MTG Salvation

So I'm going to be testing out River of Tears in my Whir list tonight to see how the help with the manabase. Unfortunately I'll only have access to 2 of them this week (can't find any anywhere :| ) so my manabase will look like this:



That gives me 17 sources of U mana for the 3 Whir of Invention I am running while also being 16 B sources for all my discard. I opted to keep a Botanical Sanctum in so I have 11 instead of 10 sources of G mana in order to cast Ancient Stirrings and Abrupt Decay. Hopefully the games go well tonight and I'll be able to say how well River of Tears worked. If it works really well I may have to order the other 2 online in order to finish the playset.

I actually put the playset of Stirrings back in :). It's working out pretty well so far. I have some more videos, but out of town for the weekend.

Hey, guys! New to the thread here. (big shout-out to Crexalbo for showing me the thread)
I know that Pyxis of Pandemonium has some anti-synergy with Academy Ruins and Surgical Extraction, but in a field with Goyfs, Snapcasters, Grudge, storm, and other graveyards matters decks I'd be happy depriving them of a couple extra resources. Any thoughts about running a larger amount of exile rocks rather than Bells?

2 hits the spot for me. I'm actually not concerned about any recurring cards in G1 except for some cards (Emrakul comes into mind). I'm more worried on G2 particularly Grudge. Imo, going over 2 lowers the efficiency of your graveyard.

Hi all, i'm going to be the modern seat for my team SCG Louisville next weekend and i'm wondering if anyone has experience playing our deck in a team environment?
I love this deck, but i'm hesitant to play it because i expect some number of opponents will just start convening with their teammates over every little play once i get the lock on (time wasting in a legal way), which doesn't sound like a recipe for success. Even with the ability to call a judge, i worry that the team environment opens up too many opportunities to eat the clock in a difficult to stop way. Thoughts? (fortunately, after having played lantern for just shy of 2 years now, I feel pretty comfortable picking up most modern decks on the fly since i know their quirks. So the opportunity cost of switching from my mainstay is low.)

Ya, here ya go

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-05-17-lantern-control-copy/

This is the list I ran this week. As I said in my last post I was testing out River of Tears. The card is amazing btw

Makes me happy to see someone else running Torpor Orb. I absolutely love having it in the deck, it shuts down so many things that can cause us problems like Reclamation Sage, Flickerwisp, Thought-Knot.....

I'm very interested in this kind of list with Whir on it. How its been working for you. I would cut the pyrite for a second pyxis and run underground river instead of river of tears, I dont like the idea of not leaving to chance the B mana.
How many U sources do you need to make this consistent enough?

Quote from The_Shady_Prophet »

Makes me happy to see someone else running Torpor Orb. I absolutely love having it in the deck, it shuts down so many things that can cause us problems like Reclamation Sage, Flickerwisp, Thought-Knot.....

In my meta the Orb is surprisingly good. There's one guy who's only deck is a Sun Titan combo deck. Some other guy plays Faeries. And then last week there was someone who brought a modern Saheeli combo deck lol

Mine has a lot of TKS and a Kiki-chord player that I somehow end up playing every week, then someone who runs Soul Sisters. Torpor orb comes in very handy.

Quote from Weiru »

I'm very interested in this kind of list with Whir on it. How its been working for you. I would cut the pyrite for a second pyxis and run underground river instead of river of tears, I dont like the idea of not leaving to chance the B mana.
How many U sources do you need to make this consistent enough?

So first off, I've been really liking the list. Whir of Invention getting you the artifact you need RIGHT NOW is super important for this deck and honestly it's fantastic. With the being said I like having the Pyrite Spellbomb in the main as a mainboard win condition outside of the whole mill plan. It's also great as a card to tutor for with Whir to kill problem creatures like Noble Hierarch.

As for River of Tears while I've only played 4 rounds with the card in my deck, I have yet to have it not make the mana I want it to. You'll only ever need the black mana on your turn (outside of extreme corner cases with Abrupt Decay) and you want the blue mana on your opponent's turn for Whir. Honestly the land is amazing and I think it's a lot better than Underground River as additional blue sources.

As for how many blue sources....you want a lot of them honestly. But 17 seems to be the best number I can get to where Whir is able to be cast consistently.

