Hey peeps, just back from FNM. Something maybe worthy of sharing happened: I'm undefeated, for the final round am paired with a BW Tokens player girl I know. From having played her before and last week, I also know that she's running tons of artifact hate in her board. Fast forward to G3, I'm on the draw and keep a strong 6 that's heavily Opal-reliant, and meet her T2 Stony Silence. My Ensnaring Bridge (then stranded in hand) gets Seize'd and promptly Extracted (To myself: JESUS GOD!).
So I finally draw a into a second land and cast Glint-Nest Crane that grabs me a Lantern, that shows me the next card being a Decay... Long story short she had a board presence of 5 spirits already, and Crane MUNCHED THROUGH them ALL while Fair was slowing down the bleeding, ultimately allowing me to stabilize at 2 life! I then was controlling her topdeck and milled through 2x Stony Silence, 2x Sundering Growth, 2x Leyline of Sanctity, and Pyxis'd away 4x Lingering Souls (skillfully I like to think); eventually drew into Quiet Disrepair which brought me back to 10+ life until I was out of reach for her. But this is not a story about awesomeness. This is a story about saltyness.
The girl, a nice and friendly girl who I was chatting with about her upcoming back surgery, girl that I see week in week out and always enjoy playing against, turned to a salt golem. Fast-forward to Time in the round is called; I count 17 cards in her library, I have three mill rocks including 2 Pyxis. I'm all-in milling her but also using the symmetrical effect of Pyxis to dig me into two more mill rocks; and by the end of the fifth turn I pull it off and mill her exactly to zero card in library! I'm silently extatic, looking at her in expectation of a scoop. Well she wouldn't concede. As I asked why, she turned and spit a storm of salt at me. So I went WTF? And left.
Lantern does this thing to people's brains. It's really one of the weirdest/hardest to manage (for me at least) part of playing the deck I think. Yet I won through a resolved T2 Stony Silence and with extracted Ensnaring Bridges, and that's ******* nuts!!! Bittersweet end of night I guess
Get to Dakmor in hand, Gitrog on table, discard outlet
Draw deck with Dakmor Salvage (or, for cleanup phase kill, craft a hand of Necromancy, Dark Ritual, Skirge Familiar, Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation; requires land on battlefield; thanks to razzliox for this one)
Infinite black mana. You can do this at instant or sorcery speed. At instant speed, razzliox mentions exile of Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation on land for land that produces black mana, tap for B, Dark Ritual to BBB, Necromancy as an instant on Skirge Familiar. Discard land and Kozilek, shuffle library. Dakmor for infinite black mana and infinite draw triggers.
Infinite green mana with Riftsweeper. Let's create a cycle in the state graph. Current state: zero green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Discard Riftsweeper, Necromancy (as an instant) on Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper ETB, Elvish Spirit Guide to library, draw ESG, exile ESG, one green, Culling the Weak sacrificing Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper and Necromancy to graveyard, discard Kozilek, draw library with draw triggers. New state: one green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Cycle complete, infinite green mana.
razzliox, I'd love to hear your updates on the following from a competitive game play perspective, i.e. the following may work, and be very clear to explain in a goldfishing scenario, but may be more vulnerable to disruption:
1 - Dakmor Salvage to generate draw triggers with every flipped land
2 - When you hit Gaea's Blessing or Kozilek, immediately shuffle (there may be edges cases covered by the algorithm, but this works in practice)
3 - Repeat (there may be some edge cases that are covered more fully in your algorithm and proof, mazeTemporal) until draw trigger > number of cards in deck. I find in practice this takes about 5-6 loops to a shuffle trigger.
4 - Draw deck
5 - Discard Kozilek, shuffle into library, and draw so all remaining draw triggers are removed from stack (so we can play non-instants)
5 - Lotus petal, crack for one mana
6 - Discard four lands generating four draw triggers, discard Kozilek shuffling library. mazeTemporal, do you consider this the simplest base case for which you can show every possibility leads, in a finite number of steps, to drawing the entire library to repeat step 5? Of course you can do it with less discarded lands, but it seems in those cases you can only say that you can draw your library with arbitrarily close to 1 probability. For example, say you crack Lotus Petal, discard land (draw trigger), Kozilek shuffle, but the order of the library is not with the petal in the third slot, then you have to shuffle with the first dredge and repeat until petal is in third slot, which will get arbitrarily close to one, but in an infinite number of steps.
