MTG Salvation

It's a very different engine, but I imagine it could work. Can you walk me through the combo briefly? I may be a decent player, but Spellweaver Volute isn't something I'm used to seeing very often...

Bocephus: I don't know how to tell you this, but your testing is wrong. You freely admit you were doing this years ago. So were we. And we've been playing the format ever since. Since 2011, I've played over 1000 matches (4 matches every wednesday in the tournament since a bit before Pro Tour Philadelphia, not to mention testing during the rest of the week. Our metagame was at one time a combofest too. We adapted. We figured out how to make the shell I described above work. Also, RUG, BUG, even 12-post isn't so bad once you know how to build it. And you can say "that shell isn't fast enough to beat combo" or "we tried that and it didn't work" all you like, but that will not change the fact that you are fundamentally wrong. I don't know where the error is, but I know it's there.
You are right about one thing: the decks have to be much more accurately tuned to win in a format that powerful. That's true in Legacy too, actually. As the size of the card pool increases, the overall card power increases, and therefore the mana curves get lower, meaning that there is less room for error in your decklists. I view that as a good thing. A good thing that is mitigated by the existence of Skullclamp in the format I play, but the difference isn't all that relevant.
Oh, and by the way, you can't have tested that shell if you tried it with Skullclamp Banned. The entire point of that shell is to disrupt in the first couple turns of the game, then reliably get out clamp and use it to dig into more disruption, eventually assembling the combo and killing you with bears. Without the clamp, it wouldn't work nearly as well, in which case the deck I could crush combo with would be Miracles or RUG Delver, both of which are quite strong without clamp and have excellent combo matchups. That or perhaps a more dedicated Thopter/Depths combo deck, scrapping the fancy stuff and dropping the curve to be more like the dominant lists in extended. It wouldn't be too hard.

Oh, and Steb: You've got some pretty good lists there, especially for just goldfishing. We found that cutting the Chrome Moxen from storm is usually right, and that you should use those slots for Disruption, in some mix of Missteps, Repeals, Bolts, and Punishing Fires. I don't know if you're interested, but I thought you should know that your test build is a pretty good proxy for what we built as well.

I don't have the exact lists, because I lost a LOT of stuff in the port from my computer, but I can give you a pretty clear idea of the skeletons for the top-tier stuff.
I'm currently on what we call "the broken deck". It's basically just all the most broken cards off the banned list thrown together. This is what I remember of the shell:

Then a suite of answers and about 18 lands. You probably want to include 1 Jace there. If you're really interested, I can keep digging around, and I'm sure I can find more. Also, if you're wondering about the lack of Batterskull, I moved it to the side. Jitte is usually better in situations where Batterskull is good.

It's things like that that make me thoroughly doubt that you know what you're talking about. Maybe your lists are just drastically better than my team or anyone on the pro scene from Old Extended could ever dream up, but I doubt it. And Dredge is thoroughly incapable of going off on turn 1 in Modern, and is terrible in the unbanned format anyways, which you would know if you had played 3 matches with it against an adequate control or even zoo player. Hypergenesis requires an actual god draw and to be on the play. Shoal Infect is a terrible deck. You are right about Elfball, at least, as it was perfectly capable of going off on turn 2 with the right hand, but it's also trivially easy to disrupt, which you would ALSO know if you had played enough matches for your level of statistical confidence. Similarly, with Storm, you're right in that it's a powerful and viable combo deck, but it's also not a turn 1-2 deck in the least. And you CERTAINLY would know how few decks actually want to run Mental Misstep in this format.
Again, though, I've never claimed to be infallible, and it's not like we're team CFB over here. How about you send me your turn-2 dredge deck that can beat Rest in Piece out of Miracles? Post it here, PM it to me, doesn't really matter. Actually, send me any of your combofest lists you have. If you're right about their goldfish consistency, I'll crush my teammates next wednesday. It's a $5 buy-in, so I'll make a fair bit of cash that way.

I built a Pyromancer Ascension deck that used Perilous Research+Hatching Plans to draw a ton of cards, and Muddle the Mixture to tie it all together. About half the deck was 2cmc cards. I gave it up as soon as I played someone with Spell Snares.

Chrome Mox, just like any other civilized control deck would in such a format? And in any case, I don't know how you're winning turn 1 in this format, given how it's physically impossible for elves and Infect, requires a god draw out of Hypergenesis and for the opponent to have no disruption whatsoever, and is so rare it's essentially impossible in Pyromancer Storm. I suppose you could build a Past in Flames storm deck that could go off turn 1 or 2 with some degree of consistency, but the amount of interaction you'd have to sacrifice would be absurd. And turn 2 is absolutely too late to just goldfish.
Maybe if you're just goldfishing you could make a combo deck that fast. Matter of fact, you probably could. I never tried. We figured out how bad of an idea a combo deck like that was in the format pretty early on. They get crushed by the decks playing Missteps, Inquisitions, Abrupt Decays, Counterbalances, Chalices, and the rest of the whole pack of disruption.

Seriously, what lists could goldfish turn 1-2? I want to see what you're talking about.