Amazing, cant wait to smash a bridge at the start of the combat phase, also with padeem and production I will finally open my own brand of salt products!
Please keep updating.

I leave modern for 3 years and my pet decks grow up so big.

AmuletBloom got itself a ban. Lantern got itself Tier 2. So proud.

I will be building and testing the current versions ASAP. But man that cost of the Bauble is crazy.

Quote from kanister »

How many of you have played against that new GW 12-tutor 3-Witness combo company lists? I've had some trouble against them actually, big part of it being unable to predict what they'll sideboard into - some of them have Stony Silence and Kataki, some have 4 white Leylines, some have 3-4 disenchant creatures including.. Caustic Caterpillar. It feels like a bad matchup even if you know what they are on. I think now it's time to actually play Aether Grids and expect them to not be winmores - it should be relatively easy to stop the combo, with Druid and Recruiter having only 2, and Vizier 1 thoughness. Also solves a bunch of problems in one card, getting rid of those ever-chipping you Hierarchs.

If anybody has some useful input on that matchup, I will be glad to hear. Maybe you are supposed to trim on discard, because it's not the best either way and you can't afford to get blanked hard by Leyline? It's hard to know how hard you should go on Welding Jars, too. Boarding in Nature's Claim is also kinda rolling the dice.

I'm playing that CoCo Variant right now (Lantern is my primary but I'm not feeling it for next weekend in Baltimore)

Pithing needle stops infinite Mana because they can't untap Druid.

Surgically extract vizier. They run two combos but vizier is crucial in both.

Good luck, may I not play you now . PM me if you want to practice the matchup on MTGO

So I went Top 4 with the Whir list again last night. Unfortunately because of GP Montreal a lot of our regulars weren't present so there were only 10 people playing (including myself).

Round 1 - Go Bots

Linear aggro in the truest meaning of the name. Honestly this match up can be really annoying if they manage to get a bunch of their Signal Pests and Ornithopters since they can just scoot under a bridge. If they have a few of those out you may be 1 or 2 Atarka's Commands away from just dying out of nowhere even with a bridge out. All this stuff kind of clicked immediately for me while playing so the match up was pretty simple. Surgical Extraction the Commands, try to mill over every 0 power creature, slam down a Bridge.

I ended up winning game 1 to my opponent not wanting to play it out with me having a Bridge in play and him having exactly no 0 power creatures. Game 2 I kept a hand that couldn't match up to his insane curve (Command and Reckless Bushwhacker on the same turn hits like a freight train) and I ended up getting to 0 life before I could draw a Bridge or a Whir to find it. Game 3 was interesting because I was able to land a Bridge while at 7 life, meaning I was out of double Bolt range. It was here I encountered an interesting situation.

I have no Welding Jars in play to protect my Bridge, and only one mill rock to pair with my Lantern. My opponent has both Smash to Smithereens and Atarka's Command in his graveyard and I drew Surgical Extraction for the turn. On my opponent's side of the board he has a Signal Pest, Ornithopter, and a bunch of creatures being held back by the bridge. I also have an Inventors' Fair in play refunding me the life I lose to the Ornithopter every turn. I opted to Surgical the Command because if I can find a Welding Jar Command is the only way he can kill me. I ended up winning the game, but I'm wondering if what I surgicalled in game 3 was correct or not.

Round 2 - Living End

Game 1 my opponent cascades into living end getting back 5 dudes while I have neither a Bridge nor a Surgical extraction. Onto Game 2!

Game 2 was a hell of an adventure. I screwed up Lost Legacy and named Beast Within thinking they would be the only things I'd need to worry about once I was able to land a Padeem. Nope, he also had a Krosan Grip that he boarded in. I did the smart thing are responded to him drawing Grip via cycler by sacrificing Welding Jar to throw a Regen shield on my Bridge. However he had a Horror of the Broken Lands in play so I was doing my best to keep him off of cycling cards. He managed to get enough to put me down to 2 life but I was able to finish him off with Pyrite Spellbomb a few turns later after getting my Bridge back via Academy Ruins.

Game 3 was annoying. I have no other word for it. I played down a Torpor Orb early turning off his Ingot Chewers. I Surgical Extraction'd his Beast Withins. I even Lost Legacy'd his Krosan Grip and played out an Ethersworn Canonist to make it so he couldn't cascade into Living End. I only won because I was able to mill him out on turn 3 of turns after time had been called. Man it was brutal.

