Lantern Control: The Return of Control to Modern

Magic design has moved away from the sorts of cards needed to make Lock decks work. Getting locked out of a game and being forced to sit and watch, helpless to impact the game, is a seriously unfun experience for players. As a result, we don’t see much support for strategies that attempt to do this. I’d love to include a recent Lock deck to show how they look today, but there haven’t been any successful Lock decks in years. This is not to say they will never return, or that someone couldn’t break a format open by discovering something R&D missed. Control decks may have begun with Lock, but they haven’t ended with it. 

I read this section from Patrick Chapin's Next Level Deckbuilding the same day Zac Elsik was unseemingly making his way through day 1 of Grand Prix Charlotte, more than a month ago. The same weekend, I was tuning a Legacy Ral Zarek Stasis deck as a thought experiment, reading Patrick Chapin’s words on the Lock deck archetype. Little did we know the cards had all been there for three years, waiting for Modern to settle just right so that it requires just a few key artifacts to lock a player out of the game.

One of the biggest questions players have of the Modern format is “why are there no control decks?” Of course, the people asking this really mean “why are there no blue, draw-go control decks?” Shaun McLaren’s (at-the-time-named) American Control deck took down Pro Tour Born of the Gods, but the likes were never to see success again. Some would argue that deck succeeded largely because it was a Pro Tour metagame: where control players can more accurately assume how to answer the metagame.

I’m not good enough of a theorist or Modern guru to effectively put into words why “draw-go” control decks can’t succeed in Modern, but I don’t need to. We already mostly understand that it’s because the format is so broad that you can’t effectively tune your deck to be able to control every deck’s threats. Particularly not in a format where most decks are midrange decks with a combo element.

But for people clamoring for a control deck in modern: we finally have one. One that has been tested and tuned to be good enough to stay.

Magic players from the 90s or those aware of Magic history can clearly see how "Lantern Lock" is a control deck, and that it even resembles The Deck.

Fundamentally, these decks are from the same family: Lock.

Let’s read Patrick Chapin’s words on The Deck, since it works in explaining how Lantern Control functions:

The Deck was, if not the first first Control deck, the line in the sand that changed how Magic players thought about the game. The Deck harmonized multiple then-unappreciated thresholds of Magic strategy. Most important of these was card advantage, which included drawing extra cards, destroying (or neutralizing) multiples of the opponent’s cards with a smaller number of cards, and forcing your opponent to draw dead cards. 

The Deck used one-for-one removal and permission spells to give itself enough time and secure its lock pieces and sources of card advantage: Moat neutralized all creatures, Serra Angel neutralized all creatures that can’t properly attack into her, the lack of targets for Lightning Bolt and other removal spells, and of course the draw spells drew cards.

 Lantern Control gains the same advantages to lock opponents out of the game through different means. Ensnaring Bridge neutralizes most every attacking creature, interactive spells are rendered without useful targets other than the red herring that is Spell Skite, and Lantern controls the opponent’s draw stop keep them from drawing relevant spells. Lantern Control main-decks unusual cards like Pithing Needle and Surgical Extraction because they answer the few cards that could stop its game plan.

I would like to introduce the matchups where Lantern Control will struggle, but it must be noted that, as a Lock deck, it is an unfair deck, meaning it fights on an axis most opponents cannot interact with. Unfair decks bring guns to a sword fight.

Against Fair decks, the problem areas are:

• Sideboard hate to fight the unfair decks. In particular, cards prepared for Affinity: Stony Silence, Shatterstorm, Ancient Grudge, Kataki… 
• Aggressive creature decks that can finish you with burn. 
• Creatures that can attack through Ensnaring Bridge, such as Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch, that then kill you with exalted triggers or pump spells. 

Against Unfair decks:

• Their plan coming together faster than yours. Amulet Bloom, Tron, and Ad Nauseum can win before you lock them out of the game, and can win through Ensnaring Bridge. 
• Burn is a problematic unfair deck because its creatures deal damage to you well before Ensnaring Bridge comes online, and they have the tools to burn you out – sidestepping your tools of suppression. 
• Infect is similar to burn in that they can likely attack through an Ensnaring Bridge and finish you with pump spells. 

Lantern Control has tools to fight against all of these problem areas, a testament to how well built it is. The interactive spells help to remove the cards that matter in their opening hands or early resolved permanents before locking them out.

Congratulations to Zac Elsik. Many of us will strive for a lifetime to break the format in such a shocking, innovative way as you did.