The man who got me into magic (and is the reason I’m a blue based control player) told me very early on: “there is a finite amount of fun to be had in any game of magic. The goal of the control player is to have 100% of that fun”. Lantern control is the perfect example of that
I would argue that this is only true in competitive matches. Outside of competitive matches, it's funny to do the thing maybe once... And not so funny to not be invited back to play with other people again. When you're playing casually, friendship and fun for everyone is more important. When you're playing competitively, be as soul crushing as you'd like. ^^
Game 1 opponent here, Brian was a gentleman in chat the entire game, since i was super exited to play against him since im a huge fan. Glad i had the opurtunity to play against this legend, and i managed to comete sudoku before Bosh killed me xD
My personal (hot?) take is that lantern control is the most unique deck/strategy to ever see any significant competitive success. It plays largely as a prison/control archetype, but it focuses on controlling resources/options in such a unique way compared to just about everything else. I think that true high-quality piloting of this deck requires a top-tier understanding of the format and it's relevant threats to a degree that most other decks don't reach. I've always found it's play patterns interesting and I like the fundamental approach to the game it takes, essentially saying "I can't lose if I choose what you have access to". I've always thought it was a cool/interesting deck for these reasons That being said, it's miserable to be on the other side of a lantern lock, lol
I've played a good amount of lantern and it is hard to play. Knowing the entire format and all reasonable sideboard cards is a big ask to start playing a deck. I did enjoy it though. I stopped playing because rakdos pyromancer became a deck, and shortly after hogaak. Both were really bad matchups 😂 Amulet titan is harder to play though 😂
I completely agree! The way I've always thought about quantifying how unique Lantern is is thinking about degrees of reactivity for decks. The most proactive form of interaction is killing your opponent. This is basically every aggro deck. The next form of interaction is "on the board". This is where Magic tries to focus most of its interaction nowadays. Blocking is this, removal is this, sweepers are this, even Ensnaring Bridge is this, if you think about it. Next is "on the stack", which is where your opponent never gets to resolve a spell at all, dominated by counterspells and blue. Next is "with mana", where opponents never get to cast spells at all! This is mostly older, like with Ponza and Wasteland and Port, but newer taxes effects like Thalia effectively do this too. The last, and "final" level, is discard and the hand. You take your opponent's cards before they ever get to cast them at all! This plays lower on the scale than it is, because it's less flexible and always tempo-negative. But there's one final level, that only Lantern (and some niche Surgical brews) ever gets to really access: controlling the deck itself, before cards ever even get to a player's hand. That's what makes Lantern so special: you are literally interacting with the game in a way literally no other deck does. And it uses most/all those other layers, in various different iterations, to build up to being the *ultimate* interactive deck. You'll note that a player's opinion on interaction largely governs if they increasingly like or dislike deck archetypes in roughly this order, which I also find interesting!
Just the other day I was talking with my EDH pals about how nice it was that Lantern Control was a thing, and how much better it was that it isn't good enough to be a common sigh. It's certainly much funnier to watch than play against.
@14:51, you had a clear win from here. You should know that to win from here you need to resolve Bridge. The cards to worry about here are Tideshaper (destroying your Saga), Hexcatcher (countering your Bridge), and a possible Force of Negation. You have an answer for Force already in hand (Collective Brutality). You're about to draw an answer to Hexcatcher next turn. You have lands you need to cast Bridge, and you have Bridge in hand. It appears you got a little overconfident and negligent of these facts when you decided to play Urza's Saga on turn 2. You don't need the construct. The correct play is to play Glimmervoid, cast Brutality for the discard mode to clear the path against a possible Force of Negation. You then draw and cast Pithing Needle on the following turn, naming Hexcatcher (with the mana up to pay for possible Hexcatcher attempts to counter it). You do *not* play the Saga on turn 3 (it could be argued that getting the saga from Stirrings at all was a mistake). Last, you cast Bridge the following turn, with more than enough life to survive to dump your hand. If you are at all worried, you could also use the Brutality to dump extra cards out of your hand while gaining life. Just as you mention in game 2 against Burn, you don't just mill because you can: you have to consider the situation and what each player needs. The same goes for your game 1 against Merfolk. Yes, naming Aether Vial was *nice*, in getting a 2-for-1, but it's not what you *needed*. In game 2 in round 2, that is not a good keep against Merfolk. You should know that they're going to bring in some form of counters, and you want a Bridge as fast as possible. A better hand against Merfolk is some number of discard spells and a Bridge. A Merfolk player would *love* to know that you kept a hand like this if they saw it, because almost none of the cards really matter against them. @42:35, you should probably have sided out Haywire Mite instead of Thoughtseize or Brutality.