So, in the above, crack Petal, 4x land/draw triggers, Kozilek. If at least one land in top 2, then we increase our draw triggers and repeat. If Petal and Kozilek in top two, then bottom four are lands. Dredge, hitting two lands, draw the last two lands, shuffle, and then draw 4-card library with 4+ draw triggers on stack.
Now, it seems it is easier to just use free rocks to land Skirge Familiar, after drawing the deck, but I want to better understand this particular interaction, as it is closely related to the general process of drawing the deck. The above process with Petal is how we win, it seems, with Praetor's Grasp (i.e. discarding four lands after casting Praetor's Grasp), exiling everybody's library (if necessary).
It seems the above allows you create more draw triggers than library size in about five minutes. After that, all the infinite interactions, like creating infinite mana, or casting Praetor's Grasp repeatedly, it seems, can be shortcut with fairly straightforward explanations.
Also, Padeem draws us more cards late game, which will often combo really badly with Ensnaring Bridge. A good card for us on the face of it, but in reality I don't see how it works at all. Good in tezzerator!
Drawing an extra card per turn, after bridge is down, is often very helpful. Sea Gate Wreckage is one of the most powerful lands for Lantern.
Yes, but the good thing about sea gate is you can choose whether or not you use it (so if you have a land on top, you can avoid using it in case you draw 2 lands and can't empty your hand). With Padeem you could end up being forced to draw an extra card, and perhaps not being able to play it. And anyway, it's a 4 mana creature. At best I could see it as a possible sideboard card for after they've boarded out all their creature removal, as the hexproof is nice if you can land it. But I still think it works horribly with ensnaring bridge and costs too much. But incidentally, I don't even think sea gate wreckage is particularly awesome; the reason we ran it is because it was basically a free inclusion, as it's a land and was only really competing with an extra copy of ghost quarter. I think Inventors' fair will work better, as it actually does something while we're establishing a soft lock. Often I find every life point counts with lantern, and have often stabilised on 1 life, or been barely killed before I've been able to stabilise. Inventors' Fair will often be live by turn 2, and almost certainly turn 3.
I haven't yet tested with Inventors' Fair. It's not clear to me that Inventors' Fair is strictly better to Sea Gate Wreckage, though it may be generally better. I think the life gain should be nice, and may save some games in which we get to a very low life (or negate an attacking Noble Hierarch, as has been noted before). Obviously, being able to tutor for a Pithing Needle, Spellskite, or Bridge with Fair is very powerful and will result in some wins or saves of an existing lock that might otherwise be lost. Sea Gate Wreckage lets you significantly speed up turning a tenuous lock into a full lock with multiple mill rocks, which also equates to wins. So, I think it's something like, if you're ahead, Sea Gate Wreckage is probably better than Fair at converting that to a win, but Fair can catch you back up when you risk dying immediately (for example your Bridge just got blown up, or they're searching for their third blue mana to cast a Cryptic Command, bouncing your bridge and swinging for lethal, or Ugin's about to go ultimate).
think you just answered the debate over fair vs. Gate. Gate is a win more, whereas fair is a lose less.
Hey, artfranc007
I've only recently started contributing here, but I've been reading for several months. I've certainly valued your comments along the way.
I'd like to challenge the win-more/lose-less paradigm a bit, not just in your comment, but in also broadly in MTG analysis. Perhaps I misunderstand exactly how others are using the phrase, but it seems people conceptualize "win-more" as "winning a won game faster", i.e. it doesn't modify your overall win percentage. This is certainly not how I was constructing the above analysis. What I meant to say is that Sea Gate Wreckage can push a game state in which you're 60% to win to 75%. A lose-less card like Inventors' Fair (how we're currently understanding it) means game states where, for example, you are 35% become 50%. To evaluate two cards with these properties it is not sufficient to classify them as win-more or lose-less. Instead, we'd want to know just how much the percentages are modified *and* how often our deck finds itself against the meta. For example, I think Inventors' Fair will be at its best in GBx decks where you can slip behind but still have chances to re-establish a stable position with a mere Bridge. Against other decks, if you fall even a little bit behind, e.g. Gx Tron, everything can very easily fall apart (think Oblivion Stone taking out every artifact and Glimmervoids). Here, I guess right now (as I haven't tested) that I might prefer Sea Gate Wreckage.
