I've abandoned the Sweltering Suns plan in my current build - I was convinced when I consecutively lost a match due to color screw, then lost another game vs. Ramunap Red after resolving two Swelterings.
Meanwhile, my win rate is doing okay without them.
On the Sphinx, I have never played it and have still been able to beat Control. My main deck has only one win condition, my other wins come in later games.
Another option is Carnage Tyrant, not too bad.
I agree on testing Spell Pierce, but honestly it seems even better AGAINST us, along with Duress. I'm a bit worried, but I think we'll survive.
When do you bring in Drake Havens, and have they been any good?
I've been working on a super-budget version of this deck lately. So far I've spent 7 tix on MTGO to build it basically from scratch - but that means my mana is slightly worse. I haven't died much to it yet, though.
The bad mana also enables an interesting card out of the sideboard...
The sideboard is mostly garbage - very much a work in progress as I continue to seek the ideal game 1 build.
I felt like I was dying to variance too much (no New Perspectives in the top 20-25 cards, die to beatdown), so I forked out the money for Sweltering Suns (about 60% of the value of the deck!).
I've liked having them so far.
I'm considering Struggle // Survive over Commit // Memory. Commit is better than Struggle, but Survive is a better emergency re-try than Memory. I've not yet needed the re-try though, so it makes me feel that the front end is more important.
The mana could get slightly better, but it's a lot closer to ideal as-is than it looks. It needs a lot of basics for Shefet Monitor, and Ramunap Hydra out of the board loves having all those deserts around.
Zero land-based ways to cast Second Sun or Shadow has never come up so far, but might be worth having a backup option for each.
5/5 Ramunap vs. most of the field, especially post-board with most removal gone, has been a house. Obviously invalidated by blue Gearhulk, but that's probably okay.
I've never won a game because of Hydra so far, but that's because I keep winning with Perspectives.
I'm definitely considering a copy of Scavenger Grounds - still an untapped land searchable with Shefet Monitor, with additional utility sometimes. However, it makes the sketchy mana even worse, if only slightly.
I have considered Supreme Will as well, but it has to work hard to earn a slot. I already have 25 slots devoted to non-cycling cards in the mainboard, and that feels really shallow - although I currently have a 0% loss rate after resolving New Perspectives, with this build. So maybe it's worth the extra digging.
Fun moments:
Nimble Obstructionist has been fantastic so far, and I may put 1 more in the main. A few days ago it countered a well-timed Scavenger Grounds from my opponent mid-combo who was trying to play gotcha on my Shadow of the Grave.
Yesterday I had a match against a Gifts deck - felt good to counter their Gate search ability. At worst, it's an awful Impeccable Timing.
My apologies for not including card links in post! Posting from my phone, so I'm a bit too lazy, haha.
I'm hearing the discussion and arguments about blind milling. For a while I was convinced by "but if you don't blind mill, your chance of milling the card you want is 0%." However, I'm no longer convinced by this - and I want a final, resolute answer that the majority agrees with. That way, when I'm faced with the dilemma, I can confidently do what the community has agreed is best.
Let me try to persuade you all the way I was persuaded.
For a moment, imagine the impossible. Imagine that, when Lantern isn't active, Shredder and Bell both mill from the MIDDLE of our library. Don't worry about the logistics - somehow, when we shred ourselves, we take the 23rd card down in our library and put it into the graveyard. We do not shuffle our library.
Now in this situation, if you were in desperate need of a bridge - you had only one or two turns to live, and the only thing that can save you is bridge. You have the same dilemma - shred yourself or not?
I believe that we'd all agree, in this situation, we should definitely shred ourselves (against an opponent with no graveyard hate). Even if we mill a Bridge (23rd card down), it doesn't really matter, and if we do rip a bridge off the top, then we have a bit more ammo in the graveyard for later. If you agree with this, then I believe you also have to acknowledge that the only way self-milling is bad is the feel-bad moments created by "if I had not milled, I would have immediately drawn this thing I need."
