LocketFreeze/Sensei Sensei: need help

[Kotoso]

Random intro, feel free to skip
   I was tinkering around with LocketFreeze, an Extended deck that saw play once, when BAM! Sensei's Divining Top gets hit with the Ban Hammer. I gave up on it for a while because I didn't like the idea of playing with the highly synergistic Helm of Awakening, and I didn't think it was fast enough without it in Vintage.
   When Etherium Sculptor was previewed, I picked the deck up again, because the card is perfect for Sensei Sensei. I didn't want to abandon the Locket of Yesterdays/Artificer's Intuition trick, because it was tutorable, so I blended the decks' themes/cores. Here the deck, explanations after:
Mana
    1 Academy Ruins
    1 Petrified Field
    2 Flooded Strand
    4 Snow-Covered Island
    4 Island

    4 Darksteel Citadel
    4 Seat of the Synod
    1 Great Furnace

    1 Sol Ring
    1 Chrome Mox
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Lotus Petal

Engine
    1 Magus of the Future
    1 Future Sight
    1 Thrumming Stone

    3 Etherium Sculptor
    1 Locket of Yesterdays

    4 Sensei's Divining Top

Other Search/Draw
    4 Artificer's Intuition
    2 Trinket Mage
    3 Thirst for Knowledge
    1 Brainstorm
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Gifts Ungiven

Kill(Feels like there is too much here)
    1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    3 Stifle
    1 Trickbind

    1 Darksteel Colossus
    1 Tinker

    1 Tezzeret the Seeker
    1 Brain Freeze
    1 Grapeshot

Searchable Disruption
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Engineered Explosives

Sideboard
SB: 1 AEther Spellbomb
SB: 1 Meekstone
SB: 1 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 4 Counterbalance
SB: 1 Conjurer's Bauble
SB: 1 Chromatic Star
SB: 1 Thran Foundry
SB: 1 Pyrite Spellbomb
Explanation:
   This is the list as it is right now, without proxies, hence the 1 Chrome Mox and 1 Tezzeret. I want to buy Mana Crypt and Tolarian Academy to throw them in soon.

Some card choices for consideration (and some obvious auto-proxies):

• Black Lotus
• 5 Moxen
• Ancestral Recall
• Volcanic Island (don't have any duals yet)
• Ponder
• Fact or Fiction
• Repeal/Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapor (probably not Chain, but something is needed for Null Rod)

How You Can Help:
   I threw Tezzeret in there when I got him in a booster because he is amazing, but it feels like overkill. I have a few questions for more experienced players:

• Is the StifleNaught combo worth the space? It seemed good at the time because I only need 1 Phyrexian Dreadnought. I sometimes sideboard this combo out for Counterbalance and graveyard hate
• Are Tezzeret, Gifts Ungiven, and Mystical Tutor worth it? In testing, Gifts seemed great, if you had the turn free, or a ton of mana to cast it.
• Suggestions on what to do with Ponder, Fact or Fiction, Repeal/Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapor.
• Does <4 Thirst for Knowledge seem bad to anyone? As I type this, it seems like I could easilly go to 3 Artificer's Intuition and add a Thirst/Trinket Mage.
• A blue deck without Force of Will? BLASPHEMY!... Should I take out StifleNought and add 4 Force of Will, 1 Thirst for Knowledge and play control when I can bring Counterbalance from the sideboard?
• Is that the right number and choice for searchable disruption in the main deck?
• 4 Chrome Mox doesn't seem right. Should I just take out the one I have?
• 4 Seat of the Synod vs 1 Seat of the Synod + 3 Islands?
• Should I up the fetchland count and splash any other colours?
• Any other suggestions? The sideboard is probably wrong.

   I mainly play unsanctioned semi-casual Vintage where about 1/2 the people play with power, but a stagnant metagame is frowned upon. If someone wins or plays too long with a proven deck/archetype (Dragon, Long, etc.) they are frowned upon if they keep bringing it. The store has a 5 card proxie rule.

Sorry if that was too long or poorly formatted. Any tips appreciated, the deck feels like a bit of a mess since I added Tezzeret.
   

