Thopter Sword while operating much leaner by using Thirst instead of four mana spells. The sideboard acknowledges the natural weakness to Tron and Valakut with three copies of Crumble to Dust and some Duress and Negates to be able to meaningfully interact with any strategy. I'd have to play around with the deck to be convinced that all of the numbers are correct, though this deck shows a lot of promise and I'm very impressed by the elegance of the list.