Our daily dosage of all things deck continues today, as I randomly roll a card from Magic’s past and see what happens. Yesterday, I build a funky Keldon Battlewagon deck designed to maximize the power of the creature. Tuesday, I looked at Orcish Mechanics and decided to flesh out the whole Orcs and Artillery theme. On Monday, I began with a look at Homelands Clockwork Swarm.
What will the dice bring today? I doubt today’s deck can top yesterday’s Battlewagon-power fest, but can I at least equal it? They say a cook is only as good as his ingredients. What will my ingredient be?
I roll and get an…11. Ice Age!
I roll a two, which says that our card will be in the first one hundred Ice Age cards. And it will be card number… 08. The eighth card in the set alphabetically is…
Oh, God, no. Please. No. Let this cup pass from me. I already forced a reroll on Tuesday when I rolled Clockwork Avian the day after building a Clockwork deck by rolling Clockwork Swarm. It would be unfair to reroll twice in a week.
However, if one can break the rules, there is no better time to do so than when you roll, *shudder*, Amulet of Quoz.
Let’s look at Amulet of Quoz for a second:
First of all, no one plays for ante. Most Five Color players don’t even play for ante.
You have to sacrifice the Amulet, so you have one shot.
Your opponent may avoid this affect by simply anteing the top card of her deck.
Otherwise, flip a coin. If you win, your opponent loses the game. If you lose, you lose the game.
And you pay six mana for this card.
Has there ever been a worse card in Magic? When would be a good time to play this card? If you are winning, then forcing your opponent to ante a card or take a 50/50 chance of losing the game would be a good deal. It would basically force an ante and you’d still be winning, so you’d likely get the extra ante. This would be a great time to use the Amulet, except for one thing…
If you are winning, do you want to play a card that gives you a 50/50 chance of losing outright? Of course not. So, you do not want to play this when you are winning, ever, because your opponent will always choose the flip.
Let’s suppose that you are losing. Getting a 50/50 chance of winning the game outright when you are behind the eight ball seems like a great thing, right? Only then, your opponent will smile and ante an extra card, and then defeat you and your Amulet of Quoz playing self.
There is no good time to use the Amulet of Quoz. The only time you might get a benefit is if you look like you are about to die but you secretly know that you are about to win. Then, if you sac the Amulet of Quoz, your opponent will choose the ante, and then you can win in startling fashion, grabbing the extra ante too. I suppose that’d be useful in that small number of situations.
Note however, that for just three mana, you can cast Demonic Attorney that adds an extra ante card for each player. You can cast this any time you are winning in order to win more cards, so it’s much more useful than Amulet of Quoz for only half the mana.
Fine. I’ll build a deck with Amulet of Quoz, and assume that people will play for mana. Sigh.
Creatures (10)
Lands (24)
Spells (26)
This deck tries to go turbo Amulet of Quoz. Once you have a Platinum Angel out you can tap an Amulet of Quoz ad infinitum, because you can’t lose the game by losing the coin flip. Your opponent is forced to ante or possibly die, thus losing ante.
Using the power of Goblin Welder, you can keep changing random artifacts into Amulet of Quoz and firing off this “great” Ice Age rare until your opponent dies, or has so many cards anted that a win will give you half her deck.
The deck has several card drawing spells to help you find the best elements quickly. Discarded Amulets from Thirst of Knowledge can be turned into treasure by our good friend, the Goblin Welder. You can also discard a Platinum Angel then use your Goblin to bring one out earlier than would otherwise happen.
Mindslavers are a great decoy, because people might think you are playing turbo-Slaver. Artifact removal will go the Slaver’s way, leaving your Amulet of Quoz victory path open.
If you need to, you can just use Amulet of Quoz as a six-mana artifact in the hands of Bosh, Artifact Chucker. If your board is an Amulet and Platinum Angel and you draw Bosh, then you just won through direct damage.
I even included a bit of surprise countermagic in the form of Override. If someone throws a big monkey wrench into your plans, simple counter away for a cleaner, quicker kill.
Of course, you could just not play Amulet of Quoz at all and pretend this article never happened. That’s probably a better idea. I’d hate to roll this deck if I ever revisit the “Deck Smash!” formula.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent