Why the hell would someone bother building a deck with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas? Why would she use Ensnaring Bridge and not build Lantern Control? What is going on?
For one, I don't own all of the pieces to Lantern Control but I do own all the pieces for this deck. I played a similar deck which was more into the prison element, with Lodestone Golems, Tidehollow Scullers, Mox Opals, Thirst for Knowledge and Trinispheres. As the Modern format gained speed this angle of attack was no longer reasonable.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is my favourite Modern legal planeswalker and I think he's criminally underplayed. Often times it's a four mana spell with suspend 1 which reads "Win the game."
When Wizards unbanned Sword of the Meek, Tezzeret got even better. He finds both pieces of Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek and when he doesn't find those he finds lock pieces. What's not to love!? As we'll see, plenty.
1 Academy Ruins
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
5 Swamp
4 Watery Grave
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Executioner's Capsule
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Sword of the Meek
3 Talisman of Dominance
3 Thopter Foundry
1 Damnation
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Serum Visions
1 Go for the Throat
2 Spellskite
1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1x Curse of Death's Hold
2x Darkblast
2x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Leyline of the Void
2x Negate
2x Pithing Needle
2x Thoughtseize
1x Vampiric Link
1x Witchbane Orb
During Eldrazi Winter there were four Ghost Quarter to try and improve the matchup but now with the Eye of Ugin ban the deck can support more basic lands to improve Blood Moon matchups.
There are two utility lands in Academy Ruins and Sea Gate Wreckage. The Ruins gives some inevitability and the Sea Gate Wreckage gives late game card draw.
The Blinkmoth Nexuses are deceptive in their inclusion. They serve as win conditions (seriously), bockers for Planeswalkers and sacrifice outlets for Thopter Foundry to get the combo chain going.
There are two planeswalkers and they're both critical to the gameplan. Liliana serves triple duty, each of her modes is impactful. Her ultimate helps keep opposing hate pieces off the board, like Stony Silence. Tezzeret, as described previously, finds win conditions and wins the game. Tezzeret also has a hidden mode of make your artifacts a 5/5 for the surprise beatdown.
Tezzeret has the super hidden mode of completely destroying Affinity. Turning 0/2 Ornithopters into 5/5s means they can't attack through an Ensnaring Bridge. Turning Cranial Plating into a creature means it can't be equipped. He really makes the Affinity matchup very easy.
This is why we're playing this deck. First out of the gates is 4 Ensnaring Bridge. Modern is still a heavy creature format which means Ensnaring Bridge is the broadest way to impact a large number of decks.
Executioner's Capsule is a sneaky inclusion. It can be rebought with Academy Ruins and found with Tezzeret. The targetting restrictions means the Jund matchup is worse, but the Capsules integrate well Liliana by leaving a Doom Blade in play instead of our hand. We'll talk more about the Jund Menace later on.
Ratchet Bombs help clean up bothersome permanents and fill the gap between Executioner Capsule and a real removal spell.
Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry are good and should be played together. Thanks Wizards!
Talisman of Dominance serves that triple purpose of accelerating mana, activating Sea Gate Wreckage and sacrifical fodder for Thopter Foundry. It's never a good feeling to draw these after turn 7 but it's great on turn 2. The hidden mode is accelerating into a Tezzeret on turn 3 and then potentially attacking for 10 on turn 4, if one of the land plays was a Blinkmoth Nexus.
Damnation is never expected by the opponent. Ever. It's like people forgot Wrath of God was colour shifted. Unfortunatley I only own the one. I'd really like two and to kick the Go for the Throat out of the deck.
Inquisition of Kozilek strips worrysome cards out of their hand. Quick creatures, counterspells or hate cards. A fourth one would be welcome.
We're playing blue so we have to play Serum Visions. It's nice to be able to filter the draw steps even though it still sucks as a spell.
Go for the Throat is kind of a proxy for Damnation and kind of another removal spell that hits the Jund creatures. It's pretty bad and could be the second Damnation or even a Dismember. It feels bad to have this dud against Affinity but the matchup is so good that it doesn't really matter.
Spellskite is a great utility creature that can shut down Infect and serves a valuable purpose againt Burn and Abrupt Decay out of BGx decks.
I like Ashiok for the control matchups and the uninteractive combo decks as a way to attack them in a meaningful way. Now don't get me wrong, it's not good in the latter two matchups but that's going to be a recurring theme.
For Affinity and Infect. Neither deck can really beat it.
For Affinity and Infect and those annoying White hatebear decks. Also not the worst for control decks packing Snapcaster and Vendilion Clique.
Originally for the Collected Company decks but it's found a slot against Nahiri decks and Dredge. With the decline of Collected Company one of these might morph into a card to improve the GBx matchup, like...
GBx, the mirror and dredge.
Burn, Control decks, uninteractive combo decks (Turns, Ad Nauseum, etc), Scapeshift and other decks not interested in attacking very much.
Useful for creature lands, opposing Lilianas and other annoying permanents.
More for control and uninteractive combo decks.
For burn.
Merfolk and Burn. Merfolk is going to bring in Hurkyll's Recall and then they're not going to be able to use them because there's a Witchbane Orb in play and then they literally can't answer an Ensnaring Bridge.
The deck plays out like a prison deck with several lock pieces. The lock pieces are Ensnaring Bridge, Thopter/Sword, Liliana, Executioner's Capsule/Academy Ruins. Once the lock pieces are in place for game one many opposing decks can't provide an answer or a way to otherwise win. The deck can find a win condition at its leisure.
Opening hands which have a bridge on turn 3 and a way to quickly lose the cards are best.
There is no Ancestral Vision or Thirst for Knowledge in the deck at present because drawing cards with Ensnaring Bridge out isn't a very good idea. Thirst requires a bigger density of artifacts than this deck plays. There is probably a version of the deck that exists which plays those draw spells.
The duck crush Affinity like it's our job. It's such an easy matchup. We also have a great matchup vs Merfolk.
The deck loses to Jund. Jund's creatures that matter are black which makes the Executioner's Capsules bad. They have a lot of Ancient Grudge effects, plus Scavenging Ooze to break up Thopter/Sword.
We lose to uninteractive combo decks like Ad Nauseum and the infinite turns deck. THey're just bad and there are so many dead cards in the starting deck.
Tron beats us easily because they have Karn and Ugin which we need two sideboard Pithing Needles for. They have more ways to answer our threats than we can deal with.
There's a lot of fun to be had in prison strategies. No, really! There are Lodestone Golems and Tidehollow Scullers and Phyrexian Revokers, which were the core of the first iteration of this deck. There's an option to go more blue heavy and favour Vedalken Shackles and other hard control cards like counterspells.
I had to set the deck down before I could evaluate these options in order to play a good deck for the most recent WMCQ.
In an ideal world I would be able to put more repetitions into the deck to test more configurations. It's still a fun deck to play when it works, but don't expect to win anything more than FNM with it.