Also, Padeem draws us more cards late game, which will often combo really badly with Ensnaring Bridge. A good card for us on the face of it, but in reality I don't see how it works at all. Good in tezzerator!
Drawing an extra card per turn, after bridge is down, is often very helpful. Sea Gate Wreckage is one of the most powerful lands for Lantern.
Yes, but the good thing about sea gate is you can choose whether or not you use it (so if you have a land on top, you can avoid using it in case you draw 2 lands and can't empty your hand). With Padeem you could end up being forced to draw an extra card, and perhaps not being able to play it. And anyway, it's a 4 mana creature. At best I could see it as a possible sideboard card for after they've boarded out all their creature removal, as the hexproof is nice if you can land it. But I still think it works horribly with ensnaring bridge and costs too much. But incidentally, I don't even think sea gate wreckage is particularly awesome; the reason we ran it is because it was basically a free inclusion, as it's a land and was only really competing with an extra copy of ghost quarter. I think Inventors' fair will work better, as it actually does something while we're establishing a soft lock. Often I find every life point counts with lantern, and have often stabilised on 1 life, or been barely killed before I've been able to stabilise. Inventors' Fair will often be live by turn 2, and almost certainly turn 3.
I haven't yet tested with Inventors' Fair. It's not clear to me that Inventors' Fair is strictly better to Sea Gate Wreckage, though it may be generally better. I think the life gain should be nice, and may save some games in which we get to a very low life (or negate an attacking Noble Hierarch, as has been noted before). Obviously, being able to tutor for a Pithing Needle, Spellskite, or Bridge with Fair is very powerful and will result in some wins or saves of an existing lock that might otherwise be lost. Sea Gate Wreckage lets you significantly speed up turning a tenuous lock into a full lock with multiple mill rocks, which also equates to wins. So, I think it's something like, if you're ahead, Sea Gate Wreckage is probably better than Fair at converting that to a win, but Fair can catch you back up when you risk dying immediately (for example your Bridge just got blown up, or they're searching for their third blue mana to cast a Cryptic Command, bouncing your bridge and swinging for lethal, or Ugin's about to go ultimate).
7 fast lands feel like too many 4-5 is where you want to be at IMO, consider running a couple pain lands in their place. There are a number of circumstances in which you want 4 mana on turn 4 to play a bridge and another card, running this many fast lands really hurts your chances of doing that.
I'm not sure if I've heard this yet, but it's important to have colorless mana sources if you're playing Sea Gate Wreckage (which is one of the strongest lands in Lantern Control). Skitzafreak included two Darksteel Citadel, but most versions do not. So, if you're playing Sea Gate Wreckage you cannot convert all your lands to fastlands. (There are typically two Academy Ruins in most lists, but that's not enough to consistently turn on Sea Gate Wreckage)
I have been thinking about this my self, Burn has recently started to be more creature based and this has the potential to punish that. I'm worried how constantly we will be able to cast this on turn 1 though. More then likely we will be able to cast it turn 2 or 3 and that might not be fast enough for the decks we want it to fight against.
I think it's important to be open to new builds and new cards, while generally retaining a conservative attitude -- i.e. most new cards will not be sufficiently good for existing Modern decks, as these decks already represent a significant amount of deliberation by a community.
Also, Padeem draws us more cards late game, which will often combo really badly with Ensnaring Bridge. A good card for us on the face of it, but in reality I don't see how it works at all. Good in tezzerator!
Drawing an extra card per turn, after bridge is down, is often very helpful. Sea Gate Wreckage is one of the most powerful lands for Lantern.
It doesn't appear Ceremonious Rejection will be an issue for us. Annul already hit all our artifacts and is rarely played in modern sideboards. So, the only concern is whether this will be played more than Annul given that it also hits Tron. Perhaps there could be some running around in some Jeskai/Nahiri sideboards to help against Tron, but Jeskai/Nahiri already has even more powerful hosers for us in Stony Silence, requiring us to already bring in a reasonable amount of discard. At the very worst, perhaps we'd want to have 7 discard in the 75 (which I already have).
As for Ghirapur Orrery, there are already dangerous cards in sideboards for us that it's important for us to discard if they're in our opponents hand, e.g. Scapeshift. As you know, Crexalbo, Lantern has a lot of insulation against powerful sideboard cards as we play many discard spells in our 75. This may seem strange, and I certainly need to test with it, but I was considering playing Ghirapur Orrery in MY Lantern 75! Of course there is the potentially quite serious issue of them drawing 3 if they manage to go hellbent (which they'll certainly strive for once Orrery is out), but it also helps us. Due to the extra land drop, there's a reasonable chance we won't hit three lands out of four (on turn 4-5ish with ~48 cards left in our library, 13 of which are lands [I run 17 lands total; 4 on the battlefield], there's about a 5.5% chance of hitting three lands, leaving us with one card in hand after we play our stuff). As you mentioned with Bloodchief Ascension, sometimes it is important to have a closer and Ghirapur Orrery can help us end the game. I think it would be useful for the community to keep track of how often our opponents can reasonably go hellbent against us (analogous to you wondering about how many times the opponent will trigger Bloodchief Ascension for us). Also, maybe surgical extraction becomes more valuable when running alongside Ghirapur Orrery (I run three surgical main and one in the board).
That was a great story.
mazeTemporal, I recognize you as having created the algorithm which shows, deterministically, how to draw the deck with Dakmor Salvage, discard outlet, and Gitrog: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/4fbhk1/proof_of_determinacy_for_the_gitrog_monster_combo/
razzliox, I'd love to hear your updates on the following from a competitive game play perspective, i.e. the following may work, and be very clear to explain in a goldfishing scenario, but may be more vulnerable to disruption:
1 - Dakmor Salvage to generate draw triggers with every flipped land
2 - When you hit Gaea's Blessing or Kozilek, immediately shuffle (there may be edges cases covered by the algorithm, but this works in practice)
3 - Repeat (there may be some edge cases that are covered more fully in your algorithm and proof, mazeTemporal) until draw trigger > number of cards in deck. I find in practice this takes about 5-6 loops to a shuffle trigger.
4 - Draw deck
5 - Discard Kozilek, shuffle into library, and draw so all remaining draw triggers are removed from stack (so we can play non-instants)
5 - Lotus petal, crack for one mana
6 - Discard four lands generating four draw triggers, discard Kozilek shuffling library. mazeTemporal, do you consider this the simplest base case for which you can show every possibility leads, in a finite number of steps, to drawing the entire library to repeat step 5? Of course you can do it with less discarded lands, but it seems in those cases you can only say that you can draw your library with arbitrarily close to 1 probability. For example, say you crack Lotus Petal, discard land (draw trigger), Kozilek shuffle, but the order of the library is not with the petal in the third slot, then you have to shuffle with the first dredge and repeat until petal is in third slot, which will get arbitrarily close to one, but in an infinite number of steps.
So, in the above, crack Petal, 4x land/draw triggers, Kozilek. If at least one land in top 2, then we increase our draw triggers and repeat. If Petal and Kozilek in top two, then bottom four are lands. Dredge, hitting two lands, draw the last two lands, shuffle, and then draw 4-card library with 4+ draw triggers on stack.
Now, it seems it is easier to just use free rocks to land Skirge Familiar, after drawing the deck, but I want to better understand this particular interaction, as it is closely related to the general process of drawing the deck. The above process with Petal is how we win, it seems, with Praetor's Grasp (i.e. discarding four lands after casting Praetor's Grasp), exiling everybody's library (if necessary).
It seems the above allows you create more draw triggers than library size in about five minutes. After that, all the infinite interactions, like creating infinite mana, or casting Praetor's Grasp repeatedly, it seems, can be shortcut with fairly straightforward explanations.
Hey, artfranc007
I've only recently started contributing here, but I've been reading for several months. I've certainly valued your comments along the way.
