Amulet Bloom may have been the breakout deck of Pro Tour Fate Reforged, and it’s likely still a good choice for Grand Prix Vancouver. Whether you’re thinking about playing it or just looking to know what’s going on on the other side of the table, I figured I’d walk through some games with this substantially unorthodox deck to show just what’s happening here.
The list I’ll be playing is a small update from the Pro Tour. I’ve swapped Ghost Quarter and the second Cavern of Souls because there were fewer control decks than anticipated, and I’ve cut Firespouts for Pyroclasms due to the poor showing by Zoo. Finally, I’ve cut Wurmcoil Engine for Thragtusk, which was a change that we realized we should have made before the Pro Tour. Either card is to bring in against Abzan Midrange, but Path to Exile is too good against Wurmcoil Engine, and the threat of Thoughtseize on Wurmcoil Engine giving Tarmogoyf +2/+2 is too high a cost as well.
While I don’t consider this deck a glass cannon, in that it actually has a resilient lategame plan, it’s still a combo deck, and sometimes you keep hands that are just one card away from being great. Sometimes you miss when you do that and you die embarrassingly without putting up any kind of resistance. That happened in game 1, and it’s just the cost of doing business. In game 2, Olle kept a slow, minimally disruptive hand, and that just didn’t work. I basically lost game 3 by a turn because I was on the draw, which is definitely how things go some portion of the time against Affinity. Both decks have just a little interaction and similar clocks.
Round 2
Game 1 looked really close, but then my opponent inexplicably made a suicidal attack. I think I was probably going to win anyway once Sunhome got online though. My draw in the second game was about what I’m looking for against Abzan, and I was able to fight through an average amount of hate pretty easily.
Round 3
With the double mulligan I was just a little too far behind to put up a fight against Liliana and Path to Exile. I thought I was going to suffer a similar fate in game 2, but somehow the hardest working Khalni Garden in the business was able to save me. Topdecking a Summer Bloom in the third game turned a slow hand that wasn’t doing much into the exact right hand for the matchup.
Round 4
It’s really nice to get your nut draws against faster combo decks, but I don’t really have any disruption, so my opponent was able to outrace me pretty easily the next two games.