Round 3 - CoCo Spirits

Not much to talk about. I kept a very mediocre hand game 1 and got punished, and game 2 I never saw a Whir or a Bridge. Sometimes lady luck just doesn't like you.

Top 4 - Mono U Control? Thing

So this was weird. The guy I was playing against was playing some Mono-U Control deck with Consecrated Sphinx, Smuggler's Copter, Staff of Domination, and Grimoire Thief of all things backed up by a plethora of counter magic. I lost Game 1 due to not knowing what the hell I was suppose to do against this deck.

Game 2 I won via Mechanized Production on a Codex Shredder but I lost Game 3 because I wasn't expecting him to have Chalice of the Void and couldn't cast anything once he played it due to me boarding out Abrupt Decay like an idiot.

The list is the exact same as the one I posted above on this page. I won't post my list every time I write about it unless it's a huge tournament or I've made changes to the list.

Skitzafreak - I do encourage you to post your deck list every time you make a change and have a chance to test it. I have been playing your list the last two weeks (to mediocre results). Anyway, do not underestimate how useful thoughtfully constructed and tested desk lists are to lurkers like me: for the last eight months I play lantern each week at my FNM, but rarely write.

Lastly, it's pretty clear that this Abzan "Counters Company" deck will be very influential in the short term at least. Please offer your opinion on how to approach this match up while referencing your blue lantern list.

Quote from jfuite »

Skitzafreak - I do encourage you to post your deck list every time you make a change and have a chance to test it. I have been playing your list the last two weeks (to mediocre results). Anyway, do not underestimate how useful thoughtfully constructed and tested desk lists are to lurkers like me: for the last eight months I play lantern each week at my FNM, but rarely write.

Okay fair enough. I'll throw my list in at the end of this post.

Quote from jfuite »

Lastly, it's pretty clear that this Abzan "Counters Company" deck will be very influential in the short term at least. Please offer your opinion on how to approach this match up while referencing your blue lantern list.

So I haven't played against the Counters Company deck, but looking at it there are a few things I'm taking note of:

1) Pithing Needle can do a lot of work here. Devoted Druid, Viscera Seer, and Walking Ballista all have activated abilities crucial to their infinite mana and win conditions. Needling those creatures, or at least important ones seems like how you'd find yourself a way to win game 1.

2) They have no mainboard Artifact with their Qasali Pridemages being in the sideboard. However outside of Pridemage their Artifact hate doesn't seem to hit just Artifacts. So Padeem might be good, or it might be horrible.

3) Because Walking Ballista is the combo win condition for this deck, they can't run Stony Silence in their 75. That's a good little nugget to keep handy.

4) It seems they also run Anguished Unmaking in the sideboard, which makes our Welding Jars worthless. This does give more credence to wanting to bring in Padeem.

5) As with all decks running Chord of Calling and Collected Company, Grafdigger's Cage works wonders at slowing them down.

6) Make sure to kill their Noble Hierarchs with Pyrite Spellbomb and Collective Brutality when appropriate, and don't be afraid to use Surgical Extraction or Extirpate on them. Hierarch is one of the easiest ways for your an opponent to steal a win from you while you have the lock in place.

Best of luck to anyone when they play against the deck. Feel free to let me know how my general knowledge stacks up when actually playing against the deck

I have a (hopefully) larger Modern tournament I am going to today. I'll post a report when I get back, though my track record for larger events is not exactly all that great. Here's my list for those curious:



The sideboard will be dependent upon what I think the field is going to be, so I'll make an update before or after round 1 with the sideboard I'm running.

Against the new Abzan CoCo deck you need to make a wise decision on naming Pithing Needle targets. Duskwatch Recruiter might be the premier target but it still comes down to the boardstate. Devoted Druid might be the second option then Viscera Seer and the last one would be Walking Ballista as they usually run only one copy. Of course there are meta players who has mainboard Qasali Pridemage or Caustic Caterpillar.

On contrary to running Stony Silence in the sideboard, they do run it as they only run one Ballista. Some even run Kataki as well for good measure and it's easier to get as it is tutorable. I haven't played the match up yet but I talked to a friend who uses the deck. He is very positive with the deck's upgrade and was even more confident against Tron where they are not favored as well.