MTG Salvation

I went 3-1 at my local weekly event. 2-0 vs GDS, 2-0 vs Grixis Control, 1-0 vs Abzan, and 1-2 vs Tron. Kind of bungled the Tron matchup, missequenced my lands and missed a kill g1, won g2, then got my Growth Chambers Crumbled to Dust g3 followed by back to back Karns and couldnt recover. My local meta is very light on combo so I've angled my maindeck in a more midrangey direction with the extra value creatures. It's been working pretty well though.

@d8dk32 That's a sweet list, right! It's kind of the approach people were taking as soon as Summer Bloom got banned, with the Skulls and stuff. If you want to gun towards the midrange matchups, then you're very much missing out on Trackers. I've seen people go as far as running 4 Trackers in the 75, and I think that's a really good approach. Tracker is the ultimate king of the midrange. In the main, Baloth or Tusk could be a Tracker, and in the board, Witness could also be a Tracker as well. Still, it's always a matter of preference, and I have a preference for Tracker in this deck over any other midrange creature.

If you guys want to see an entertaining video, I recommend you click on the following link:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224192970

This is Jacob Haversat's stream, a long time Amulet aficionado. He's playing game 2 (up a game) against Junk, and it's one of the most epic amulet matches I've ever seen.

@fpawlusz i probably will try swapping the maindeck baloth for tracker, I don't think the baloth was needed main even considering the state of my local meta. The Eternal Witness was a test slot but it seemed fairly strong and put in a lot of work this week. At different points in the night it regrew EE, a dead thragtusk, a land that had been fulminator'd, and a ghost quarter. It seems potentially strong in grindy matchups, since getting back a stirrings or something and chump blocking is pretty strong.

Yeah, Witness is a great card, but I just feel like the job it does it's done by Tracker even better. Having nothing relevant on the yard on turn 2/3 and having witness as your only play is most definitely worse than just jamming a Tracker and start going to town. Tracker is also relevant in other matchups, such as Tron just cause it's a really solid clock that comes down early. For what witness does, I'd even consider Mortuary Mire, which feels like grinds really REALLY hard, and in my testing it has been quite impressive.

The one of Tracker has grown to be confusing to me. As a 1x, I assume we a leveraging on the fact that we can tutor it with Summoner's Pact. What situations would we get it over a Titan, or perhaps a Azusa/Thrun/Baloth? I can at least see some value in Courser if our hand is empty on lands, or maybe Ramunap Excavator if we have been dealing with land hate. I've played probably 200 games with the deck now and more and more the Tracker feels like win more. Our deck is a lot of air, and drawing more cards instead of a Titan which will automatically tutor another Titan seems weird.

I did consider primal command, I used to play Ponza and loved the card there. I haven't tried it because it can't be tutored for, but it might be worth a try as another multi purpose business spell.

I think tracker as a 1 of post board is fine but I've never been overly impressed. It's definitely gotten me out of some tight spots but a lot of the time it just dies before doing much. On the other hand, I love Explore. I find it really greases the wheels of the deck, getting you ahead on mana and keeping you moving through cards. Just kind of keeps things moving smoothly.

The 1 of Tracker in the main is amazing when you draw it in midrange matchups, and I have actually tutored for it game 1 against Shadow and other midrange matchups when they're trying to aggro you out and you don't have enough mana (even without amulet, the combo of Azusa+Tracker+bounceland will leave a ton of clues behind, which can help you get out of Liliana locks and the like.) And speaking of locks, I Pact for it quite consistently in game 1 vs Lantern and 8 rack. I do aggre than post board, as a 3-4 of it's a complete bomb.

Finally back on the deck after selling it to a friend! I'll try again to reverse engineer the Summer Bloom days with mostly Journey of Discovery (replacing Summer Bloom) and Azusas and Simians and the Hive Mind package specially since everyone runs Fatal Push. It's not going to be a turn 2 deck anymore but a turn 3 deck for sure. I just want to win blazingly fast the way we did before the bannings.

Cheers!

Blood Sun has also been in my radar with a Hive Mind kill with rituals and amulet for acceleration and at least 1 of each of the 5 pacts to cover the missing opponent's colors leaning more on Intervention Pacts and Glorious End - but should definitely be in a new thread. Ethereal Usher can play the 5th to 7th copy with 4 Tolaria West for the pacts. It would have a blue red mana base at the least. Will keep brewing this once the price of Blood Sun goes down some more..

@Grrvvpp23 I feel like adding Blood Sun turns the deck into a completely different animal... You're not a combo deck anymore, basically, you're a midrange deck with Prime Time. With Blood Sun in play, Prime Time is not really a modern playable card, since it can't go get lands that do things or that go get more friends. Still, the idea is super interesting and you could probably get to something, but if you want to explore it further I think it should be done for sure in another thread. Still, the idea is super interesting! Particularly loving Tracker in a list like this, with Gitrog and friends. I'm afraid finding the balance could be really tough, since the Amulet part of the deck has the opposite of synergy with the Blood Sun part of the deck (Azusa/Tribe Scout are unplayable with a Blood Sun in play, Amulet does literal nothing, makes Titan much worse, etc...)
Feel free to link that thread here, though!

