Hello Internet,
Chris here with another PPTQ win and accompanying tournament report. This time I got there with a strategy a bit different than my birds from last year. I took down the event with Amulet, which is a deck that has been near and dear to my heart since before the banning of Summer Bloom. So near and dear in fact that I’ve fully foiled out the deck, after the ban! While the explosiveness of the deck has been substantially hurt by the banning, the overall idea behind the deck remains the same. Amulet is a deck that tries to combo an Amulet of Vigor with a cycle of lands from the original Ravnica block that tap for two colors of mana but enter tapped and require you to bounce a land to your hand on entering the battlefield. While sometimes known as “Karoos”, I’ll refer to these lands as “bounce lands” for obvious reasons. When combined with an Amulet and the ability to play multiple lands each turn one bounce land can create quite a large amount of mana, letting you cast a Primeval Titan out of nowhere. While fast Titans are a big reason why I like the deck so much, that’s not the whole story. Amulet can also grind a ton of value with the bounce land plus Tolaria West interaction. A Titan trigger can find both Tolaria West and a bounce land, allowing you to then transmute into a Summoner’s Pact, which itself finds another Primeval Titan. This helps you grind through opposing removal and has granted the giant the lesser known nickname of Squadron Titan.

Here is the decklist that I played:

Amulet

Artifacts (5) 4 Amulet of Vigor 1 Engineered Explosives Creatures (13) 3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking 4 Primeval Titan 1 Reclamation Sage 4 Sakura-Tribe Scout 1 Walking Ballista Enchantments (1) 1 Hive Mind Spells (13) 4 Ancient Stirrings 4 Explore 1 Pact of Negation 4 Summoner’s Pact

Lands (28) 1 Academy Ruins 1 Boros Garrison 1 Cavern of Souls 1 Crumbling Vestige 3 Forest 4 Gemstone Mine 1 Ghost Quarter 3 Gruul Turf 1 Khalni Garden 1 Radiant Fountain 1 Selesnya Sanctuary 4 Simic Growth Chamber 1 Slayers’ Stronghold 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion 3 Tolaria West 1 Vesuva Sideboard (15) 2 Abrade 1 Bojuka Bog 1 Dismember 1 Engineered Explosives 1 Firespout 1 Grafdigger’s Cage 1 Hornet Queen 1 Kozilek’s Return 2 Obstinate Baloth 1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed 1 Seal of Primordium 2 Spell Pierce

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