I haven't had any time to test yet, but there is an article on SCG Premium today from a guy that top 16'd with Amulet Titan. I don't have Premium, so I don't know if the article is any good or not, but I wanted to share.
Quick reply before lunch just to say that I did watch part of your Twitch link last night, including the epic game against Bant with Worship. Very cool! Then my internet crapped out and I couldn't finish the video, but that's on the list of things to do tonight
[Edit] I decided to read the entire reply. That's good info, especially about Magic Online! I'm definitely going to get some reps in with the deck before changing anything. Just waiting for A25 to release so Pacts and Azusa drop. I already have the rest (except Ballista and Cavern, trying to stay on a budget for now).
Thanks for the fast replies, @0oSunnYo0 & @daviusminimus!
1) I guess my impression of Amulet Titan is a fast combo deck where you get Titan, then Garrison+Stronghold, then Sunhome+Vesuva and win, but you guys are describing it as Titan doesn't equal auto-win. In that case, the utility lands would be much better. Although I do worry about the lack of Forests making you completely dead to Blood Moon. For Ghost Quarter or Bog, it seems key to finding these turn 2 or 3 at the very latest in order to really do anything against Dredge and Tron. With only 1 in the deck, and your tutor costing 3 mana IF you have Simic Growth Chamber and Gemstone Mine (in other words, very few lands you can tap for blue), it seems unlikely that you'll be able to consistently find these in time for them to be useful. Exiling Dredge's graveyard after they have 6 creatures in play, Storm's graveyard turn 4 after you died turn 3, or killing Tron's land after they played turn 3 Karn doesn't seem very helpful... Is the deck actually consistent at finding these lands in time?
2) Sanctuary makes sense as another source of white mana, but I don't understand the game state where all of the conditions are met such that it's actually good. You need to not have access to Garrison or Vesuva. You also need to have another source of red mana to go along with Sanctuary's white in order to activate your Stronghold/Sunhome. If you are looking for a land to combo with Sunhome on the turn you played Titan and found Garrison/Stronghold, finding Sanctuary + Sunhome only helps if you have Gemstone Mine available. If you are trying to active Sunhome on any turn later than when you played Titan, you will have Garrison's mana to do that. If you are worried about Garrison being destroyed, why not just run a 2nd? It doesn't combo with Amulet to make green for Titan, but Sanctuary often doesn't produce useful mana either, especially for all your red sideboard cards.
2B) It sounds like some of the issues come from struggling to fix your mana. That's why we run a bad bounceland in Sanctuary rather than a 4th Gruul Turf. And we are pretty short on sources of blue to transmute Tolaria West. Has Manamorphose been tested as a means to generate the mana we need? It shrinks your deck, gets us GG for Titans (even through Blood Moon), UU for Tolaria, RW for Stronghold/Sunhome, and R for sideboard cards. Sounds perfect! That, and I just generally love the card.
3) Yeah I meant the double-Amulet times. I looked back 2 pages and didn't see any discussion about that. Can you point me to the discussion you are referring to? Either tell me the page or a keyword I can CTRL+F for?
I'm new to Amulet Titan, wanting to try it out for the first time Online. I have a few questions:
1) Are all the utility lands that useful? Looking at a stock list like the 5-0 deck from last week (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/977205#online), there are quite a few utility lands:
Bojuka Bog
Cavern of Souls
Ghost Quarter
Khalni Garden
Radiant Fountain
I know all of these have uses. My question is how often do we actually use each of these compared to, for example, having more basic Forests to get around Blood Moon? Cavern is a pretty easy inclusion, but the others seem like corner cases of usefulness (especially Bog, Garden, Fountain). Again, not that they are bad, just wondering about Forests instead.
2) Why Selesnya Sanctuary? Is there some corner case where you need the white mana to go with Stronghold/Sunhome? A 4th Gruul looks better to cast your sideboard cards.
3) How do you play this deck on Magic Online? I noticed that it doesn't let me decide how to stack multiple Amulet triggers but rather stacks them automatically. For example, if I Titan for Garrison and Stronghold, it will pop up 3 triggers: Garrison bounce, Amulet untap for Garrison, Amulet untap for Stronghold. I want to stack these Garrison bounce, Stronghold untap, Garrison untap. This allows me to get mana from Garrison, use it for Stronghold, then bounce Stronghold if needed. However, if I click the Garrison bounce trigger, then Magic Online puts both of the Amulet triggers on the stack in a seemingly random order... Is there a way around this?