[jaeppel]

This looks like it could be a fun casual deck, or potentially something that could be competitive in legacy.  As for being competitive in a real vintage meta, i think that a nice list could exist for some kind of future sight/top/locket/sculptor list.  That being said, there are a number of flaws with this list, the most heinous being the lack of Forces.  i understand you are limited by your cardpool, but for me i just write 'volcanic island' on a nice looking mountain and then draw in a little sea.  it works well enough, and if we are playing casually between friends, why not play with all of the pieces?  if i were to loose a rook for the chessboard i would find a suitable winecork to substitute before playing.

artifact lands are really terrible in vintage.  because workshop/key/vault exists in this world, null rod is the king of hate, and your seats and furnaces are directly worse than the corresponding basic land.  island cannot be wasted, but seat can.  maybe, if you really needed the extra free artifacts i could see 2 of the artifact lands, but no more.  the nice thing about lands is that they work under rod.  losing that makes lands about as good as a startrek card.  what i would do is collect one each foil artifact land and write "mox_____" on them.  and drop the others.

you devote really far too many slots to win conditions.  your 'win slots' in a deck like this should be few and absolute.  if you have a crazy combo that just draws your deck, it should be no problem to find 1-2 kill cards.  dreadnought is terrible here, that guy needs a deck built around him to be worth anything, and if youve drawn your entire deck, you need to do something more broken than a two mana 12/12.  naught lends itself to an aggro plan, but the combo killer of choice is always the dsc, which you already have in there, good.  amazing synergy with tfk, so its never a problem to draw. 

4of thirst is absolute here.  with a locket in play they get rather broken, the third costing just U.  artificers intuition should be a singleton, i would replace with tutors (demonic, vamp, mystical), and of course run black because will is amazing here.  Yawgmoth will win far more games than Futuresight ever will.  green is also needed here, red has nothing to offer sensei.  if you run futuresight, fastbond is required.  thats true vintage brokenness, letting you timwalk directly to your final turn once sight hits.  play one gush to go with it for random mana acceleration and just nice cheap drawing.

i would propose a decklist, but i dont really have one either.  there must be an optimal list for sensei combo floating around out there.  its a puzzle ive been working on for a long time.  ive wanted to break futuresight forever, but it just never seems to find a tier one space.

[Kotoso]

^ thank you, that was a very helpful post. I never considered Fastbond, but it is great when Future Sight hits play without the other combo pieces. Green also makes Gifts Ungiven better.

One thing I forgot to ask is: What is the proper way to combo out with a Thrumming Stone and 2+ free Sensei's Diving Tops in play?

Played out properly, it is very slow to ripple through 4 cards every Top activation. I'm guessing that a shortcut past the rippling step wouldn't be allowed in most tournaments, although I don't really intend on going to any large tournaments, just my local casual one.

[VideoGameBoy]

One thing I forgot to ask is: What is the proper way to combo out with a Thrumming Stone and 2+ free Sensei's Diving Tops in play?

You have 2 tops in play.

Tap top 1 to draw a card, and then top 1 goes on your library.
Tap top 2 to draw top 1, and then top 2 goes on your library.
Play top 1, and ripple out top 2 plus any extra revealed tops.

Rinse and repeat to load up your hand and storm count.

Note that with 2 free tops (no thrumming stone), you can do this for the storm kill w/brain freeze:

You have 2 tops in play and Brain Freeze in hand.
1) Tap top 1 to draw a card, and then top 1 goes on your library.
2) Tap top 2 to draw top 1, and then top 2 goes on your library.
3) Play top 1.  Tap top 1 to draw top 2, and top 1 goes on your library.
4) Play top 2.  Tap top 2 to draw top 1, and top 2 goes on your library.

Rinse and repeat 3 and 4, and finish with Brain Freeze.
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My advice would be to ditch the tops, sculptors, thrumming stone and future sight(s), throw in FoW and tutors (including Merchant Scroll) and stick with the Trinket Mage/StifleNaught kill.  4 card combos do not work in vintage, especially ones that bend over to Null Rod, and this combo list as it exists is strictly inferior to Tendrils.  This is because the entire deck in a good tendrils build is the engine, with the only potentially dead (read: useless until the combo is in play) card being Tendrils of Agony itself -edit- and even then, in some rare situations such as with Bargain/Necro in play, Tendrils can even help keep things moving.  For example, Chain of Vapor is a house in Tendrils, because it is both an answer and engine card, letting you swap out tapped lands for reusable moxen mana and upping the storm count in the process.

The goals of every vintage combo deck are threefold:
1) Drop the fundamental turn as low as possible, which means control doesn't have a chance to get UU active, and aggro doesn't stand a chance, period, and other combo is left in the dust.
2) Never have dead cards in your grip.
3) Don't just die to hate.

The CounterTop strategy looks like an interesting sideboard swapout, though.