Carrie On Going Big in ModernPosted by Carrie OliverFebruary 19, 2013 | How much mana can you make on turn two in Modern?
Two? Four perhaps? Eight maybe?
Amulet of Vigor is an amazing combo enabler that was once appropriately abused in Modern. The old Cloudpost deck could happily power out a turn three Eldrazi, and was sufficiently terrifying that Cloudpost got banned after the first Modern event.
Since then, ramp decks have abandoned Amulet of Vigor and transformed into the stable, if somewhat less exciting, Tron decks. Making seven mana on turn three is all well and good, but its just not that splashy.
At GP London I was wandering past the Modern side event on Sunday, and found my friends giggling madly at the end of the row while spectating a match. They waved me over and I observed a rather oppressive board state.
On one side was a normal-looking, approximately turn three board state for a Birthing Pod list. On the other side there were about 12 lands and a couple of Primeval Titans. Ah, I thought, the Pod player has been a little screwed for a number of turns, poor guy, seems cruel of my friends to be laughing about it.
Then Ill bounce Mosswort Bridge with the bounce land trigger, which is convenient because I still have five land drops left this turn.
Wait, WHAT?
Apparently it was only turn five. His opponent had not missed a land drop but had missed a turn thanks to a Time Warp. Even so, what was going on?
It turns out that Amulet of Vigor plays well with bounce lands and Summer Bloom, which is Modern legal.
Amulet of Vigor can do really stupid things.
Consider one Amulet and a Summer Bloom:
On turn one you play the Amulet.
Turn two (assuming you have a bounce land) you can generate seven mana. You play the bounce getting two triggers, one to return a land to your hand and one to untap the bounce land. So you untap the bounce, add two mana to your pool and then put it back into your hand. After casting Summer Bloom with that mana you can do that three more times. This makes six mana plus the land played on turn one for seven. Ha! Take that Tron.
Great! So now what?
Well, it also turns out that Primeval Titan plays well with Amulet of Vigor and that tutor effects are still a powerful effect in Magic.
Remember that one of the most banned card types in Modern is Land? There are still plenty of interesting ones left.
What can you do with two land-tutor effects that will get immediately untapped by the Amulet?
Slayers Stronghold can be tutored up along with Boros Garrison to give your Titan haste, allowing yet more lands to be fetched. So now we have two more lands to tutor up.
Fetching a bounce land and Tolaria West lets you bounce Tolaria West which can then be transmuted. Conveniently, Summoners Pact has the same CMC as Tolaria West, and can tutor up more Titans for us to play should the first one be rudely Terminated.
The gambler in me loves the hideaway lands.
Ive had a passion for the hideaway cycle ever since I achieved PTQ success with Windbrisk Heights in UW Tempered Steel in Extended several years ago now. Surprise lords during combat are soo good.
They have made an attempt to be cool in Modern with the GW Hideaway deck, which goes heavy on the creature ramp to activate Windbrisk Heights and hope to hit an Emrakul. It has never reached top tier due to its vulnerability to losing its mana creatures before being able to activate the lands.
But with Amulet of Vigor, you can use them straight away! If you have no mana in pool when you tutor them, you can use one to activate the other, which is fine because one of them is probably bad anyway. But if you got to tutor one card from the top eight of your deck and cast it for a single red mana? Id take that.
Spinerock Knoll can be activated after bashing with a Titan that has been targeted with a Slayers Stronghold. While Mosswort Bridge requires another 2 power coming either from a Kessig Wolf Run, Lotus Cobra, or (surprisingly often) another Primeval Titan, but does work really well in certain draws.
And just think what could be underneath
Vesuva provides a lot of flexibility to a deck like this. It allows you to be very diverse with your land choices as that second copy of whatever you need in a given situation. Amulet of Vigor removes the downside of Vesuva. In fact, lands that enter tapped have an upside with multiple Amulets in play. Additionally, bounce lands allow you to reset your Vesuva to change its identity later in a game.
I was so excited about this deck that I asked Robert to give me his list. I didnt know if he would want to share with you all, but you are in luck, hence this article. Credit where it is due, and a huge thanks to Robert Wilbrand for giving me his lists, thoughts, and insights into the deck, and for agreeing to let me share it with all of you. This is my personal take on his list, but the core is his:
