Lantern Lobotomist [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Exile Lantern Control Mill Multiplayer Primer Prison Top Deck Matters UB (Dimir)

Kineverence

Land (36)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Duskmantle, House of Shadow
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 7x Island
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Mystifying Maze
• 1x Nephalia Drownyard
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x River of Tears
• 1x Sea Gate Wreckage
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Watery Grave

Creature (7)

• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Scrib Nibblers
• 1x Thassa's Oracle
• 1x The Reality Chip
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Wizened Snitches

Instant (18)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Demonic Consultation
• 1x Dimir Charm
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Shadow of Doubt
• 1x Siphon Insight
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Thought Scour
• 1x Winds of Rebuke

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Mnemonic Betrayal
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Sealed Fate
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Field of Dreams
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Planar Void
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sphinx's Tutelage

Commander (1)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Codex Shredder
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Ghoulcaller's Bell
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Lantern of Insight
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Meekstone
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mindlock Orb
• 1x Pyxis of Pandemonium
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance

Planeswalker (4)

• 1x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

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Lantern Control is an Effective Lobotomization Method

What is Lantern Control?

Lantern Control is a Mill and Control deck popularized in the Modern Format wins by means of controlling both players draws and spell access during the course of the game. The ability to deny useful cards on draw is quite powerful and this deck is an attempt to show it can be done in its own way in EDH!

So how do we do it?

Starting off with our commander we decided to utilize Circu, Dimir Lobotomist giving us access to some of the best top deck manipulators in Black/Blue as well as have quite a helpful ability for granting an exile level "Fateseal" anytime we cast a blue and/or a black spell (Blue and Black spells exile off two libraries that can be different due to both triggering separately on Circu) controlling the top of the library! The ability also targets the library rather than the player so pesky player hexproof does not matter!

But how, you may ask, do we know we are making the right choice of which opponent to exile the top of library from without knowing the top of the library? Easy, We simply look...

Utilizing cards such as Field of Dreams, Wizened Snitches, Lantern of Insight, Trinket Mage (which can fetch Lantern of Insight) we can get a permeant view of the top of everyone's library including our own in case we want to exile our own library to filter into a better card.

Cards that care about the top of our library include Dark Confidant, Sensei's Divining Top and The Reality Chip

This deck also has various one time view effects that also double as additional exile or milling cards.

Removing the Top of those Libraries

Here is a fairly large section so lets try to break them down into repeatable and one time effects.

Repeatable: Nephalia Drownyard, Duskmantle, House of Shadow, Codex Shredder, Ghoulcaller's Bell, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Jace, Memory Adept, Sphinx's Tutelage, Scrib Nibblers, Pyxis of Pandemonium

One Time Spells: Thought Scour, Predict (cool card draw tech), Reality Shift and Winds of Rebuke (both doubles as removal), Dimir Charm (also a Counter spell!), Portent, Extract

Keep in mind anytime we cast a blue and/or black spell we do obtain the one time effect with our commander out as well as that being exile!

Keeping them in the Lantern

There is always the fear someone will attempt to try and break out of our lantern control strat... how dare they... The main ways I could see our strategy get hosed is if they try to draw more than 1 card a turn, if they try to tutor an answer, and if our strategy of milling is helping out a graveyard deck.

Normally we may not need to worry if we don't give our opponents any cards that allow those options but keep in mind: some things may already be in hand when we establish a lantern lock, the opposing commanders may include these effects and we cant say no to that, or maybe something slipped through our lobotomy procedure...

No Worries! We included some helpful tools to deal with each of these scenarios

To prevent multiple draw

Notion Thief, Narset, Parter of Veils (we used to also use Hullbreacher pre ban.. BOOOOO)

To prevent Pesky Tutoring

Shadow of Doubt, Opposition Agent and Ashiok, Dream Render

To prevent Helping Graveyard decks

Planar Void and Grafdigger's Cage along with some one offs like Bojuka Bog

Winning the game?

So how do we win?

Well we are not really trying to mill out our opponents fully. Just enough to prevent their gameplay while establishing our win state

We are in Dimir Colors so we did include the most efficient combo being Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation casting Thassa's Oracle and holding priority to its ETB and casting Demonic Consultation naming a card not in our deck to remove our library and them letting the trigger resolve to win the game

Blue and being artifact heavy allows us to abuse the Iso-Rev combo casting Isochron Scepter exiling Dramatic Reversal from hand. For {2} more mana we can tap the Scepter to cast a copy of Dramatic Reversal untapping the Isochron Scepter and any our our mana rocks or milling tap creatures/effects. If we can get a net even mana of {2} from our artifacts we can repeat this an infinite number of times milling our opponents entire library with mill effects or even the commander as Dramatic Reversal is a BLUE spell at the end of the day which gives us even safer mill, Exile! That helps if someone is using a shuffler titan.

Our last major win condition is more on flavor being Bloodchief Ascension that will slowly kill our opponents as well as granting us lifegain by milling. The more oponents we have the more people milling, more life is lost, so more life is gained! Keep in mind the more opponents we have the harder it is to control the whole table....

Date added	3 years
Last updated	8 months
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 35 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 18 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.09
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C
Folders	EDH Deck Ideas