If you agree with this, then I think we can limit our discussion to the math involved (already settled previously), and the tactical benefits and disadvantages of milling out of the 'middle' of our library.
Did you consider re-trying the Thopter Sword combo in the Whir build? Perhaps just one copy of each, or two Foundries? It might be 100% win-more, who knows.
I feel like it has potential. (Whir in Lantern in general, I mean.)
1 + 2. Spellskite is strictly better than Consulate Skygate. Heck, Wall of Tanglecord is strictly better than Consulate Skygate. Both of those have been mentioned in this thread, so the search would have revealed that.
3. I'd probably go with Spellskite over this, too, as Spellskite at least has the ability to shut off an Abrupt Decay/Maelstrom Pulse/etc, despite enabling creature removal. We don't really need much, if any, more mana fixing for the most part. A very big question here would be what to take out to make room for this card.
4. So this acts to either keep creatures at bay until we get our Bridge, or is worthless if we've already got the Bridge. Collective Brutality and Glint-Nest Crane both do this much better. Red removal doesn't get rid of our Brutality (and Brutality is loads better than this card versus Burn). Brutality also answers the 0-power creatures that would get under Bridge (except for the occasional Spellskite, but that's going to be a super corner case).
But, you are thinking outside the box, I can't fault you for that
Thanks thinkr.
Sheltering Ancient relying on creatures is the biggest hit against it, aside from your thoughts.
Just to clarify though, Skygate does have reach - so it's serving a very different function. (Not necessarily a function we need, though.)
Last thing, I never thought of the Caryatid fighting Skite for space. It's a two-mana Mox Opal that blocks, whereas Skite is a superior Welding Jar that dies to creature removal.
I was curious about other creatures Lantern could consider using, particularly by the BG creatureless versions, post-board.
I've come across four. Three I think aren't very interesting, but I want to mention them anyway - the fourth could be valuable Super-Secret-Tech or complete jank.
1. Wall of Vines + 2. Consulate Skygate
-- These two are vanilla blockers. The only reason I want to mention them is because a few people in the last two pages have noted that Crane's digging ability is sometimes less relevant than the fact that it's an x/3 flying blocker. BG versions also have access to this in various forms, if desired.
3. Sylvan Caryatid
-- This is a x/3 blocker that doesn't enable any removal, fixes mana for those who need it, and in that regard may help you empty your hand for Bridge by giving you access to more mana.
Not sure if this has been discussed before; if it has, feel free to ignore.
4. Sheltering Ancient
-- Here's the spicy one. I imagine this exclusively as tech vs. Burn, Infect, and Affinity - maybe Jund as well. I'll break down my thoughts. 1) 5/5 profitably blocks everything short of a 5/6 Tarmogoyf. Yes, I'm aware the Cumulative Upkeep changes that math in short order. 2) No red removal can realistically get rid of this (although Searing Blaze hits), so red may have to play a waiting game to have its creatures get around the Ancient, or else pour multiple resources into that task. 3) The Cumulative Upkeep can actually permanently nullify 0-power creatures otherwise able to get under bridge, or even 1-power creatures if we're stuck with a card in hand. 4) And hey, a 5/5 might win the game once every hundred.
I'm perfectly happy for all of these to be wildly wrong! Just like to throw in some spicy ideas every now and then.
Thanks for reading.
So basically, you would like me to play 100 games with a stock list vs burn, and then play another 100 games vs burn where I replace 2surgicals and 2pithing needles with cards that are not dead, and maybe then you will start being open to the idea that the dead cards dont improve the matchup?
Or will you just tell me they are needed for another matchup?
Are you open to the idea that the deck is not perfect and can be improved upon?
If you could find a card that solved the same problems surgical did, but was not dead in half your matchups, would you be open to running that card instead? (for game 1)
Edit: could I ask to see your testing that shows burn as a good enough matchup that you can afford to run multiple dead cards?
Thanks Morimacil.
