This is PuntThenWhine. I’ll stream again this Sunday at 5 eastern. For anyone who is a twitter follower of @puntthenwhine and sends me a decklist over twitter by Sunday I will try to play a 2-man with your list (amulet titan lists only). If there are too many lists I’ll try to play as many as possible.
Can’t wait to try out the sweet tech you guys send my way!
Today I fired up modo for the first time in 2 weeks. Of course, I ran a Comp League with Amulet. I changed my list a bit based on the latest lists that I'd been seeing from Snyder and puntthenwhine's. I added a 1 of Dismember in the main, which I switched for the 4th Explore. Honestly, it might just be correct to run 1/2 Dismembers, in the current meta having the random out to drawing removal feels nice. I know it's bad against Scapeshift and stuff, but I even randomly drew it vs BG Tron, and it won me the game, allowing me to attack through a World Breaker in a key turn. What I changed in the board was adding a second Pact of Negation. My MD was basically Snyder's, plus 1 Explore, minus 1 Dismember. So my sb was:
1 Pact of Negation
2 Swan Song
1 Dismember
2 Kozilek's Return
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Thragtusk
1 Hornet Queen
1 Ruric Thar
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Engineered Explosives
Round 1 played against Infect. Game 1 they mull to 5... still completely destroy me. Drawing a Dismember here would have been nice. I had a turn 4 Titan with U pact backup... he killed me on turn 3. Game 2 he didn't mull... aka I lost even worse. This mathup is as bad now as it always was.
Round 2: RG Tron. This is where the random MD dismember gave me game 1. I kept a terrible hand, but in one turn he had the option of breaking my World. He opted for play Ostone and crack to kill my Azusa and Tribe Scout (bad bad misplay...) I proceed to draw a Titan in the right turn, I titan him and fetch bounceland/GQ, destroy their Tron and it snowballs from there. I keep attacking with Titan and he eventually manages to get Tron back online and plays world breaker. I attack and he blocks, I shrink the Breaker, and then next turn HE DOESNT BRING IT BACK. Following turn he taps out and I bojuka bog it away. We come to a point where I die only to Ulamog, but can beat everything else. He doesn't have it. Game 2 was much more straight forward, and GQ, Tec Edge, Vesuva copy Tec Edge get me there with ease, even without Amulet. There was a lot of punting from both sides, but I managed to punt less than them
Round 3: Storm. This game I simply drew great. He didn't have interaction and no kill on turn 3, but I didn't find a Titan. He spends his turn 3 killing Azusa... I topdeck Titan (with U pact backup) and take it from there thanks to Amulet. Game 2 he combos, womp womp... Game 3 was interesting... I manage to resolve a Titan with Amulet, and I fetch Bog and Vesuva (copying a bounceland) and bouncing Vesuva itself. This allows me to have 1 of 3 pieces of interaction: I can use a Vesuva I bounced with my Tribe Scout to either make U mana and flash in another in my upkeep to pay for both green AND blue pact, I can also flash in that Vesuva to copy a forest I fetched with my Titan attack trigger to play around BM (he's playing fetches, so I suspect he has it) or I can use vesuva to copy at instant speed a Bog that I also fetched with Titan Trigger to exile his yard. In his turn he starts going off, and I discard his rituals off his Gift piles. He grapeshots for 6, killing my scout, and I am given the choice. After tanking for a minute, I end up going for eating his yard with Bog, which allows me to play around Remand, but leaves me dead to Blood Moon. I bit the bullet, close my eyes...... and he concedes. Guess I chose correctly
Round 4: Bant Company. He doesn't draw (or doesn't play) Mindcensor, so it's pretty straight forward. Notable things: Game 1, he used a path on my Tracker... ramping me and allowing me to Titan. Man, do I love Tracker Game 2 He plays Mirran Crusader, which I wasn't expecting. Fortunately, I have Ballista and K Return!... But he has Unified Will... Game 3: Turn 3 KReturn eats his board after I ramp up to 5 mana with Tribe Scout. I titan turn 3. Turn 4 he's holding up 3 mana, but lets me attack and resolve a Trigger. I was again expecting mindcensor, so I resolved the trigger, he doesn't do anything, and at that point I suspect Queller, so I fetch a second Green pact on my 2nd main. He paths my Titan at EOT, and I Green pact in response, playing around Unified Will cause I have more dudes than him, and Queller, cause he doesn't have 3 mana. He untaps and concedes.
Round 5: UR Twin. Back to a classic battle! basically, he doesn't draw Blood Moon, so I get to do whatever I want. Also, post board, the second Cavern proves quite handy.
All in all, the deck felt awesome! Perfect way to get back into it after a while of not playing. The online meta kinda makes me want to go back to 2 Dismembers main, since it was useful in basically every matchup. Besides that, I felt like 3rd Tracker was a bit overkill. After watching Puntthenwhine's stream, I kinda want to try Mortuary Mire, so that'll be my next step. Besides that, the deck felt solid, and only lost to unwinnable matchups or pretty bad draws (or just getting got.) Will try to play some more and share experiences!
So, I tried moving my hive minds to the board and bringing in hornet queen and ballista and on my first league with it got a 5-0 (ironically with 2 hive mind kills in my final match vs DS).
Davius, a nice split could be 2 Relic/1 Tormod's. Ruric Thar becomes a hard investment and could be easily avoidable (storm), although it is great against lantern and prison decks.
Tec Edge feels better than Ghost Quarter MB. We usually don't play a titan until turn 3/4 and at that point we are really only turning off decks like Valakut and Tron in roughly half their games. Tec edge also plays into the general mana dominance that seems to be one of the more underappreciated aspects of the deck. Keeping our opponent off double spell on T4 is a play most of us don't make but should maybe think about more.
Bojuka big is my 76th card. As soon as I find something I feel like cutting it will come in. I think tormod’s crypt is miles above all other graveyard hate options.
The only graveyard hate I think is in a league with tormod’s crypt is bojuka big as both are tutorable...but my main issue with bojuka bog is that without sakura tribe scout it is sorcery speed. Between living end, storm, grishoalbrand, and even to some extent dredge, I think instant speed graveyard hate is much better than sorcery speed.
I would not NOT play Bojuka Bog in the maindeck in the current meta. It's too big of an effect to not have access to, for practically free. Crypt feels quite good specifically vs Dredge and Storm, since against those matchups you don't really care about the fact that Relic replaces itself. Being able to interact significantly and buy time after finding it off Stirrings on turn 1 is the only thing we care about. I don't think it's inclusion is worth in any other matchups though, so only makes sense if we want a card specifically for those matchups (and I do consider Dredge to be a positive matchup in my experience.)
I was looking at your videos, Davius, and you said that about Rec Sage... And 2 hours later I lose a game where I forgot to bring in Rec Sage (it was 8 whack, so I wasn't really expecting Blood Moon...) and I lost a game I would have easily won had I brought in Rec Sage, not so much had I brought in Seal or Nature's Claim. Game 3 he turn 2 mooned me (again), but I K Returned his board. 3 turns later I Pact for Rec Sage and play Titan in the same turn (since I had been playing bounceland in the previous turns. I think having the option is just too strong.
By the way, I'm a firm believer in the 3 maindeck Forests. I have been converted.
Both cards preformed very well. Hornet queen was very powerful multiple games including a game I stabilized against humans with 2 life when they had 5 creatures. Ballista has also been quite good, especially against humans. I see it as a nice split card between early interaction and payoff.
Ballista is amazing for me. There are plenty of spots where it is your only out, and in a previous post I noted a bunch of situations that had happened to me where Ballista was my only out, and I was able to win (or at least get out of that tricky situation and then lose anyway :P) just because I was running it. In my eyes it has really earned it's spot in the main deck.
Next league I fire up I'll try your list @geedemorris. I will need to get used to the whole Lotus Bloom deal, and the different math involved and whatnot, but I'm very interested in trying out if it's a better approach. The only thing I don't like is that not having Tribe Scout and Explore make Tracker worse, and I just love that card too much. Is the list the same one you ran in last week's stream, switching Ballista and Queen for the 2 Hive Minds? Or did you make any other changes in the mana base or sideboard?
Can’t wait to try out the sweet tech you guys send my way!
Regards!
-PuntThenWhine
1 Pact of Negation
2 Swan Song
1 Dismember
2 Kozilek's Return
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Thragtusk
1 Hornet Queen
1 Ruric Thar
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Engineered Explosives
Round 1 played against Infect. Game 1 they mull to 5... still completely destroy me. Drawing a Dismember here would have been nice. I had a turn 4 Titan with U pact backup... he killed me on turn 3. Game 2 he didn't mull... aka I lost even worse. This mathup is as bad now as it always was.
Round 2: RG Tron. This is where the random MD dismember gave me game 1. I kept a terrible hand, but in one turn he had the option of breaking my World. He opted for play Ostone and crack to kill my Azusa and Tribe Scout (bad bad misplay...) I proceed to draw a Titan in the right turn, I titan him and fetch bounceland/GQ, destroy their Tron and it snowballs from there. I keep attacking with Titan and he eventually manages to get Tron back online and plays world breaker. I attack and he blocks, I shrink the Breaker, and then next turn HE DOESNT BRING IT BACK. Following turn he taps out and I bojuka bog it away. We come to a point where I die only to Ulamog, but can beat everything else. He doesn't have it. Game 2 was much more straight forward, and GQ, Tec Edge, Vesuva copy Tec Edge get me there with ease, even without Amulet. There was a lot of punting from both sides, but I managed to punt less than them
Round 3: Storm. This game I simply drew great. He didn't have interaction and no kill on turn 3, but I didn't find a Titan. He spends his turn 3 killing Azusa... I topdeck Titan (with U pact backup) and take it from there thanks to Amulet. Game 2 he combos, womp womp... Game 3 was interesting... I manage to resolve a Titan with Amulet, and I fetch Bog and Vesuva (copying a bounceland) and bouncing Vesuva itself. This allows me to have 1 of 3 pieces of interaction: I can use a Vesuva I bounced with my Tribe Scout to either make U mana and flash in another in my upkeep to pay for both green AND blue pact, I can also flash in that Vesuva to copy a forest I fetched with my Titan attack trigger to play around BM (he's playing fetches, so I suspect he has it) or I can use vesuva to copy at instant speed a Bog that I also fetched with Titan Trigger to exile his yard. In his turn he starts going off, and I discard his rituals off his Gift piles. He grapeshots for 6, killing my scout, and I am given the choice. After tanking for a minute, I end up going for eating his yard with Bog, which allows me to play around Remand, but leaves me dead to Blood Moon. I bit the bullet, close my eyes...... and he concedes. Guess I chose correctly
Round 4: Bant Company. He doesn't draw (or doesn't play) Mindcensor, so it's pretty straight forward. Notable things: Game 1, he used a path on my Tracker... ramping me and allowing me to Titan. Man, do I love Tracker Game 2 He plays Mirran Crusader, which I wasn't expecting. Fortunately, I have Ballista and K Return!... But he has Unified Will... Game 3: Turn 3 KReturn eats his board after I ramp up to 5 mana with Tribe Scout. I titan turn 3. Turn 4 he's holding up 3 mana, but lets me attack and resolve a Trigger. I was again expecting mindcensor, so I resolved the trigger, he doesn't do anything, and at that point I suspect Queller, so I fetch a second Green pact on my 2nd main. He paths my Titan at EOT, and I Green pact in response, playing around Unified Will cause I have more dudes than him, and Queller, cause he doesn't have 3 mana. He untaps and concedes.
Round 5: UR Twin. Back to a classic battle! basically, he doesn't draw Blood Moon, so I get to do whatever I want. Also, post board, the second Cavern proves quite handy.
All in all, the deck felt awesome! Perfect way to get back into it after a while of not playing. The online meta kinda makes me want to go back to 2 Dismembers main, since it was useful in basically every matchup. Besides that, I felt like 3rd Tracker was a bit overkill. After watching Puntthenwhine's stream, I kinda want to try Mortuary Mire, so that'll be my next step. Besides that, the deck felt solid, and only lost to unwinnable matchups or pretty bad draws (or just getting got.) Will try to play some more and share experiences!
Thanks for start uploading again your leagues =)!
I was looking at your videos, Davius, and you said that about Rec Sage... And 2 hours later I lose a game where I forgot to bring in Rec Sage (it was 8 whack, so I wasn't really expecting Blood Moon...) and I lost a game I would have easily won had I brought in Rec Sage, not so much had I brought in Seal or Nature's Claim. Game 3 he turn 2 mooned me (again), but I K Returned his board. 3 turns later I Pact for Rec Sage and play Titan in the same turn (since I had been playing bounceland in the previous turns. I think having the option is just too strong.
By the way, I'm a firm believer in the 3 maindeck Forests. I have been converted.
Next league I fire up I'll try your list @geedemorris. I will need to get used to the whole Lotus Bloom deal, and the different math involved and whatnot, but I'm very interested in trying out if it's a better approach. The only thing I don't like is that not having Tribe Scout and Explore make Tracker worse, and I just love that card too much. Is the list the same one you ran in last week's stream, switching Ballista and Queen for the 2 Hive Minds? Or did you make any other changes in the mana base or sideboard?