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.
Wow that is a cool new take. I love innovation and that looks really fresh. Please share your results once you tested it a bit. It may be completely correct to cut the discard package due to it not being the strongest in the current meta.
Only problem I see is the amount of blue sources. You are playing whir. That requires more than 9 blue sources if you don't plan on casting it after turn 7+ reliably. Maybe stirrings is better than whir in this build.
The thing is with AT in the format we also want to be playing more basics, which makes the whir version worse. Maybe with AT we can go back to a mostly golgari list and play more basics?
I won a small 25 player tournament today with lantern. Although i did play a damping sphere main, i feel like it is not really worth the maindeck slot. It is a great sideboard card against tron, but i don't think there is enough thron in the meta to warrant the sphere maindeck. Especially since against tron preboard you do not even have a way to really benefit from slowing him down. (No Tezzeret) I do think that playing at least one brutality maindeck is worth it and therefore i usually split 3 IoK, 3 TS, 1 Brutality for my maindeck discard suite.
I did not miss Abrupt Decay Mainboard, but i think Welding Jar would be a nice maindeck inclusion.
Having said this, i think this is probably the list that i would run, if there was a GP to play tomorrow, which is almost the same list i played today. (I had one sphere main and 2 Jars in the sideboard):
Holy ***** crexalbo, this would be a very good article but for 2 reasons:
1. In say a GP you will have a standby judge sooner rather than later if you win all your games with just the first game. This judge will be so suspicious for intentional slow play that he might actually give you a penalty for something that could also be legal, like recycling lanterns over and over.
2. It also poses significant risk in the following scenario: You get the lock at lets say 35 minutes left in the round. You durdle around until there is 10 minutes left in the round and then your opponent suddenly realizes, he is not winning game 1 anymore. You now have to play game 2 with 10 minutes left against a deck that can probably win this fast and you have no way of preventing a draw if they do, because our deck is not fast. Had we finished game 1 quickly we could have played all 3 games easily. The thing with lantern is: Wins take time, losses can go super fast.
The problem with Tron is even countering there worldbreaker or Ulamog does not help since their on cast triggers already happened and did the damage. Against Titanshift we have Orb which i think improves that matchup drastically.
Maybe Jester's Cap is the best way to battle tron, has anyone tested this card in that matchup yet?
Also thank you Skitzafreak for your analysis on why ward of bones is not good. I think you are right about that card. Although i feel that your tron MU analysis stating that chromatic sphere is the most problematic card is a little bit of. Yes chromatic sphere is a problem, but so are the other 30 options that tron can draw which results in them breaking the lock, by getting to an ulamog/worldbreaker. It is probably still a good idea to have a 1 of revoker in the sideboard, but I feel that is not enough to make the matchup even for the whir list.
ward of bones is awesome, I want to try out ward as a one of. It might help the tron matchup and other matchups as well, everything with good etb creatures. One could consider forbidden orchard to lock out the first creature as well.
That's a sweet looking list. But really. Why fatal push? especially only one of them. What do you need it for? I can't even imagine you ever wanting to tutor for it since by the time your hand is empty you probably have enough artifacts in play to just get battle for the bridge. Also, as cool a Duskmantle is, why does this build need it any more than the GB version? It just seems like you are wasting sideboard slots by moving the ghost quarters to the sideboard.
My idea was having fatal push because the UB version is not as fast in getting hellbent as the BG version is. Therefore having cheap early interaction to not get smashed by a swiftspear or a goblin guide sounded nice. In the list above there are 7 spot removal. Maybe that is too many but UB is newer than BG and tuning has just begun.
UB cannot bring in nature's claim like BG can so stony silence hurts way more, duskmantle mitigates that a bit. And with our colours being UB it makes the activation of duskmantle that much easier.
@Garkyn, that is a really cool list. While you do loose Ancient Stirrings, It seems like Whir of Invention can do just as good of a job. 4 Bridges + 4 Stirrings is not 8 bridges in your deck, but 3 Bridges + 3 Whir is 6 hard bridges. The flexibility to grab something important that you are missing, such as a lantern or needle or another mill-rock is exactly what Whir aims to accomplish. I love the simplicity of it.