In answer to your question, imagine this:
You take a look at Thinkr's Spreadsheet and see the current 50% win rate against burn. You go out and test your version of lantern and say "Hey, look at this, I won 7 matches against burn out of 10 with my list. Here's the reason I won those games. What do you think?"
Then somebody says "But are your matchups against other decks equally good?"
It's a fair question, and one that you won't have an answer to without further testing.
The deck definitely isn't perfect. You'd be hard-pressed to find any two players with exactly the same list. I want to encourage you to try to innovate. (Just don't get offended if people don't listen until you have evidence and numbers to show.)
@tiersdonexits: If you dont want to discuss things with logical arguments to improve the deck, I dont see why you are on a forum?
Haha, I don't think I'm the one who's misunderstanding the purpose of the forum.
Look, several veterans of this thread have responded saying the same thing. "We'll listen, but where's your data?"
"If your entire deck is lock pieces, then that doesn't happen. Sure, you can draw the 'wrong' lock pieces at the wrong time, and you can draw bunches of dead cards against the wrong matchups. We can make these arguments all day, but that brings us back to the first point."
This is terrible logic. you say that wont happen, then in the next sentence you say that it will happen, and then it brings us back to the frist point, which is what? that you dont want to listen to logical arguments?
Way to get people to listen to you - criticize their logic. And by the way, my logic is sound.
The 'that' I'm referring to is 'drawing your win conditions at the wrong time'. If your deck doesn't have win conditions, it can't draw them.
Your understanding of my argument is the problem here.
The 'first point' is the same one I made above - "we'll listen, but where's your data?"
I have been testing the deck, quite a lot. What I am sharing is the results of my testing.
Great, maybe we're getting somewhere. Show us your win ratios vs. various decks in the metagame. Show us your innovations exactly, in a decklist. If you can't do this, then you're not sharing your results - you're sharing your ideas.
I've explained myself to my satisfaction. Enough people have said the same things now that if you aren't at least able to say "I understand you want data, I'll put it together for you as soon as I can", I think I won't waste any more of my time responding.
Why would you obviously need dead cards in your deck game one? To me, it is obvious that you should avoid having as many dead cards as you can.
You dont need needle to deal with displacer-thought knot. And you dont need surgical do deal with conflagrate, and/or world breaker.
There are many many other cards you could be running that would take care of that.
Basically, as long as you are doing something proactive enough, those scenarios stop mattering as much, because they take too long to set up.
If you thopter sword them out, that takes care of it before it becomes an issue.
But if you do something like liliana, thats fine too. Even though she costs 3 mana, she works well with bridge, and she is useful on her own. And she would also be an effective way of nullifying the threat of displacer-thought knot, or world breaker.
If you do not run anything proactive alongside the soft lock, then it feels like you need pieces to make the soft lock into a stronger lock. But if you are doing something proactive, the soft lock is enough.
Most of the time, once you establish the soft lock, you win.
In some games, you will have the soft lock, and lose
in some games, you dont get to the lock and you lose
The long games where you had the soft lock and then lost are the most frustrating ones, because they take up for ever, and it feels like you should have won because you were winning for a large part of the game. So there is a tendency to add cards that will help with those scenarios. But it would be better to be focusing your efforts on the other games, the ones where you got beat fast because you didnt have the right answers, you couldnt get to bridge and you lost.
Morimacil, we hear where you're coming from, and I want to make sure you don't feel like you can't say whatever you feel you need to.
It makes sense - if you have a soft lock and then a way to win the game quickly, then the lock doesn't need to be as hard or take as long to win.
There are two points I need to make. Firstly, when you got annoyed at the phrase "talk is cheap", you shouldn't - it just means "Go get a better win ratio than the current version of Lantern, and we'll listen. If you can't get a better win ratio, then that indicates the current build is on the right track."
Discussing the theory behind lantern is good to do, but only win ratios will make others change their already-successful decks.
The second thing I have to say is this - you never want your deck to be a worse version of something else.
