Are textmode consoles/terminals still supported?

I'm attempting to get a video card that DTRT on FreeBSD.
I started with the graphics provided by an AMD A6-7470K,
only to discover it's not yet supported. So I forked out
for a recent nvidia card, and build/installed a new
world/kernel.
Everything seemed to be as one would expect, except there
was an issue with loader.efi. So I had to move mine aside,
and use the one off the install media (tho I understand
the (u)efi has since been fixed). Now, I'm attempting to
obtain textmode. The text stripped from a tty, and pasted
to a new file in a textmode editor -- ee(1) for example;
pads the line with spaces to EOL, and prefaces each line
following the first line with rubbish (about 1 to 2
characters worth).
So "graphics mode" or vt(4) isn't going to get it, for me.
Textmode, and syscons(4) has always worked as expected, and
I thought I'd try to re-enable it, or get textmode via vt(4).
But all attempts fail.
excerpt from my KERNCONF

device		vga
options 	VESA

device		sc
options 	SC_PIXEL_MODE

device		vt
device		vt_vga
device		vt_efifb

However, following the advice on the freebsd wiki, querying
the value in sysctl(8) returns:
# sysctl hw.vga.textmode
sysctl: unknown oid 'hw.vga.textmode'

OK how bout vidcontrol(1)
# vidcontrol -i adapter
vidcontrol: obtaining adapter information: Inappropriate ioctl for device

So, it appears from my standpoint that textmode is no longer
supported?

FWIW:
FreeBSD trump.whitehouse.gov.test 12.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT #0 r314700:
Sun Mar 5 09:01:30 PST 2017
root_at_trump.whitehouse.gov.test:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/TESTKERN amd6

Thank you for anything that might help me obtain textmode again.

--Chris