As much as I want to play this, someone bought out all the field of dreams where I live and I aint paying 30$ ea for them.
Island Sanctuary is/looks interesting and I can't provide anything other than theory craft here. I'm not sure how useful it is _before_ you hardlock someone out, and by that time you probably already drew into an ensnaring bridge. This deck wants to drop soft locks until the soft lock (check) turns into a hardlock (checkmate). I'm not sure at which point you could use Island Sanctuary other than as the final lock piece to enable the hardlock. That said, this deck is a little bit strange in that you often just mill your own top card away when you don't need it, so it's not like it's going to clutter up your hand too often. This just needs testing imo. Moat is a much more reliable card even though it's pretty slow. It you play black for discard (which may well be the only way to play this deck), this could be better than RiP+Field, but I'm still a huge proponent of Energy Field because it instantly wins against burn and delver; 2 notoriously difficult matches for prison decks.
The price is going up indeed. I bought a couple extra Field of Dreams myself and I'd suggest doing the same. Lantern is a completely new paradigm of prison decks. If crap like Hazezon Tamar and Adun Oakenshield costs €30.00-€50.00 and Invoke Prejudice is €85,00. I don't see why a key card for what may be an entirely new paradigm of prison decks should be €8. Zac is putting up 70%-90% win rates in modern and its in the deck's DNA to be almost impossible to hate out without dedicating 9+ sideboard cards to it. I've seen less competitive decks get ported to legacy successfully (Jund for instance).
I think what Zac did is teach everyone in the magic community that we may be looking at deck development in an outdated fashion and that the whole should indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. For Lantern, synergy is really more important than intrinsic strength.
That said, I'd suggest we focus the discussion on trying to come up with the best version of the deck.
$30 was a steal.
http://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/legends/field-of-dreams
It may be damn good be damn good in Modern where library manipulation sucks, but I'm rather sceptical how it fares in Legacy, given the existence and wide spread of Brainstorm, SDT, and to a lesser extend, Ponder.
And don't get me wrong, I love the idea behind the Modern version of the deck.
I do agree with you fully that it has to proof that it can overcome the cantrip cartel, but Zac's first performance with the deck did beat Omnitell which I would have thought would be one of the worst matchups. I know it's only one game, but apparently running a deck full of cantrips can be defeated with this strategy. For my belief in the deck, the next stop is to defeat Miracles with consistency. If this deck can defeat Miracles or at least have a reasonable game against it, then I have no second thoughts about the tournament worthiness of lantern in legacy.
Sideboard considerations against miracles could be Goblin Welder (to force through artifacts through counterbalance), Extirpate (ditto split second shuffle), Krosan Grip (ditto, split second CB removal) or Jace the Mindsculptor (dodges counterbalance). I think that if you can Surgical/Extirpate Counterbalance, the rest of the match is easy. Pithing Needle will eventually deal with SDT, and a single bridge blanks both Mentor and Entreat the Angels. At that stage you need prison redundancies and try to prevent Council's Judgment from happening.
I think you are also overestimating Ponder. They get one fresh draw from it. I wouldn't want to be in that position. Brainstorm is more dangerous but still, at most they draw 3 useful cards but it is much more probable that they draw into fewer than that. Why?
* You know the top card and you are leaving that on top because it sucks. So that leaves 2 potential business cards.
* Of those two, the chance to hit two consecutive good cards is lower than the chance to hit two consecutive bad cards plus the chance of hitting one good and one bad card.
Also, the new mulligan rule greatly helps this deck out because you can mill your opponent with a mill-rock if he scry's and keeps the top card.
With a little bit of luck Dig Through Time leaves the meta-game at which point we are back to Ponder and Brainstorm (and Gitaxian Probe for certain decks). I believe that's manageable, especially so when running discard spells.
@Zac: I hope you are able to get a hold of the 3 Field of Dreams you need for the deck. If this really becomes a problem I'm willing to lend them out to you.