I love lantern control so much, it’s a great example of how innovative players can be in card games. Taking all these random different pieces to create a deck that operates in a manner that’s totally foreign to how each piece of the deck operates separately. No other card game is willing to give players that level of control over their play experience, arguably even WotC doesn’t give this kind of freedom in this day and age. It’s also my go to example of what true suffering in a game of magic looks like. It wins in such a slow and bizarre way that it takes experience to know when you’ve lost to the deck. It’s so easy to just sit there and let the game go on for far too long, suffering the entire time.
Lantern insights is an absolutely based amazing player who has a channel dedicated to this deck who is like in tune with the meta and explains all the math behind his decisions.
This is a deck I have a lot of experience with and I'm so looking forward to it. only one Karn makes little sense to me, I play 2 personally. But I like this list a lot more than some of the black white lists I have seen. Stirings is so good and loam is a great inclusion if you don't wanna splash for wren.
This brings me back. This was my best friends deck for a while. Between that, the time he played 8rack, and the time he played burn, I've lost a lot of matches to Bridge 🤣
my birthday was a few weeks ago...but seems like you gave me a late birthday gift. thanks very much ;-) May the Lantern shine the way...but it always showed you how good the opponents can top deck ;-)
in '94 or so my deck was field of dreams/ millstone. i tried it in every possible color combination, but at least in those days it wasn't possible to get a hard dependable lock and the games were always very tactical. ppl hate losing that slowly, but other than that i never received a complaint about "zero sum fun"
I've recently thought about this deck so this is quite a treat ❤ I met your channel from your first lantern control video (I just checked and it was 2 years ago, phew) so this is very nostalgic. Fun fact: If I recall correctly, there you said something like "time to watch this slog on 1'25x speed" and I've been doing that with every single one of your videos ever since!
34:35 seems like a safer line is to cast spellskite and Thoughtseize to take potential Titan from hand (was cultivator in this case). Spellskite can redirect the the lands ability for haste so you were still safe from them having a 2x Titan in hand/top decked Titan. Feels a lot safer then planning to Assassin's Trophy a resolved Titan.
15:40 Was it possible to assassin's trophy the tide shaper in response to the trigger to keep the Saga? Since the abillity wouldn't have turned it into an island in the first place. Or just not worth using the trophy in the first place?
I thought this was legacy during the deck tech so when you said we dont have mox opal anymore i was like “WHAT?” and ran to check if there was a banlist announcement lol
I was told that the ceiling of this deck is very high. Meaning for a given player playing RG ponza for example, because the deck has a low ceiling a highly skilled player will easily fill out the ceiling once the basics of playing the deck are learned, it doesn't take too much to reach that final 10% of perfect piloting. Lantern deck has a high ceiling, and ridiculously skilled players will be pleased that the deck allows their skill level to fill that ceiling to the max. 👻
I was literally brewing a version of this deck in Legacy last night... 4 Murktide Regent 4 Karn, the Great Creator 4 Brainstorm 4 Daze 4 Predict 4 Force of Will 4 Ponder 3 Mishra's Bauble 1 Aether Spellbomb 3 Codex Shredder 3 Lantern of Insight 1 Pithing Needle 1 Shadowspear 4 Ancient Tomb 4 Flooded Strand 3 Island 1 Otawara, Soaring City 4 Seat of the Synod 4 Urza's Saga 1 Hullbreacher 2 Flusterstorm 2 Hydroblast 2 Force of Negation 3 Dismember 1 Tormod's Crypt 1 Codex Shredder 1 Lantern of Insight 1 Ensnaring Bridge 1 Mycosynth Lattice
As much as I miss Mox Opal because of decks like this and Whir Prison, I know that it wouldn't be healthy for the format with Hammer being a deck, Scales coming back, and with Affinity being fringe. As long as Saga, Emry, and Urza exist in the format, Opal will never be safe and it makes me hurt.
