Maybeboard


Mono U Lantern for lower power formats. I have to bend the rules a bit on tutor count bc the deck concept doesn’t work without a lot of them, but there’s no “Game Changers” as of yet (we’ll see about Ensnaring Bridge)

Textbox is a wip

Shoutouts to ayaMTG for giving me the confidence to brew around this card again.

Lantern Control is a classic Modern prison deck built around Lantern of Insight, Ensnaring Bridge and mill rocks like Codex Shredder & Ghoulcaller's Bell. The goal is to assemble a panopticon where no information is hidden and no more magic can be played. In Modern the deck thrives off fighting linear combo decks with discard spells & struggles against interactive, card-advantage based strategies with repeatable onboard effects. While commander is a vastly different format with many different strategies, the casual focus & immense card pool allow the strategy to be adapted to a four player format.

Your prison has two angles of attack: what people can draw and what people can do on board. Lantern of Insight and the mill rocks grant you some agency over what cards your opponents draw. This allows you to deny them anything useful, forcing them to win with whatever’s already on board. As the number of mill rocks increases & you find additional untap effects, this control subsumes the game. They mathematically cannot draw an out to defeat your lock.

Ensnaring Bridge locks the board, denying your opponents the opportunity to attack. This renders most creatures functionally inert, allowing you to enact your draw control plan in peace. Bridge has a few vulnerabilities your opponents can take advantage of, but when combined with draw control, your opponents can really struggle to find their footing.

Once your opponents are unable to attack, unable to interact with your lock & unable to take meaningful game actions, all that’s left to do is mill them out. You can slowly remove cards until everyone runs out of deck. You can also stick Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and bolt everyone or Sai, Master Thopterist and attack through Ensnaring Bridge with thopters. The means are largely up to whatever you draw.

This section is dedicated to specific cards & the role they play in the deck.

Aether Spellbomb is a flexible interactive piece. It can bounce enemy commanders & problematic creatures, but it can also bounce your own creatures. This opens up avenues for re-buying ETBs, protecting valuable creature or resetting Phyrexian Revoker. Emry can recur Aether Spellbomb repeatedly, letting you loop valuable plays over and over.

Aphetto Alchemist is an efficient untapper that plays well with Emry, mana rocks & mill rocks. His many uses include doubling Emry’s bauble recursion, activating Repurposing Bay twice, generating four mana off of Sol Ring, emergency untapping Codex Shredder & giving attackers pseudo vigilance.

Campfire is a tech card that gains enormous amounts of life in the late game. It also allows you to essentially re-shuffle your entire deck, making it very likely you’ll deck out your opponent’s first.

Codex Shredder is among the most important cards in the deck. Its synergy with Lantern of Insight is simple, but it combos incredibly well with Unwinding Clock & Ensnaring Bridge. If you have 5 mana open during your lock, you can re-buy a counterspell from your graveyard & cast it without surrendering the bridge lock. Then, on your turn, you can re-cast Codex Shredder from the graveyard using Emry.

Imprisoned in the Moon exists to check problematic commanders. Sometimes your opponents have a commander that you simply cannot beat. When that happens, you lock em up for good.

Soul-Guide Lantern are the main forms of graveyard hate. They cycle with Emry’s activated ability as well, though not very efficiently.

Spellskite blocks creatures & takes a bullet for your other pieces.

Trinket Mage finds a lot of your most valuable cards. Of course they can grab Lantern of Insight, but you can also grab Codex Shredder, Aether Spellbomb, Sol Ring or Mishra's Bauble. Aether Spellbomb can bounce the mage back to your hand & find additional cards later.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is your emergency button. He exiles essentially everything but your lock & acts as a very good late game cleaner. Bolt solves a lot of problems & is a totally viable win condition when everything else is assembled.

Wayfarer's Bauble is a simple ramp spell that plays nice with Emry. It gives you an artifact to reduce her cost, but it can be recurred by Emry with ease. If you’re in a slower pod or intend to wipe the board, it’s fine to spend several turns just ramping islands into play.

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Casual

95% Competitive

Date added 5 days
Last updated 9 hours
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

4 - 0 Mythic Rares

32 - 0 Rares

22 - 0 Uncommons

19 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.32
Tokens Ape 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Construct 0/0 C, Elemental 4/4 UR, Manifest 2/2 C, Morph 2/2 C, Thopter 1/1 C
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