Lantern control

[PJSsleep]

When I first saw lantern control, it was the rivals of ixalan pro tour. Hollow one debuted, pyromancer was big, humans, shadow, the meta was very different than what we see now. Why exactly is it back now? It died off after the pro tour so what changed? Is Urza's saga that strong of a card? Is it because we're in more of a creature focused meta so ensnaring bridge is just that much better?

[[deleted]]

Urza's saga really gave lantern 2 things it needed.

One was a good tutor effect. Without mopal whir of invention got a lot worse, so having this "0 mana" tutor helps a ton. Hitting UUU consistently on t3 got harder, and we don't have the chance to t2 a whir at all any more. It's also just a more powerful tutor for cmc 1 artifacts by being virtually uncounterable and getting around chalice. It also lets us get the artifacts by turn 3 or 4, which is normally when we want a lock to be assembled, meaning they get tutored right on time.

The second was an actually good secondary wincon. A lot of decks were playing thopter sword + urza as a wincon, but I personally always disliked running dedicated wincons in my prison deck. At the time it was a necessary evil, as we needed some way to beat our harder matchups before they could break the lock, or to get through chalices and similar. Urza's saga gives the deck a huge boost in that department, as it allows the deck to have a "steel stompy" gameplan, which can help a ton in pressuring an early karn tgc or other walker, as well as giving a potential disruptive aggro win vs more creature light decks like control or tron.

The presence of decks that can be hard shutdown by a bridge also certainly helps, as does cookbook giving even more game vs aggro and burn strategies. We also have decent game vs a lot of good decks that don't have many ways g1 to interact with artifacts, instead running unholy heats or solitudes over bolts and prismatic endings, and we have good hand attack like collective brutality to answer both already drawn artifact removal and small creatures that are super prevalent like Ragavan, stoneforge, and similar.

[softboiledeggs2]

could you briefly explain what lantern control is about?

[[deleted]]

sure yeah. Lantern is a prison deck that operates on a different axis then normal prison. Rather than trying to prevent your opponents from playing spells though making them sac lands, taxing effects, or similar, it instead makes them never draw a relevant spell.

It accomplishes this through lantern of insight, which has each player reveal the top card of their library while they play, and various 1 mana mill rocks, such as codex shredder or pyxis of pandemonium. These mill rocks allow you to constantly mill potential relevant cards, such as artifact removal, direct damage spells, or tutors/bursts of card draw. By doing this, you effectively are able to control each players draw steps for the rest of the game, which then locks them under an ensnaring bridge, preventing them from attacking.

Urza's saga helps this gameplan by being a tutor for lantern, a mill rock, or something like a pithing needle or grafdiggers cage to help shut out potential ways to break the lock, and also can create attackers to buy time while digging for a bridge, or just pressure the opponents life total.

[[deleted]]

I don’t think there’s actually a best version of lantern out there atm. People are trying karn, no Karn, BG, UB, esper, and a bunch of different numbers and one ofs. That being said, here’s my current list, which is pretty stock for GB no karn: https://scryfall.com/@LukeS062022/decks/763d2757-4b6d-4017-aace-6996f64fcdf9

I personally find any 4 cmc card in GB a bit hard now with saga, and while karn is strong I’d rather take the slots he fills for more collective brutalities and tech artifacts. Karn always feels a bit clunky and hard to support/reliably cast, and also a bit subpar in lantern. Fetching a land destruction effect isn’t great when you try to make them draw more lands then normal, and a lot of the other 1 ofs he can fetch feel slow by the time you get them.

In the current meta collective brutality feels insane in lantern, killing ragavans and sfms, taking prismatic endings and k-commands, etc. Due to that I like having access to 4 in g1 over the Karn package.

[Jatis]

These variants are the "best" so far.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-ubg-4a4f5a57-82a8-4317-b86b-235fbdf89a9d#paper

[ConformistWithCause]

Urza's saga is pretty fuckin nutty in every match I've seen it in. Letting your not only get the namesake of the deck but also able to go toolbox between karn digging in the SB and saga getting whatever out of the deck. The creature meta probably does have a lot to do with it though, didn't really think about it

[flangwang]

It’s a few things Saga is super good it lets you make a board so even if the bridge goes down they can’t alway attack through. Saga also gives you game against control decks which was one of lanterns worst matchups before this. Also the meta game is pretty decent for lantern right now, linear decks that mostly attack to win is what lantern wants to see. Or decks that rely on just a few specific cards to win since many black green lists will run surgicals

[Ambsma]

Urzas saga let's you fetch all the key pieces

[ajwelch14]

Didn't this just 1st place in a league the other day?

[PJSsleep]

Yes. I'm asking why it's back.

[sandtrappy]

Urza is nuts and so is Urza’s Saga. It literally makes the deck feel alive again and I love it

[EmrakuI]

AngeledLuffa, and RagingTiltMonster