Thank you for sharing your thoughts in such a elaborate way @daviusminimus I will have to do more testing on my own, last time I played I was still on Mapson's list. I also think Queen is meh in the maindeck but I feel like it got me out of some really tricky situations so many times I have a hard time not having at least one in the sideboard but maybe I overplay it. Apart from that so far I agree with pretty much everything else you said so far, thanks again for your help
Hi Guys
I'm just getting started with this deck, after I've listened to the GAM podcast, and decided to give it a try.
Does anybody have a link to the Amulet titan discord? All the links I've found on this thread seem to have expired.
Anyone considered black?
Recently I cut the last firespout in favor of a second EE in the sideboard. I enjoy it but I kinda only run red for Abrade and Slayers' Stronghold. Anyone ever considered playing black instead of red? Recently watched a stream with White Amulet.
Pretty new to amulet titan and not sure if changing from red to black would be worth it but it seems fine to swap the abrades for Assassin's Trophys.
older lists ran a golgari bounceland (maybe even two?) and also sprung for a slaughter pact. Makes sense that we could dip back into black again as it's a fairly easy splash.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
@daviusminimus - Thanks! That was very insightful and I pretty much agree. Much like its functional but competitively, black doesn't bring enough. I like Beast Within but and I respect its power when I played it with Elves lol. But I personally wouldn't for its high cost and the 3/3 that comes with it. Preference though. Firespout is definitely a more efficient board sweeper but having that extra EE allows me to be a little more aggressive with it early. I'm not sold on the triple EE yet but I don't mind putting EE on 2 if I expect a Damping Sphere. Plus Academy Ruins is sweet. Still Running Red for 3 Abrade, should be okay against Pithing Needle effects and Meddling Mage.. I hope.
Thanks a lot! Wasn't sure how active it is around here.
So what’s the plan for the deck if ancient stirrings gets banned? I just bought into the deck recently and it’s incredibly disappointing to know that I paid $600 for a deck and that depending on the banlist I may get to play it in exactly 2 tournaments before stirrings gets banned. I’m curious if the deck is going to be anywhere near relevant if it gets banned. Thoughts?
Thank you for the quick (and incredibly reassuring) answer! Also, would you happen to have a discord link? I’m interested in talking with more people about the deck. And the blue splash is interesting. As someone with a much smaller level of experience with the deck, do you think oath of nissa plus a plainswalker or two would be possible?
Anyone here talking about Growth Spiral? I'm still really in favor of Explore right now and an instant speed explore sounds great to me. Wording on it is important since its not actually an additional land too.
Nobody speak about the last amulet titan breach deck,winner the last SCG in Worcester? The deck play with 4 Azusa and 3 Wayward Swordtooth the manaramp and 4 Through the breach to fast combo kill with Titan and Emrakul.
What do you think with this version?
@user-23561543 - first of all, because you're from the EU, you've lost all your old posts (this happened to me), and your username. You can make a request to regain some bits, but it's unlikely to work. However, they'll give you the chance to get your username back at least.
I'll add at this point, it happened to me, and because I run the primer, the primer dissapeared for about a week. That's likely why no-one is talking aobut the SCG Winner! The primer wasn't here. I do plan to update the primer soon.
The interesting thing about this list, in my opinion, is that it's actually no quicker than the scout list. If anything, it's slower. Without an amulet, there's no way of resolving a turn 3 titan, because you'll ramp on Turn 3 and go for Through the Breach or just hardcast a titan on Turn 4. That's not that great.
However, there are some upsides. Sometimes you'll just get to through the breach an emrakul on Turn 4, which is significantly better than just casting a titan. You basically win the game on the spot thanks to the annihilator trigger. That's a pretty big upside.
Also, pretend you have Lightning Bolt or Gut Shot... it's almost blank against this deck. I know it's going to get pointed at your head instead, but the point is that a card like Gut Shot can really ruin a scout players day, but that's not the case for Swordtooth and co.