Maybe this is obvious, but why didn't the R3 opponent cast their Summoner's Pact in response to the Collective Brutality at 25:18 ? It seems like that way they could have gotten Titan, paid for the pact on their upkeep, then deployed Titan on the following turn.
This was my favorite deck in 2017/18 pre mox ban. Luis Salvatto won the pro tour with it. I have a question for everyone, this deck died completely when they banned mox and I always wondered why? Like there was no other card that could fit into that slot? The deck did its thing even when you didn't start a turn or two with mox.
@@BoshNRoll Yes, 1080p in Theater Mode on a 1920x1080 monitor. Specifically I had trouble with the deck tech and battlefields. It wasn't a huge issue since you do such a good job narrating, but I remember you asking about this type of thing a few videos ago so I thought you'd want to know.
Because it’s based on decking your opponent over many turns while hiding behind ensnaring bridge. Ring kills you with damage while making Bridge ineffective.
Who needs to win when you can make your opponent lose?
The theory behind animating a Lich's Tomb temporarily and donating it to your opponent with Jon Irenicus so it can't be sacrificed.
That burn player thought, who needs to lose when you can make your opponent win?
Lose their sanity
In round 1 you should have started redirecting the damage they were hitting themselves with to spellskite
Calm down there Satan
"It's about sending a message" 😆
they were a good sport about it so no need to do them dirty like that lol
The man who got me into magic (and is the reason I’m a blue based control player) told me very early on: “there is a finite amount of fun to be had in any game of magic. The goal of the control player is to have 100% of that fun”. Lantern control is the perfect example of that
I like this philosophy. But Im a stax player
I would argue that this is only true in competitive matches. Outside of competitive matches, it's funny to do the thing maybe once... And not so funny to not be invited back to play with other people again. When you're playing casually, friendship and fun for everyone is more important. When you're playing competitively, be as soul crushing as you'd like. ^^
My man in round 1 really said "I have a family" and Brian's response was effectively "Then I'll send them flowers" XDD
Game 1 opponent here, Brian was a gentleman in chat the entire game, since i was super exited to play against him since im a huge fan. Glad i had the opurtunity to play against this legend, and i managed to comete sudoku before Bosh killed me xD
My personal (hot?) take is that lantern control is the most unique deck/strategy to ever see any significant competitive success. It plays largely as a prison/control archetype, but it focuses on controlling resources/options in such a unique way compared to just about everything else. I think that true high-quality piloting of this deck requires a top-tier understanding of the format and it's relevant threats to a degree that most other decks don't reach. I've always found it's play patterns interesting and I like the fundamental approach to the game it takes, essentially saying "I can't lose if I choose what you have access to". I've always thought it was a cool/interesting deck for these reasons
That being said, it's miserable to be on the other side of a lantern lock, lol
I've played a good amount of lantern and it is hard to play. Knowing the entire format and all reasonable sideboard cards is a big ask to start playing a deck. I did enjoy it though. I stopped playing because rakdos pyromancer became a deck, and shortly after hogaak. Both were really bad matchups 😂
Amulet titan is harder to play though 😂
I completely agree! The way I've always thought about quantifying how unique Lantern is is thinking about degrees of reactivity for decks.
The most proactive form of interaction is killing your opponent. This is basically every aggro deck.
The next form of interaction is "on the board". This is where Magic tries to focus most of its interaction nowadays. Blocking is this, removal is this, sweepers are this, even Ensnaring Bridge is this, if you think about it.