I'd like to challenge the win-more/lose-less paradigm a bit, not just in your comment, but in also broadly in MTG analysis. Perhaps I misunderstand exactly how others are using the phrase, but it seems people conceptualize "win-more" as "winning a won game faster", i.e. it doesn't modify your overall win percentage. This is certainly not how I was constructing the above analysis. What I meant to say is that Sea Gate Wreckage can push a game state in which you're 60% to win to 75%. A lose-less card like Inventors' Fair (how we're currently understanding it) means game states where, for example, you are 35% become 50%. To evaluate two cards with these properties it is not sufficient to classify them as win-more or lose-less. Instead, we'd want to know just how much the percentages are modified *and* how often our deck finds itself against the meta. For example, I think Inventors' Fair will be at its best in GBx decks where you can slip behind but still have chances to re-establish a stable position with a mere Bridge. Against other decks, if you fall even a little bit behind, e.g. Gx Tron, everything can very easily fall apart (think Oblivion Stone taking out every artifact and Glimmervoids). Here, I guess right now (as I haven't tested) that I might prefer Sea Gate Wreckage.
I haven't yet tested with Inventors' Fair. It's not clear to me that Inventors' Fair is strictly better to Sea Gate Wreckage, though it may be generally better. I think the life gain should be nice, and may save some games in which we get to a very low life (or negate an attacking Noble Hierarch, as has been noted before). Obviously, being able to tutor for a Pithing Needle, Spellskite, or Bridge with Fair is very powerful and will result in some wins or saves of an existing lock that might otherwise be lost. Sea Gate Wreckage lets you significantly speed up turning a tenuous lock into a full lock with multiple mill rocks, which also equates to wins. So, I think it's something like, if you're ahead, Sea Gate Wreckage is probably better than Fair at converting that to a win, but Fair can catch you back up when you risk dying immediately (for example your Bridge just got blown up, or they're searching for their third blue mana to cast a Cryptic Command, bouncing your bridge and swinging for lethal, or Ugin's about to go ultimate).
I'm not sure if I've heard this yet, but it's important to have colorless mana sources if you're playing Sea Gate Wreckage (which is one of the strongest lands in Lantern Control). Skitzafreak included two Darksteel Citadel, but most versions do not. So, if you're playing Sea Gate Wreckage you cannot convert all your lands to fastlands. (There are typically two Academy Ruins in most lists, but that's not enough to consistently turn on Sea Gate Wreckage)
I think it's important to be open to new builds and new cards, while generally retaining a conservative attitude -- i.e. most new cards will not be sufficiently good for existing Modern decks, as these decks already represent a significant amount of deliberation by a community.
Drawing an extra card per turn, after bridge is down, is often very helpful. Sea Gate Wreckage is one of the most powerful lands for Lantern.
It doesn't appear Ceremonious Rejection will be an issue for us. Annul already hit all our artifacts and is rarely played in modern sideboards. So, the only concern is whether this will be played more than Annul given that it also hits Tron. Perhaps there could be some running around in some Jeskai/Nahiri sideboards to help against Tron, but Jeskai/Nahiri already has even more powerful hosers for us in Stony Silence, requiring us to already bring in a reasonable amount of discard. At the very worst, perhaps we'd want to have 7 discard in the 75 (which I already have).
As for Ghirapur Orrery, there are already dangerous cards in sideboards for us that it's important for us to discard if they're in our opponents hand, e.g. Scapeshift. As you know, Crexalbo, Lantern has a lot of insulation against powerful sideboard cards as we play many discard spells in our 75. This may seem strange, and I certainly need to test with it, but I was considering playing Ghirapur Orrery in MY Lantern 75! Of course there is the potentially quite serious issue of them drawing 3 if they manage to go hellbent (which they'll certainly strive for once Orrery is out), but it also helps us. Due to the extra land drop, there's a reasonable chance we won't hit three lands out of four (on turn 4-5ish with ~48 cards left in our library, 13 of which are lands [I run 17 lands total; 4 on the battlefield], there's about a 5.5% chance of hitting three lands, leaving us with one card in hand after we play our stuff). As you mentioned with Bloodchief Ascension, sometimes it is important to have a closer and Ghirapur Orrery can help us end the game. I think it would be useful for the community to keep track of how often our opponents can reasonably go hellbent against us (analogous to you wondering about how many times the opponent will trigger Bloodchief Ascension for us). Also, maybe surgical extraction becomes more valuable when running alongside Ghirapur Orrery (I run three surgical main and one in the board).