I'd like to find a way to improve the Valakut / Jund / Tron matchups, thought tron may just be a lost cause at this point even with GQ. The Battle at the Bridge alongside Collective Brutality helps against most aggro matchups for sure, buying you plenty of time.
I understand Crucible + GQ is great, and Inventors' Fair makes it even better, but I don't think it's necessary if you are able to setup your gameplan of disruption + lock. Whir lets you more consistently get the lock going, then you're in great shape. You don't need the Crucible backup plan if you could also assemble thopter sword combo to close out games.
EDIT: For everyone else, why do you guys like Ghost Quarter so much? Don't get me wrong, this card has been in all of my decks since its inception. The card has been good to me. I find it hard to pin-point exactly where I've needed it...
Thanks for your reply and you make some very good points. Let me get through each of your suggestion and share my thought process:
1. Spellskite
I feel that this is the easiest card to cut because being the single creature in the deck our opponent will always have a removal for it. The idea was to have it fetchable at instant speed vs infect or valakut but there are better options for that so this one should probably be a one of in the SB.
2. Crucible
I do not like crucible for its recursion with GQ but for the interaction with inventors fair. Most often I cracked fair eot to get crucible to get back fair to get a shredder every turn. But I see your point of it being win more.
3. GQ
I think duskmantle would be a great replacement because against stony silence this deck is really week. Only set adrift as an out. Maybe you are right and we need to accept that tron is a lost cause. Valakut I feel is not that bad because we can whir for witchbane orb postboard which is hilarious in response to valakut triggers. Maybe we could even put that orb main as a replacement for spellskite since it helps in a lot of matchups.
4. Fatal Push
Great card, but with a 3rd brutality main we can go down to 2 of those.
5. Polluted Delta
I think I would rather cut an island for the 4th shore since fetches are so great. Turn on push, free scrys with lantern, thinning,...
Your suggestions for adding:
1. Thoughtseize
I guess 5 one mana discards would be good. Question is which split 4/1 or 3/2
2. Collective brutality
I was reluctant to add the 3rd but with a more clunky deck than golgari I think 4 in the 75 and 3 main are the right way to go.
3. Infernal tutor
I don't like tutor in this version because we are hellbent later than the other variants. 4th whir would be my choice
4. Duskmantle
Great card especially in dimir lantern. I was just too afraid of tron to take it over GQ but I guess is helps in more matchups although not in the toughest ones.
Conclusion:
These changes I will make and try it out at the next event I get a chance to play in:
- 1 fatal push
- 1 island
- 2 ghost quarter
- 1 crucible of worlds
- 1 spellskite
P.s.: another thing that would be cool for whir decks would be chromatic sphere. Because it can either help pay for the X or help get the blue. But I guess no list can actually spare the slots for it.
on the topic of blindmill, I think we got a little bit further in the last two pages:
1. The odds of drawing specific cards you are looking for (e.g. bridge) remain the same whether you do or do not mill
2. The graveyard is a huge resource for us (information and recursion) which advocates blind mill
3. Playing Tutors, it is not smart to self mill if you run the risk of milling the last one of your target cards
4. When the opponent is likely playing graveyard hate it is probably a bad idea to self mill
5. The benefit of self milling is increasing your resources (graveyard, information) even if you do not have recursion online yet, because chances are you will eventually get recursion online and then you will be way happier if you have a large graveyard to recur from.
The problem with the situation on blind milling is, that it feels so bad if you mill that crucial card and think, if I had not done this I would have won that game. But this feeling is very biased and does not change the fact, that it was the correct line of play.
It probably does not make a huge difference in win percentage whether you blind mill in certain situations or not, but I am against saying you should never blind mill unless you have recursion online already.
