Banning Amulet, Titan or Bloom would just be stupid. None of these cards are overpowered or violate any modern rules.

Yes Titan Bloom is strong, has inevitability and and is pretty much unstoppable once Primeval Titan resolves and survives, but honestly, if you let it, it’s your fault.

Hive Mind Pact Turn two is another story, but even that is weak to hand disruption.

At least by doing this we can get insight to what the hell they are doing in their smoke filled rooms when they make these ban announcements. Burn and infect and affinity would a few examples of the decks that can win before turn 4, but each color in magic has multiple ways of interacting and disrupting those decks game plans.

The only problem I see (which might be huge) is that most of the time when an amulet bloom player makes it onto coverage they are doing well, and that coincides with when most players aren’t packing enough hate for both bloom and tron. Just like other strategies, people need to make sure they have main/sideboard hate for the “Land” decks of the format. Throwing a simple ghost quarter into the mix can throw those early turn wins off by more than enough, not including the times YOU win if they can no longer pay for a pact lol.

To try and only compile data on whether a deck breaks the t4 rule when it is most advantaged (camera time, when hate is typically lower, and people will have less interaction with it) doesn’t really help make a case for banning. Like most powerful decks in our format, preparation is key to beating them.

Last point, if bloom was truly overpowered and that consistent, it would make up a much higher % of our metagame share. We can’t try and blame it on a “learning curve”. We can’t blame it on the price (cheap, real competitive deck). Fear that it will be banned in the future. Why can’t we blame it on either of those things? Because people are willing to do anything when it comes to winning, whether that’s learning something new, or spending some cash. People go out and try and play the deck every time it does well at a big event. Is it that they somehow didn’t spend enough time learning the deck that causes them to lose? Maybe? Or maybe its the fact that their opponents remember the deck exists and suddenly start packing just a few more hate cards each round. There’s a reason that when amulet bloom does well we don’t see a repeat, even when in the hands of a pro… the deck is simply to fragile and inconsistent to go up against proper hate over 9 rounds of a tournament.

Amulet bloom is in my top 3 favorite decks. It’s like affinity of old, when people forget about it, prepare to win.

I’d say “ban the transgressor” is the most logical policy. But again, I doubt it will happen. Hive mind will remain, bloom will die.

A ban of Summer Bloom seems by far the most probable to me. “Ban the ritual” is quite the way they chose in the past and could let the deck survive under some kind of form.
But what about a Tolaria West ban? Since even “Ban the tutor” could be a fine policy.

I agree with this.

Hi Sheridan,
Really liked this article, but will echo what JB said – a lot of fluff before getting to the meat. But as you say, no harm in talking it up!
I’m amazed at that Turn 2-3 win percentage, and would be surprised if that held true on a larger sample. To back that up (in a way), I played a 6-round event and cut to top 8 on Sunday, going 4-0-2 in the swiss and loosing in the semis. Although the match-ups dictated this somewhat, my quickest win of the day was actually Turn 5 (I didn’t drop a game in the swiss or quarters, so it wasn’t like my slower kills were detrimental, just that I was violating Turn 4 rules).
Am I right in thinking you watched 15 games from stream and 15 games from MTGO? In that case, if you add another 6 to the list (I know this isn’t a practical thing to do because a) I could be making all this up and b) I’m no pro), but the figures would change be another 3-4%.
Anyway, this was the kinda data I’ve been waiting for, and (once I got to it :P) it was very useful to see. Unfortunately for me, I fully expect your predictions to be right, and its just feels like a case of what gets banned, not if.

I was a bit worried about that lead-in myself during edits, but hey, can’t blame a guy for building it up within the article!

Although I think the bootstrapped samples are good for estimating win-turn percentages overall, I don’t think they are great for guessing matchup win-turn percentages. We’d probably want more data to do that, but I suspect midrange really struggles in G2-G3 regardless of how G1 goes down.

In Bloom’s case, very few of the wins were T2 instead of T3. Then again, in Storm’s case, 1 or 0 of the sampled games was T2 and not T3, so it might not matter too much as a point of comparison. Maybe more interesting if we considered Infect too, a deck definitely capable of T2 wins.

I’ll be talking about Hive Mind in tomorrow’s article. It’s not an impossible ban. I just don’t think it fits the “ban the ritual” model we’ve seen in past decisions. I wouldn’t be blown away if it got banned, but I also wouldn’t gamble on it.