I am playing a "win a box of MM17" tournament Thursday and looking for a fun Jace deck to play. I was thinking Jace+Snapcaster (my favorite creature), but Jace+Tezz sounds even better!
I have a few questions:
1) Is the green splash for Decay worth the extra damage you take from Pool and Spire (which could become Darkslick Shores or River of Tears instead)?
2) Would Tezzeret the Seeker be a good 1-of in the deck? It finds all of your lock pieces only dies in the process if you find Orb.
3) Was Grafdigger's Cage ever relevant? One of the prominent Snapcaster decks right now is Grixis, which can kill/bounce it easily. Nobody in my meta plays CoCo. Are there other uses I'm forgetting?
I probably would have as well. The mirror is a pure race. You have enough win-cons in the deck that I'd cross my fingers and hope to find another. Holding it doesn't do much if you die before it's relevant.
Agreed. Being on 6 on the draw is already a very tough spot to win from. You probably need to kill him on your turn 4, which requires:
4 lands from hand
3 ramp spells
1 Scapeshift
That's 8 cards. If you mull to 5, you would have exactly 9 cards on turn 4, so they would have to be almost the exact perfect cards to win. Very unlikely, so you really can't mull to 5.
Yes, I read your entire post. Can you share a list? It sounds like your build runs no maindeck removal and just has ramp and the 10-card win package (Titan, Scapeshift, Pact). Does that give you enough redundancy so you are insanely consistent with turn 4 goldfish? If not, then how do you survive when most other Modern decks either goldfish turn 4 or have heavily disrupted you by turn 4?
It feels wrong to run 2 Pact and 2 Hour. If Hour is that good, then why not use them instead of Pact? Yes, Pact can find sideboard bullets like Reclamation Sage, but if your goal game 1 is to goldfish as fast as possible, one of those cards has to be better than the other to accomplish that, right?
Hour often wins the game but it doesn't end it on the spot.
Obviously it is very different than scapeshift or titan.
Also according to your logic you should cut 2 scapeshift and add 2 more pacts.
After all titan wins the game one turn faster (6 lands instead of 7). So why aren't you doing it?
If Titan won the game on the spot and was easy to cast 2 in a turn, then I would absolutely go 4 Pact and drop some Scapeshifts!
Spike, you need green fetches for any version, so you can still use those Verdants
I have been less and less impressed with Courser lately, to the point where I stopped running mono-green and went RG instead. If I take turn 3 to cast him, that means I am not ramping myself and not getting toward my eventual game plan of 7 lands...
Don't get me wrong, I don't run Shusher. I typically do pretty well against UW Control, so I don't have dedicated sideboard cards for it. I'm just saying that Shusher does give you inevitability. As long as UW Control isn't putting you on a clock, you have plenty of time to find it.
FCG, Shusher has the "can't be countered" clause, so you don't have to worry about that
I'm going to try Hour in my mono-green turbo-Titan build and see how it goes.
I don't like Vexing Shusher vs. Control decks. I used to run 1 in my Legacy Painter, but only against Chalice of the Void. The decks that have countermagic have creature removal too often, so its power is diminished. I would assume that it is a similar situation in Modern for the same reasons. I do think it's solid vs. Chalice of the Void, so if that card ever hurts us, we have an option (although creature removal is much more common in Modern).
In this deck, the only time you would cast Shusher is the turn you win with Scapeshift. That way removal doesn't matter.
1) Cast Shusher. It resolves.
2) Retain priority, cast Scapeshift.
3) Retain priority, use Shusher's ability on Scapeshift to make it uncounterable.
4) Win
Axel, I also used to not run Bolts. However, many of the top-performing RG Titan Shift decks (including the 2nd-place deck at SCG Cincinnati last weekend) lately have moved back to them. You're right that Bolt is awful against GDS and Eldrazi-Tron, which is exactly why I stopped playing any red removal maindeck. However, Online, there are way too many creature-based decks. I don't play against GDS or Eldrazi very often compared to Vizier, Affinity, Burn, Taxes, Merfolk, Elves, etc.
