My weekend in Amsterdam
Aka: how I managed to NOT qualify for the PT, but enjoyed the ride.
Hello and welcome to a long read where most of you will be bored but some of you will have fun reading the horrible dad jokes i’m planning to pour in this piece while going through all the highs and lows of a weekend with friends in Amsterdam, with a lot of Magic (just cardboard magic, not hallucinating magic).My name is Jimmy Caroli and many of you won’t remember me, but some of you may as the guy who wrote articles like the Sondaggissimo and many (now not relevant) pieces about Amulet Titan.
Coming back to the real topic, this was my first real MagicCon since I’m not really a “Con” person: I enjoy tournaments, I enjoy the grind and meeting friends I don’t see very often, but not that much the surrounding fanfare that exists in these events.
MagicCon Amsterdam ticked all the boxes for me: three days of PTQs (Limited PTQ on Friday, Modern PTQ on Saturday and Limited Championship Qualifier on Sunday) and the ProTour in the same venue, which means I could meet friends from Italy I don’t usually see now that I moved to Denmark.
This Pro Tour was Modern, a format which I really liked playing back in the day but now feels quite stale and not really that much interesting to play or explore. However, this PT saw a new emerging team of only italian players, called Novo TCG that completely crushed the event. The fact that long time friend Marchino (aka TrueHero) was a member of said team and playing in the PT was also a plus for me in making the trip to Amsterdam. So basically the plan for the weekend was the following:
- Burn money in entry fee for the PTQs in which I had 0 expectations
- Burn money for food in expensive places nearby the event location
- Bring the Vintage Cube from home and gather people from the hotel lounge to Cube till death
- Enjoy the ride with friends
- Meet A LOT of friends from back in the day in the venue
- Cheer Marchino and the newly formed Novo TCG Team
- Enjoy the ride with friends (did I say I met a lot of friends?)
With these premises set, let’s dive into the preparation for the events.
Limited
My experience as a limited player comes mostly from MTG Arena and watching lots of Limited streamers such as Dafore, Darkest Mage and Mike Sigrist. That’s basically it. Going into the format my rules were quite simple in sealed:
- White is the best color in the format, period. So if possible, play white
- Land cyclers are necessary in this format and also good value upfront 80% of the cases, so there’s no real downside in playing 2 maindeck
- Sealed can be either two color, or soup, in the sense that you may find yourself with a dominant color (hopefully white) and three light splashes
- Equipments are sneakily good in this format, especially the white one drop
- Red is both a horrible color and the color with some of the bomb-y-est cards, such as The Civil War saga. Splashing red is nice, having red as main color is not so nice
- The format is quite grindy and rewards having both an early plan but mostly a long game plan. If your deck uses all its gas in the first 5 turns, I don’t think you’re gonna have a long day in the event
- This limited rewards good players over good decks. Yes, if your deck is a precon you’re gonna do great, but if you’re a good player you will manage a deep run even with a mediocre pool, just playing tightly. Not that this applies to me
In the Limited PTQ I opened what I thought was a good pool, with a clean UW build over a BW with more rares but 0 removal spells. I made a build error by not playing Loki, which was sided in all games basically.
I started 2-0 and then quickly lost a round to a player from the Handshake Moxfield team, and then lost to myself playing pretty badly in a stalled board state that eventually slipped away from my hands. Since the event started quite late in the day (theoretical start at 11.30, real start of the rounds basically at 14), after 4 rounds and with no shot to Top32 for the Day2, we decided to call it a day and go eat and rest.
Modern
My testing is modern is non-existent. I have been playing Amulet for the past years, and I can't count them anymore. My last big event was the 4Seasons in Bologna where I played kinda distracted and ended up 6-3 I think, which was ok but not amazing. Amulet has been the same deck over and over, and minor changes in its core didn’t derail its nature. The idea and the plan is more or less the same every time, so if you’ve been through countless iterations as I have, you’re always able to find a way through the hate.
Since I don’t play that much or often, I rely a lot on muscle memory and watching again a lot of streamers dedicated to Amulet: Reidq7, Kanister, Mistakenn, Aljce, Kollslaw, Deftjad and so on. The idea of watching these streams is to find the lines before the streamer, and to highlight mistakes made during their runs. It's easier than playing mindless games in the Modern League queue, and it usually teaches something most of the time. So with this in mind, I set to play a very standard Amulet list, with a spicy Icetill Explorer on the sideboard as a pet card and headed to the venue with the peace of mind of being able to go 2-2 again and find something nice to eat in the evening.
