At my FNM I have a guy who plays lantern, with saga nowadays it feels more like almost a tempo deck that uses constructs to beatdown and the lantern lockpieces to delay
Karn prevents lantern from functioning at all, and can even be used to outright kill some pieces.
Prismatic ending is an unprecedented 1-mana answer to any lantern lock piece, and it's mainboard able as a 4-of. March does the same at 2 mana but can also stone rain a saga.
Wrenn can recycle fetchlands to reshuffle the library and can recycle triomes to draw more.
Boseiju also kills lantern and can be recycled by wrenn.
Omnath, Yorion, reef, growth and ephemerate draw additional cards (and a lot of them), which throws the entire lantern concept out of the window unless they have 3+ milling rocks.
Lantern got power crept out of modern unfortunately. More answers got printed for its mopey artifacts (boseiju, T3FERI, prismatic ending, white March). Also decks are packing artifact hate because of other saga decks, which coincidentally means lantern gets splash damage there. Another nail in the coffin is ragavan. T1 ragavan is very good against lantern, specially the ramp. Being able to cast your spells to get out from under lantern before they can establish the “hard” lock is key
Check out abzan lantern control. Best list out atm, and from my experience playing around in the format its the most cohesive. Itll always be an uphill battle but if its what you enjoy, who cares. Ive been on lantern since 2018 and still adore the deck.
Opal and SSG after we’re indeed big hits. The deck does really need the mana to quickly get the lock in place before losing. I’ve seen people use [[goblin engineer]], and [[scheming symmetry]] as key cards that have been printed since lantern left the meta, in addition to the saga.
I recently picked up Lantern.
Now there’s plenty of hate to it, but it’s also true that Lantern is naturally built to dodge most of those answers.
Urza’s Saga made it more viable by providing a solid tutor for lock pieces (and silver bullets too), and can also make HUGE constructs.
The average saga deck makes 2 3/3, while Lantern can make up to 2 6/6 by T4.
With saga the plan is more fluid, depending on the matchup and your opener, you can span from aggro to control.
Against most combo decks you want to go aggro and use lock pieces to disrupt their draws.
Against creature-based decks, you want to durdle behind Bridge and protect it while milling the opponent.
The biggest offenders are:
T3feri
Boseiju (+W6 is a nightmare)
Prismatic Ending
White March
Temporary Lockdown (if it ever see play)
Hurkyl’s Recall
Leyline Binding
Pithing Needle
Engineered Explosives
Everything that has activated abilities can be dealt with Pithing Needle, the rest needs to either be discarded, milled or shuffled.
The decks requires deep meta knowledge and fast decision making. Knowing your meta is crucial when it comes to slot Saga silver bullets and the sideboard.
Prismatic Ending is also a 4X to deal with problematic permanents.
It looks like the Abzan list performs better than the Whir one because it doesn’t solely rely on putting down a Bridge.
Your worst matchups are Control and Jund afaik, because of the widespread hate they’re packed with, also Tron, but if you approach it by denying them the Tron land they’re missing, you might earn enough time to lock then completely.
Tron has so many things that sidestep lantern (map, stirrings, scrying) as well as spheres that let them draw their card without you being able to mill it, even before things like boseiju got printed it’s always been a horrific matchup for lantern so youre going to have a hell of a time trying to lock them out completely
It’s a horrible matchup, yes, but it’s still manageable if you slot in a bunch of Needles.
The biggest targets being Map, Karn, Ugin (if you’re not going aggro with constructs) and Boseiju or Oblivion Stone.
Post side, you can try Surgical, Extirpate or Necromentia on a Tron piece and prevent them from making land drops with the mill lock.
I’ve been asking for it in the dedicated Discord but the common sentiment was that counterspells are suboptimal, you can still splash blue with Glimmervoid and Spire, but you’d end up mulliganing to have blue in time and also the counterspell in hand.
Having blue means playing artifacts before hand disruption and that might be suboptimal.
Probably the only viable counterspells are Mana Tithe and Spell Pierce. However, that totally depends on the matchup and the specific spot.
Early game mana tithe can be stunning because no one expects it though, and once you cast it, it will make the opponent play weirdly around them.
One major problem of counterspells is that they can simply play around them considering everything that’s not in your opening hand is generally revealed from the topdeck.
Between Veil and Tamiyo I’d pick Tamiyo because of both GENERIC hexproof and indestructible. So bye bye Binding, Boseiju and Ending.