Yes, I read your entire post. Can you share a list? It sounds like your build runs no maindeck removal and just has ramp and the 10-card win package (Titan, Scapeshift, Pact). Does that give you enough redundancy so you are insanely consistent with turn 4 goldfish? If not, then how do you survive when most other Modern decks either goldfish turn 4 or have heavily disrupted you by turn 4?
My mono-green maindeck has cantripping disruption in Relic and life gain + blocker + land finder with Courser. Other than that, every other card is ramp or the 10-card win package. It works great except against stuff like Vizier. Maybe that would be a better shell for adding Omen+Hour than RG Titan Shift.
It is singularly focused on ramping. You can win with Titan or Scapeshift. You can use Hour for ramp or as a win condition with Omen. It doesn't worry about what the opponent is doing, just goldfishes as fast as possible.
Axel, in your version, it sounds like you run:
4 Scapeshift
4 Titan
2 Pact
2 Hour
It feels wrong to run 2 Pact and 2 Hour. If Hour is that good, then why not use them instead of Pact? Yes, Pact can find sideboard bullets like Reclamation Sage, but if your goal game 1 is to goldfish as fast as possible, one of those cards has to be better than the other to accomplish that, right?
But then again, maybe run both as a single copy. Vexing Shusher lets you win instantly with 7 lands with Scapeshift.
The problem with Boseiju is that Titan and Hour probably won't resolve anyway, do you can't search for them. If they DO resolve, you are probably going to win already. Most UW players I go against Online let Pact resolve to counter the threat I play to tax my mana the most. If they tap low to counter Pact then they risk me killing then I'd I have Scapeshift or Titan in hand. Work this line of play, you will get Shusher in your hand too give you the 7-land kill.
Do you really get to turn 4 with only 5 Mana very often? If you only had 1 ramp spell and no removal on your deck, you probably should have mulliganed...
Do you win the game when you cast Hour? Or is it just another ramp spell that gets you closer to Titan/Scapeshift winning the game?
Obviously you win most of the time that you cast hour.
If you always had the nuts and your opponents discard and counter spells never did anything we wouldn't have to talk about how to adjust the deck.
Because we'd all scapeshift for lethal on turn 4.
I don't understand your attitude. How is it "obvious" how games go with a brand new card that most people haven't used!?
Why not try to give useful information? Are you saying Hour is good because it comes down sooner than Titan? Is it better than Pact? Is it really only good if you have Omen in play? If you are cutting Bolts for Hour, how do you survive until the turn after you play Hour with no removal?
FCG, the first Tracker never wins the game. Normally, I drop it turn 3 and then a fetch. If they try to Path, then I pop the fetch for another Clue, so he's a 3 for 1 not counting the land getting Path. That gets me more action, often more Trackers. I have more Mana than UW, and if I can out-card them, too, then it's easy to set up a turn where you double-P shift. This is much easier to do on a turn they tap low to play a planeswalker or Wrath.
Do you really get to turn 4 with only 5 Mana very often? If you only had 1 ramp spell and no removal on your deck, you probably should have mulliganed...
Do you win the game when you cast Hour? Or is it just another ramp spell that gets you closer to Titan/Scapeshift winning the game?
after the 5:0 list with hour of promise was linked here i tried the deck, changed sideboard and replaced chandra with another prismatic omen.
I thought hour of promise was a big joke at first.
But after playing with it i think it is the real deal, the card is crazy good.
Can you share some instances where it was crazy good? Without Omen in play, it seems like it would just be worse than Primeval Titan, which means that it's worse than Pact #3 & #4.
But I haven't tested it. I'd love to be proven wrong!
[Edit] I decided to read the entire reply. That's good info, especially about Magic Online! I'm definitely going to get some reps in with the deck before changing anything. Just waiting for A25 to release so Pacts and Azusa drop. I already have the rest (except Ballista and Cavern, trying to stay on a budget for now).
