The Zugzwang Machine | A History of Lantern Control

This video follows the unlikely ascent of Magic’s most peculiar deck: Lantern Control. From a fleeting idea in a forum thread to winning the Pro Tour, Lantern Control challenged our understanding of Magic and forever changed how we think about its core game systems.

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📘 Chapters:
0:00 Card Kingdom
0:29 BASILISK
1:05 The Compulsion to Move
3:12 Assembling the Pieces: The MTGSalvation Thread
9:11 There Is No Game To Be Played
17:21 A Cult of the Obsessed
30:35 The Light That Never Goes Out
35:58 The Magali Villeneuve Playmat Collection
37:01 Rules Technicalities Galore

🖊️ Full Script & Sources:

#mtg #magicthegathering

[ryanharris]

Probably the best commentary in pro tour history:
when Gerry concedes to Luis in the finals, LSV says “although these matches are untimed… Gerry still values the time he has left on this planet.”

[ArmanyteGX]

Amazing job Sam, you made an in depth explanation on the history of a deck within the time it took to play a match against it!

[tdimensional]

"Players inexperienced with the deck will make the crucial mistake of trying to play Magic with it" is such a funny sentiment to have for a deck and I love how right it is

[Somane]

26:48 An opponent once asked me "Do you have any counterspells?" and I said "Maybe". He conceded. I had 7 lands in hand.

[RazzAlerio]

I once read Lantern Control described as
"Systematically putting every card in our decks under intense scrutiny to ensure no fun is had by anyone”

[FlyingKotte]

My favorite lantern interaction I got to make a call on was a Lantern vs UW control endgame. Where neither player could kill the other, the UW player was out of cards, and the Lantern player was recycling Academy Ruins to not deck. However, the UW player had Gideon of the Trials out with an emblem and could not lose, and the lantern player had to stop their loop eventually, meaning that the UW player got the win.

[lucasenraraujo]

The unique thing Lantern does is turning Magic into a complete and perfect information game and that's why the chess analogy is even more apt. This deck always fascinated me as seemingly stupid rube-goldberg machine could go and flip the game on its head and its history, as highlighted in the video, is a delightful insight into the mtg community at its best.

[SurgingChaos]

Lantern Control was probably the last gasp of the old-school internet forums being the main source of players getting together to create, tune, and optimize decks like this. After Lantern Control, you eventually got Reddit, Twitter, and Discord taking over and replacing forums for good. Lantern Control wasn't just unique in its gameplay, but it also represented a turning point in the game's history for how information was being processed.

[BaalThondral]

37:40 The bigger problem for the lantern player was chromatic sphere. Because the draw is tied tothe manaability, that doesnt use the stack, you cant respond to it. So the tron player can always crack a sphere to immediately draw the top card (without you being able to mill it in response). You can however respond to a star activation, because the carddraw on star is a seperate ability that uses the stack.

[project.mirari]

As someone who was referenced in this video, thank you for making this video. This deck and this early time period of Modern was one of the last joys I had in participating in deckbrewing online, and it cemented Magic for me for all this time. I don't play much anymore but I am proud of this deck and how far it's come. Even though I didn't leave tournament results or major impact for the shape of the deck as it is now, I still associate a large part of me as a Magic player to my time in the MTGsalvation thread for Top Control.

Thank you for your dedication to Magic history.

[jonathanrichman]

I'm a chess master who has played for 15 years now. There is nothing more satisfying than pulling off a middlegame zugzwang. It's one of the hardest accomplishments to pull off and it never gets old. Lantern control sounds like such an amazing deck, I wish I got to see it when it was at its prime.

[dhalden]

I used to joke that the win condition of this deck was "making your opponent quit magic." But it is definitely the most fascinating deck in modern by a mile, and I eagerly wait the day of its rise again.

[bobdiedtwice]

From a flavor perspective it's a pacifist's loadout. " I don't want to kill you, I don't want to die. I just want you to walk away from the battlefield."

[genecole]

The social element of this deck is incredible to learn about. Lots of folks talk about Magic as a game of pure numbers - but it's also played by humans, and those humans have baggage that's just as challenging to navigate (from behaviours and etiquette to our unique perceptions of time)

Incredible video, and one that reminds me why I love Magic - and multiplayer gaming in general

[RedEarthTaxidermy]

See, this is a sterling example of why your work is so awesome: you focus on *concepts*. Could be principles of deckbuilding, could be art, could be storyline, could be analyses of a single card, but no matter what, you're plumbing the depths of the *ideas* beneath the game. No matter how many goofy crossover junk sets they release, they can never take that away. Kudos, good sir.

[DNGNDriver]

I love how you describe BBD at 20:19. It's like a character in a Lovecraft story who becomes obsessed with these strange realities after being brushed by it. Great video!

[danielkings]

I love the chess reference in the title. I used to play competitive chess and magic scratches the same mental pathways that makes chess so enjoyable to me. I will soon begin playing magic competitively too. Magic may be the best game ever devised.

[werhsdnas]

One fun fact was that the card Shenanigans was printed by Wizards as an attempt to stop Lantern Control, and the art depicts a lantern being destroyed.

[julianalvarez]

One of my favorite decks I've never played. Probably amongst the most unique gameplans to ever see real competitive success.

[aidancary]

I don't really have the words to communicate how this video specifically and Rhystic Studies videos in general make me feel, but the closest approximation is that after every video I'm glad to be alive. There's such an attention to the small things that make our world wonderful. This isn't a video about a deck, it's a video about community, thinking about the world differently, and that there will always be new worlds to discover no matter how small. Thank you for giving me 40 minutes of that feeling.