Amulet Titan
- 4 × Arboreal Grazer
- 3 × Primeval Titan
- 1 × Aftermath Analyst
- 1 × Cultivator Colossus
- 2 × Summoner's Pact
- 4 × Malevolent Rumble
- 4 × Scapeshift
- 3 × Green Sun's Zenith
- 4 × Spelunking
- 4 × Amulet of Vigor
- 4 × Crumbling Vestige
- 4 × Forest
- 4 × Simic Growth Chamber
- 4 × Urza's Saga
- 3 × Boseiju, Who Endures
- 2 × Gruul Turf
- 2 × The Mycosynth Gardens
- 1 × Dryad Arbor
- 1 × Echoing Deeps
- 1 × Golgari Rot Farm
- 1 × Hanweir Battlements
- 1 × Mirrorpool
- 1 × Otawara, Soaring City
- 1 × Shifting Woodland
- 1 × Tolaria West
- 3 × Force of Vigor
- 3 × Stock Up
- 3 × Trinisphere
- 2 × Dismember
- 1 × Bojuka Bog
- 1 × Icetill Explorer
- 1 × Keen-Eyed Curator
- 1 × Six
Boy was I wrong. So just a bit of background: Modern right now is not in a great shape. It is basically a combo world (at least up until PT Amsterdam) where the general idea is to have either a strong and fast combo plan, or to have a strong and fast combo plan while being aggressive. In this context, it is no surprise that decks like NeoForm, Cosmogoyf or Broodscale are actually thriving and being real menaces to the format (and the sanity of people).
The era of Boros Energy as the de facto 2015 Jund of the format is slowly fading, backed up by several bannings to the deck that nicked its dominance. Other decks such as Affinity or Storm are basically “all in” with a backup plan to survive and either chip damage or rebuild to get another all in turn.
Affinity purists will deny this claim, but the deck works only when it can power up a very fast Kappa Cannoneer, otherwise it struggles to even set up a real gameplan. Eldrazis are also a menace, as lore intended: Ramp and Tron can abuse the power of Kozilek’s Command, another busted card in the format, if not THE busted card of the format.
To round up this small overview, we have the blue decks: Goryo is a hybrid control combo deck that ticks a lot of the checkboxes of the format, but also dies to itself when the plan doesn’t assemble in the correct amount of time given by the opponent or if you draw the wrong half of the deck; the Blink decks (Esper, Jeskai, UW) are hybrid control combo decks with no real plan other than “grind their way out” and cheat with Phelia most of the time.
The downside of this strategy is that if you don’t set up a clock, your “grindy” games are laughable into combo players that just assemble perfect 7 and play them all in the same turn. Please don’t play Blink decks unless you’re very passionate about the archetype: it’s a nice trap, but still a trap. And then we have Amulet, which just refuses to die ban after ban.
It will always be there and always be the most busted strategy in the format up until the Ban Committee will decide that it’s enough and Amulet of Vigor has been in the format for too long. Up until that day, Amulet will always be a playable deck, because it is fundamentally customizable to every metagame and format shift.
Back to the event. I managed to close the portion of Day 1 with the score of 6-1-1, good enough for a spot in Top32 as 12th seed. These were the matchups as a simple list, then I’ll go into highlights of the event:
- Round 1: Grixis Reanimator WW
- Round 2: UW Energy WLW
- Round 3: Boros Energy WLW
- Round 4: Mono Black Lessons WLW
- Round 5: UW Control LW (D)
- Round 6: Eldrazi Tron WW
- Round 7: Esper Blink WLW
- Round 8: Esper Blink LWL
Highlights of the event
Round 2 opponent was not really familiar with how Amulet works which is fine and legit. He wanted to track all the mana generated into the combo turn. When I reached 123 floating mana I had no more dice left to track the colors, I asked if I could assume that I had the colors I needed at any time and he replied “No”, which is fair and game. He then asked me to play quicker because we had only 3 minutes on the clock, to which I replied “I mean, it doesn’t really matter, you’re not gonna have another turn”. Be kind when playing, it doesn’t cost a thing.
Round 3 opponent was a very nice player from Poland. I speak very little Polish thanks to my wife, so he was kinda happy to exchange some greetings in Polish. We played nice games with back and forth plays and by the end of the last game he complimented and told me that it was very nice to play and talk with me. This was nice, and also quite unexpected. I wished him the best and later in the day met him again to chit chat a bit more.
Round 5 opponent was from Turkey and was coming from a very bad Round 4. He was visibly shaken because his previous opponent tried to cheat him, got a DQ but all this went through a long Judge call with investigation, so he was not in his best mind state. He told me about this and replied that there was no rush in playing, to take his time, go drink something, wash his face and just relax. This is just a game in the end, there is no reason to be extremely distressed if it is avoidable.
During the game he calmed down, we played two good grindy games (I enjoy playing against UW Control as an Amulet player) and we ended up drawing because no time was left of the clock. But in the end, my opponent felt better, relaxed and relieved. Sometimes you win even when you draw. I call this an humanity win rather than a paper win.