1) I guess my impression of Amulet Titan is a fast combo deck where you get Titan, then Garrison+Stronghold, then Sunhome+Vesuva and win, but you guys are describing it as Titan doesn't equal auto-win. In that case, the utility lands would be much better. Although I do worry about the lack of Forests making you completely dead to Blood Moon. For Ghost Quarter or Bog, it seems key to finding these turn 2 or 3 at the very latest in order to really do anything against Dredge and Tron. With only 1 in the deck, and your tutor costing 3 mana IF you have Simic Growth Chamber and Gemstone Mine (in other words, very few lands you can tap for blue), it seems unlikely that you'll be able to consistently find these in time for them to be useful. Exiling Dredge's graveyard after they have 6 creatures in play, Storm's graveyard turn 4 after you died turn 3, or killing Tron's land after they played turn 3 Karn doesn't seem very helpful... Is the deck actually consistent at finding these lands in time?
2) Sanctuary makes sense as another source of white mana, but I don't understand the game state where all of the conditions are met such that it's actually good. You need to not have access to Garrison or Vesuva. You also need to have another source of red mana to go along with Sanctuary's white in order to activate your Stronghold/Sunhome. If you are looking for a land to combo with Sunhome on the turn you played Titan and found Garrison/Stronghold, finding Sanctuary + Sunhome only helps if you have Gemstone Mine available. If you are trying to active Sunhome on any turn later than when you played Titan, you will have Garrison's mana to do that. If you are worried about Garrison being destroyed, why not just run a 2nd? It doesn't combo with Amulet to make green for Titan, but Sanctuary often doesn't produce useful mana either, especially for all your red sideboard cards.
2B) It sounds like some of the issues come from struggling to fix your mana. That's why we run a bad bounceland in Sanctuary rather than a 4th Gruul Turf. And we are pretty short on sources of blue to transmute Tolaria West. Has Manamorphose been tested as a means to generate the mana we need? It shrinks your deck, gets us GG for Titans (even through Blood Moon), UU for Tolaria, RW for Stronghold/Sunhome, and R for sideboard cards. Sounds perfect! That, and I just generally love the card.
3) Yeah I meant the double-Amulet times. I looked back 2 pages and didn't see any discussion about that. Can you point me to the discussion you are referring to? Either tell me the page or a keyword I can CTRL+F for?
Thanks!
1) Are all the utility lands that useful? Looking at a stock list like the 5-0 deck from last week (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/977205#online), there are quite a few utility lands:
Bojuka Bog
Cavern of Souls
Ghost Quarter
Khalni Garden
Radiant Fountain
I know all of these have uses. My question is how often do we actually use each of these compared to, for example, having more basic Forests to get around Blood Moon? Cavern is a pretty easy inclusion, but the others seem like corner cases of usefulness (especially Bog, Garden, Fountain). Again, not that they are bad, just wondering about Forests instead.
2) Why Selesnya Sanctuary? Is there some corner case where you need the white mana to go with Stronghold/Sunhome? A 4th Gruul looks better to cast your sideboard cards.
3) How do you play this deck on Magic Online? I noticed that it doesn't let me decide how to stack multiple Amulet triggers but rather stacks them automatically. For example, if I Titan for Garrison and Stronghold, it will pop up 3 triggers: Garrison bounce, Amulet untap for Garrison, Amulet untap for Stronghold. I want to stack these Garrison bounce, Stronghold untap, Garrison untap. This allows me to get mana from Garrison, use it for Stronghold, then bounce Stronghold if needed. However, if I click the Garrison bounce trigger, then Magic Online puts both of the Amulet triggers on the stack in a seemingly random order... Is there a way around this?
Thanks!
I am playing a "win a box of MM17" tournament Thursday and looking for a fun Jace deck to play. I was thinking Jace+Snapcaster (my favorite creature), but Jace+Tezz sounds even better!
I have a few questions:
1) Is the green splash for Decay worth the extra damage you take from Pool and Spire (which could become Darkslick Shores or River of Tears instead)?
2) Would Tezzeret the Seeker be a good 1-of in the deck? It finds all of your lock pieces only dies in the process if you find Orb.
3) Was Grafdigger's Cage ever relevant? One of the prominent Snapcaster decks right now is Grixis, which can kill/bounce it easily. Nobody in my meta plays CoCo. Are there other uses I'm forgetting?
Congrats on the finish and thanks in advance!
Agreed. Being on 6 on the draw is already a very tough spot to win from. You probably need to kill him on your turn 4, which requires:
4 lands from hand
3 ramp spells
1 Scapeshift
That's 8 cards. If you mull to 5, you would have exactly 9 cards on turn 4, so they would have to be almost the exact perfect cards to win. Very unlikely, so you really can't mull to 5.
