GB Lantern | Modern MTGO

[@xXM60E4Xx]

Big Fish was actually filmed local to where i grew up. I’m happy to see if mentioned

[@isambo400]

This format went from great to ass in 3 years

[@samuelswinamer4939]

I am a Lover of Lantern. It is unlike anything I've experienced in any card game period, not just MTG. Love that part of the win condition is knowing/determining your opponent's win condition every game.

[@persydiangelo8461]

You mention early in the video that you don't know all the lantern builds, there's a channel that recently started posting videos called "Lantern Insights", I'd check out some of their lists and lantern guides. The guy is pretty aware of everything in the format and all the benefits of the different builds.

[@ClubbingSealCub]

Actually there is one card that lets you escape the lock: Chromatic sphere.

[@phlsphr42]

@9:10, it's a waste to use the Trophy on the 1/1 when you know that they're going to follow up with a massive Murktide. This decision comes down to threat assessment: you have an Inventors' Fair on top against their 1/1 (so their 1/1 will be meaningless). This forces their hand: they have to play the Murktide to make any real progress. When they play the Murktide, you force the Spell Pierce by using Trophy on the Murktide (and you can still pay the 2 for Pierce). This leaves you with the ability to play Bridge with zero worries. @11:35, this is where it's important to be familiar with what a typical opponent has in their 75. You should be aware that the opponent will likely have at least one Otawara in their list, plus the Engineered Explosives that they will be siding in. Blood Moon is relatively unimportant against you (especially if you were to switch to the manabase that I have in the list on my channel), so Haywire Mite doesn't really matter much. You'd have to float the green to use the Haywire Mite anyways (unless you randomly drew the 1-of Forest, which isn't likely). As for the Surgicals, I'm not sure why you decided on running four, let alone a 4th Surgical over a 3rd Trophy. This is *especially* true knowing that you are facing a deck that runs Ragavan. The opponent would probably be *very* happy hitting a Surgical off of Ragavan and crippling your deck. @13:10, if you planned on using Surgical on their upkeep, it's better to use the Surgical on their draw step. The reasoning is that if they randomly draw a Murktide, you get that one as well. The only time this doesn't end up being a better play is in the slight chance that they drew exactly Spell Pierce and they didn't have another Spell Pierce already. Using the Surgical on their draw step also gives you extra information, whereas a Surgical in their upkeep means that they get a card that you're going to be blind to. @13:35, you knew that they were going to bring in EE, and that EE would be set to 1 (most likely), so if you wanted to ensure they didn't have one, it was better to Thoughtseize on turn 1. @18:42, I'm not sure why you thought that Magus of the Moon was bad for you at all. You already have a Swamp out, and the only green cards you have in the deck are Trophy (which you can prevent yourself from drawing if you need to). It's better to just let them have Moon. You should get a Needle (naming Explosives) with the Saga search. If they pop Explosives in response, then you get to search for a Lantern and rebuild very easily. Making the 2nd Saga token is a punt, because you know that their only real answer to Bridge now is Cast Into the Fire, and you have a Mycosynth Gardens up to copy Bridge in response. By making another Saga token (which won't save you if they remove Bridge because Murktide has flying), you've now made it so that you can no longer copy Bridge if you need to if they get Cast from the Expressive Iteration. While it wasn't a great probability of them getting Cast off of Expressive Iteration, is was an out that you allowed the opponent to have (and that you could have made never exist in the first place with careful play). @25:57, it seems that you are overestimate the benefits of getting Saga search to happen. It's better to use the Thoughtseize here to make sure that the opponent doesn't have any good plays. Once you've done that, you should have *plenty* of time to establish the lock, because you bought that time with Thoughtseize. @32:34, it's probably a good idea to get a good idea on how you plan on sideboarding before jumping into games. The correct sideboarding here is to bring in Leylines and Cursed Totems, taking out Surgicals and either a Bauble or a Profane Tutor. Again, you are over-estimating the severity that Blood Moon has against you (and you should adjust the manabase to make it even more insignificant). In trying to sideboard against Blood Moon, you are giving your opponent potential cards to use against you (Haywire Mite). @33:37, you should have used that Bauble on yourself as a "surveil". You know that you need to draw lands and a Bridge quickly, or you will lose. If you don't get those cards, you would lose regardless of whether the opponent has a good card on top. @34:59, you can see now why siding out Cookbook is a bad idea against Sheoldred decks :/ @35:20, this is unfortunte to see. You should have played the Lantern first to get better information. You were going to play the Lantern anyways, so this is just a punt. If you'd done this, you would see the Thoughtseize on top and know that you can draw the Thoughtseize by sacrificing your Bauble. This means that you could take the Engineered Explosives with the Duress, let the opponent have the Fable, play Bridge the following turn, and Thoughtseize Sheoldred after that. Worse yet, by using the Bauble when you did, you're now going to take even more unnecessary damage. For the third match and on, playing salty and tilted isn't going to make you play any better. If you're not having fun, it may be a good idea to just take a break @39:07, again you play the Saga first, which is almost always incorrect. It's far better for you to have blockers (or possibly even attackers) if you have the chance. Instead, the better turn one play would be either Gardens or Glimmervoid, followed by Lantern. You can better see the reasoning for this as you have to mill the Ragavan that they are going to draw on their turn 2, giving them a Molten Collapse instead. You could have let them have Ragavan if you were able to make Saga tokens the following turn. From there, you have a decent lock and are getting some large constructs, putting the opponent on the back foot. @42:26, again you play Saga first. Additionally, you see a Bridge on top, but you don't pop Bauble to make sure you draw it. Instead, you let Ragavan take it? Yes, they would have still been able to get it with Grief, but instead the opponent gets to leave your hand *severely* crippled. You *could* have been left with either Trophy or Bell, both of which would have either killed the Grief or let you dig to another Bridge faster. Funny enough, you end up with Academy Ruins, which means you could have been able to get Bridge back after it was discarded if you really needed to. Your line prevented all of these opportunities from happening. @48:14, cutting Duress is a mistake. If you play the matchup some more, you'll find that pulling The One Ring or Force of Vigor is pretty important. @52:34, the correct line is to put Needle on EE, play Haywire Mite, sacrifice Haywire Mite to remove Dryad, then Damping Sphere. This cuts your opponent off of mana, giving you a *ton* of time to solidify the lock and stabilize.