On another note, yesterday I tried a UB Variant of Lantern at a local tournament. It went quite well (4-1) with my loss being against catless burn, where in hindsight I probably should have taken mulligans. Since it is quite different from the main lantern builds at the moment I would appreciate a discussion about this list, I found this list so interesting I will definitely keep working on it
Some notes I have after playing a few rounds. Battle at the bridge is insane. It is live against pretty much every deck, can buy a couple of crucial turns against very aggressive decks and is even good later removing a problem creature like hiearch or lavamancer. Fatal push fills a similar role and i was never sad to see it. I was skeptic before but my gut feeling at the moment is: early I am super happy to see it to just slow my opponent down so I do not die before I have bridge, later I don't care because I am probably winning already anyway.
Whir of invention was awesome and a split of 3 whir 3 bridges felt quite good. If you have both, the wir can go fetch something else and it allows me to play a few one ofs, that become super good with whir (Welding Jar, Crucible, Skite, Needle, Thopter Combo)
Thopter Combo with a 1-1 split seems cool and it actually won me two games (1 against infect providing blockers for the nexus, 1 against eldrazi and taxes, also providing blockers when my bridge was flickered). With 3 copies of whir and 2 inventor's fairs it is quite consisten in its setup and can speed up the clock or provide a concession really fast (not really necessary but an added bonus)
Being only 2 colors i think a fetch base is stronger because the fetch lands provide free scrys with a lantern up and without ancient stirrings there is not reason to not shuffle your library.
Set Adrift also harmonised well with the fetches and was a good enough replacement for abrupt decay, often being cheaper than decay and as effective.
I'm very interested in brewing this Dimir variant further.
How do you feel about the discard suite? Was 6/9 enough for you? I feel like I really want to be on 8 maindeck discard spells, but fatal push also one for ones a creature just as well as the fourth inquisition. You lose out on selection/information though, which worries me.
19 Lands is a lot, but I imagine the fetches offset it some, how did that work for you? Have you had any trouble with singleton ruins? Any thoughts on running duskmantle? Or are these cut to reduce your colorless lands?
No Cranes in blue black? I don't like them in other lists but they seem perfect for the dimir version, especially if you're taking a more relaxed approach and not trying to race the lock down asap, which seems to be the case.
Did you ever feel like tezzeret would have been really good? I had him in at a 2 of in the main deck and he's a good dig effect and a tertiary win on the spot, but I don't know how crucial he is to the deck.
Only 3 whirs? I feel like you definitely want 4, especially if you're running without cranes or other non-mill dig. I was playing 2 bridges and 4 whir and never had trouble with getting it when I needed.
So the first change I think I would make is cutting spellskite, even as a one off I never wanted it because early it is quite clunky and late the opponent probably has like 10 removal in hand already. I would then move the 3rd brutality to the main. The ability to discard cards is quite nice especially when you are running 19 lands. The landsbase felt good, playing whir I think 5 non colored lands is the maximum, having more early interaction means we often can afford to not be hell-bent on turn 3 and with the fetches thinning the deck 19 was good. I would probably only swap out one basic for the fourth shore.
Cranes, bridges and whirs are another topic though. I am not sure but 4 whir would probably be better. But here come the tricky part: what do you cut. The same goes for the cranes. Admittedly they would fit nicely but I don't see the card that crane would be better than. I could try cutting a mox to add the 4th whir but for the cranes I have no idea.
Tezzeret I would like to test instead of the foundry combo but I feel like it might be worse because it does not give you flying blockers in a pinch and it is not fetchable with whir/fair.
1 academy ruins is probably enough because with the whir you often just can get a new one than put one from the grave on top. Sure I would like to play more and also play duskmantles and sea Gate wreckage but triple blue spells require a certain amount of blue sources
on the topic of blindmill, I think we got a little bit further in the last two pages:
1. The odds of drawing specific cards you are looking for (e.g. bridge) remain the same whether you do or do not mill
2. The graveyard is a huge resource for us (information and recursion) which advocates blind mill
3. Playing Tutors, it is not smart to self mill if you run the risk of milling the last one of your target cards
4. When the opponent is likely playing graveyard hate it is probably a bad idea to self mill
5. The benefit of self milling is increasing your resources (graveyard, information) even if you do not have recursion online yet, because chances are you will eventually get recursion online and then you will be way happier if you have a large graveyard to recur from.