Sure, if you establish the lock and then the quick, lock-supported win that you're talking about, then everything's dandy. What if it comes in the opposite direction? First you have your win pieces, except you don't have the lock yet, so you don't have enough 'oomph' to actually use them to win. Then later you draw the lock pieces - except now it's too late to lock them out, they've drawn too much stuff.
If your entire deck is lock pieces, then that doesn't happen. Sure, you can draw the 'wrong' lock pieces at the wrong time, and you can draw bunches of dead cards against the wrong matchups. We can make these arguments all day, but that brings us back to the first point.
On the other hand, if you want a quick, proactive win, there are a great many decks available for doing that - if you think locking opponents out then winning is the best strategy, there are also decks to do that - 8rack for example.
Hope you can see where we're coming from. I don't want you to think that the Lantern community is just a big hoax based on not wanting to admit that we love watching others suffer - we play the deck for many reasons, but the exact cards we choose to use are mainly based on win ratios and 'best practices'.
On the topic of burn, is Battle at the Bridge plausible as anti-burn, kind of like Brutality #5-8?
Can be cast t2 often enough with x=2 to kill a creature and soften a blow from a burn spell, so the function seems similar. Later will gain as much life as you want to put you out of reach, like gaining 6-7 on turn 4 or something.
I've had a lot of fun playing with Ghirapur Orrery, but even when I'm drawing 4 cards and reanimating 5 creatures a turn, it never feels like it's doing enough. This is an attempt to make it do something fun and properly powerful.
I have had extraordinary experiences with Ghirapur Orrery. I don't know to what extent that's a different deck than the one you have in mind here, but while trying to optimize Orrery I was thinking of a shell similar to yours, so I thought it was worth posting for consideration.
apologize for the unintended snarkiness. i'm reading that that the main attraction of an alternate win-con or "fast" win-con, is that it mitigates the chances of a game going to time. i've gone to time twice in paper tournaments, both times it was against decks with shuffle effects and i boarded out multiple millrocks. after learning my lesson i never board out mill rocks. i only run 8, but i never board them out. also i think there is one major factor that can effect how quickly the game ends, and it is not your alternate win condition. it is how fast you play. the reason why time is not a factor in modo is that time is allocated to the players individually. all the lantern control player's actions should be very quick therefore, not burning up his clock. it is our opponent that is being imprisoned so their actions tend to take longer especially when under the full lock. however; in contrast to modo, players share time in paper magic. admittedly this does increase the chances of drawing, as we are now affected by our opponents slow play. This makes it crucial to play as fast as possible, and ultimately that means practice. lastly, i run galvanic blast in the sideboard @crexalbo so occasionally i get to bolt face. most of the time i just use it to blow up thought-knot seers.
Just wanted to clarify, the snarkiness was coming from 4554551n, not you. Hence my skipping over it.
Thanks for the response. I think crexalbo's response is probably the most appropriate - this works for you, and it may not for others.
I wonder which way makes more sense for new players? Presumably not going to time in paper magic requires substantially more skill and experience, plus a keen awareness of when your opponent is playing slowly enough to warrant a judge call and the willingness to call a judge many times per tournament. For newer players, then, it seems to make more sense to include a backup win condition.
That's assuming the deck's win rate does NOT go up when you include win conditions. That's a separate point from going to time - I'm still concerned with the question of how many games are won and lost specifically due to the presence or absence of win conditions.
I think we'll need to compile data for that question.
this is an interesting point. to test this we would have to find an appropriate win-con. the choices probably include aether grid, tezzeret, thopter sword combo, and a fringe card i use to play ashiok. one reason i went with ashiok is that after the printing of nahiri there were a ton of jeskai decks that ran ancestral vision in my meta. i wanted a cheap threat that could nullify the card advantage they were able to generate. while it did work every so often, i found it to be inconsistent. also every time i would cast stirrings and see it i would get angry. i get this feeling with every alt win-con. if foundry were colorless perhaps it would be an auto-include. speaking from experience and from a competitive perspective; i believe that alternate win-cons are not necessary and therefore should not take up slots that would otherwise be devoted to cards that increase the consistency of the deck. specifically i am speaking of mishra's bauble. i suggest running 2 of them.