Next is "on the stack", which is where your opponent never gets to resolve a spell at all, dominated by counterspells and blue.
Next is "with mana", where opponents never get to cast spells at all! This is mostly older, like with Ponza and Wasteland and Port, but newer taxes effects like Thalia effectively do this too.
The last, and "final" level, is discard and the hand. You take your opponent's cards before they ever get to cast them at all! This plays lower on the scale than it is, because it's less flexible and always tempo-negative.
But there's one final level, that only Lantern (and some niche Surgical brews) ever gets to really access: controlling the deck itself, before cards ever even get to a player's hand. That's what makes Lantern so special: you are literally interacting with the game in a way literally no other deck does. And it uses most/all those other layers, in various different iterations, to build up to being the *ultimate* interactive deck.
You'll note that a player's opinion on interaction largely governs if they increasingly like or dislike deck archetypes in roughly this order, which I also find interesting!
you know it's not gonna be pretty when bosh uploads a lantern video that's only an hour long
Elixir of Immortality is such a nostalgic card for me lmao. Seeing it played is like Anton Ego eating that ratatouille
Awh, the sweet innocence of Control mirrors going to turns in game 2 🤣
Me, screaming at my screen during sideboarding in round three: Leyline beats Valakut, leyliiiiiine
Just the other day I was talking with my EDH pals about how nice it was that Lantern Control was a thing, and how much better it was that it isn't good enough to be a common sigh.
It's certainly much funnier to watch than play against.
@14:51, you had a clear win from here. You should know that to win from here you need to resolve Bridge. The cards to worry about here are Tideshaper (destroying your Saga), Hexcatcher (countering your Bridge), and a possible Force of Negation. You have an answer for Force already in hand (Collective Brutality). You're about to draw an answer to Hexcatcher next turn. You have lands you need to cast Bridge, and you have Bridge in hand.
It appears you got a little overconfident and negligent of these facts when you decided to play Urza's Saga on turn 2. You don't need the construct. The correct play is to play Glimmervoid, cast Brutality for the discard mode to clear the path against a possible Force of Negation. You then draw and cast Pithing Needle on the following turn, naming Hexcatcher (with the mana up to pay for possible Hexcatcher attempts to counter it). You do *not* play the Saga on turn 3 (it could be argued that getting the saga from Stirrings at all was a mistake). Last, you cast Bridge the following turn, with more than enough life to survive to dump your hand. If you are at all worried, you could also use the Brutality to dump extra cards out of your hand while gaining life.
Just as you mention in game 2 against Burn, you don't just mill because you can: you have to consider the situation and what each player needs. The same goes for your game 1 against Merfolk. Yes, naming Aether Vial was *nice*, in getting a 2-for-1, but it's not what you *needed*.
In game 2 in round 2, that is not a good keep against Merfolk. You should know that they're going to bring in some form of counters, and you want a Bridge as fast as possible. A better hand against Merfolk is some number of discard spells and a Bridge. A Merfolk player would *love* to know that you kept a hand like this if they saw it, because almost none of the cards really matter against them.
@42:35, you should probably have sided out Haywire Mite instead of Thoughtseize or Brutality.
I love lantern control so much, it’s a great example of how innovative players can be in card games. Taking all these random different pieces to create a deck that operates in a manner that’s totally foreign to how each piece of the deck operates separately. No other card game is willing to give players that level of control over their play experience, arguably even WotC doesn’t give this kind of freedom in this day and age.
It’s also my go to example of what true suffering in a game of magic looks like. It wins in such a slow and bizarre way that it takes experience to know when you’ve lost to the deck. It’s so easy to just sit there and let the game go on for far too long, suffering the entire time.
Aw, you could have redirected opponent's self-inflicted lethal onto your spellskite.
15:35 Trophy the Tide Shaper in response to trigger
Such a beautiful miserable deck. Played this a lot around the early 2010s, was so much fun to play. A true celebration of Magic’s mechanics at work
Lantern insights is an absolutely based amazing player who has a channel dedicated to this deck who is like in tune with the meta and explains all the math behind his decisions.