If Titan won the game on the spot and was easy to cast 2 in a turn, then I would absolutely go 4 Pact and drop some Scapeshifts!
I have been less and less impressed with Courser lately, to the point where I stopped running mono-green and went RG instead. If I take turn 3 to cast him, that means I am not ramping myself and not getting toward my eventual game plan of 7 lands...
FCG, Shusher has the "can't be countered" clause, so you don't have to worry about that
I'm going to try Hour in my mono-green turbo-Titan build and see how it goes.
In this deck, the only time you would cast Shusher is the turn you win with Scapeshift. That way removal doesn't matter.
1) Cast Shusher. It resolves.
2) Retain priority, cast Scapeshift.
3) Retain priority, use Shusher's ability on Scapeshift to make it uncounterable.
4) Win
Axel, I also used to not run Bolts. However, many of the top-performing RG Titan Shift decks (including the 2nd-place deck at SCG Cincinnati last weekend) lately have moved back to them. You're right that Bolt is awful against GDS and Eldrazi-Tron, which is exactly why I stopped playing any red removal maindeck. However, Online, there are way too many creature-based decks. I don't play against GDS or Eldrazi very often compared to Vizier, Affinity, Burn, Taxes, Merfolk, Elves, etc.
Yes, I read your entire post. Can you share a list? It sounds like your build runs no maindeck removal and just has ramp and the 10-card win package (Titan, Scapeshift, Pact). Does that give you enough redundancy so you are insanely consistent with turn 4 goldfish? If not, then how do you survive when most other Modern decks either goldfish turn 4 or have heavily disrupted you by turn 4?
My mono-green maindeck has cantripping disruption in Relic and life gain + blocker + land finder with Courser. Other than that, every other card is ramp or the 10-card win package. It works great except against stuff like Vizier. Maybe that would be a better shell for adding Omen+Hour than RG Titan Shift.
I guess that deck would look like:
27 lands
10 win conditions (Titan, Pact, Scapeshift)
23 ramp spells:
4 Search
4 STE
2 KHE
4 Farseek
1 Explore
3 Omen
1 Wood Elves
4 Hour
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/705978#online
It is singularly focused on ramping. You can win with Titan or Scapeshift. You can use Hour for ramp or as a win condition with Omen. It doesn't worry about what the opponent is doing, just goldfishes as fast as possible.
Axel, in your version, it sounds like you run:
4 Scapeshift
4 Titan
2 Pact
2 Hour
It feels wrong to run 2 Pact and 2 Hour. If Hour is that good, then why not use them instead of Pact? Yes, Pact can find sideboard bullets like Reclamation Sage, but if your goal game 1 is to goldfish as fast as possible, one of those cards has to be better than the other to accomplish that, right?
The problem with Boseiju is that Titan and Hour probably won't resolve anyway, do you can't search for them. If they DO resolve, you are probably going to win already. Most UW players I go against Online let Pact resolve to counter the threat I play to tax my mana the most. If they tap low to counter Pact then they risk me killing then I'd I have Scapeshift or Titan in hand. Work this line of play, you will get Shusher in your hand too give you the 7-land kill.
I don't understand your attitude. How is it "obvious" how games go with a brand new card that most people haven't used!?
Why not try to give useful information? Are you saying Hour is good because it comes down sooner than Titan? Is it better than Pact? Is it really only good if you have Omen in play? If you are cutting Bolts for Hour, how do you survive until the turn after you play Hour with no removal?
FCG, the first Tracker never wins the game. Normally, I drop it turn 3 and then a fetch. If they try to Path, then I pop the fetch for another Clue, so he's a 3 for 1 not counting the land getting Path. That gets me more action, often more Trackers. I have more Mana than UW, and if I can out-card them, too, then it's easy to set up a turn where you double-P shift. This is much easier to do on a turn they tap low to play a planeswalker or Wrath.
Do you win the game when you cast Hour? Or is it just another ramp spell that gets you closer to Titan/Scapeshift winning the game?
Can you share some instances where it was crazy good? Without Omen in play, it seems like it would just be worse than Primeval Titan, which means that it's worse than Pact #3 & #4.
But I haven't tested it. I'd love to be proven wrong!