Round 7 opponent was the first (and last) Italian opponent of the weekend. Did I fail to mention that there were an infinite amount of Italian players in the venue? At times, it was easier to hear Italian than English, which was quite crazy to be honest. But also expected from an European event so close to Italy.
Anyway, my opponent was obviously not very skilled in playing the matchup against Amulet and valued wrong information and cards in the matchup. In the games I won, I was able to power through 3 Thoughtseize, 2 Flickerwisp and 5 Solitudes (Game 1) and 3 Thoughtseize, 7 Solitude and 2 White Orchid Phantom (Game 3).
The lack of pressure of the deck meant that all the “value” he was accruing by removing my threats for free with Solitude, was not converted in clock, which meant I could easily rebuild and provide new threats to be answered. A turn in Game 1 involved my opponent having 4 cards in hand, 3 of which were Solitude with a 4th white card to pitch and the 4th Solitude already in play hardcasted. By the end of that turn I still had a Primeval Titan in play, and my opponent was empty handed with basically no board. Planning makes the difference in these matchups: play the long game and expect constant interaction. If they fail to answer, just punish and out value them.
Round 8 opponent wanted to play. We were both locked for Top32, me at 6-0-1 and him at 6-1. But apparently Day 2 was seeded, so the better seed got to start and we basically played to be first seed since everyone else just ID in. It was already pretty late, around 22 in the evening. I asked my friends if they wanted to go eat, but one of them was still playing for prizes, so we decided to play instead of just conceding for "quality of life” value.
Games were again pretty nice and back and forth. Again, I managed to win a game against 5 Solitude triggers and many Thoughtseize, to the disbelief of my opponent (yet again). The last game I got punished by Dryad Arbor, which was my second green source to pay the pact the turn after. Solitude killed me good and by the verge of 23.15 we were able to get an Uber to the closest Domino to ravage bad pizza and bad chicken, get back to the hotel and watch the second half of France - England.
Day2 was a Top32, single elimination bracket. Basically 4 pods of 8 people, you need to go 3-0 into your pod and you get the qualification to the next PT, plus some goodies. My Round 1 opponent was Devon Straub, who played the PT the days before, playing a Mirror Match. Usually I enjoy mirror matches of Amulet and love the intricacies that can arise in these games where you need to respect a lot of things otherwise you just get blown out.
The coin flip is that sometimes, you just die on T3. And that’s basically what happened: knowing we were playing a Mirror and Devon was on the play thanks to his higher seed, Game he T3 killed me. Game 2 I killed him T3 and Game 3 I mulled to 5, Devon tried to kill me on T3, failed because of Force of Vigor and I failed to kill back due to my low mulligan. Sad games, not really interesting apart from my mulligan decision in Game 3. The 7 I opened on 5 were the following: Amulet Amulet Scapeshift Force of Vigor Bounceland Bounceland Forest I kept Amulet Amulet Forest Bounceland and Force of Vigor, but in hindsight keeping Scapeshift instead of the second Amulet would’ve granted me a win. We learn from our mistakes.
Cube
Finally, we get to the actual main event of the weekend: Vintage Cube. I’ve been building and tweaking my Vintage Cube for almost three years now and played it way less than the time I spent tweaking it. So it was a no-brainer to bring it to Amsterdam, go down in the hotel lobby and start drafting and drinking till we basically needed to go to sleep. Thursday when we arrived we managed to snag our passes quite quickly at the venue, then head to the center to eat something and back to the hotel to draft all night.
We started making the boosters and the crew of Decked Out approached us, asked what we were doing and we invited them to draft with us. While we started, Christoffer Larsen also joined, making it a more interesting draft. Obviously nothing was on the line, most of the time we were joking and throwing shades at each other, many laughs and many drinks happened, which is what I look for in Magic nowadays. We doubled down on Friday night with other friends from Denmark, same setup, same laughs, same drinks. Cube is really the best way of playing Magic today and I am always more than happy to dust off my Cube everywhere I go.
Epilogue
As everyone always says, The Gathering is the best part of Magic. It doesn’t matter the result, if you have fun during the ride, it is worth every second, every time. Just have good friends, have fun and don’t overwhelm yourself with goals and expectations: go, play your best Magic, eventually results will happen. For me, this Top32 meant that I can still play good Magic if I am relaxed and with a calm mind that doesn’t start overthinking about “What if” scenarios. Just play, take every round as the first round and go from there. I was so happy during the weekend to meet friends from all over Italy that I can’t see much anymore, and cheer for the NOVO TCG team in the PT Area in their debut on the big stage.