This is a deck I have a lot of experience with and I'm so looking forward to it. only one Karn makes little sense to me, I play 2 personally. But I like this list a lot more than some of the black white lists I have seen. Stirings is so good and loam is a great inclusion if you don't wanna splash for wren.
I like the Wrenn splash as a 2 to 3 of.
This was my favorite modern deck ever back in 2014-2015
Ya same still have it in paper lol
This brings me back. This was my best friends deck for a while. Between that, the time he played 8rack, and the time he played burn, I've lost a lot of matches to Bridge 🤣
"let's see if they're a legacy player" truly menacing sentence
Slow miserable magic? I’m in.
my birthday was a few weeks ago...but seems like you gave me a late birthday gift. thanks very much ;-) May the Lantern shine the way...but it always showed you how good the opponents can top deck ;-)
man, I loved the opponent of round 1. Such a nice guy.
Edit: I would recommend checking your mic...
Yeeeeeah Quicksand!!!! Haven't seen that card in over a decade. Good memories.
in '94 or so my deck was field of dreams/ millstone. i tried it in every possible color combination, but at least in those days it wasn't possible to get a hard dependable lock and the games were always very tactical. ppl hate losing that slowly, but other than that i never received a complaint about "zero sum fun"
"Your family's gonna have to learn to live without you"
BRUH. 🤣
I've recently thought about this deck so this is quite a treat ❤ I met your channel from your first lantern control video (I just checked and it was 2 years ago, phew) so this is very nostalgic. Fun fact: If I recall correctly, there you said something like "time to watch this slog on 1'25x speed" and I've been doing that with every single one of your videos ever since!
I'm a 1.5-2x speed TH-cam consumer myself. :)
@@BoshNRollnow that the topic comes up, does it affects your channel stats? 'Lower' view times?
I love lantern so much. Thanks for the vid!
I loved this deck back in the day glad to see it still has some life
God that was the most typical Amulet Titan performance in G1 you'll ever (not) hope to see. It's the deck that always seems to have it 😒
34:35 seems like a safer line is to cast spellskite and Thoughtseize to take potential Titan from hand (was cultivator in this case). Spellskite can redirect the the lands ability for haste so you were still safe from them having a 2x Titan in hand/top decked Titan.
Feels a lot safer then planning to Assassin's Trophy a resolved Titan.
15:40 Was it possible to assassin's trophy the tide shaper in response to the trigger to keep the Saga? Since the abillity wouldn't have turned it into an island in the first place. Or just not worth using the trophy in the first place?
Yes, it is. Tideshaper never turns the saga into an island if its killed on the stack.
I have been anticipating this one, I watched it get play tested, and I already love lantern control.
The deck I play at FNM! So excited to watch!!!
There is a finite amount of fun in a game of Magic, and I intend to have all of it.
I thought this was legacy during the deck tech so when you said we dont have mox opal anymore i was like “WHAT?” and ran to check if there was a banlist announcement lol
I love lantern control its so unique and cool
I was told that the ceiling of this deck is very high. Meaning for a given player playing RG ponza for example, because the deck has a low ceiling a highly skilled player will easily fill out the ceiling once the basics of playing the deck are learned, it doesn't take too much to reach that final 10% of perfect piloting. Lantern deck has a high ceiling, and ridiculously skilled players will be pleased that the deck allows their skill level to fill that ceiling to the max. 👻
I was literally brewing a version of this deck in Legacy last night...
4 Murktide Regent
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Predict
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
3 Mishra's Bauble
1 Aether Spellbomb
3 Codex Shredder
3 Lantern of Insight
1 Pithing Needle
1 Shadowspear
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Otawara, Soaring City
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Urza's Saga
1 Hullbreacher
2 Flusterstorm
2 Hydroblast
2 Force of Negation
3 Dismember
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Codex Shredder
1 Lantern of Insight
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
FUCK YES. PUMPED FOR SOME 3 HOUR LANTERN CONTROL ACTION!!!
