Much Abrew: How Good in Lantern Control in 2024, Actually? (Modern)

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! As you probably know, on Monday we had a huge ban list update with one of the changes being Mox Opal returning to Modern. While most people are hyped about Affinity or Grinding Station Combos or Hardened Scales, the first thing I thought of when I heard that Mox Opal was unbanned was that Lantern Control is back! If you don't know Lantern Control, it's one of the most unique decks in Magic's history. It's a prison deck with the primary goal being to use Lantern of Insight to see the top of your opponent's decks and then a bunch of janky mill rocks like Ghoulcaller's Bell, Pyxis of Pandemonium and Codex Shredder to mill any relevant card the opponent might draw until eventually the give up in frustration or run out of cards! Does the return of Mox Opal mean that Lantern Control is back, or does powerful artifact removal like Boseiju and Meltdown mean the plan of sticking a bunch of jank artifacts for several turns it just too big of an ask? Let's jump into a league and find out!

Much Abrew: Lantern Control

Discussion

• First off I should say that I love Lantern Control. It's such a singular archetype and it still blows my mind that Zach Elsik and friends actually figured out a way to put all of these janky pieces together into a functional deck. Lantern Control is like playing a puzzle, if you can fit all the pieces together correctly the end result is that your opponent doesn't get to do anything meaningful for the rest of the game. The deck is about cutting off potential outs your opponent might have, one by one, until it's eventually impossible for them to win, which means that sooner or later you'll pick up the victory!
• I'm not going to go super deep into the individual card choices here, but I did want to cover a couple of basics, because they'll be important in understanding the decks performance. The core of the deck is Lantern of Insight, which allows us to see the top card of our opponent's deck, alongside artifacts that tap to mill a card including Codex Shredder, Ghoulcaller's Bell and Pyxis of Pandemonium, with the idea being that we stick Lantern and a few mill rocks and use them to make sure our opponent never draws a relevant card. If they have something good on the top of their deck we mill it, if it's a harmless land or whatever, we let them keel it.
• The rest of the deck is basically about strengthening the lock, staying alive and cutting off additional outs. Ensnaring Bridge helps ensure we don't die to any creatures that slip through our lock, which lets us focus on milling spells while letting our opponent draw creatures. Pithing Needle shuts off planeswalkers and, perhaps more important, Boseiju, Who Endures. Meanwhile, Urza's Saga and Ancient Stirrings helps us find our important artifacts while new addition Mox Opal speeds up the deck significantly. And that's basically the plan of the deck.
• So how did Lantern Control perform? Honestly, a mixed bag. We finished 3-2 in our league, which is a fine record, although we really got to see the strengths and weaknesses of Lantern Control in 2024. The good news is that now that Mox Opal is back in the fold, the deck felt explosive. We could easily empty our hand, flood the board with artifacts and get the lock set up. 
• On the other hand, the bad news is twofold. First, everyone is playing Meltdown (like literally everyone, all five of our opponent's had it, if I remember correctly) and Meltdown is a blowout. It turns out that because of the recent Mox Opal unbanning, the meta is super prepared for artifacts. This isn't a deal breaker - we can use our lock to keep our opponent from drawing it if things go well - but it does make our job harder, because a single Meltdown slipping through the cracks has potential to lose us the game. The other, more subtle issue was card draw. Cards like Faithless Looting and Preordain are annoying. While Lantern of Insight let's us see the top card of our opponent's deck, it doesn't let us see the second from the top card, while Faithless Looting, Preordain and similar cards let our opponent dig down to that card. We lost a game because Meltdown was second from the top, which is something we really can't control. It's basically a weird version of the "you can't Thoughtseize the top of the deck" problem.
• This has me wondering if we need more protection for our artifacts. Perhaps moving Welding Jar into the main deck or even trying something more radical like playing Heroic Intervention in our sideboard specifically to fight Meltdown and Wrath of the Skies. The biggest problem we had wasn't that our deck performed badly, but that our opponents had these super powered sweepers that occasionally would blow us out. If you have other ideas on how to protect our artifacts, let me know in the comments!
• So how good is Lantern Control is 2024, actually? I think it's probably a tier two or three deck. Mox Opal is a huge buff, but the meta is pretty hostile at the moment. While the deck is still really good at making opponent's not play Magic, it's also fragile so that a single card slipping through our lock can ruin our entire game. I think the deck is good enough that you could go 5-0 if you hit good matchups, but more protection for our artifacts seems helpful.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.