How would Chains of Mephistopheles work with the basic premise of the deck?
I don't have an updated list on what cards it would hit in the current legacy meta. Off the top of my head:
* Gitaxian Probe, Ponder, Brainstorm
Splash damage:
* Cascade Waterfalls: Ancestrall Visions
* A random Predict?
* Enter the Infinite, but I guess you're gonna be dead regardless, actually, you aren't. Two millstone activations win you the game if they cast Enter the Infinite :P
* Storm: Preordain
* Miracles / Turbo Eldrazi : activated Sensei's Divining Top
* Elves: Glimpse of Nature
What did I miss?
Painful Truths. ;)
Also Silvergill Adept, Relic of Progenitus, Sylvan Library.
Well was gonna buy the 2 Field of Dreams I needed for this when they were 6 dollars and now they are 90. Fuck Magic, I'm unbelievably tilted.
Yeah this is close to the most egregious example of sellers noticing a small amount of people wanting a niche old rare card and deciding that it must be worth ~100 dollars because fuck you.
I wouldn't worry about the card being $100.00. It's in a very volatile state right now price-wise and there is skewed pricing going on right now with TCG as there aren't many other retailers actually actively selling copies. Completed auctions on eBay have the card selling at or around 25-40 a piece. You're actively seeing people post polarizing prices of the card on eBay because they don't know what it's supposed to be.
I'd wait and see how it plays out, but it's definitely not $100.00.
Does Black Vise have a home in this deck? It was just unbanned.
Fools dig for water, corpses or gold
The ice in my teeth keep the Cristal cold
I be shoot'n lava around like an uzi
Watch me turn this glacier into a jacuzzi
I'm so hot people standing around me, just to stay warm
Castin' so many spells looks like I'm playin' Storm
I fuck all your creatures without any lotion
Skeet in yo face, Erratic Explosion
Every time you look I'm doing 2 to your dome!
So scoop up your cards and take your broke ass home
-G.L.M.
Dig Through Time's ban weakens the cantrip cartel. That's good news for Lantern. That leaves miracles as the most problematic matchup imo.
I do already own three Field of Dreams. I wish I could invest the time in developing a competitive Lantern list for legacy but I lack the resources (time and cards) to properly develop and I want to wait to see how the meta settles down with the exclusion of Dig Through Time.
I strongly believe Lantern can be a contender because there are more streamlined combo decks vs. aggressive creature decks. There are many cards that Pithing Needle hits. Many more decks that MB discard suite just destroys and buys us so much time. Again, I just don't have the time or cards to developer and fine-tune a list right now.
A note for anyone testing this and thinking of card suggestions, as this will help speed up the process for you guys: Most cards, regardless of how good they are or bad they are by themselves, will likely be worthless in a Lantern deck. This style of deck doesn't play magic or try to win so don't aim to include cards that do that. You only want cards to increase the likely hood and consistency of getting the lock into place; the game ends then and there.
Examples:
Chains of Mephistopheles is poor because it doesn't prevent them from drawing cards and finding outs.
Black Vise doesn't do anything because our deck doesn't aim to kill people. This is a permanent that only kills and doesn't lock.
Island Sanctuary/Moat *could* be sweet but doesn't stop flyers from killing us (delver, emrakul, angels, etc) and has no effect the turn we play it.
Back to Basics is by itself a sweet card but does nothing to help our lock. Lantern cares not for allowing the opponent to play cards, only the cards available to the opponent.
If you have any specific questions or want to reach out to me (I dont check forums that often) I'm on twitter @utdzac
I have to second this point. I've tried playtesting this deck online and if I hadn't known that it has been successful in the hands of people like Zac here, I would doubt the potency of the deck. It's so far from the normal Magic experience that you have to reconfigure your brain just to effectively pilot the deck, let alone suggest structural changes to the deck list.
I think there is only a small percentage of even the *competent* Magic players (players who otherwise do well with most other decks) that have the ability and desire to succeed with this deck.
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