My local meta has a lot of non interactive decks. Ad nausium and storm. Chalice might be good there and we can tutor for it with tolarian.
Tracket also can be searched for.
While the chances of finding batterskull is low ancient sterings can dig for it.
But getting a chalice is such a huge cost for the wallet.
Ps: how is balista good vs deathshadow? All their removal kills it.
Walking Ballista is moreso very good against counters company rather than deaths shadow. It has potential to kill them without attacking if they put their life low enough, but grixis DS usually won't do that because tasigur and angler are enough of a clock. An experienced pilot will not put themself lower than 9 without a blocker. Ballista is fantastic utility and is especially good against counters company whereas tracker is fantastic against fair decks and their less fair cousin, deaths shadow decks. I can totally see chalice in a meta with a bunch of non interactive decks. For me, I've got to prepare for vegas where I'm sure the meta will largely consist of GY centered decks like grixis deaths shadow, dredge. Add to that tron and sprinkle in a variety of aggro decks and that's the meta I'm expecting.
Hi. I see some amulet lists relly on artifacts to keep the deck better.
The artifacts i see popping up is :
Enginered explosives
Batterskull
Chalice of the void
Walking ballista
Also, Sam Black has sime times used Tierlesd Tracker.
Could somebody bring me up on those cards? I used to play the deck, but I have not updated myself on it for a long time.
Hi there! A couple of those I believe are absolutely integral to amulet right now given the modern meta. Engineered explosives and walking ballista. The others are certainly playable but probably a bit low on the list because they aren't too relevant against the meta. With the explosion of deaths shadow and vizier of remedies combo decks, the capital of walking ballista and tireless tracker have skyrocketed for amulet players and I'd highly recommend both. You're probably well aware, but it's super important that tolaria west can tutor up ballista and EE to deal with a large variety of different scenarios.
Hi Allex! Here's my current list:
x4 sakura tribe scout
x4 amulet of vigor
x3 azusa lost but seeking
x1 courser of kruphix
x1 walking ballista
x1 hive mind
x1 batterskull
x1 pact of negation
x1 engineered explosives
x4 summoners pact
x4 primeval titan
x4 ancient stirrings
x4 serum visions
x3 botanical sanctum
x1 khalni garden
x1 slayers stronghold
x1 sunhome fortress of the legion
x3 gruul turf
x1 boros garrison
x4 simic growth chamber
x3 tolaria west
x4 gemstone mine
x1 vesuva
x1 radiant fountain
x1 cavern of souls
x1 island
x1 forest
x1 selesnya sanctuary
SB:
x1 hornet queen
x1 crumble to dust
x1 Firespouts
x2 ghost quarter
x1 obstinate baloth
x1 bojuka bog
x1 reclamation sage
x1 sigarda, host of herons
x1 ruric thar unbowed
x1 melira, sylvok outcast
x2 seal of primordium
x2 swan song
Sorry for no deck tag. The changes I'd make as of right now going into vegas would be to go down to the normal 2 botanical sanctum and add the bojuka bog to the main. I'd also consider tireless tracker over batterskull. Skullcrack is becoming a mainstay of current burn and batterskull has mostly limited applications in most games, while tracker really puts on pressure and accrues a ton of card advantage. On top of that, I also consider burn to be a relatively easy matchup contrary to what a lot of people in this thread have been saying. Their hands with goblin guide might as well be mulligans as that card helps us more than it helps them. Potential for a chalice in the board to take bojuka bogs place.
I've found that the toughest matchups are the deaths shadow matches. I don't even have a bad record against them so much as it's straight a 50-50 or 45-55 whereas a lot of amulets matchups are pretty skewed in one direction or the other. This means that the matchup is largely skill/draw based. Not much to say else about it except that your % goes up significantly if you can avoid getting TS or IOK ~2-3 times; once is usually pretty manageable. Other than DS I find amulet to be favored against most modern decks outside of MB blood moon decks. MU's like noble abzan, living end, and counters company get closer to even than most, so cards like ballista are pretty dang effective right now. Amulet, in my experience, handles aggro relatively well and has a strong plan for control thanks to tolaria west and cavern of souls.
