Today we’re covering another relatively “new” interaction in Modern- the Thopter/Sword combo! Sword of the Meek was recently unbanned in Modern alongside Ancestral Vision (which we covered yesterday!), which means Thopter Foundry is ready to churn out bodies again. But how exactly does the combo work, so you know how to play it, OR how to disrupt it properly when you’re staring down the combo on the other side of the table? It’s fairly simple. Whenever a 1/1 enters the battlefield under your control, your Sword of the Meek triggers and comes back, then attaches to it. Thopter Foundry lets you sacrifice non-token artifacts (so you can’t sac the Thopters!) to make a 1/1 Thopter and gain 1 life. So, you pay 1 mana and feed your Sword to your Foundry, which gains you 1 life and makes you a 1/1 Thopter. That Thopter triggers Sword and brings it back- end result, you’re down 1 mana, up 1 Thopter, and up 1 life. For every 1 mana you want to spend on this little loop, you gain 1 and get a Thopter. It’s not infinite by itself- the two-card combo is limited by how much mana you have, but being able to dump 4 or 5 mana at end of turn into an instant army is nothing to sneeze at.

However, by adding one more piece, it CAN go indefinitely- Krark-Clan Ironworks. With Ironworks, you sacrifice the Thopter you make each time to generate CC- one more mana than it costs to make the Thopter. Each time you do this, you end up with a net gain of one colorless mana- once you’ve got a few thousand mana, you can just make a few thousand thopters and not have to feed them to the Ironworks (or just keep going to gain as much life as you want). Now that you know how the combo works, you can demonstrate the loop to win your games (or disrupt your opponents, since you know how it works!)

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez