[SCD] Amulet of Vigor

[rufus]

"Here's this weird card. It's probably terrible, but what would you do with it?"


It's been mentioned by several people, but I just can't figure out how it would be strong enough for legacy: There aren't many cards that have enters the battlefield tapped effects, that are both strong enough to see play without the amulets, and are also sufficiently helped by the amulet to justify it's inclusion.

Amulet of Vigor
Artifact :1:
When a permanent comes into play tapped and under your control, untap it.

This card doesn't really advance the board state, accelerate, or give card advantage so it's only plausibly good when used to combo. Here's what I've thought about so far:

Idea 1: Thawing Glaciers -
It's been suggested by others that it might be playable, in multiples, with Thawing Glaciers, but 1x Amulet of Vigor + Thawing Glaciers is a bit underwhelming - you'd really want to hit 3 or more Amulets. Trinket Mage is an obvious choice, but from there it's a bit more iffy, especially because the deck is looking for more than 2. There are supplemental artifact tutors or copiers : Enlightened Tutor, Artificers' Intution, Transmute Artifact, Reshape, Dizzy Spell, Copy Artifact, Sculpting Steel, Mizzium Transreliquat and Fabricate, but I struggle to see how this is going to have anything on a more conventional high tide approach.

Idea 2: Scapeshift
The obvious problem is that the deck will have to be strong enough to weather a couple of turns, so getting an occasional extra turn of speed from Amulet of Vigor seems to offer marginal benefit at best. To date, the only Scapeshift-based finish that's been seriously suggested is Valakut + Mountains, which is pretty weak as well.

Idea 3: Hideaway
You burn a card and some mana to put the amulet on the table, and then cash in on a hideaway effect, which provides - effectively - a card and some mana. The 'advantage' is that it gives you something of a surprise factor. Conceptually, something like - Turn 3, Swing with Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape, and Tarmogoyf, drop the Amulet & Windbrisk Heights, and rip Ranger of Eos.

[Otter]

There are two main obstacles that I see here:

(1) Cards that Amulet makes playable are horrible on their own. Thawing Glaciers and Krosan Verge are sweet with it, but if you draw them without the Amulet they're far too slow for modern legacy and you'll lose to everything. Similarly, if you draw the Amulet without the Glaciers, it's a blank card. Unless someone finds a really broken, "You win right now" sort of combo, this isn't like Stifle-Naught. The Stifle is useful on its own and once you find the pieces, you get to kill very quickly.

(2) Amulet kind of like spending tempo to gain tempo. If your draw doesn't include one, what are your options? Spend a card for Enlightened Tutor so that you can play the Amulet? Wait until turn three to Trinket Mage for it? Not liking any of those plays.

Glaciers is still well, glacially paced even with an Amulet out and your win condition is probably painfully slow as well. Scapeshift just doesn't care, they need lands in play, not untapped lands. Hideaway is silly, you'd have an extra card in the first place if you had played something that wasn't the Amulet in your list.

[conboy31]

I don't know if the right cards have been printed, but this is a card I will look to pick up a playset and maybe a foil playset if I can get them cheap and throw them in a box. It has medium potential with the possible cards that could be printed.

The Ancient Spring cycle of lands probably sucks with the Amulet because you would be using particularly bad cards. Boseiju, flagstones, gets better.
Sprit tribal subtype with loam dweller BROKEN ;) !! Maybe Magosi somehow. Orb of dreams and root maze have been mentioned. Cycle lands and man lands too.

All in all a very unimpressive list of options.

[Forbiddian]

It's a "synergy" with no upside.

At best it's a cool play where each Amulet generates like 1-2 mana per turn. At worst, you're playing a useless artifact or shitty lands. There's way better acceleration in Legacy than basically a Sol Ring that only works half the time and requires a steady stream of awful lands.

[Infinitium]

Someone mentioned this in the WWK thread, but the notion that this synergizes with Ravnica bouncelands to let you sustain Stasis makes it somewhat more interesting, especially as a deck based around it and Root Maze would probably need to be two-colored U/G by definition (since fetches are a big no-no with a Root Maze in play). Garruk and possibly Tezzeret also makes for easy maintaining of Stasis, although it's likely too slow for the format and dies horribly to a number of things unless you catch people untapped.