It's very similar to the lotus bloom version of the deck imo, as it focuses on a consistent Turn 4 rather than an explosive combo deck. Both have free wins (hive mind or emrakul) and both blank bolt pretty well.
Ive never been a fan of this style of deck, just because I prefer the midrange feel you get from the stock scout lists from time to time. Its a play preference more than a "this is right or wrong" though. Kudos to Dominic for winning with his list!
On Harvey's list, I like the iteration of through the breach it offers a different angle and still has some game against blood moon. But otherwise I agree it's slower, I prefer the mid-range/ trinket mage version, overall think it's not only more consistent but also better.
At the same event rossum and Edgar were on the black splash for a. Trophy and cranial out of the board. I am currently a huge fan, as the trophy provides a clean answer to everything, big fish creatures or blood moon ect. and the the white splash for path giving them a land anyway isn't an issue to me. I don't think abrade is good enough right now to be on the red hard splash, as it's truly only great when both modes are good not just a lackluster shatter or bad bolt. But the cranial helps against, ironworks and Phoenix and storm ect. So I believe the black splash is something to be said moving forward.
@Eternaldragon09 - I tested a black splash myself a while ago, though I wasn't running Cranial Extraction, I did run Extirpate, which is clearly a bit different but similar.
Here's the issue I had with the black splash:
1. Thoughtseize was worse than Spell Pierce, so may as well keep Pierce. No biggy
2. Assassin's Trophy isn't that great
That sounds a bit dumb, but the issue is that it's average in every match, but never great. Like if Trophy is taking out Damping Sphere or Aether Vial, or anything bolt-able, Abrade is actually better because it doesn't give them a land. If it takes out an artifact/enchantment, then rec sage is better because its easier to cast and leaves a body behind.
The beauty with assassin's trophy is the flexibility, obviously. But, it is harder to cast than even Abrade, though that's pretty marginal. But, when Trophy was just being average for me every single turn, no matter what - I started thinking about other "destroy whatever you want" cards. I went to a basically mono-green deck (dropping red and black) and ran Beast Within. Although it costs 1 more and leaves a 3/3 behind, it's significantly easier to cast, to the point where you can run a 4th and possibly 5th basic forest. That gives you extra game vs moon, path and field of ruin for a start.
Secondly, its just a castable card. I felt Beast Within was very comparable in power level, with occasions where I'd prefer Trophy and occasions where it was significantly better.
Once I figured out all that, I just came to the conclusion that I don't want trophy or beast within. Once/if you decide that you don't want Trophy OR Thoughtseize, you're now saying "do I want to drop my splash colour JUST for cranial extraction". I think the answer is no.
That's not to say you can't run black or that even Edgar was wrong (brave man to say that). It's just that my testing suggested it wasn't very good. The beauty of amulet is that you can kinda get away with whatever you play, the core 60ish (across the 75) cards are that good. Just my thoughts on black. I'd almost always prefer Red or White.
That makes sense, I was going on the premises that abrade was only marginally worse then trophy or path due to flexibility of hitting the stuff in bad matchups.
Like you said d. Sphere is ok against us, I mean Azusa or snake usually out ramp it anyway let alone a Titan. So it just slows us down essentially. Vial on the other hand, I would let sit, I would rather hit the creature it plays instead. Those are all just preference though, and I know those were just example.
All together I just liked the flexibility of path/ trophy to answer the bigger creatures that present the clock or to hit the problem enchantment or such and cranial against combo as a hedge (basically our bad matchups).
I typically don't board in rec sage unless I confirmed have targets. He is typically a game 3 guy in some matchups so having the catch all type is decent I think. Again I think no matter what you play like you said the core of the deck is so good it really doesn't matter and it's all preference and marginal points either way.
Yeah I agree with everything you've said there EternalDragon. So where I sit on the matter is that I'd either want Path for bigger creatures or Abrade for flexibility... and not really trophy.
I agree, I am currently on the path list for fnm and subsequently for my next event until further changes. I will be sitting on red or black depending on the format of course but I think white is where I'm going to stay for now.