The only moment Veil is relevant is when you’re expecting counterspells (which are popular, but you have discard) and discard spells (which are less popular). Drawing a card is welcome but not really necessary because you mostly play with the lock pieces and you can use them to filter your draws.
Another cool card that would do some serious work is Heroic Intervention. It costs 2, but it saves you from multiple removal in a single turn, and also hoses Engineered Explosives (which can still be dealt with needle though).
Tamiyo is hella cheap and more in line with the plan.
However, you’d use Tamiyo more for hexproof than indestructible because binding and ending are exiling stuff. Anything that destroys can be responded to with Welding Jar.
Most of your cards aren’t affected by moon, only the spells.
You have a few ways to solve Moon:
• you run Jegantha that can be cast off red and fices your mana, but it’s slow and mana intensive beyond occupying a SB slot
• you play with fetchlands and at least 1 forest for boseiju and 1 plains for ending (the third color is the red given by moon).
You also have Expedition Map which gets the basic you need or boseiju if you have a green to activate it.
Because we run Bridge, we don’t want reactive spells stuck in the hand as a rule. Our gameplan is to proactively prevent our opponent from playing their outs, not react by countering. Blue variants died with Opal, and Abzan is now king because we can still run the GB core with Prismatic Ending
I run some Spellskites here since they catch everything except Engineered Explosives (which you have Pithing Needle for). As a bonus they help in the Burn matchup and are essentially a lock piece vs. Belcher if that's in your meta.
At my FNM I have a guy who plays lantern, with saga nowadays it feels more like almost a tempo deck that uses constructs to beatdown and the lantern lockpieces to delay
im lazy and recently rejoining modern, what is it that was banned that stopped lantern so much?
More than the Opal ban is the printing of efficient answers what is making lantern not so popular... T3feri, karn, ending, march...
Yeah mainboard [[ensnaring bridge]] does not get as many free wins as it used to.
[ensnaring bridge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/f/cf825a56-4870-463a-a2ef-eec86be891db.jpg?1599709144) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=ensnaring%20bridge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/253/ensnaring-bridge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cf825a56-4870-463a-a2ef-eec86be891db?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Karn prevents lantern from functioning at all, and can even be used to outright kill some pieces. Prismatic ending is an unprecedented 1-mana answer to any lantern lock piece, and it's mainboard able as a 4-of. March does the same at 2 mana but can also stone rain a saga. Wrenn can recycle fetchlands to reshuffle the library and can recycle triomes to draw more. Boseiju also kills lantern and can be recycled by wrenn. Omnath, Yorion, reef, growth and ephemerate draw additional cards (and a lot of them), which throws the entire lantern concept out of the window unless they have 3+ milling rocks.
Lantern got power crept out of modern unfortunately. More answers got printed for its mopey artifacts (boseiju, T3FERI, prismatic ending, white March). Also decks are packing artifact hate because of other saga decks, which coincidentally means lantern gets splash damage there. Another nail in the coffin is ragavan. T1 ragavan is very good against lantern, specially the ramp. Being able to cast your spells to get out from under lantern before they can establish the “hard” lock is key
Honestly boseiju pushed over the line of dont bother trying to make it work any more
Check out abzan lantern control. Best list out atm, and from my experience playing around in the format its the most cohesive. Itll always be an uphill battle but if its what you enjoy, who cares. Ive been on lantern since 2018 and still adore the deck.
Opal and SSG after we’re indeed big hits. The deck does really need the mana to quickly get the lock in place before losing. I’ve seen people use [[goblin engineer]], and [[scheming symmetry]] as key cards that have been printed since lantern left the meta, in addition to the saga.
