MTG – Modern – Death & Taxes vs Amulet Bloom
Modern continues to grow in popularity. Wizards of the Coast cultivate the on-going interest in the format in a multitude of ways, from sporadic reprints of ‘money cards’ in supplemental products, to entire reprint sets and GP weekends devoted to them. One thing is clear, despite Standard and casual kitchen table games being the gears that keep the money rolling in at Wizards, Modern is loved by both the players and the games makers.
The banning of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time has helped to foster a relatively diverse Modern metagame. You have your core ‘meta’ decks that you need to be able to beat – Splinter Twin, GBx, Affinity, Burn and most recently, several flavours of Grixis thanks to a host of new and powerful cards from the Khans block. But alongside these, there are literally dozens of archetypes and strategies considered fringe, rogue or tier 1.5 through to 3 that are still playable, and at times considered competitive.
Amulet Bloom is one such deck. Alongside another notorious combo deck (Grisselshoal), Bloom has almost become a bugbear of the format. Both decks are capable of an absolutely nuts turn two kill, which is considered un-fun, un-interactive and fundamentally at odds with the philosophy and soft rules Wizards laid out when they created Modern a few years a go.
Amulet Bloom looks to use an unfair engine to generate a lot of mana very early, and cast a Primeval Titan, give it haste, give it double strike and hit their opponent for 16-20 points of damage. It does this by playing Amulet of Vigor, the original bounce lands from Ravnica block, and Summer Bloom. With Amulet in play, a Bloom player can play a bounce land such as Simic Growth Chamber, and get to tap it for mana prior to bouncing it, or another land to hand because it untaps. This, accompanied by Summer Bloom allows the deck to consistently cast 6-drop threats on turns 2-5. The deck has a backup win condition in Hive Mind, which it will cast and then use a pact such as Summoners Pact to make their opponent lose the game, as they are more often than not, unable to pay for the cost in their upkeep.
To explain, Wizards planned to use bannings to ensure that there were not decks that could consistently go off and kill their opponents prior to turn 4. Both Bloom and Grisselshoal break this rule. A vocal minority have been clamouring for parts of each deck to be banned in an effort to reduce their effectiveness or consistency, but Wizards’ latest bannings left these decks alone. At least for the next few months, people are free to nut-draw their opponents and ruin them before they even get to cast their first spell.
But don’t fear. If you sit on the side of the argument that feels like decks like these are degenerate, and unhealthy for the format – there is hope. There is a shining white knight that is here to protect against the dark and overbearing storm of combo decks. Its name is ‘Death & Taxes’, sometimes known as Hate Bears, and it is here to really, really piss off Amulet Bloom players.
Death & Taxes is an older archetype that is ingrained in Magic history. Conventionally a Legacy strategy, some mad bastards like myself are devoted to pushing the deck in to other formats, albeit with some of its more powerful interactions and card choices either unavailable or out right banned in Modern.
D&T is a ‘white weenie’ deck by very definition. It’s name comes from an old comment about how there are only three things certain in life, Death, Taxes and White Weenie in Magic: The Gathering. However, amassing a ‘go-wide’ board state and beating your opponent to death aggressively is not really what the deck is all about. D&T looks to play utility creatures that provide disruption, card advantage and technical choices that allow you to eek out an advantage over your opponent. At the core of the deck you have cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, who look to slow your opponent down and stop them from executing their game plan, whilst you execute yours. Along side her is Leonin Arbiter, which alongside Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter provides some borderline unfair interactions that leave opponents starves of resources. The other all-star of the deck is the infamous Flicker Wisp. This card allows you to do all manner of tricks, especially when put in to play at instant speed off of an Aether Vial. I have lost count of the amount of times I have put this guy in to play in my opponents end step only for them to pick up the card, read it, and then look at me with some mixtures of discomfort and fear. It can be difficult to seem some of the plays this card enables, coming. Playing around Flicker Wisp is difficult.
So with built in disruption and mana denial mainboard, Death & Taxes has its easiest match-ups against the unfair decks within the format. Decks like Storm and Bloom are what Death & Taxes is here to beat down on and keep in check. Quite intuitively, some of the decks more difficult match-ups are the fairer midrange strategies of GBx and its ilk.
So how does Death and taxes vs Amulet Bloom play out? Other than hilariously, you will have to watch the video to find out.