On another note I was curious if you had some more details on sideboarding? I would like to compare notes if at all possible. I just want all the input I can have prior to my team event, more minds are better than one and maybe I'm doing things wrong. Overall I have general concepts and reasoning but I would like some more insight into the recent metagame. I would say I feel fair with my comfortability level of sideboarding. Generally speaking siding out the non ideal lands in specific matchups, shaving a snake in "bolt" decks and things of that sort. I just had mixed opinions and feelings like against uw control as a small example of sideboarding out like bog x2 amulet and maybe shave x1 trinket mage? For another cavern and ruic thar and your pierce/negate I mean it seems fine all together as you're going more for a grindy game anyway and amulet is a bad topdeck against a deck like that where you want more threat's. Like just logic like that? I feel 50/50 on some things and wanted a little more indepth clarity.
However, just be careful on your "cut a snake against bolt" approach. I'm running Explore, so that does change how I approach these things, but I tend to think about the deck in 3 sections.
1. Lands - can I cut some? which do I want to cut? Against a deck like Hatebears or Ponza, I just want as many lands in my deck as possible. Against most other decks, I'll go to 26 at a push, but I'd prefer to stick to 27 (I start with 28). I don't like cutting too many because that tends to cut into your untapped green sources. I occasionally run a SB land so that I can improve the lands without cutting too low (e.g. sometimes I run tect edge which can be better than fountain in some MUs).
2. Ramp - rather than thinking "am I facing bolt, cut scout", I tend to think about the speed of the games and the play patterns. For example, against BGx, I know I can cut 2 scouts + 4 amulet and still have plenty of ramp. I dodge bolt a little bit, dodge K-command a bit, and completely dodge fatal push. But, you have to keep in SOME early ramp which is why 2 scouts stay. 1 of the best ways to lose to BGx is a big goyf early, and leaving a few scouts helps there.
Against Jeskai control, my scouts aren't going to live and the clock is almost always slow. All 4 scouts can come out, but Amulets may want to stay in, especially if you've seen planeswalkers. Planeswalkers need pressuring after the opp has tapped out, and amulet helps you do that.
Against UWx though, Scout has more value. It's not easily killable for the opponent, and the ability to flash lands is great. Explore is better in the lategame, so I tend to like that land there. However, Amulets are less key. You still want access to the effect, but you don't want to topdeck them, so you can trim these imo. As a result, I tend to cut Azusa's quite agressively against UW. It lets me have flash tricks with scout, can pressure PWers with Amulet, and re-draw late-game with explore.
Against a deck like pheonix, the games are over quickly. Cutting snake to dodge bolt is just going to make you too slow. You almost have to just risk it. If the bolt comes at your head, it's not exactly a good thing anyway. The same is true against burn. If you were running explore, that'd be a card I cut there.
3. Threats. Against grindier decks, I go up on threats. Against the very fastest decks, I feel pretty comfortable making a cut. A card like primeval titan against KCI, as an example, isn't going to fetch up a 2nd titan very often. It's either going ot try kill the opp, fetch U-pact, or you're going to die. So you only need to see 1. If you are playing Ruric, then its pretty easy to swap a titan for a ruric, but I would also then consider trimming ANOTHER titan. However, if you don't run Ruric, I would cut a summoner's pact before a titan, because the utility from Pact is minimal, but the upkeep can be very relevant. Against a chalice deck, I'll happily trim U-pact + 2x G-pact.
Trinket Mage is a card that I'm not a big fan of, and as a result, cant give too much advice on it. It looks an easy cut to me post-board though, especially in the games where you're less reliant on amulet. Yes mage fetches ballista/EE, but those cards are much better when you naturally draw them, for the most part. On top of this, always consider if you want EE/Ballista/U-pact. Those are the first cuts I tend to make.
So I went to my local and played Friday, basically beat myself.
Round 1 v burn.
Game one I do Titan things and kill turn 3 on the draw. At 3 life btw.
I board in sigarda, x2 spell pierce and negate for u pact, bog and explosives and ballista.
Game two is grindy and he gets there I just can't keep up.