Last two things I wanna talk about are serum visions and basic island. Basically I do believe the card selection from visions is particularly strong and necessary for amulets plan. Basic island has been pretty great honestly. It doesn't seem like it, but transmuting for island vs skred or another moon deck can be the correct play only because your opponent cannot interact well with hivemind. Having 2 G basics does basically nothing in my testing because even being able to cast titan doesn't do anything vs skred as you'll go and search for 2 basic mountains and your opponent literally either needs to just race or rip a skred. I can't stress enough how good Hive mind has been for me, and it hardly dilutes the deck at all because amulet in particular has so much room for flex spots.
edit: I'd add pithing needle to the board before chalice.
Yup you are correct Duckie, I could have played Scout and Needle and Amulet in that turn. I'll be honest, its hard to think about all the lines and discuss them. At the time, I was spending my energy thinking about whether I wanted gruul turf in hand or in play, and wasn't really considering playing the amulet, for some stupid reason! Good spot, and thanks for the feedback! I'm sure when i've done more video's, the play and the fun will improve! I will probably stream on twitch too, which should help (since i'll be able ot respond to chat etc).
At the end of Game 3, I didn't actually have pact of negation still in, I'd boarded it out. I felt like the card was too slow in the early game, and felt like EE + Ballista was enough in the late game. That could be wrong, but I felt that if I landed a titan safely, I could work around almost anything else they had.
Thank you for the reply. I didn't catch you boarding it out! I totally understand missing stuff. This deck makes me look like I shouldn't have graduated elementary school most times. Keep making videos man, I'll watch them at least lol.
Please let me know if there's any point in these! All feedback welcome!
Hihi. I liked your video! I'm stressing pretty bad about gp vegas because amulet is a much better deck than I am a player. I don't mean to put you on blast but I'd like to ask you about a couple of your plays from game 3. When you had a mine with 2 counters on it why didn't you cast amulet then play the gruul turf to pithing needle + scout/stirrings? Were you playing around natures claim? That'd be strange because you didn't respect the natures claim at any other point of that game. Also, at the end when deciding what to transmute for why grab ballista instead of pact of negation? There was no combination of creatures that could kill you with needle on druid so to me that stands out as the safest play to guarantee a win. Thank you for the content it's much appreciated.
For anyone who cares I'm having a ton of success with 1 MD hive mind. It's won me an absurd amount of games and is the sole reason my record against skred is positive. Though I don't believe my experience to be exactly indicative of the skred v amulet matchup. I play 1 island and 1 forest instead of 2 forest.
Hihi people. I'm seeing in this thread a lot of ideas about werewolves being aggro and a coco deck and such. This mentality confuses me because we don't have the same good cards and lords as og innistrad. We hardly have any good aggro options tbh. 2/1s for 1 are done better by mono white and instant speed threats are done better by spirits and bant coco. We should be trying to give werewolves their own standard identify and not just be another coco deck that is outclassed by bant. I may be wrong about all of this, but after all we are all still testing and theorycrafting. In my opinion people are not looking to utilize the good removal options given to us by EDM and are instead playing subpar equipment, or weird situational green removal. Here is a rough draft of what I came up with:
It didn't post results because the Jeskai Ascendancy Token decks are easily hated on anymore. People always carry enchantment hate since RW took a hold in the meta. Plus they just printed Seismic Rupture which really hoses them. Narset is a build-around walker, you can't just throw her in any deck that can cast her by t4. Which from what i've seen, people were doing.
This guy gets it.
What? Build a white deck of non-creature spells?
Yeah that's a horrible deck. Unfortunately the format doesn't support creatureless control decks splashing white. Those that have tried tokens got hosed by Seismic Rupture, Scouring Sands and Drown in Sorrow. Lets also not forget Virulent Plague can be called into action if needed too.
Better mana fixing and better control spells are needed for Narset to be good. Wizards has had their fun with End Hostilities, perhaps it's time to bring back a real 4 mana wrath like Day of Judgment. I do believe that's a Zendikar card so we'll see
Have you seen jeskai tokens? It's a "creatureless" deck that I find to be a good fit for Narset. Sure there is hate for Tokens, but every deck is hated on after board. The difference is that tokens sides into counterspells making hate cards null a certain % of the time. I'm not trying to defend the card, but your logic seems kind of narrow. Let's wait till the protour to see how often she is played and how effective she is.