It does get interesting to think about.
You talk about a very specific experience of finding a non-colorless win condition off of Ancient Stirrings that you couldn't grab. This is both relevant and irrelevant - irrelevant because the Stirrings probably found you something useful anyway, and it's not like we have a 100% hit rate even in your list, artfranc007 - but relevant because a Stirrings-able win condition could be marginally better than a colored one.
Anyway, here's what I'm thinking. Let's say we come to an agreement on a magical hypothetical Lantern list with just three spare slots. Everyone agrees on the 57 mainboard cards, and then we have two camps - singleton Tezz, Grid, and Infernal Tutor vs. two Mishra's Bauble and something else you'd recommend from your list, artfranc007.
As 4554551n mentioned on a previous page, it wouldn't really work out like this, probably. Not having win conditions changes the structure and needs of the deck slightly, so that maybe more than 3 cards need to change between the styles. And even then, we aren't sure about the colorless land slots, number of mainboard Spellskite, whether to include red cards or not, number of Surgical Extractions, etc.
But for the sake of science and simplicity, I really think we could come to a 55-card lantern list paired with two different 5-card packages - a package with two win conditions, and a package with no win conditions.
And if we did this, we would be able to start gathering data.
4554551n, you mention the problem that all games are won with a win condition (even in the version we keep calling "win-condition-less", this is true). If we start collecting data on wins and losses based on fixed or extremely similar builds of lantern, we wouldn't need to think or worry much about this problem - if the win condition cards are helping, the win rates will go up, and if they are hurting, they will go down. It wouldn't matter whether a Stirrings had one less hit or whether you mulligan'd because you had one too many dead cards in your opener - the exact scenarios become somewhat irrelevant, or at least less relevant, in the face of the overall data.
This also wouldn't have to just be 4554551n vs. artfranc007, either - a great many of us could change our builds slightly to fit the "temporarily fixed" packages of Lantern, for the sake of science.
It would take a great deal of participation from everyone here to report their wins and losses against various types of decks, and honestly this idea isn't likely to pan out - I can foresee nearly everyone saying "yeah I liked this list but I changed three cards, here are my results anyway" which corrupts the data to some degree.
Even then the science isn't perfect by a long shot. This would only provide directional information even in perfect circumstances, but I figured it would be worth a shot sharing it with the community.
Meanwhile, my win rate is doing okay without them.
On the Sphinx, I have never played it and have still been able to beat Control. My main deck has only one win condition, my other wins come in later games.
Another option is Carnage Tyrant, not too bad.
I agree on testing Spell Pierce, but honestly it seems even better AGAINST us, along with Duress. I'm a bit worried, but I think we'll survive.
When do you bring in Drake Havens, and have they been any good?
Will post my updated list when I can.
The bad mana also enables an interesting card out of the sideboard...
4 Desert of the Fervent
4 Desert of the Indomidable
4 Desert of the Mindful
4 Mountain
4 Forest
4 Island
CREATURES 9
4 Vizier of Tumbling Sands
4 Shefet Monitor
1 Nimble Obstructionist
4 Sweltering Suns
1 Approach of the Second Sun
INSTANTS 14
4 Shadow of the Grave
4 Haze of Pollen
3 Censor
2 Countervailing Winds
1 Commit // Memory
ENCHANTMENT 8
4 New Perspectives
4 Gift of Paradise
4 Ramunap Hydra
1 Faith of the Devoted
3 Nimble Obstructionist
3 Negate
1 Censor
1 Commit // Memory
2 Island
The sideboard is mostly garbage - very much a work in progress as I continue to seek the ideal game 1 build.
I felt like I was dying to variance too much (no New Perspectives in the top 20-25 cards, die to beatdown), so I forked out the money for Sweltering Suns (about 60% of the value of the deck!).
