Witches' bells, also known as witch bells or protection bells, are objects that have been used for centuries in various cultures to ward off negative energy, evil spirits, and malevolent magic. These small, usually metallic, bells are often hung near doorways, windows, and other entrances, as well as on personal belongings such as necklaces or keychains. The exact origins of witches' bells are unclear, but they can be found in folklore and spiritual practices from diverse regions such as Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In many traditions, the sound of bells is believed to have the power to cleanse and purify an area, repelling any negative or harmful energies. The belief in witches' bells as protective talismans remains prevalent today, particularly among practitioners of witchcraft or Wicca. The meaning behind witches' bells varies depending on the culture and personal beliefs of the individual using them.

The Next Big Thing in Magic…”Amulet of Vigor” combos!

I wanted to play The Mazes End deck in a modern tournament, and so I went to research ways to turn the GuildGate cards (read bad common cards) into something playable. (Why try this strategy? I have four copies of “Mazes End.” One is foil. One is Japanese. I guess just for vanity. I also wanted to play the new card, “Chromanticore”)

The reason why the guild gates are so bad is because though they are dual lands, they enter the battlefield tapped. And that’s it. In Modern, at least locally, here’s what can happen…

• Turn one. You won the dice roll! You play a GuildGate. It is a tapped dual land that lets you do NOTHING until your next turn.
• Turn one for your opponent. He does something you figured impossible. He gets out Griselbrand! You lose.
• And you never produced one mana.

I am exaggerating a little bit. The guy I played who was able to do this did it on turn two. But my GuildGate was useless just the same.

The most common card coming up as a solution was “Amulet of Vigor.”

Anyways. I went shopping, and found four copies of “Amulet of Vigor” online. (It wasn’t in any local stores.) Each copy only cost about $2.50. To me, not a bad price for a card that can allow the dumb GuildGates to untap when they enter the battlefield, and therefore not be so dang useless.

Well…I didn’t know the amount of POWER I was getting into…

There is this story floating around out there. In the first ever sanctioned Modern championship tournament, the “Amulet of Vigor” was used with “Cloudpost” so effectively that “Cloudpost” was banned from the format!

With the banning of “Cloudpost,” the amulet fell by the wayside, taking up space in binders everywhere.

But someone recently figured it out. And now the Amulet is selling for around $20! (So I could sell mine off now and make a big profit. Not gonna happen!)

Here’s what you can do with an amulet, and a couple of other “bad cards.”

• Turn One. You have this in your hand. A “forest”, “Summer Bloom”, “Simic Growth Chamber,” “Primeval Titan,” “Boros Garrison,” “Summoner’s Pact,” and “Amulet of Vigor” You play your forest, and the Amulet.
• Your Opponent does something that you hope isn’t Thoughtsieze or some kind of “Griselbrand Now”
• Turn two. You draw “Hive Mind.” Play “Simic Growth Chamber.” Here is the trick. It actually enters the battlefield tapped, but then the Amulet of Vigor ability goes on the stack, which causes it to untap. Normally you would have to bounce a land. But you can go ahead and tap the land for its two mana first. Having used it up, you can bounce it back to your hand! (Now you have a floating green and a floating blue.) Use the two floating mana to play “Summer Bloom”. This card lets you play up to three lands from your hand….Guess what three lands you are going to play? “Simic Growth Chamber”! Get its floating mana, and bounce it three times! This gets you three blue and three green floating mana, which you are now going to use to play “Primeval Titan!” I suggest getting utility lands for the Titan when he enters the battlefield. Or maybe “Slayers Stronghold” and “Boros Garrison,” which you can use to give him haste and an extra +2/+0″! Swing with your Titan, on turn two for 8 my friend, and go get two more lands. I suggest “Simic Growth Chamber” and “Galgori Rot Farm.” Return the original “forest” and “Slayers Stonghold” to your hand. ON TURN TWO YOU ARE SERIOUSLY AHEAD!
• Your opponent looks sad as he responds on Turn two. He can’t do anything much. Maybe he can remove your titan. But it’s too late. A new plan is forming….
• Turn 3. You draw …. It doesn’t matter, really. You play down “Hive Mind” by playing, tapping, and bouncing one of your green bounce lands and tapping the other two you had out. Then play “Summoners Pact.” The first card is an enchantment that says “players cast copies of instants and sorceries at the same time. They may choose new targets.” When you played “Summoner’s Pact,” it was a free card for you. You get to search your library for a green creature card. It will probably be another “Primeval Titan,” and put it in your hand. Your opponent gets to do the same. He’d better hope he is playing green….The downside to “Summoner’s Pact” is you have to pay two green and two colorless at the beginning of your upkeep, or else you lose the game. Not a problem for you. But on turn three can your opponent do that at the beginning of his upkeep. (before he gets a land drop.) NOPE. YOU WIN!

Let me just say that I didn’t invent this. I read about it. And then some championship type people started doing it. Mathias Hunt posted a video about the deck he played at the last championship tournament. Also, Gerry Thompson out there has a version of this deck. It is JUST SICK. And It is the next big thing I expect.

You heard it here from the SpartanNerd first. I haven’t seen anyone actually play this deck in a tournament. One guy saw me playing the deck before I had the complete combo, and commented that he was building one too at home. (I played a hybrid Amulet and Mono Black Devotion Deck at the last modern tournament. It lost pretty bad.)

But at home I have built a version that doesn’t have as many great lands as I wish it had. I mean, I don’t have “Gemstone Mine” or any “fetch lands.” I don’t have “City of Brass”. I do have “Tolaria West,” which can let me get “Summoner’s Pact” or some other pact card. (“Slaughter Pact”) And I have four copies of each bounce land. So I built this deck on a budget.

I already mentioned I got my amulets for $2.50. The bounce lands cost around $20 for the whole set, mint condition. Summer Bloom was like $1.50 apiece. The pacts cost about $5. Basically, the Primeval Titans are the most expensive thing. I might have a total of $120 invested in it so far. That’s a pretty good deal for a deck that I expect to win at the next Modern Tournament I can make it to!

(As for the Mazes End. I played the Amulets with it. In multiples, the Amulet triggers over and over, so you can produce either color of the land that you want. several times on the turn the gate comes out. Otherwise, it still doesn’t work that good as a strategy.)

Amulet Combo Primer

Matthias Hunt provides a primer on the Amulet Combo deck that he played at Pro Tour Born of the Gods and thinks is a great choice for Grand Prix Richmond.

Amulet Combo is one of the decks that isn’t supposed to exist in Modern. It’s a high risk, high reward combo deck that when played well has the potential to produce turn 2 and turn 3 kills while at the same time being able to win through multiple counterspells. When the deck is firing on all cylinders, it’s almost impossible to interact with due to the amount of mana it’s capable of producing and the sheer volume of spells it can cast in a turn.

This is the list that I played at Pro Tour Born of the Gods:

Creatures (11)

• 4 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
• 3 Simian Spirit Guide
• 4 Primeval Titan

Lands (27)

• 1 Tendo Ice Bridge
• 3 City of Brass
• 4 Gemstone Mine
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
• 3 Gruul Turf
• 4 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Vesuva
• 3 Tolaria West
• 2 Glimmerpost
• 1 Slayers' Stronghold
• 1 Cavern of Souls

Spells (22)

• 1 Forest
• 4 Summer Bloom
• 4 Serum Visions
• 2 Pact of Negation
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 4 Summoner's Pact
• 2 Hive Mind
• 4 Amulet of Vigor

Sideboard

• 1 Chalice of the Void
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Seal of Primordium
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 3 Firespout
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 3 Leyline of Sanctity
• 1 Thragtusk

How The Deck Works

On the surface, Amulet Combo can be pretty confusing. With a full 28 lands, the deck is clearly about making tons of mana, but not all the lines are straightforward. So let’s break down what we’re trying to do.

The meaning behind witches' bells varies depending on the culture and personal beliefs of the individual using them. Some see them as tools for invoking the divine, while others view them as a form of spiritual alarm system, alerting them to the presence of malevolent forces. The jingling and ringing of the bells are thought to disrupt any negative energy or evil spirits, forcing them to flee or lose their power.

Goal #1: Resolve a six-drop as soon as possible.

' rel="noopener">Hive Mind, the goal of Amulet Combo is to count to six. And just like math, it’s easier to count to six when you can count by two.

Basic combo interactions:

This seems like an odd place to start, but it’s the most fundamental combo because at its core this deck is a

' rel="noopener">Summer Bloom is a very powerful effect that’s really only held back by the fact that it’s difficult to actually have three additional lands when you cast the spell. Bounce lands solve this problem by acting like two lands while taking up one card in your hand. To showcase the sheer power of

This hand can cast a

' rel="noopener">Primeval Titan on turn 3 with a counterspell to back it up thanks to the triple acceleration that

' rel="noopener">Amulet of Vigor is not the most important part of the deck, but it’s certainly the flashiest since leads to most of the degenerate draws the deck has. A good way to think about Amulet is that the first Amulet causes all of your bounce lands to come into play untapped but a second Amulet makes each bounce land give you a free two mana in addition to coming into play untapped.

When playing bounce lands with an

' rel="noopener">Amulet of Vigor in play, you want to figure out how much mana you’re going to need for the turn because it affects what land you bounce with the bounce land. Whenever possible, you would prefer to bounce a non-bounce land so that you can actually develop a mana base in addition to getting mana, but there is also the concern of keeping a bounce land in your hand. When you cast a card like

' rel="noopener">Summer Bloom, it’s important to be able to use all the extra land drops you’ve gained, so sometimes this means you’ll want to use the bounce land to bounce itself to make a quick two mana.

In short, when an

' rel="noopener">Amulet of Vigor is in play, you can use each land drop to produce two mana, but you will lose one mana for each drop that isn’t a bounce land. Count the bounce lands in your hand; for every one less than three, you will have to skip a land drop if you want the full six mana.

' rel="noopener">Summer Bloom is a four-of in the deck. The two cards are mostly interchangeable, but there are a few of things that are different about Azusa.

1) Azusa doesn’t make turn 2 six-drops without the help of

She’s a full mana more expensive than the

' rel="noopener">Summer Bloom, and as such she isn’t part of the deck’s best draws. If you draw a hand with both Azusa and

' rel="noopener">Summer Bloom, Azusa is a green creature. This means that you can Pact for Azusa, but you often don’t have the time. It’s pretty important for the deck to be quick, which means that you want most of your hands to combo on turn 4 or earlier. If you Pact for an Azusa, it means you won’t combo on the next turn because of the 2GG you have to pay during upkeep. As such, I really only recommend casting Pact for Azusa if it’s a turn 2 Azusa, which only happens with the help of

3) Azusa can be killed before you get all your land drops.

If Azusa dies, then you lose the two extra land drops that she was giving you. This means that when you’re playing the two extra Azusa land drops, you want the first extra land to be a land that doesn’t have a trigger (no bounce lands, no Glimmerpost) so that your opponent doesn’t have a chance to kill her. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but whenever possible it’s best to get the value off her immediately.

Okay, so now you’ve made a six-drop. What happens next?

In addition to their protective qualities, witches' bells are often associated with good luck, bringing positive energy and blessings into the lives of those who possess them. They are commonly used as part of spellwork, rituals, or ceremonies to create a sacred and protected space. Some believe that the bells also act as a symbol of the practitioner's commitment to their spiritual path, and as a reminder of their connection to the unseen realm. While each person may interpret the meaning and significance of witches' bells in their own way, they are generally seen as a potent tool for spiritual protection and energy cleansing. Whether used in a religious, magical, or superstitious context, witches' bells continue to hold a place of reverence and intrigue in the realm of the mystical and occult..

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Witch's Bells and Ancestral Magick: Communicating with Spirits