Game 3 I beat myself, I had Titan/ asuza in play during turns, I got slayers and Garrison instead of just getting double bounce and gaining a ton with my crossroads over the next two turns, instead I pumped Titan and swung for lethal he had one card.... It was d. Palm. -_- totally didn't read that one.
Round two I played against tron. I turn 3 both games, it was sick.
I boarded out ballista and explosives, for x2 pierce and negate and I got rid of a bog I believe.
Round three I played against mono white hatebears.... I lost twice very fast... Then dropped.
I had no chance, he played turn one plains go, I play a snake and pass. He plays ghost quarter into leonin arbiter...
Game two was more interesting, I lead with mine, snake and pass. He plays vial and passes, turn two I play ghost quarter and pass, leave my snake up for protection with a bounce in hand. He plays land, upticks vial and passes. I don't draw anything else relevant, so I keep my same line up and pass. I have a pact and multiple Azusa at this point. He plays ghost quarter, vial is on 2 and passes. I play a bog and pass again nothing really sweet going on for me. He end step plays mindscensor -_- not good. So I responded with Killing his quarter and he untaps upticks vial to 3 and plays land and says go. I have a path at this point, but I'm not going to walk into anything so I just had to hold it up, play Azusa and ramp a little and say go. So basically he responds to everything I try to do from here on out and ends up playing two flickerwisp and displacer.. can't do much. Sad day. Looking to retry things on Friday at my home shop.
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I'm just getting started with this deck, after I've listened to the GAM podcast, and decided to give it a try.
Does anybody have a link to the Amulet titan discord? All the links I've found on this thread seem to have expired.
Recently I cut the last firespout in favor of a second EE in the sideboard. I enjoy it but I kinda only run red for Abrade and Slayers' Stronghold. Anyone ever considered playing black instead of red? Recently watched a stream with White Amulet.
Pretty new to amulet titan and not sure if changing from red to black would be worth it but it seems fine to swap the abrades for Assassin's Trophys.
Thanks a lot! Wasn't sure how active it is around here.
What do you think with this version?
I'll add at this point, it happened to me, and because I run the primer, the primer dissapeared for about a week. That's likely why no-one is talking aobut the SCG Winner! The primer wasn't here. I do plan to update the primer soon.
For those that haven't seen the winning list, it's here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/126139
The interesting thing about this list, in my opinion, is that it's actually no quicker than the scout list. If anything, it's slower. Without an amulet, there's no way of resolving a turn 3 titan, because you'll ramp on Turn 3 and go for Through the Breach or just hardcast a titan on Turn 4. That's not that great.
However, there are some upsides. Sometimes you'll just get to through the breach an emrakul on Turn 4, which is significantly better than just casting a titan. You basically win the game on the spot thanks to the annihilator trigger. That's a pretty big upside.
Also, pretend you have Lightning Bolt or Gut Shot... it's almost blank against this deck. I know it's going to get pointed at your head instead, but the point is that a card like Gut Shot can really ruin a scout players day, but that's not the case for Swordtooth and co.
It's very similar to the lotus bloom version of the deck imo, as it focuses on a consistent Turn 4 rather than an explosive combo deck. Both have free wins (hive mind or emrakul) and both blank bolt pretty well.
Ive never been a fan of this style of deck, just because I prefer the midrange feel you get from the stock scout lists from time to time. Its a play preference more than a "this is right or wrong" though. Kudos to Dominic for winning with his list!
On Harvey's list, I like the iteration of through the breach it offers a different angle and still has some game against blood moon. But otherwise I agree it's slower, I prefer the mid-range/ trinket mage version, overall think it's not only more consistent but also better.
At the same event rossum and Edgar were on the black splash for a. Trophy and cranial out of the board. I am currently a huge fan, as the trophy provides a clean answer to everything, big fish creatures or blood moon ect. and the the white splash for path giving them a land anyway isn't an issue to me. I don't think abrade is good enough right now to be on the red hard splash, as it's truly only great when both modes are good not just a lackluster shatter or bad bolt. But the cranial helps against, ironworks and Phoenix and storm ect. So I believe the black splash is something to be said moving forward.