I've liked having them so far.
I'm considering Struggle // Survive over Commit // Memory. Commit is better than Struggle, but Survive is a better emergency re-try than Memory. I've not yet needed the re-try though, so it makes me feel that the front end is more important.
The mana could get slightly better, but it's a lot closer to ideal as-is than it looks. It needs a lot of basics for Shefet Monitor, and Ramunap Hydra out of the board loves having all those deserts around.
Zero land-based ways to cast Second Sun or Shadow has never come up so far, but might be worth having a backup option for each.
5/5 Ramunap vs. most of the field, especially post-board with most removal gone, has been a house. Obviously invalidated by blue Gearhulk, but that's probably okay.
I've never won a game because of Hydra so far, but that's because I keep winning with Perspectives.
I'm definitely considering a copy of Scavenger Grounds - still an untapped land searchable with Shefet Monitor, with additional utility sometimes. However, it makes the sketchy mana even worse, if only slightly.
I have considered Supreme Will as well, but it has to work hard to earn a slot. I already have 25 slots devoted to non-cycling cards in the mainboard, and that feels really shallow - although I currently have a 0% loss rate after resolving New Perspectives, with this build. So maybe it's worth the extra digging.
Fun moments:
Nimble Obstructionist has been fantastic so far, and I may put 1 more in the main. A few days ago it countered a well-timed Scavenger Grounds from my opponent mid-combo who was trying to play gotcha on my Shadow of the Grave.
Yesterday I had a match against a Gifts deck - felt good to counter their Gate search ability. At worst, it's an awful Impeccable Timing.
My apologies for not including card links in post! Posting from my phone, so I'm a bit too lazy, haha.
I'm hearing the discussion and arguments about blind milling. For a while I was convinced by "but if you don't blind mill, your chance of milling the card you want is 0%." However, I'm no longer convinced by this - and I want a final, resolute answer that the majority agrees with. That way, when I'm faced with the dilemma, I can confidently do what the community has agreed is best.
Let me try to persuade you all the way I was persuaded.
For a moment, imagine the impossible. Imagine that, when Lantern isn't active, Shredder and Bell both mill from the MIDDLE of our library. Don't worry about the logistics - somehow, when we shred ourselves, we take the 23rd card down in our library and put it into the graveyard. We do not shuffle our library.
Now in this situation, if you were in desperate need of a bridge - you had only one or two turns to live, and the only thing that can save you is bridge. You have the same dilemma - shred yourself or not?
I believe that we'd all agree, in this situation, we should definitely shred ourselves (against an opponent with no graveyard hate). Even if we mill a Bridge (23rd card down), it doesn't really matter, and if we do rip a bridge off the top, then we have a bit more ammo in the graveyard for later.
If you agree with this, then I believe you also have to acknowledge that the only way self-milling is bad is the feel-bad moments created by "if I had not milled, I would have immediately drawn this thing I need."
If you agree with this, then I think we can limit our discussion to the math involved (already settled previously), and the tactical benefits and disadvantages of milling out of the 'middle' of our library.
What do you all think?
Did you consider re-trying the Thopter Sword combo in the Whir build? Perhaps just one copy of each, or two Foundries? It might be 100% win-more, who knows.
I feel like it has potential. (Whir in Lantern in general, I mean.)
Thanks thinkr.
Sheltering Ancient relying on creatures is the biggest hit against it, aside from your thoughts.
Just to clarify though, Skygate does have reach - so it's serving a very different function. (Not necessarily a function we need, though.)
Last thing, I never thought of the Caryatid fighting Skite for space. It's a two-mana Mox Opal that blocks, whereas Skite is a superior Welding Jar that dies to creature removal.
Some janky tech for your consideration.
I was curious about other creatures Lantern could consider using, particularly by the BG creatureless versions, post-board.
I've come across four. Three I think aren't very interesting, but I want to mention them anyway - the fourth could be valuable Super-Secret-Tech or complete jank.