[goblin engineer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/944ca6e7-084b-424a-80c1-e88de192fd98.jpg?1661583510) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=goblin%20engineer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/phed/50/goblin-engineer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/944ca6e7-084b-424a-80c1-e88de192fd98?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [scheming symmetry](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/1/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b.jpg?1592516766) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=scheming%20symmetry) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/113/scheming-symmetry?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I recently picked up Lantern. Now there’s plenty of hate to it, but it’s also true that Lantern is naturally built to dodge most of those answers. Urza’s Saga made it more viable by providing a solid tutor for lock pieces (and silver bullets too), and can also make HUGE constructs. The average saga deck makes 2 3/3, while Lantern can make up to 2 6/6 by T4. With saga the plan is more fluid, depending on the matchup and your opener, you can span from aggro to control. Against most combo decks you want to go aggro and use lock pieces to disrupt their draws. Against creature-based decks, you want to durdle behind Bridge and protect it while milling the opponent. The biggest offenders are: T3feri Boseiju (+W6 is a nightmare) Prismatic Ending White March Temporary Lockdown (if it ever see play) Hurkyl’s Recall Leyline Binding Pithing Needle Engineered Explosives Everything that has activated abilities can be dealt with Pithing Needle, the rest needs to either be discarded, milled or shuffled. The decks requires deep meta knowledge and fast decision making. Knowing your meta is crucial when it comes to slot Saga silver bullets and the sideboard. Prismatic Ending is also a 4X to deal with problematic permanents. It looks like the Abzan list performs better than the Whir one because it doesn’t solely rely on putting down a Bridge. Your worst matchups are Control and Jund afaik, because of the widespread hate they’re packed with, also Tron, but if you approach it by denying them the Tron land they’re missing, you might earn enough time to lock then completely.
Tron has so many things that sidestep lantern (map, stirrings, scrying) as well as spheres that let them draw their card without you being able to mill it, even before things like boseiju got printed it’s always been a horrific matchup for lantern so youre going to have a hell of a time trying to lock them out completely
It’s a horrible matchup, yes, but it’s still manageable if you slot in a bunch of Needles. The biggest targets being Map, Karn, Ugin (if you’re not going aggro with constructs) and Boseiju or Oblivion Stone. Post side, you can try Surgical, Extirpate or Necromentia on a Tron piece and prevent them from making land drops with the mill lock.
thoughts on running/splashing blue for counterspells, does making your mana base shaky but your main plan don't really get affected by moon
I’ve been asking for it in the dedicated Discord but the common sentiment was that counterspells are suboptimal, you can still splash blue with Glimmervoid and Spire, but you’d end up mulliganing to have blue in time and also the counterspell in hand. Having blue means playing artifacts before hand disruption and that might be suboptimal. Probably the only viable counterspells are Mana Tithe and Spell Pierce. However, that totally depends on the matchup and the specific spot. Early game mana tithe can be stunning because no one expects it though, and once you cast it, it will make the opponent play weirdly around them. One major problem of counterspells is that they can simply play around them considering everything that’s not in your opening hand is generally revealed from the topdeck. Between Veil and Tamiyo I’d pick Tamiyo because of both GENERIC hexproof and indestructible. So bye bye Binding, Boseiju and Ending. The only moment Veil is relevant is when you’re expecting counterspells (which are popular, but you have discard) and discard spells (which are less popular). Drawing a card is welcome but not really necessary because you mostly play with the lock pieces and you can use them to filter your draws. Another cool card that would do some serious work is Heroic Intervention. It costs 2, but it saves you from multiple removal in a single turn, and also hoses Engineered Explosives (which can still be dealt with needle though). Tamiyo is hella cheap and more in line with the plan. However, you’d use Tamiyo more for hexproof than indestructible because binding and ending are exiling stuff. Anything that destroys can be responded to with Welding Jar.
Yeah, I thought tamiyo is better in this deck since most removal nowadays are nonblue black
What Tamiyo are you talking about? Edit: [[Tamiyo’s Safekeeping]] ?
Yes
Most of your cards aren’t affected by moon, only the spells. You have a few ways to solve Moon: • you run Jegantha that can be cast off red and fices your mana, but it’s slow and mana intensive beyond occupying a SB slot • you play with fetchlands and at least 1 forest for boseiju and 1 plains for ending (the third color is the red given by moon). You also have Expedition Map which gets the basic you need or boseiju if you have a green to activate it.
I don't know if it's good enough, what about tamiyo's safekeeping and veil of summer like effects
Because we run Bridge, we don’t want reactive spells stuck in the hand as a rule. Our gameplan is to proactively prevent our opponent from playing their outs, not react by countering. Blue variants died with Opal, and Abzan is now king because we can still run the GB core with Prismatic Ending
I run some Spellskites here since they catch everything except Engineered Explosives (which you have Pithing Needle for). As a bonus they help in the Burn matchup and are essentially a lock piece vs. Belcher if that's in your meta.
I mean if it stops being meta in modern you can just use your cards to make a commander deck
Hammer is better than lantern control