MTG Salvation

KCI is dead, so the incidental sideboard hate should fall off a bit... let's claw back some of that meta-share! Also, any thoughts on Kaya, Orzhov Usurper? I think she might have potential as a one-off in the board. She eats Engineered Explosives, Aether Vial, and pretty much anything that Affinity can sneak under a bridge, as well as potentially being a nuisance against RDW. I think that situationally, she can function as a better alt win condition than Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Mostly I just want to laugh maniacally as an opponent's Rest in Peace is used to fuel a lethal spirit bomb.

I don't think Kaya is what our deck wants. It is an extremely narrow sideboard card. The window for eating EE is so small, and Tezz gets you out of the hole that EE put you in. Doing the spirit bomb thing is remarkably similar to Tezz ult, except it is slower than Tezz and offers no other options. But, try it out and give us some data.

Sam Black posted a lantern list about a month or so ago, and he was advocating for 1 unmoored ego main and 3 board. I've tried it in a few matches, but I haven't faced many linear decks in my meta except for burn. So much burn.
Has anyone played the Phoenix matchup much or has SB advice?

Lately I swapped to Thopter Foundry Combo with pretty much the same prison shell, because I feel like it's really well positioned in the current meta with a good Phoenix and Burn Matchup and I've tested Ego there. Ego is amazing and when I'm swapping back to Lantern I would definitely play it over Surgical. It's just so good against Tron and can also easily be boarded in against Stony Silence Decks, like UWx control or Spirits. Being able to proactively remove a card with the necessarity to have it in the graveyard first is awesome. I also like the idea of playing one in the mb in lantern.

Another card I'm really high on in the current meta is Topor Orb. A lot of decks only have etb outs for artifacts. There are so many cards it deals with, like Primeval Titan, Reclamation Sage, Deputy of Detention, Knight of Autumn, Viridian Corrupter, Thought-Knot Seer, Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique. I think it's currently a must play in the SB, IMO and depending on the meta you expect I could even see and argument for it in the MB. Before Phoenix became popular Spirits and humans were so dominant, that it definitely was viable there. Funny enough it also denies Prized Amalgam triggers.

Torpor orb sounds great! Also, I eat my words on Kaya. With Phoenix and dredge being such a large part of the meta, she is excellent. She is a huge out to chalice, AND Sam Black top 8'd GP Tampa with BG lantern with Kaya. He also wrote an article. Can't wait to try it out since it has been backed with data!
http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38439_How-I-Made-Top-8-At-Grand-Prix-Tampa-With-Kaya-Orzhov-Usurper.html

What are the thoughts on Narset, Parter of Veils? Preventing all the Lootings and other card draw engines seems very interesting and the -2 is also pretty solid.

Quote from Al_Z_Heimer »

What are the thoughts on Narset, Parter of Veils? Preventing all the Lootings and other card draw engines seems very interesting and the -2 is also pretty solid.

It's probably worth testing in the Whir version.

Hey! Just lurking around for old times sake, seeing whats new and whatnot with the deck... interesting times in modern for Lantern. Such a good array of cards to test on this last set, im itching to just dust off cockatrice and get some games on.

Has anyone been keeping an eye on this guy? https://www.mtggoldfish.com/player/AngledLuffa

Nice stream of 5-0s there... with varying lists even.

Well AngledLuffa grinds infinitely much on modo. It's the same with Selfeisek. Mardu Pyromancer is not the best deck in the meta, but by playing this much it's just a matter of time spent to get this many 5-0s.

I still think the Whir lists are far superior. They are simply way more consistent and the only upside of GB is, that it allows you to play more colorless lands in the MB, especially GQ which makes the Tron and Titan MU better. The deck is also better against Taxes, but apart from these 3 decks Whir has an edge over GB against pretty much every other deck in the meta.

I've lately started to pick up lantern again after extensively testing Thopter/Sword Combo and some ElectroEnd. There is definitely a lot of new cards, which deserve testing.
Kaya, Orzhov Usurper: This has already seen some play, because it's pretty good against Phoenix, Dredge and deals with stuff like Chalice.
Narset, Parter of Veils: The passive seems really good against Phoenix, Storm and UW(x) control and the -2 is pretty strong.
Ashiok, Dream Render: A solid passive and also a Mill-effect with repeatable Graveyard hate.
Karn, the Great Creator: Very interesting for GB lists. In Whir lists I see it as more of a SB card, where you can simply board out all your highly situational Toolbox 1-offs. It depends how many SB slots you want to invest into this.

So the guys in the Tezzerator Forum have come up with Narset and Teferi's Puzzle Box MB. I think this could actually be interesting for Lantern as Narset simply fits pretty well into lantern with booth her passive and the -2 and with Whir and her we can pretty consistently find a 1-off Puzzlebox.

So I've played now with 1 Narset, Parter of Veils and 1 Ashiok, Dream Render in the SB and was able to see them in action in multiple games at our last weekly local modern event yesterday.

Match 1 8-rack 2-0:
Yeah ez MU not much to say.

Match 2 UW 2-1:
Game 1: I actually lost game 1, due to simply having 8 lands in a row on top of my library.
Game 2: Due to a combination of lock pieces, discard and removal for his enchantments I was able to lock him out.
Game 3: He had double Celestial Purge and Disdainful Stroke in hand against my Whirs and Tezz and I simply resolved Narset, which was huge. It basically shut of Jace entirely and also denied him Serum Visions and Teferi's +1. He also played a list with multiple Hieroglyphic Illumination, which were also reduced to Reach Through Mists. The -2 was also able to find a me Whir.