1. Wall of Vines + 2. Consulate Skygate
-- These two are vanilla blockers. The only reason I want to mention them is because a few people in the last two pages have noted that Crane's digging ability is sometimes less relevant than the fact that it's an x/3 flying blocker. BG versions also have access to this in various forms, if desired.
3. Sylvan Caryatid
-- This is a x/3 blocker that doesn't enable any removal, fixes mana for those who need it, and in that regard may help you empty your hand for Bridge by giving you access to more mana.
Not sure if this has been discussed before; if it has, feel free to ignore.
4. Sheltering Ancient
-- Here's the spicy one. I imagine this exclusively as tech vs. Burn, Infect, and Affinity - maybe Jund as well. I'll break down my thoughts.
1) 5/5 profitably blocks everything short of a 5/6 Tarmogoyf. Yes, I'm aware the Cumulative Upkeep changes that math in short order.
2) No red removal can realistically get rid of this (although Searing Blaze hits), so red may have to play a waiting game to have its creatures get around the Ancient, or else pour multiple resources into that task.
3) The Cumulative Upkeep can actually permanently nullify 0-power creatures otherwise able to get under bridge, or even 1-power creatures if we're stuck with a card in hand.
4) And hey, a 5/5 might win the game once every hundred.
I'm perfectly happy for all of these to be wildly wrong! Just like to throw in some spicy ideas every now and then.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks Morimacil.
In answer to your question, imagine this:
You take a look at Thinkr's Spreadsheet and see the current 50% win rate against burn. You go out and test your version of lantern and say "Hey, look at this, I won 7 matches against burn out of 10 with my list. Here's the reason I won those games. What do you think?"
Then somebody says "But are your matchups against other decks equally good?"
It's a fair question, and one that you won't have an answer to without further testing.
The deck definitely isn't perfect. You'd be hard-pressed to find any two players with exactly the same list. I want to encourage you to try to innovate. (Just don't get offended if people don't listen until you have evidence and numbers to show.)
Thanks for listening.
Haha, I don't think I'm the one who's misunderstanding the purpose of the forum.
Look, several veterans of this thread have responded saying the same thing. "We'll listen, but where's your data?"
Way to get people to listen to you - criticize their logic. And by the way, my logic is sound.
The 'that' I'm referring to is 'drawing your win conditions at the wrong time'. If your deck doesn't have win conditions, it can't draw them.
Your understanding of my argument is the problem here.
The 'first point' is the same one I made above - "we'll listen, but where's your data?"
Great, maybe we're getting somewhere. Show us your win ratios vs. various decks in the metagame. Show us your innovations exactly, in a decklist. If you can't do this, then you're not sharing your results - you're sharing your ideas.
I've explained myself to my satisfaction. Enough people have said the same things now that if you aren't at least able to say "I understand you want data, I'll put it together for you as soon as I can", I think I won't waste any more of my time responding.
Morimacil, we hear where you're coming from, and I want to make sure you don't feel like you can't say whatever you feel you need to.
It makes sense - if you have a soft lock and then a way to win the game quickly, then the lock doesn't need to be as hard or take as long to win.
There are two points I need to make. Firstly, when you got annoyed at the phrase "talk is cheap", you shouldn't - it just means "Go get a better win ratio than the current version of Lantern, and we'll listen. If you can't get a better win ratio, then that indicates the current build is on the right track."
Discussing the theory behind lantern is good to do, but only win ratios will make others change their already-successful decks.
The second thing I have to say is this - you never want your deck to be a worse version of something else.
Sure, if you establish the lock and then the quick, lock-supported win that you're talking about, then everything's dandy. What if it comes in the opposite direction? First you have your win pieces, except you don't have the lock yet, so you don't have enough 'oomph' to actually use them to win. Then later you draw the lock pieces - except now it's too late to lock them out, they've drawn too much stuff.