I make it about 2.6% to have 4 lands, 1 Mystic, 1 of the other 11 dorks, 1 Whisperwood, 1 Hornet Queen, and 1 random card in your first 9 cards. I have not made consideration for the Mystic needing to be in your original 7 or the 2nd dork to be in your original 8; nor have I taken into account the possibility of 3 Mystics and 3 lands. But, I imagine these things won't change the answer much. I'd say <3% is "not common". And, that's only for on the draw, if you're on the play and only get to see 8 cards, well, the odds will be significantly less.
I stand by my call of BS.
Call it as you see it. Either way, your opponent is living in christmasland if he thinks he will get 2 untapped black sources by t2 and a blight in his hand (all while sacrificing board presence as an aggro deck). To keep it on topic, I'd like to mention that your deck stonewalls stuff like fleecemane with courser, pollyk, and every other non-dork in your deck. Your deck demolishes abzan aggro much like it does abzan midrange. The discussion should probably be more about combating abzan control, u/w heroic, and the like. If abzan midrange/aggro is giving you a hard time consider tuning your numbers to combat it better.
@ lajube: If you're looking for any input on your deck I'd suggest getting rid of wild slash and xenagos and moving a collosus to the board. A devotion list hellbent on getting lots of mana not running ugin is a mistake. Wild slash is a really weird card in your deck. It dilutes your mana base and is wildly inefficient against almost every deck barring u/w heroic which you are trying to race anyway. The lack of a single Nissa anywhere in your 75 is concerning as well, but I don't know your meta so w/e. Collosus is a good 1 of to have in the deck so that you can find him some % of the time with a genesis hydra if you're facing something like SBD, but otherwise he is inefficient as well. Big dumb green creatures that don't provide card advantage is just asking to lose to sweepers and other removal heavy matchups. Besides that I'd recommend taking another look at your sideboard. Your only cards against control are shaman and outpost siege. Phoenix should not be there, neither should gather courage. Has briber's purse crossed your mind for u/w heroic? How about setessan tactics? the other 2 genesis hydra's? Nylea's disciple? Why is there 3 barrage of boulders?
pretty sure we play different decks, but for what it's worth you probably should not be losing to the aggro version of abzan. A common curve in my deck is turn 3 whisperwood, turn 4 hornet queen. have you played the matchup? What are their problem cards for you?
I call BS! It is not "common" to play T3 Whisperwood followed by T4 Hornet Queen.
Suppose you play T1 Forest/Mystic; T2 Forest/Caryatid; T3 Forest/Whisperwood. T4 Forest does not get you to seven mana for Hornet Queen. You either need a second Mystic to be played on T2 or a Nykthos somewhere along the line. It would be unusual for Abzan not to be able to break things up by removing a Mystic (or two with Bile Blight) or removing the Whisperwood (breaking up the devotion path to 7 mana on T4).
That's because you would have 6 mana available turn 3 if you play 2 dorks on turn 2. Not that hard with 12 in the deck. And yes, it would be unusual for abzan to kill your mana dorks on t2 with a blight considering they are playing aggro, and hitting double B isn't exactly easy.
My gameplan against U/W Heroic, untested as yet, is to guarantee I can chump block thanks to colorless creatures, namely Rattleclaw Mystic (also good for jumping the mana curve via morph), Whisperwood Elemental, and sided in Ashcloud Phoenix. Also Back to Nature to foil the enchanments.
Does anybody have a strong plan against Abzan Aggro?
pretty sure we play different decks, but for what it's worth you probably should not be losing to the aggro version of abzan. A common curve in my deck is turn 3 whisperwood, turn 4 hornet queen. have you played the matchup? What are their problem cards for you?
Has anyone considered running Boon Satyr in this list? I was looking at Joe Page's list and thinking about running it in place of the 3 Singing Bell Strikes. It has 4 power(to draw off of temur ascendancy), it is an enchantment(to draw off of eidolon of blossoms), it's a 3-drop(where all we have is courser of kruphix) and has 2 green pips. Seems to me like a pretty good fit that I haven't heard suggested yet.
Boon satyr was included as a 2-of in the 11th place SCG list.
Walking Ballista is moreso very good against counters company rather than deaths shadow. It has potential to kill them without attacking if they put their life low enough, but grixis DS usually won't do that because tasigur and angler are enough of a clock. An experienced pilot will not put themself lower than 9 without a blocker. Ballista is fantastic utility and is especially good against counters company whereas tracker is fantastic against fair decks and their less fair cousin, deaths shadow decks. I can totally see chalice in a meta with a bunch of non interactive decks. For me, I've got to prepare for vegas where I'm sure the meta will largely consist of GY centered decks like grixis deaths shadow, dredge. Add to that tron and sprinkle in a variety of aggro decks and that's the meta I'm expecting.
Hi there! A couple of those I believe are absolutely integral to amulet right now given the modern meta. Engineered explosives and walking ballista. The others are certainly playable but probably a bit low on the list because they aren't too relevant against the meta. With the explosion of deaths shadow and vizier of remedies combo decks, the capital of walking ballista and tireless tracker have skyrocketed for amulet players and I'd highly recommend both. You're probably well aware, but it's super important that tolaria west can tutor up ballista and EE to deal with a large variety of different scenarios.
x4 sakura tribe scout
x4 amulet of vigor
x3 azusa lost but seeking
x1 courser of kruphix
x1 walking ballista
x1 hive mind
x1 batterskull
x1 pact of negation
x1 engineered explosives
x4 summoners pact
x4 primeval titan
x4 ancient stirrings
x4 serum visions
x3 botanical sanctum
x1 khalni garden
x1 slayers stronghold
x1 sunhome fortress of the legion
x3 gruul turf
x1 boros garrison
x4 simic growth chamber
x3 tolaria west
x4 gemstone mine
x1 vesuva
x1 radiant fountain
x1 cavern of souls
x1 island
x1 forest
x1 selesnya sanctuary
SB:
x1 hornet queen
x1 crumble to dust
x1 Firespouts
x2 ghost quarter
x1 obstinate baloth
x1 bojuka bog
x1 reclamation sage
x1 sigarda, host of herons
x1 ruric thar unbowed
x1 melira, sylvok outcast
x2 seal of primordium
x2 swan song
Sorry for no deck tag. The changes I'd make as of right now going into vegas would be to go down to the normal 2 botanical sanctum and add the bojuka bog to the main. I'd also consider tireless tracker over batterskull. Skullcrack is becoming a mainstay of current burn and batterskull has mostly limited applications in most games, while tracker really puts on pressure and accrues a ton of card advantage. On top of that, I also consider burn to be a relatively easy matchup contrary to what a lot of people in this thread have been saying. Their hands with goblin guide might as well be mulligans as that card helps us more than it helps them. Potential for a chalice in the board to take bojuka bogs place.
I've found that the toughest matchups are the deaths shadow matches. I don't even have a bad record against them so much as it's straight a 50-50 or 45-55 whereas a lot of amulets matchups are pretty skewed in one direction or the other. This means that the matchup is largely skill/draw based. Not much to say else about it except that your % goes up significantly if you can avoid getting TS or IOK ~2-3 times; once is usually pretty manageable. Other than DS I find amulet to be favored against most modern decks outside of MB blood moon decks. MU's like noble abzan, living end, and counters company get closer to even than most, so cards like ballista are pretty dang effective right now. Amulet, in my experience, handles aggro relatively well and has a strong plan for control thanks to tolaria west and cavern of souls.
Last two things I wanna talk about are serum visions and basic island. Basically I do believe the card selection from visions is particularly strong and necessary for amulets plan. Basic island has been pretty great honestly. It doesn't seem like it, but transmuting for island vs skred or another moon deck can be the correct play only because your opponent cannot interact well with hivemind. Having 2 G basics does basically nothing in my testing because even being able to cast titan doesn't do anything vs skred as you'll go and search for 2 basic mountains and your opponent literally either needs to just race or rip a skred. I can't stress enough how good Hive mind has been for me, and it hardly dilutes the deck at all because amulet in particular has so much room for flex spots.
edit: I'd add pithing needle to the board before chalice.