@xenatic Glad you started playing the deck! Your list does indeed look sweet. Digging the 2 maindeck Trackers. Rec Sage, Claim AND Primordium seems like a bit too much, and it's not even guaranteed that will get there against moon. I am a bigger fan of Seal cause it dodges Chalice on 1, which a lot of people like to run against us (even though Chalice on 0 is almost always much better.) Seal does get caught by Spell Snare, but not caught by Dispel, which every blue deck will be 100% bringing in against you... Anyway, it's always a matter of preference, and I personally go for Seal, since it doesn't force me to keep mana up every turn whenever my opponent can slam a moon the following turn. Out of the board, I do feel like the second Explosives is a must. It's quite often the best card in your main and having an extra copy in the board helps quite a bit in some matchups like Lantern, Humans, Merfolk, Elves, even Burn and BGx. Sometimes it's even amazing against control, where it can kill searches for Azcanta, and on 3 can get Gideons and D Spheres.
What I would recommend is try it out A LOT. Make sure you're familiar with the basic mana counts (Azusa, amulet, bounceland, non-bounceland and Titan is a turn 3 Titan. Add an Explore and you have an even better turn 3 Titan cause you end up with more mana afterwards; double amulet, bounceland, non bounceland, Explore titan is a turn 2 kill, etc...) Since you're running the Kessig versions, there is even more math you need to go through to figure that out. Try to goldfish it A LOT, and REMEMBER TO PUT A DIE ON TOP OF YOUR DECK TO REMEMBER PAYING FOR YOUR PACT TRIGGERS. After years playing the deck, this past weekend I ended up losing a match at my LGS because I miscounted my mana, and counted a Tolaria I had in play as a blue source to pay for a blue pact... Which I had to transmute in order to go get that pact... -.- The deck is very unforgiving, so take your time, as sleep well the day before the tournament.
As far as the second list goes, I am not a big fan of Serum Visions in a list like this. I think you can run it, but you need to make way more concessions not only in the mana base, but also in the sideboard, since adding more blue sources often times means taking out red sources used for sideboard cards. Also, in my opinion with all the Stirrings and fetching with pacts and Tolaria Wests and Titan attacks, I feel like the Serum Visions don't really pull their weight, and the sacrifices you need to make in order to run them just makes them not worth it. Still, I do love me some Explores in my Tracker/Scout lists.
Best of luck at your event, and have a lot of fun! May you not run into many Blood Moons!

If you're playing the Scout version, I like Bog much better than crypt, since you still have the possibility of using it at instant speed, and it's tutorable with a Titan attack. If you're already running Bog, then Tormod's Crypt isn't really necessary, might as well try to shore up some other matchup. The deck is extremely customizable, and you should definitely move cards and card numbers around to fight your expected metagame. There are A TON of possibilities in an (almost) 5 color deck, so make sure you know what you want to gun for. If you tell me what decks you expect to face we can tell you commonly played cards to fight those strategies.

Second Ghost Quarter, and I don't think it's close. Crumble is too slow and non-tutorable. We're not playing a control deck, so we don't need to keep them off tron, we just need to delay their tron while our Titan accrues value and goes and gets Pacts. I even think Tec Edge is better than crumble, which also has the bonus of being actually good against Titan Shift.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gptor18/gptor18-9-32-decklists-2018-02-11

Amulet Titan placed 12th at GP Toronto!

The list looks very generic vs a wide field which isn't surprising. 4 forests in the main though! Seems like it's at the expense of shadow MU but you gain against Blood Moon and GQ. Also no GQ main which seems odd to me but I guess tron isn't too bad if they don't have turn 3 Karn...Regardless, it's great to see Amulet put up some new results.

Odd question, but do you guys think that Bloodbraid Elf would be strong in Amulet Titan with lotus bloom? It has the potential to ramp for 3 mana, get us azusa, get us a pact, and at worst cantrips with ancient stirrings.

You could accidentally cascade into a summoner's pact or pact of negation that you can't pay for, then die on your upkeep

Quote from Chilli_Axe »

You could accidentally cascade into a summoner's pact or pact of negation that you can't pay for, then die on your upkeep

Reread the Cascade mechanic. You get to choose whether you cast it.

Amulet is a combo deck first, then a value deck. As such, you care about having the key pieces in the key times in order to win. The random aspect of Bloodbraid it's not something we can really exploit. As said above, Cascading into a pact that we can't cast it's very much -EV for us, and we can't really leverage the 3/2 for 4 anyway... Also, needless to say that cascading into EE or Ballista has to feel really terrible Or even a second Azusa.

On another note, I've been able to run some leagues with Punthenwhine's list, and I have to say I quite like it. I think it's just straight better than the Scout lists, even though it's less fun. I have not faced Storm yet, but I have faced a bunch of Shadow and Hollow One decks, and have to say in more than one occasion I wanted for that Tormod's Crypt to be a Bojuka Bog real bad. The MD Ballista is also an all-star. I have included a 1 of Cavern in the manabase, though. I played against control twice, and was really REALLY happy I made this change. Nothing like untapping with 5 mana on turn 6, and have my opp draw step-Clique and see a hand of 2 Titans, 1 Pact, 1 Hornet Queen with a Cavern in hand I transmuted for the previous turn. 10/10 would recommend.

Quote from Dizdo »

Odd question, but do you guys think that Bloodbraid Elf would be strong in Amulet Titan with lotus bloom? It has the potential to ramp for 3 mana, get us azusa, get us a pact, and at worst cantrips with ancient stirrings.

BBE wouldn't be good I don't think. We want titan ASAP. That's when we start playing magic. Postboard we can go into grind mode but even then does BBE grind better than tracker? It just seems hard to find a place for her where we have other cards that do more for less.


How do people feel going against the unbanned cards? I feel like JtMS won't have much of an effect against us and I don't expect BBE to make much of a splash in modern in general

I expect for any meta shifts here to be really good for us. We can tune our deck to have a great matchup against UW control decks that will be playing Jace very easily, we can grind well against Jund out of the board, and I think the aggro decks that will be targeting Jace are Burn and Affinity, both of which are pretty good matchups. I also expect this to mean less Storm and possibly less UR Blood Moon decks (if UW is taking advantage of Jace better).