[@androkguz]

Do you imagine it's fun for opponents to play against Lantern? What do you think are decks that are fun to play *against*?

[@AmmiO2]

I here a lot of people say Lantern is unfun to play against and I don't understand why. It takes a lot of setup (i.e. it's slow) and can be interacted with by artifact removal, which is plentiful and powerful in Modern, and which doesn't require dedicated sideboard slots because it's useful against other decks like Amulet, Hammer, etc. It's also not a "soft lock". Yes, technically you can still take actions, but once your opponent has Lantern, Bridge, and 3 mill rocks, you may as well concede because you're not going to hit 7 relevant cards in a row off the top. Fun decks to play against are those that avoid the unfun pitfalls, which are: --Able to win on turn 3 or earlier (or generate so much advantage they're overwhelmingly likely to win). This doesn't just apply to combos. Snowballing advantage engines like Ragavan and Curious Obsession are in this category. Relatedly... --Sets up combos, board states, or card advantage such that they've effectively won the game, but don't technically win until many turns later, forcing you to keep playing on the 0.001% chance they brick or you can make a comeback. Examples are Blood Moon, UW Control, and Storm/Lotus Field. --Difficult or impossible to interact with either because you literally can't interact with them or doing so is too inefficient, detrimental, or requires extremely specific answers. Examples are Hexproof, Monarch/Initiative, and stack-based combo decks like Lotus Field. Relatedly... --Stack-based decks that win with combos or big spell finishers for which non-blue decks that don't have access to counterspells can't interact with them. --Able to win out-of-nowhere with minimal or zero prior setup on the board. Cascade, Quintorius, Lotus Field. --If you make one wrong move, however slight, or tap out at the wrong time you can lose. Splinter Twin and various other combo decks. --Generates so much resource advantage that you can never beat them while playing a "fair" game, whether those resources are cards, threats, or mana. Tron, Rakdos Midrange in Pioneer, Omnath piles, Beanstalk decks. --Counter-flash decks. Decks that play entirely or mostly at instant speed, simply performing a "draw-go" gameplan and countering everything relevant you play. When you cast something irrelevant or run out of cards they flash in their threats and beat you. UW Control is the classic example, but this also applies to decks like Spirits. --Decks where there's at least 1 card that becomes the only card that matters and winning or losing is dependent on whether you have an answer to it immediately. Examples are things like Sheoldred and All That Glitters. --Hand disruption decks. Any deck running Thoughtseize could technically be in this category, but this is more aimed at decks like Scam where the entire plan of the deck is preventing the opponent from doing anything. I think that covers everything. Decks that avoid those categories I would say are generally fun to play against. The problem is that EVERY DECK nowadays falls into at least one of those.

[@androkguz]

@@AmmiO2 man, that list is huge. I also don't understand how you can say that it's unfun to play against a deck that gives you a 0.001% to win but against lantern you might as well give up because "you are not going to hit 7 relevant cards in a row" I mean, if you have a chance to hit 4 relevant cards in a row, you have to stick in the game. Plus, to counter lantern, you *would* be very benefited by special artifact removals that work from the graveyard, which you wouldn't care about for other artifact matches. I can't think of a time in magic when all the decks didn't fall into those categories. Have you considered trying a different card game for a while? Hell, you could try to create your own format. You have followers who might try it

[@AmmiO2]

@@androkguz If you're Lantern opponent has 3 mills rocks you lose. You don't have any chance to get out of the lock, it's 0%. You can concede. Whereas situations like your opponent controls a Teferi and you have no attackers, or Blood Moon is stopping you from casting anything, you technically still have a chance for them to draw multiple lands in a row or for you to draw the exact basic you need. Wins where you have lost the game and can safely concede are better than "wins" where the technically correct decision is to stay in. There have been plenty of times in Magic where (at least _some_) decks were fine.

[@androkguz]

​@@AmmiO2 "Wins where you have lost the game and can safely concede are better than "wins" where the technically correct decision is to stay in." I totally agree, but I think you are missing the part where playing against lantern plus a single mill or two is like playing against blood moon or teferi. It's basically the universal feeling of playing against a control deck.

[@AmmiO2]

@@androkguz My disagreement is because Lantern is more interactable. The Lantern player has to setup Lantern + at least 2 mill rocks + Bridge and have you not interact with any of that, and all of those permanents are artifacts, whereas something like UW Control can land Teferi, hold up a single counterspell or removal and then snowball away with the game.

[@gavinquirk4098]

I haven't really tested it but I thought about playing a red version of lantern just to play cemetery gatekeeper so they can play their lands and die or just have a handful of lands lol

[@isambo400]

You just gave them something to point their otherwise worthless removal at. Congrats

[@gavinquirk4098]

@@isambo400 well the point of the deck is to control what they draw u only give them land if they use the removal cool get pinged then I'll galvanic blast and shaprnel blast them to death

[@AmmiO2]

@@gavinquirk4098 You want to make their cards drawn irrelevant, you don't need to burn them.