Are Affinity and lantern control still viable
Modern forum
Posted on Jan. 25, 2020, 7:26 p.m. by Will361405
I was recently considering building one of these decks pre opal ban, are they 100% dead, or do they still have legs?
BrandonJamesCAC says... #3
In short, not right now. I generally gauge competitive Modern decks against whatever they can do vs Burn, Jund and Grixis Death's Shadow.
Opal was crucial. Burn is too fast and Death's Shadow wants to take 8 damage.
January 27, 2020 2:08 a.m.
Flooremoji says... #4
I think opal ban was the nail in the coffin. They weren't showing up/doing well in any tournaments recently and opal gave them a much faster gameplan. It's possible that the new meta will be the kind that lantern preys on, but for now it will need some serious adaptions to be viable.
January 27, 2020 1:43 p.m.
aaron_the_great says... #5
as much as I like affinity and lantern control I hve to admit there dead
Oloro_Magic says... #2
Affinity is pretty dead, at least I haven't seen any affinity guru's trying anything, opal just allowed them to be so greedy with their spell suite and are just so all in on playing everything quick. Hardened Scales Affinity may still have some legs though but without opal is significantly slower, maybe too slow for the current meta.
Lantern is harder to judge, it already was not very well positioned pre-ban just because the decks at the top of the format weren't really the decks lantern preys on. That said, it can also be pretty greedy and opal gave it some much needed acceleration in order to set up the soft-lock quickly. That's hard to judge though, lantern style decks could have legs in the right meta but its really dependant on just that because you have lost the ability to very quickly get ahead against medium to hard matchups but will still be pretty decently positioned against certain decks in the format.
January 25, 2020 8 p.m.