The problem with the situation on blind milling is, that it feels so bad if you mill that crucial card and think, if I had not done this I would have won that game. But this feeling is very biased and does not change the fact, that it was the correct line of play.
It probably does not make a huge difference in win percentage whether you blind mill in certain situations or not, but I am against saying you should never blind mill unless you have recursion online already.
On another note, yesterday I tried a UB Variant of Lantern at a local tournament. It went quite well (4-1) with my loss being against catless burn, where in hindsight I probably should have taken mulligans. Since it is quite different from the main lantern builds at the moment I would appreciate a discussion about this list, I found this list so interesting I will definitely keep working on it
Some notes I have after playing a few rounds. Battle at the bridge is insane. It is live against pretty much every deck, can buy a couple of crucial turns against very aggressive decks and is even good later removing a problem creature like hiearch or lavamancer. Fatal push fills a similar role and i was never sad to see it. I was skeptic before but my gut feeling at the moment is: early I am super happy to see it to just slow my opponent down so I do not die before I have bridge, later I don't care because I am probably winning already anyway.
Whir of invention was awesome and a split of 3 whir 3 bridges felt quite good. If you have both, the wir can go fetch something else and it allows me to play a few one ofs, that become super good with whir (Welding Jar, Crucible, Skite, Needle, Thopter Combo)
Thopter Combo with a 1-1 split seems cool and it actually won me two games (1 against infect providing blockers for the nexus, 1 against eldrazi and taxes, also providing blockers when my bridge was flickered). With 3 copies of whir and 2 inventor's fairs it is quite consisten in its setup and can speed up the clock or provide a concession really fast (not really necessary but an added bonus)
Being only 2 colors i think a fetch base is stronger because the fetch lands provide free scrys with a lantern up and without ancient stirrings there is not reason to not shuffle your library.
Set Adrift also harmonised well with the fetches and was a good enough replacement for abrupt decay, often being cheaper than decay and as effective.
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.
Only problem I see is the amount of blue sources. You are playing whir. That requires more than 9 blue sources if you don't plan on casting it after turn 7+ reliably. Maybe stirrings is better than whir in this build.
I did not miss Abrupt Decay Mainboard, but i think Welding Jar would be a nice maindeck inclusion.
Having said this, i think this is probably the list that i would run, if there was a GP to play tomorrow, which is almost the same list i played today. (I had one sphere main and 2 Jars in the sideboard):
4 Glimmervoid
4 Spire of Industry
1 Inventors' Fair
3 Botanical Sanctum
1 Academy Ruins
3 Darkslick Shores
4 Mox Opal
2 Pyxis of Pandemonium
3 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Witchbane Orb
4 Whir of Invention
4 Lantern of Insight
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Collective Brutality
3 Thoughtseize
4 Codex Shredder
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Ancient Stirrings
2 Pithing Needle
1 Welding Jar
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
2 Damping Sphere
1 Pithing Needle
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Nature's Claim
1 Welding Jar
2 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Pyroclasm
1. In say a GP you will have a standby judge sooner rather than later if you win all your games with just the first game. This judge will be so suspicious for intentional slow play that he might actually give you a penalty for something that could also be legal, like recycling lanterns over and over.
2. It also poses significant risk in the following scenario: You get the lock at lets say 35 minutes left in the round. You durdle around until there is 10 minutes left in the round and then your opponent suddenly realizes, he is not winning game 1 anymore. You now have to play game 2 with 10 minutes left against a deck that can probably win this fast and you have no way of preventing a draw if they do, because our deck is not fast. Had we finished game 1 quickly we could have played all 3 games easily. The thing with lantern is: Wins take time, losses can go super fast.