Here's the issue I had with the black splash:
1. Thoughtseize was worse than Spell Pierce, so may as well keep Pierce. No biggy
2. Assassin's Trophy isn't that great
That sounds a bit dumb, but the issue is that it's average in every match, but never great. Like if Trophy is taking out Damping Sphere or Aether Vial, or anything bolt-able, Abrade is actually better because it doesn't give them a land. If it takes out an artifact/enchantment, then rec sage is better because its easier to cast and leaves a body behind.
The beauty with assassin's trophy is the flexibility, obviously. But, it is harder to cast than even Abrade, though that's pretty marginal. But, when Trophy was just being average for me every single turn, no matter what - I started thinking about other "destroy whatever you want" cards. I went to a basically mono-green deck (dropping red and black) and ran Beast Within. Although it costs 1 more and leaves a 3/3 behind, it's significantly easier to cast, to the point where you can run a 4th and possibly 5th basic forest. That gives you extra game vs moon, path and field of ruin for a start.
Secondly, its just a castable card. I felt Beast Within was very comparable in power level, with occasions where I'd prefer Trophy and occasions where it was significantly better.
Once I figured out all that, I just came to the conclusion that I don't want trophy or beast within. Once/if you decide that you don't want Trophy OR Thoughtseize, you're now saying "do I want to drop my splash colour JUST for cranial extraction". I think the answer is no.
That's not to say you can't run black or that even Edgar was wrong (brave man to say that). It's just that my testing suggested it wasn't very good. The beauty of amulet is that you can kinda get away with whatever you play, the core 60ish (across the 75) cards are that good. Just my thoughts on black. I'd almost always prefer Red or White.
Like you said d. Sphere is ok against us, I mean Azusa or snake usually out ramp it anyway let alone a Titan. So it just slows us down essentially. Vial on the other hand, I would let sit, I would rather hit the creature it plays instead. Those are all just preference though, and I know those were just example.
All together I just liked the flexibility of path/ trophy to answer the bigger creatures that present the clock or to hit the problem enchantment or such and cranial against combo as a hedge (basically our bad matchups).
I typically don't board in rec sage unless I confirmed have targets. He is typically a game 3 guy in some matchups so having the catch all type is decent I think. Again I think no matter what you play like you said the core of the deck is so good it really doesn't matter and it's all preference and marginal points either way.
On another note I was curious if you had some more details on sideboarding? I would like to compare notes if at all possible. I just want all the input I can have prior to my team event, more minds are better than one and maybe I'm doing things wrong. Overall I have general concepts and reasoning but I would like some more insight into the recent metagame. I would say I feel fair with my comfortability level of sideboarding. Generally speaking siding out the non ideal lands in specific matchups, shaving a snake in "bolt" decks and things of that sort. I just had mixed opinions and feelings like against uw control as a small example of sideboarding out like bog x2 amulet and maybe shave x1 trinket mage? For another cavern and ruic thar and your pierce/negate I mean it seems fine all together as you're going more for a grindy game anyway and amulet is a bad topdeck against a deck like that where you want more threat's. Like just logic like that? I feel 50/50 on some things and wanted a little more indepth clarity.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13pe8OHJJaqLpi6HdZ0lhr9vp6al7OmUJNgap3IR7Hqk/edit?usp=sharing
However, just be careful on your "cut a snake against bolt" approach. I'm running Explore, so that does change how I approach these things, but I tend to think about the deck in 3 sections.
1. Lands - can I cut some? which do I want to cut? Against a deck like Hatebears or Ponza, I just want as many lands in my deck as possible. Against most other decks, I'll go to 26 at a push, but I'd prefer to stick to 27 (I start with 28). I don't like cutting too many because that tends to cut into your untapped green sources. I occasionally run a SB land so that I can improve the lands without cutting too low (e.g. sometimes I run tect edge which can be better than fountain in some MUs).