Hive Mind is a possible ban, but I don’t see it fitting the other bans Wizards has fired against the deck. Bloom or Amulet seem much likelier in my opinion.

These kind of super niche bans aren’t Wizards’ style, at least if history sets any precedent. Wizards tends to be fairly decisive in its T4 rule violator bans, which points to Amulet, Bloom, or maaaybe Hive Mind but the latter seems extra unlikely.

I think it might be skewing MTGO numbers, but it wasn’t a factor in the coverage numbers. Given how similar those numbers are, I am inclined to believe the deck really is in that range, although we could maybe expand it further to be super conservative to the 12%-35% range. I just didn’t give those numbers because they are a bit too broad to be meaningful, and they are unnecessarily conservative.

This is also in the reddit comment section:

1. I gave a ton of disclaimers on how to treat qualitative evidence like this, and it’s mostly given as a framing for everything else than a deciding datapoint. Those were given at the end of the qualitative section and at the beginning, so I’m really not sure why you think I’m using them as “meaningful arguments”.

2. Experiment was used a number of times at GP Chicago and subsequent events, not to mention on MTGO. It is presented as one of the two types of Storm that got Song banned.

3. As I wrote in the article, they are looking at “results of games”, which I interpret to mean real results in real games. It’s possible they aren’t using GP/PT/MTGO numbers, but if they aren’t, I really don’t know what else they would be using. I’m comfortable assuming they use this data because the alternative is that they are using internal test data or not using it at all. I like to assume they are more rigorous than that. Even if they aren’t, I will certainly try to be just to put actual numbers on the deck and hope they read the article.

4. You can’t assume PT Philly cards were banned because of a fear they would become top-tier. None of the evidence suggests this and it seems to be nothing more than speculation. The T4 rule is the only thing cited, and great emphasis was placed on the “top-tier” piece in that article.

5. Virtual kills are tricky, because every deck has them and we have no idea how Wizards treats them. As I said in the article, I table those because it’s too much speculation for us. I’m fine assuming Wizards reviews real results to determine a win-rate instead of just guessing at it. I’m not fine assuming a definition of virtual wins.

In the linked article about the turn four rule, you draw conclusions about 2013 Storm’s (the constant references to Epic Experiment are misleading: Experiment was played by some of the Minnesota players for a few events, but Ruel’s GP T8 deck as well as most MTGO lists didn’t feature it) pre-T4 win percentage and argue that this is the threshold for what’s considered acceptable. You don’t show that Wizards was using a similar data set or that their measure of ‘consistency’ is based on data at all. Their stated justification for banning Seething Song isn’t reassuring on that front: less than 4% of the 6-4+ decks at PT RTR, a single GP Top 8, and a presence on Magic Online that was heavily warped by it being the cheapest deck by far. It also doesn’t make much sense to invoke the metagame share of PT Philly decks: those cards weren’t banned based on their specific performance at that event, but out of fear that they would make up a much larger metagame share if they remained in the format (in addition to the T4 principle).

I’d also like to see more discussion of what a ‘pre-T4 kill’ means in this context. When Storm is casting a lethal Grapeshot or Shoal is hitting you for 10+ poison, the line is clear; the same goes for Hive Mind. With Primeval Titan, it’s murky: an Amulet-fuelled Titan on T2 will kill before T4 unless the opponent has removal, but if it gets to attack once the game is surely lost. Without Amulet, T2 Summer Bloom into T3 Primeval Titan often effectively ends the game, but the actual finishing blow doesn’t come for a few turns. On those terms, the stats might underestimate the frequency of the deck’s nut draws.

Another important variable in the analysis. Winning before t4 23% of the time… how much of that % is hive mind vs titan? If banning hive mind drops the pre-t4 win down to 10% or less we may be down into acceptable territory. If it just drops it to 18% or even 15% we may be back here in a year banning bloom anyways (see also: bloodbraid elf into deathrite shaman ban error).

I know you are just ranting, but I want to point out that this argument was based on Wizard’s turn four rule and not the subjectivity of fun or unfun.

“The key to remember is this: the turn four rule includes both the consistency of a pre-turn-four win and the tiering of that deck. Most Modern commentators and players forget this second piece or willfully ignore it. Also notice the definition doesn’t mention language around “warping” the metagame, being “unfun”, or being “too hard to disrupt”. All of this is either subsumed in the other two definitions, or doesn’t even matter at all.

With this definition in mind, we can move on to Amulet Bloom and how it violates both aspects of the turn four rule.”