This is what Magic is for me now: not the grind, but the the gathering, the laughs and jokes, looking back at past times and making new friends through Cube. While I don’t play as much as I would like, I am still happy I can play what I like, and enjoy doing it. And yes, I would like to go back on the PT and I will chase that high as much as I can, but I will enjoy the ride during all the failed attempts. And so should you do too.
Bonus Sideboard Guide
Yeah ok, i’ll give some sideboard guidelines for Amulet given my list. I’ll list the top decks from MTGGoldfish and then you should be able to go from there:
Boros Energy
-4 Urza’s Saga -1 Scapeshift +1 Six +1 Icetill Explorer +3 Force of Vigor This is tentative, it depends how many enchantments you’ve seen in Game 1. If you didn’t see a lot of enchantments, you can board in 2 Force of Vigors and 2 Stock Up instead, cutting a Summoner’s Pact. You can also choose to be greedy and board in 1 Force of Vigor and 2 Stock Up, depending on what you expect from their board. In open decklists this conundrum is much easier to solve
Goryo’s Vengeance
-2 Urza’s Saga -1 Boseiju -1 The Mycosynth Gardens -1 Green Sun’s Zenith -1 Malevolent Rumble -1 Scapeshift
+3 Stock Up +1 Bojuka Bog +1 Six +1 Icetill Explorer +1 Keen-Eyed Curator
The plan is to overwhelm them with threats. Ideally, you can cut all 4 your Urza’s Saga, it is an ok option. I personally like to leave two in because Constructs can actually be a plan against some draws of Goryo. Stock Up and the other green creatures are all incredible card advantage engines that can easily take over the game, so be aware that your plan shifts in this post board matchup: we’re playing a marathon now, not a 100m dash.
Affinity
-2 Urza’s Saga -1 Arboreal Grazer +3 Force of Vigor
Killing a Kappa Cannoneer is not impossible for Amulet so just be mindful of the clock you’re getting exposed. Affinity may board weird cards such as Damping Sphere in an attempt to hamper your gameplan, but I find that Damping Sphere in particular hurts them more than us. Just be aware of the possibility when you plan a Pact with passing the turn.
Eldrazi Ramp
-2 Arboreal Grazer -1 Urza’s Saga
+1 Bojuka Bog +1 Icetill Explorer +1 Six
Not much to add here: Bojuka Bog “can” help with Emrakul or at least delay it for one turn best case scenario, whereas Icetill Explorer and Six can set up some Boseiju loops. Not a great plan, but the matchup is actually not that bad so not much tweaking needed.
Eldrazi Tron
-2 Arboreal Grazer
+2 Stock Up
Stock Up can help smoothing some draws. If they play Karn and you see that they can go for Stone Brain, consider adding one more creature into the mix: Icetill Explorer can be a nuisance with the Boseiju loops, whereas Six can help with Analyst loops. Just have a backup plan if your opponent decides to remove all your Primeval Titan/Amulet of Vigor/Simic Growth Chamber/whatever.
Ruby Storm
-2 Urza’s Saga -1 Summoner’s Pact -1 Arboreal Grazer
+1 Bojuka Bog +3 Trinisphere
The plan here is to stick a quick Trinisphere, ideally turn 2 after either a Grazer/Amulet/GSZ play turn 1. Nothing else to be added. If Trinisphere sticks, remember that you don’t have infinite time and they can always resolve it in many ways, so have also a pressure plan to backup your hate piece.
Prowess
-1 Dryad Arbor -2 Urza’s Saga
+ 3 Trinisphere
Here instead Trinisphere gives you a lot of time. However, Prowess can play Consign to Memory in the sideboard so be aware of the possibility. Usually, a Trinisphere on turn 2 means that Prowess won’t be able to play the game for a while and you’re quite free to set your pace. However, if you don’t stick an early Trinisphere, Prowess can be very quick and deadly out of nowhere, so don’t relax too much.
Amulet
-4 Urza’s Saga -3 Arboreal Grazer -1 Malevolent Rumble
+1 Icetill Explorer +1 Six +1 Bojuka Bog +3 Force of Vigor +2 Stock Up
I definitely side a lot in the mirror, but that’s also how I like to play the matchup: fully centered on Icetill Explorer and the value provided with Boseiju and bouncelands. This is my gameplan and how I setup the mirror to go long and be played for resources, not for raw power. Opinions may vary, this works for me and I enjoy the configuration, but I will not admit it is the best way possible to attack the matchup.
This is it, thanks to everyone that took the time to read through this, hope you enjoyed the ride too. Thanks to all the friends I met along the way and still meet after years and years across the world: you make this game great, not Spiderman, Spock or Saruman.
Keep The Gathering alive, it’s the best way of playing Magic. Until the next time, see you again space cowboys.
Jimmy