Maybe Jester's Cap is the best way to battle tron, has anyone tested this card in that matchup yet?
Also thank you Skitzafreak for your analysis on why ward of bones is not good. I think you are right about that card. Although i feel that your tron MU analysis stating that chromatic sphere is the most problematic card is a little bit of. Yes chromatic sphere is a problem, but so are the other 30 options that tron can draw which results in them breaking the lock, by getting to an ulamog/worldbreaker. It is probably still a good idea to have a 1 of revoker in the sideboard, but I feel that is not enough to make the matchup even for the whir list.
My idea was having fatal push because the UB version is not as fast in getting hellbent as the BG version is. Therefore having cheap early interaction to not get smashed by a swiftspear or a goblin guide sounded nice. In the list above there are 7 spot removal. Maybe that is too many but UB is newer than BG and tuning has just begun.
UB cannot bring in nature's claim like BG can so stony silence hurts way more, duskmantle mitigates that a bit. And with our colours being UB it makes the activation of duskmantle that much easier.
I could see myself with a list like that. Let us know how the test goes
@khazhrak:
Yes this list is great against any aggro deck. Infect, dredge, too, death shadow and with effectivly more bridges also abzan/jund
Thanks for your reply and you make some very good points. Let me get through each of your suggestion and share my thought process:
1. Spellskite
I feel that this is the easiest card to cut because being the single creature in the deck our opponent will always have a removal for it. The idea was to have it fetchable at instant speed vs infect or valakut but there are better options for that so this one should probably be a one of in the SB.
2. Crucible
I do not like crucible for its recursion with GQ but for the interaction with inventors fair. Most often I cracked fair eot to get crucible to get back fair to get a shredder every turn. But I see your point of it being win more.
3. GQ
I think duskmantle would be a great replacement because against stony silence this deck is really week. Only set adrift as an out. Maybe you are right and we need to accept that tron is a lost cause. Valakut I feel is not that bad because we can whir for witchbane orb postboard which is hilarious in response to valakut triggers. Maybe we could even put that orb main as a replacement for spellskite since it helps in a lot of matchups.
4. Fatal Push
Great card, but with a 3rd brutality main we can go down to 2 of those.
5. Polluted Delta
I think I would rather cut an island for the 4th shore since fetches are so great. Turn on push, free scrys with lantern, thinning,...
Your suggestions for adding:
1. Thoughtseize
I guess 5 one mana discards would be good. Question is which split 4/1 or 3/2
2. Collective brutality
I was reluctant to add the 3rd but with a more clunky deck than golgari I think 4 in the 75 and 3 main are the right way to go.
3. Infernal tutor
I don't like tutor in this version because we are hellbent later than the other variants. 4th whir would be my choice
4. Duskmantle
Great card especially in dimir lantern. I was just too afraid of tron to take it over GQ but I guess is helps in more matchups although not in the toughest ones.
Conclusion:
These changes I will make and try it out at the next event I get a chance to play in:
- 1 fatal push
- 1 island
- 2 ghost quarter
- 1 crucible of worlds
- 1 spellskite
+ 1 collective brutality
+ 1 darkslick shores
+ 2 duskmantle
+ 1 thoughtseize
+ 1 whir of invention
P.s.: another thing that would be cool for whir decks would be chromatic sphere. Because it can either help pay for the X or help get the blue. But I guess no list can actually spare the slots for it.
So the first change I think I would make is cutting spellskite, even as a one off I never wanted it because early it is quite clunky and late the opponent probably has like 10 removal in hand already. I would then move the 3rd brutality to the main. The ability to discard cards is quite nice especially when you are running 19 lands. The landsbase felt good, playing whir I think 5 non colored lands is the maximum, having more early interaction means we often can afford to not be hell-bent on turn 3 and with the fetches thinning the deck 19 was good. I would probably only swap out one basic for the fourth shore.
Cranes, bridges and whirs are another topic though. I am not sure but 4 whir would probably be better. But here come the tricky part: what do you cut. The same goes for the cranes. Admittedly they would fit nicely but I don't see the card that crane would be better than. I could try cutting a mox to add the 4th whir but for the cranes I have no idea.
Tezzeret I would like to test instead of the foundry combo but I feel like it might be worse because it does not give you flying blockers in a pinch and it is not fetchable with whir/fair.
1 academy ruins is probably enough because with the whir you often just can get a new one than put one from the grave on top. Sure I would like to play more and also play duskmantles and sea Gate wreckage but triple blue spells require a certain amount of blue sources
on the topic of blindmill, I think we got a little bit further in the last two pages:
1. The odds of drawing specific cards you are looking for (e.g. bridge) remain the same whether you do or do not mill
2. The graveyard is a huge resource for us (information and recursion) which advocates blind mill
3. Playing Tutors, it is not smart to self mill if you run the risk of milling the last one of your target cards
4. When the opponent is likely playing graveyard hate it is probably a bad idea to self mill
5. The benefit of self milling is increasing your resources (graveyard, information) even if you do not have recursion online yet, because chances are you will eventually get recursion online and then you will be way happier if you have a large graveyard to recur from.
The problem with the situation on blind milling is, that it feels so bad if you mill that crucial card and think, if I had not done this I would have won that game. But this feeling is very biased and does not change the fact, that it was the correct line of play.
It probably does not make a huge difference in win percentage whether you blind mill in certain situations or not, but I am against saying you should never blind mill unless you have recursion online already.
On another note, yesterday I tried a UB Variant of Lantern at a local tournament. It went quite well (4-1) with my loss being against catless burn, where in hindsight I probably should have taken mulligans. Since it is quite different from the main lantern builds at the moment I would appreciate a discussion about this list, I found this list so interesting I will definitely keep working on it
4x Polluted Delta
1x Academy Ruins
2x Inventors' Fair
2x Ghost Quarter
5x Island
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
3x Darkslick Shores
Artifacts(25):
4x Codex Shredder
2x Ghoulcaller's Bell
1x Crucible of Worlds
3x Ensnaring Bridge
4x Lantern of Insight
4x Mox Opal
2x Pithing Needle
1x Pyxis of Pandemonium
1x Spellskite
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Thopter Foundry
1x Welding Jar
2x Battle at the Bridge
3x Fatal Push
2x Collective Brutality
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Set Adrift
1x Thoughtseize
3x Whir of Invention
1x Collective Brutality
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Lost Legacy
1x Mechanized Production
2x Pithing Needle
1x Set Adrift
1x Sun Droplet
2x Thoughtseize
2x Welding Jar
1x Witchbane Orb
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
Some notes I have after playing a few rounds. Battle at the bridge is insane. It is live against pretty much every deck, can buy a couple of crucial turns against very aggressive decks and is even good later removing a problem creature like hiearch or lavamancer. Fatal push fills a similar role and i was never sad to see it. I was skeptic before but my gut feeling at the moment is: early I am super happy to see it to just slow my opponent down so I do not die before I have bridge, later I don't care because I am probably winning already anyway.
Whir of invention was awesome and a split of 3 whir 3 bridges felt quite good. If you have both, the wir can go fetch something else and it allows me to play a few one ofs, that become super good with whir (Welding Jar, Crucible, Skite, Needle, Thopter Combo)
Thopter Combo with a 1-1 split seems cool and it actually won me two games (1 against infect providing blockers for the nexus, 1 against eldrazi and taxes, also providing blockers when my bridge was flickered). With 3 copies of whir and 2 inventor's fairs it is quite consisten in its setup and can speed up the clock or provide a concession really fast (not really necessary but an added bonus)
Being only 2 colors i think a fetch base is stronger because the fetch lands provide free scrys with a lantern up and without ancient stirrings there is not reason to not shuffle your library.
Set Adrift also harmonised well with the fetches and was a good enough replacement for abrupt decay, often being cheaper than decay and as effective.