Match 3 A Restore Balance-Electrodominance-As Foretold-Brew 2-0:
Not a hard matchup to begin with, but his deck was also full of cantrips and obviously Ancestral Vision. Narset did her job.

Match 4 Amulet Titan 2-1:
Match 1: He didn't play around Whir into Damping Sphere MB. and died to Pact on turn 4.
Match 2: I kept a weird hand with Trophies, Needles and Ashiok, Dream Render, but even though I was able to buy a lot of time he was able to kill Ashiok before I could bring a bridge to the board and then he killed me.
Match 3: I had a way better hand with Lantern Shredder and Whir and drew Ashiok of the top. I was able to assemble a small lock with 1 Shredder and brought a bridge and a Jar on to the Field and from there on Ashiok basically did the rest on her own. Denying His Pacts, T-West and even Titan-etb-trigger was completely backbreaking for him.

I think I will try to make more sideboard slots to test these PWs more, but my first impression was extremely positive.

Has anyone else been testing with Scheming Symmetry? I've had a small sample size but from my testing it has been so good in BG Lantern! For starters, it is not very good unless you have some sort of mill rock in play as it gets very risky with it being sorcery speed. So assuming you have a mill rock play, three situations always arise. First, they completely forget about you having mill rocks and you mill away their answer they cannot get back from the graveyard or they just get a land or something irrelevant. Two, they are more of a graveyard interactive deck and they get something like an ancient grudge or even a faithless looting. That is when you mill and then you have an excellent surgical target. Last, there are times when i have just tutored an unneeded land and then pyxid away whatever they tutor just to be safe. Either way i think the card is extremely powerful and we should all be giving it a shot!

I'm currently testing a lot of the new toys including 1 Scheming Symmetry MB, 1 of each Ashiok, Dream Render, Narset, Parter of Veils and Mystic Forge SB. This is my most recent list:
So far the deck as a whole aswell as all the recent additions have performed quite well. The biggest problem is, that lantern has so very few flex slots to test multiple copies of a card. I really want to make room for a 2nd Narset and a 2nd Ashiok to have a bigger sample size. My main concern with Narset is, that I really want it for the effect against UW, but I also often want to needle it against them. I kind of like the plan of boarding into some sort of Superfirends, which I can hide behind a bridge post board. I've also toyed with with idea of running 3 Narsets and a Teferi's Puzzle Box, but I just don't know what to cut.

Where are we at now?

Currently really dead I believe. The combination of graveyard taking a hit along with stoneforge being unbanned will lead to a lot more artifact hate in main and sideboards.
This may only be temporary but new karn and ouphe have also hurt the deck a lot.
Maybe we just need to innovate a little once again but the current stock lists are a bit too fragile at the moment for my taste.
Whir Prison seems to dodge several of these issues by not relying on artifact activations, blanking stony, karn and ouphe.

@Ribann:
Well we need to see how things go from now. It might be that Ancient Stirrings deck become more popular now, since it's now basically on the throne for being pretty much one the the strongest cards in modern. This might be bad for us if this leads to more Tron being played.

Apart from that the current Jund versions seem like a fine MU since they are mostly anti-creature. Game 1 should be an auto win. We of course need to find a way to deal with Collector Ouphe, since Pyrite Spellbomb doesn't work. Maybe Collective Brutality.

UR Phoenix should pretty much be gone, which was an Ok MU, but also really annoying, because with all their cantrips it was pretty much impossible to cut them of their hate pieces.

Urza can be dealt with with a few strategically placed Pithing Needles.

The biggest problem is probably UW Control. Game 1 is very doable, but for post board games you have to be creative and lucky.

Devoted Druid Combo is not easy, but also doable with the Cage + Needles.

It is to be seen how popular Infect is going to get. This would obviously be not a great MU.

Humans has and will continue to be a favourable MU, but like every deck you can always lose to it.


@Garkyn:
Whir prison has it's own problems. It's a very meta dependant deck, that neeeds the opponent to be vulnerable to Chalice/Bridge. It has easy MUs and MUs it just can't win against.
Lantern can always win against pretty much everything. It's just more or less hard to do so.

Has anyone tested Oko yet? It can deal with Ouphe, chalice, etc. also narset has been super good in testing and the puzzle box lock is very real. I’ll share a deck list if anyone is interested.

Cage and witchbane sometimes are dead cards.
Assassins trophy is good, resolves all problems that discards missed.
Surgical is versatile. Exile, see hand, shuffle deck.
Mana greedy version, but rarely is a problem.

The problem of Teferi's Puzzle Box is that you can't play it without having Narset

Hey everyone! Not sure if this forum still sees responses from the community but I want to re-dive into UB Lantern Control
I used to play a while back - it was one of the first modern decks I played, before whir of invention was printed

That being said I think the deck actually fairs well in the current meta as it is very disruptive to decks like control and whirza. I really want to try building a UB shell with the inclusion of Emry, Lurker of the Loch in place of Ancient Stirrings. I think it makes self milling a lot better and increases our chances of hitting bridge quicker. It also means that you can be a little more lenient on the land base since you can loop together max opals or mishra bauble from the graveyard..

Would you guys help in creating a list? I think it would be cool