Modern Musings: Amulet is Still Alive

Hey everyone and welcome to another Modern Musings!  This week we are going to take a look at the Amulet of Vigor deck that a few people have been doing well with and talk about the synergies and interactions to look out for when playing this deck.

Many people felt that once Summer Bloom was banned, this deck would die, joining the likes of Cloudpost decks in the halls of obscurity.  But it appears that a few dedicated individuals have kept the deck alive at around the tier 2 level.  Let’s take a peek at what the deck looks like now:

There’s a lot to go over in this deck, so first let’s look at the lands:

Important Lands

Tolaria West: allows us to tutor for anything that has a converted mana cost of zero in the deck.  This is probably the most important card in the deck as it allows us to fill the holes in our hand, whatever they may be.  This card comes pretty close to being a Grim Tutor in our deck as we’ve stacked it full of zero-costed cards.  You can go get a summoner’s pact to tutor for Azusa, Lost but Seeking or Primeval Titan.  You can tutor for bojuka bog to hose your opponent’s graveyard deck.  You get the point, it’s a versatile card that ties the deck together.

Simic Growth Chamber: This is our bread and butter bounce land.  It’s the core mechanic that makes this deck work.  With amulet of vigor, you can play it, tap it for 2 mana, then bounce another land or itself if you have another land play for the turn.

Khalni Garden: Good against aggressive decks, especially since you can play this multiple times to create a small army of chumpers.

Important Spells

Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Azusa is the replacement for Summer Bloom, and allows all of your degenerate plays to work.  You can play a bounceland three times with her and play Primeval Titan getting Boros Garrison and Slayers’ Stronghold giving your titan haste if you control an Amulet of Vigor.

Amulet of Vigor: The reason the bouncelands work with the deck.  This allows you to give your Primeval Titans haste, which is pretty good I hear.

Ancient Stirrings: Allows you to tutor for your most important cards, key to any opening hand.

Sakura-Tribe Scout: The other new addition to this deck, Sakura-Tribe Scout is fairly self explanatory, it allows you to play more lands on your turn or your opponent’s turn (most likely their end step).

Hands to Keep

Sakura-Tribe Scout, Ancient Stirrings, and Amulet of Vigor are the cards to look out for in your opening hand, If you don’t have at least one those then I would strongly consider taking a mulligan.  The other thing you want to look out for is a way to get Primeval Titan.  This includes Tolaria West, Pact of Negation, and of course the titan himself.  As for lands, ideally you’d like to have a bounceland as well as a Gemstone Mine.

Things to Remember

This deck can actually play a slow game as well as a fast game, if you’re up against a deck that has counterspells you can wait to be able to get your Cavern of Souls or Pact of Negation.  If you’re playing against a liliana deck, you can bounce and replay your Khalni Garden to give yourself a buffer against her sacrifice ability.

A Final Note

This deck is actually pretty hard to play, and I wouldn’t recommend it as your first modern deck, but if you are looking to play a deck that likes to play a ton of lands in one turn, then this deck is the right one for you.  I will warn you though, that you will probably lose a lot with this deck at first, but the more you play, the more lines of play you start to see.

That’s all for this week, see you all next week for some brewing fun!