As much as I miss Mox Opal because of decks like this and Whir Prison, I know that it wouldn't be healthy for the format with Hammer being a deck, Scales coming back, and with Affinity being fringe. As long as Saga, Emry, and Urza exist in the format, Opal will never be safe and it makes me hurt.
15:35 If you Trophy the Tide Shaper in response to the ability - I believe the Saga survives, Would be the best play, I think.
My favorite modern deck!
My favorite deck!
Pity snoop is so dangerous, since it does technically reveal their top card for you.
Maybe this is obvious, but why didn't the R3 opponent cast their Summoner's Pact in response to the Collective Brutality at 25:18 ?
It seems like that way they could have gotten Titan, paid for the pact on their upkeep, then deployed Titan on the following turn.
*counting* nine targets for a one-of karn seems like a bizarre choice
You could have Assassin's Trophy'ed their Tide Shaper in response to the trigger to keep Urza's Saga
Yeah just noticed this too
I miss this deck so much
I’ve been thinking about this deck in Legacy. We have so many good cards and fast mana I think there is a list for Legacy Lantern.
I hope Nikachu watched the second match :)
One of my favorite players piloting one of my favorite decks mmm yes plz
G1 vs merfolk - you could have trophied your own extra lantern to get a 3rd land to cast bridge and ride that to victory
That’s not a legal play due to the text on Trophy
This was my favorite deck in 2017/18 pre mox ban. Luis Salvatto won the pro tour with it. I have a question for everyone, this deck died completely when they banned mox and I always wondered why? Like there was no other card that could fit into that slot? The deck did its thing even when you didn't start a turn or two with mox.
Losing 4 power 9 level cards was a big hit, yea
shocked this video is only an hour long
I fucking love yhis deck. We need one more way to reveal top cards
01:00 lol
I’m looking at the video length before watching and I’m confused as to why it’s not 5 hours long.
YES I love lantern in modrn, the only modern deck I have built and all foil :)
Whoever plays this deck: enjoy it while you can, my favorite card meltdown is coming.
They need to bring this to arena
I miss Mox Opal so badly.
Not a one ring fan but 1 or 2 in the side board i think is a good choice over 4 of leylines
I made Lantern Kontrol for Edh. It’s Dimir
Ive always loved this archetype. Sorry if that makes me a terrible person
Lantern was the last deck that needs to return. I've seen this deck force opponents to just leave the LGS
I can't explain why I like pioneer lotus field combo but hate modern amulet titan
Hello!
Hello!
There is a lot wrong with this build, but just enough right to make me want to risk giving up on real decks and rebuilding Lantern for the next RC ...
I think 🤔 bontus last reckoning might be tight in this deck?
HEAT
Yup, lantern isn’t any more fun on this side of the table.
25:25 why didn’t they just Summoner’s Pact in response to CoBru and put Prime Time in their hand, then just pay for pact and pass the turn?
Is the mic different or am I imagining things?
I play this deck all the time...but no on one wants to play with me.
Hard to imagine 🤔
I know you've been working on it so I figured I'd let you know that this video is incredibly blurry and is super hard on my eyes.
Are you watching on 1080? It looks clear on my screen.
@@BoshNRoll Yes, 1080p in Theater Mode on a 1920x1080 monitor. Specifically I had trouble with the deck tech and battlefields. It wasn't a huge issue since you do such a good job narrating, but I remember you asking about this type of thing a few videos ago so I thought you'd want to know.
I appreciate the feedback. :)@@PirlKnighte
I did not have this issue
*Gasp*
Why no one ring in this deck?
Because it’s based on decking your opponent over many turns while hiding behind ensnaring bridge. Ring kills you with damage while making Bridge ineffective.
Lantern Control is one of those decks that doesn’t feel like Magic
bosh pack smoke em if you got em
What level of self loathing do you need to have to play that deck... It's no fun for anyone...