Cool. So has my entire team. And you're wrong. I don't know if it's your deckbuilding or your playskill, but your take on an unbanned modern is wrong. If you've seen my tournament reports, you'll know I'm at least a fairly good player, and my background in competitive vintage (including a top 8 that earned me a Time Walk) should demonstrate that I know my way around broken decks. And I am hardly the best player on my team. There are seven of us, with an eighth who joins us for drafts. And the format you claimed to have played, we play a tournament every wednesday on Cockatrice. We've done that since Pro Tour Philadelphia. It's just that fun a format.
How many rounds have you played? What decks? Against which? Did you figure out the optimal Stoneforge package, or are your lists still running Batterskull maindeck? Which variant of Storm is better in your opinion, with or without Punishing Fire? Did you ever get around to testing variants of the Rock? We tried it out, but the zoo matchup always felt a little awkward. That reminds me. About Zoo, Unified Will or Might of Alara? We went for Might in the end, but I'd love to hear a second opinion.

You claim it's a combo fest. I guess you could call it that. Certainly you need an awful lot of synergy to win, and goodstuff style builds aren't gonna get you all that far. But unless Stoneforge Mystic/Dark Confidant/Skullclamp is a combo in your mind, then you need to try it again.

Alternatively, you could try Goryo's Vengeance. It's not exactly the top tier deck, but it's awfully explosive, and it's the closest thing to the "cheat giant things into play fast" style you want. The Tron and WUBG Gifts Control decks are both much slower.

Bocephus: It's not a turn 2 combo kill format. Mental Misstep is an awfully good answer to the decks that can kill that fast, and Chalice of the Void is even better. For every U/R Storm deck, there's a deck packing Countertop and Thopter-Sword with some of the most efficient disruption in the world that rips it apart.
Stephen Menendian found the same thing when he tried vintage with no restricted list a few years back. Broken interactions, while broken, all have fundamentally similar strategies, in that they're highly modular. That modularity comes at the price of things like: low cmc band, heavy reliance on additional resources such as the graveyard, and big turns in which they spend a lot of mana and cards. To put that in simpler terms, as the format grows stronger, the hate cards and answers become more efficient. This effect is even amplified here by the presence of powerful answers that are even on the banned list: Mental Misstep, Sensei's Divining Top to enable Counterbalance, and so on. Is combo powerful in a format with everything but clamp unbanned? Sure. It's incredibly powerful. But so is everything else. If you'd like to see it for yourself, build an ascension list on cockatrice and see how you do against Countertop Miracles with Jace, Countertop itself, and 4 mental missteps.

Well, I'm usually able to get the kill going vs. Zoo, and it's pretty much unbeatable in a lot of matchups, but sometimes (faeries is a great example) the battlesphere is your plan A. Alternatively, sometimes the goal is to gifts for an Academy Ruins pile that sets up Crucible/Tectonic Edge, wipe their board with explosives recursion, keep them to 3 lands, and then kill with Hive Mind/Pact. sometimes, you just have to play control.

I should clarify: I don't think wizards should unban every single card in Modern. I'm just pointing out that, as long as you balance unbans among the colors and strategies, you can unban as many cards as you want without hurting the overall balance of the game. You'd just make it more powerful.

The final interation of the seven-year extended banned list was Skullclamp, Aether Vial, Sensei's Divining Top and Disciple of the Vault.
The real problem is that the format you would get with that liberal a banned list is much more powerful than Wizards wants, and probably more powerful than
For the record, my and my team have for fun played Modern with no banned list, not even Skullclamp. It's a really fun format. Very diverse. Counterbalance, Mental Misstep, Inquisition of Kozilek, Abrupt Decay, Repeal, Engineered Explosives, etc. are more than enough to keep the format slow enough to be interesting, and having the clamp around makes it so even the jankiest of weird decks can steal games by just drawing a pile of cards, so basically every deck we've made is at least viable. If it were a tournament format, I would be playing way more magic.

Lectrys: I've actually never had that problem. It's possible that you're going for Hive Mind too often: in situations where the Hive Mind kill isn't the right win con to go for. Against countermagic or decks that can easily pay for or block your pacts, it's usually correct to go for Battlesphere instead and use pact/counterspells to keep them from exiling it. Destroying it is fine, since you have Academy ruins.
INS: I really dislike Thirst here, since there just aren't all that many artifacts you're remotely interested in discarding, or artifacts period, but that's just me. By all means try it, though. I've learned to hold your card choices in pretty high regard As for pacts, I don't know, but it sounds a lot like you're going for the Hive Mind kill too often. I made the same mistake when I was trying this deck out. In fact, I still do. But don't be afraid to go for the Battlesphere instead. I think some of those issues will be resolved when you do.

Reanimate isn't legal either. I'd just go with the counterspell, since you aren't playing a way to get the fatty into the graveyard in the first place and reanimation doesn't play well with Colossus.

It's not exactly Ghost Dad, but I've seen a pretty sweet Ghost Husk variant on cockatrice. It's running some targeted discard and bobs, but also Lingering Souls, Timely Reinforcements, and some sacrifice outlets (Bloodthrone Vampire, Plagued Rusalka, and Nezumi Bone-Reader out of the sideboard). It's not Tallowisp, but it seems sweet and it's not too many degrees of separation away.