Thank you for the reply. I didn't catch you boarding it out! I totally understand missing stuff. This deck makes me look like I shouldn't have graduated elementary school most times. Keep making videos man, I'll watch them at least lol.
Hihi. I liked your video! I'm stressing pretty bad about gp vegas because amulet is a much better deck than I am a player. I don't mean to put you on blast but I'd like to ask you about a couple of your plays from game 3. When you had a mine with 2 counters on it why didn't you cast amulet then play the gruul turf to pithing needle + scout/stirrings? Were you playing around natures claim? That'd be strange because you didn't respect the natures claim at any other point of that game. Also, at the end when deciding what to transmute for why grab ballista instead of pact of negation? There was no combination of creatures that could kill you with needle on druid so to me that stands out as the safest play to guarantee a win. Thank you for the content it's much appreciated.
For anyone who cares I'm having a ton of success with 1 MD hive mind. It's won me an absurd amount of games and is the sole reason my record against skred is positive. Though I don't believe my experience to be exactly indicative of the skred v amulet matchup. I play 1 island and 1 forest instead of 2 forest.
4 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Lambholt Pacifist
4 Ulvenwald Captive
4 Geier Reach Bandit
2 Spirit of the Hunt
2 Ulrich of the Krallenhorde
4 Oath of Nissa
Instants
3 Galvanic Bombardment
3 Collective Defiance
Sorcery
4 Incendiary Flow
Planeswalker
2 Arlinn Kord
4 Cinder Glade
4 Game Trail
8 Forest
8 Mountain
Ignore the lands as I didn't do any of the math and I'm still considering Hanweir Battlements. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Edit: Dunno if I didn't format correctly or something but my deck isn't showing up. Removed the deck tag for now. nvm I'm dumb thanks ronnie.
Have you seen jeskai tokens? It's a "creatureless" deck that I find to be a good fit for Narset. Sure there is hate for Tokens, but every deck is hated on after board. The difference is that tokens sides into counterspells making hate cards null a certain % of the time. I'm not trying to defend the card, but your logic seems kind of narrow. Let's wait till the protour to see how often she is played and how effective she is.
Call it as you see it. Either way, your opponent is living in christmasland if he thinks he will get 2 untapped black sources by t2 and a blight in his hand (all while sacrificing board presence as an aggro deck). To keep it on topic, I'd like to mention that your deck stonewalls stuff like fleecemane with courser, pollyk, and every other non-dork in your deck. Your deck demolishes abzan aggro much like it does abzan midrange. The discussion should probably be more about combating abzan control, u/w heroic, and the like. If abzan midrange/aggro is giving you a hard time consider tuning your numbers to combat it better.
@ lajube: If you're looking for any input on your deck I'd suggest getting rid of wild slash and xenagos and moving a collosus to the board. A devotion list hellbent on getting lots of mana not running ugin is a mistake. Wild slash is a really weird card in your deck. It dilutes your mana base and is wildly inefficient against almost every deck barring u/w heroic which you are trying to race anyway. The lack of a single Nissa anywhere in your 75 is concerning as well, but I don't know your meta so w/e. Collosus is a good 1 of to have in the deck so that you can find him some % of the time with a genesis hydra if you're facing something like SBD, but otherwise he is inefficient as well. Big dumb green creatures that don't provide card advantage is just asking to lose to sweepers and other removal heavy matchups. Besides that I'd recommend taking another look at your sideboard. Your only cards against control are shaman and outpost siege. Phoenix should not be there, neither should gather courage. Has briber's purse crossed your mind for u/w heroic? How about setessan tactics? the other 2 genesis hydra's? Nylea's disciple? Why is there 3 barrage of boulders?
gl, fun deckbuilding [:
That's because you would have 6 mana available turn 3 if you play 2 dorks on turn 2. Not that hard with 12 in the deck. And yes, it would be unusual for abzan to kill your mana dorks on t2 with a blight considering they are playing aggro, and hitting double B isn't exactly easy.
pretty sure we play different decks, but for what it's worth you probably should not be losing to the aggro version of abzan. A common curve in my deck is turn 3 whisperwood, turn 4 hornet queen. have you played the matchup? What are their problem cards for you?
Boon satyr was included as a 2-of in the 11th place SCG list.