If your entire deck is lock pieces, then that doesn't happen. Sure, you can draw the 'wrong' lock pieces at the wrong time, and you can draw bunches of dead cards against the wrong matchups. We can make these arguments all day, but that brings us back to the first point.
On the other hand, if you want a quick, proactive win, there are a great many decks available for doing that - if you think locking opponents out then winning is the best strategy, there are also decks to do that - 8rack for example.
Hope you can see where we're coming from. I don't want you to think that the Lantern community is just a big hoax based on not wanting to admit that we love watching others suffer - we play the deck for many reasons, but the exact cards we choose to use are mainly based on win ratios and 'best practices'.
Can be cast t2 often enough with x=2 to kill a creature and soften a blow from a burn spell, so the function seems similar. Later will gain as much life as you want to put you out of reach, like gaining 6-7 on turn 4 or something.
4x Voldaren Pariah
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Haunted Dead
4x Asylum Visitor
1x Stromkirk Condemned
4x Ghirapur Orrery
4x Smuggler's Copter
Enchantments:
4x Call the Bloodline
3x Sinister Concoction
2x Collective Brutality
2x Ruinous Path
Instants:
4x Grasp of Darkness
Lands:
22x Swamp
2x Westvale Abbey
This build empties its hand at will for value, making Orrery and Asylum Visitor function. 1/1 lifelinkers clog the ground and get sacrificed to Voldaren Pariah and Westvale Abbey. Smuggler's Copter does Copter things.
Removal fills in the blanks.
It's still early in brewing, but I'd like to ask for advice - any thoughts?
This looks very useful - thanks for sharing.
FYI, some of the formulas in the sheet seem to have broken - you might want to look into those.
I'll keep thinking.
It does get interesting to think about.
You talk about a very specific experience of finding a non-colorless win condition off of Ancient Stirrings that you couldn't grab. This is both relevant and irrelevant - irrelevant because the Stirrings probably found you something useful anyway, and it's not like we have a 100% hit rate even in your list, artfranc007 - but relevant because a Stirrings-able win condition could be marginally better than a colored one.
Anyway, here's what I'm thinking. Let's say we come to an agreement on a magical hypothetical Lantern list with just three spare slots. Everyone agrees on the 57 mainboard cards, and then we have two camps - singleton Tezz, Grid, and Infernal Tutor vs. two Mishra's Bauble and something else you'd recommend from your list, artfranc007.
As 4554551n mentioned on a previous page, it wouldn't really work out like this, probably. Not having win conditions changes the structure and needs of the deck slightly, so that maybe more than 3 cards need to change between the styles. And even then, we aren't sure about the colorless land slots, number of mainboard Spellskite, whether to include red cards or not, number of Surgical Extractions, etc.
But for the sake of science and simplicity, I really think we could come to a 55-card lantern list paired with two different 5-card packages - a package with two win conditions, and a package with no win conditions.
And if we did this, we would be able to start gathering data.
4554551n, you mention the problem that all games are won with a win condition (even in the version we keep calling "win-condition-less", this is true). If we start collecting data on wins and losses based on fixed or extremely similar builds of lantern, we wouldn't need to think or worry much about this problem - if the win condition cards are helping, the win rates will go up, and if they are hurting, they will go down. It wouldn't matter whether a Stirrings had one less hit or whether you mulligan'd because you had one too many dead cards in your opener - the exact scenarios become somewhat irrelevant, or at least less relevant, in the face of the overall data.
This also wouldn't have to just be 4554551n vs. artfranc007, either - a great many of us could change our builds slightly to fit the "temporarily fixed" packages of Lantern, for the sake of science.
It would take a great deal of participation from everyone here to report their wins and losses against various types of decks, and honestly this idea isn't likely to pan out - I can foresee nearly everyone saying "yeah I liked this list but I changed three cards, here are my results anyway" which corrupts the data to some degree.
Even then the science isn't perfect by a long shot. This would only provide directional information even in perfect circumstances, but I figured it would be worth a shot sharing it with the community.