Life after Lantern wins the Pro Tour!

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Newsletter
Thursday, February 8th

Lantern Control haters, eat your heart out!

Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan is in the books and for some, Luis Salvatto's win with Lantern Control is the stuff nightmares are made of. For others, not so much, as Lantern Control is a viewed as the sweetest and most rewarding prison strategy of all time. Where the community stands on the deck and its future has certainly has been split down the middle, but one thing isn't up for debate—a Modern Pro Tour was a very good idea!

Pro Tour Journey to Nix champion, Patrick Chapin, took some time earlier this week to break down Modern's return to the Pro Tour as only he can; showing that even though Lantern Control won the tournament, Modern's diversity hasn't changed one bit. Once you're done reading that, head over Jadine Klomparens' way so she can show you the proper way to tackle the most played deck in Bilbao, Five-Color Humans, and explain why what you thought was correct probably isn't. And what better way to end things than giving Ross Merriam's defense of Lantern Control a read. Lantern Control may not be the type of deck the four-time SCG Tour champion would play himself, but that doesn't mean he thinks the deck needs to be banned—quite the contrary.

Bilbao was a lot of fun for me. 9-7 wasn't exactly the record I was looking for when I stepped foot in the Bilbao Exhibition Centre but trips to the Guggenheim Museum, Azkuna Zentroa, and Vizcaya Bridge made those seven losses sting a lot less. And hey, it's tough to be upset about getting to watch one of your best friends get second place at the Pro Tour!

Congrats again Gerry T!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

March 3-4
Legacy

March 10-11
Modern

March 24-25
Team Constructed

Pro Tour Rivals Of Ixalan:
Modern Returns
By Patrick Chapin  

The first Modern Pro Tour since fully-powered Eldrazi Aggro ran rampant two years ago at Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, was one of great diversity in both form and function. I was only able to collapse the strategies into eighteen macro-archetypes, and that includes taking the fairly large liberty of merging U/W Control, Jeskai Control, Grixis Control, U/R Pyromancer, and U/B Faeries into one archetype, as well as merging Abzan, G/B, and Jund. Even with all that, 11% of the field doesn't even fall into one of the eighteen most popular archetypes!

To start to get a feel for the Modern metagame present at the Pro Tour, here's a look at the Day 1 and Day 2 popularity of those eighteen archetypes. The conversion rate listed is what percentage of the pilots made day 2, with the important caveat that three of the first eight rounds were Draft. The Plus/Minus category is how much the archetype was above or below average for conversions. Finally, the Day 1 success column is the product of the Day 1 popularity multiplied by the deck's conversion rate (attempting to strike a balance between performance and sample size). Shoutout to Hall of Famer Frank Karsten for the bulk of the metagame data.

Humans: How To Beat A Deck
You Think You Understand
By Jadine Klomparens  

But for me, Humans itself wasn't the most important story of the tournament. No, what I fixated on was how players were going about beating Humans. The success and popularity of Humans wasn't a surprise to any of the competitors at the Pro Tour. Everyone was ready for it, and time and time again I watched feature matches where subtle weaknesses in the Humans deck were capitalized on to great effect.

When Humans broke onto the Modern scene a few months ago, I immediately shortcutted it in my head as a disruptive aggro deck, similar to Death and Taxes or Merfolk. As such, I figured I wanted cheap spot removal, reasonable sweepers, and the ability to turn the corner. These things are all good against Humans, and that shortcut was very useful in letting me quickly react to the new deck on the scene.

My mistake was in never moving past this idea of the Humans deck. I fixated on beating the archetype and never tailored my plan to the Humans deck itself. Watching Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan opened my eyes to a lot of the specific things I could be doing to beat up on the Humans deck, and now I'm going to share them with you.

In Defense Of Lantern
By Ross Merriam  

The deck that once featured Ghoulcaller's Bell and still has several cards you'd begrudgingly put into your draft pile as a fifteenth pick defeated a field full of Snapcaster Mages, Lightning Bolts, and Noble Hierarchs. This should've been a true underdog story that reaffirmed our faith in Magic and cemented the great place where the Modern metagame currently finds itself.

Instead, there was widespread anger directed toward the deck for being unfun and calls for the ban of Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal in order to curb the deck's power. These calls came despite the fact that a scant nine players played the deck in the tournament. That's two percent of the field. The deck was far from dominant, but it was well-positioned against the most popular decks in the room, and Luis Salvatto had plenty of experience with his deck of choice and enough poise to overcome a game loss in his win and in match that would've easily derailed most players.

A great player, playing a well-positioned deck that they have plenty of practice with is exactly who we should want to be winning at the highest levels of Magic. This Pro Tour was a triumph on every level, and the victory for Lantern Control was a big part of that. This is a deck that should be celebrated rather than vilified, because it represents so much of what makes Magic the best game ever made.