2. Ramp - rather than thinking "am I facing bolt, cut scout", I tend to think about the speed of the games and the play patterns. For example, against BGx, I know I can cut 2 scouts + 4 amulet and still have plenty of ramp. I dodge bolt a little bit, dodge K-command a bit, and completely dodge fatal push. But, you have to keep in SOME early ramp which is why 2 scouts stay. 1 of the best ways to lose to BGx is a big goyf early, and leaving a few scouts helps there.
Against Jeskai control, my scouts aren't going to live and the clock is almost always slow. All 4 scouts can come out, but Amulets may want to stay in, especially if you've seen planeswalkers. Planeswalkers need pressuring after the opp has tapped out, and amulet helps you do that.
Against UWx though, Scout has more value. It's not easily killable for the opponent, and the ability to flash lands is great. Explore is better in the lategame, so I tend to like that land there. However, Amulets are less key. You still want access to the effect, but you don't want to topdeck them, so you can trim these imo. As a result, I tend to cut Azusa's quite agressively against UW. It lets me have flash tricks with scout, can pressure PWers with Amulet, and re-draw late-game with explore.
Against a deck like pheonix, the games are over quickly. Cutting snake to dodge bolt is just going to make you too slow. You almost have to just risk it. If the bolt comes at your head, it's not exactly a good thing anyway. The same is true against burn. If you were running explore, that'd be a card I cut there.
3. Threats. Against grindier decks, I go up on threats. Against the very fastest decks, I feel pretty comfortable making a cut. A card like primeval titan against KCI, as an example, isn't going to fetch up a 2nd titan very often. It's either going ot try kill the opp, fetch U-pact, or you're going to die. So you only need to see 1. If you are playing Ruric, then its pretty easy to swap a titan for a ruric, but I would also then consider trimming ANOTHER titan. However, if you don't run Ruric, I would cut a summoner's pact before a titan, because the utility from Pact is minimal, but the upkeep can be very relevant. Against a chalice deck, I'll happily trim U-pact + 2x G-pact.
Trinket Mage is a card that I'm not a big fan of, and as a result, cant give too much advice on it. It looks an easy cut to me post-board though, especially in the games where you're less reliant on amulet. Yes mage fetches ballista/EE, but those cards are much better when you naturally draw them, for the most part. On top of this, always consider if you want EE/Ballista/U-pact. Those are the first cuts I tend to make.
So I went to my local and played Friday, basically beat myself.
Round 1 v burn.
Game one I do Titan things and kill turn 3 on the draw. At 3 life btw.
I board in sigarda, x2 spell pierce and negate for u pact, bog and explosives and ballista.
Game two is grindy and he gets there I just can't keep up.
Game 3 I beat myself, I had Titan/ asuza in play during turns, I got slayers and Garrison instead of just getting double bounce and gaining a ton with my crossroads over the next two turns, instead I pumped Titan and swung for lethal he had one card.... It was d. Palm. -_- totally didn't read that one.
Round two I played against tron. I turn 3 both games, it was sick.
I boarded out ballista and explosives, for x2 pierce and negate and I got rid of a bog I believe.
Round three I played against mono white hatebears.... I lost twice very fast... Then dropped.
I had no chance, he played turn one plains go, I play a snake and pass. He plays ghost quarter into leonin arbiter...
Game two was more interesting, I lead with mine, snake and pass. He plays vial and passes, turn two I play ghost quarter and pass, leave my snake up for protection with a bounce in hand. He plays land, upticks vial and passes. I don't draw anything else relevant, so I keep my same line up and pass. I have a pact and multiple Azusa at this point. He plays ghost quarter, vial is on 2 and passes. I play a bog and pass again nothing really sweet going on for me. He end step plays mindscensor -_- not good. So I responded with Killing his quarter and he untaps upticks vial to 3 and plays land and says go. I have a path at this point, but I'm not going to walk into anything so I just had to hold it up, play Azusa and ramp a little and say go. So basically he responds to everything I try to do from here on out and ends up playing two flickerwisp and displacer.. can't do much. Sad day. Looking to retry things on Friday at my home shop.