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Amulet Titan In-depth & Sideboard guide
AMULET TITAN GUIDE
Who am I?
Hello everyone, my name is Marc Pérez, better known as MarcusMPV in Magic Online. I play a lot of formats, but I'm currently focused on Modern. I usually play Amulet Titan, with which I won the Modern Showcase Challenge last Sunday.
The deck:
Before going into details, let's take a look at the version I used along the tournament.
$945/346.53 Tix
Maindeck (60)
| Creature [17] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Arboreal Grazer | $0.35 | |
| 2 Azusa, Lost but Seeking | $5.99 | |
| 2 Cultivator Colossus | $14.99 | |
| 4 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove | $12.99 | |
| 4 Primeval Titan | $4.99 | |
| 1 Tireless Tracker | $0.49 | |
| Artifact [5] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Amulet of Vigor | $21.99 | |
| 1 Expedition Map | $2.99 | |
| Instant [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Summoner's Pact | $4.99 | |
| Sorcery [2] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2 Explore | $0.35 | |
| Enchantment [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Urza's Saga | $39.99 | |
| Land [28] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Boros Garrison | $0.35 | |
| 1 Breeding Pool | $20.99 | |
| 2 Castle Garenbrig | $4.99 | |
| 2 Cavern of Souls | $42.99 | |
| 1 Crumbling Vestige | $0.35 | |
| 4 Forest | $0.01 | |
| 1 Gruul Turf | $0.35 | |
| 1 Misty Rainforest | $23.99 | |
| 1 Radiant Fountain | $0.49 | |
| 3 Selesnya Sanctuary | $0.35 | |
| 4 Simic Growth Chamber | $0.35 | |
| 1 Slayers' Stronghold | $0.49 | |
| 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion | $0.35 | |
| 2 Tolaria West | $1.49 | |
| 2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle | $23.99 | |
| 1 Vesuva | $15.99 | |
| Sideboard [15] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Cavern of Souls | $42.99 | |
| 1 Tireless Tracker | $0.49 | |
| 1 Bojuka Bog | $1.79 | |
| 1 Endurance | $27.99 | |
| 2 Engineered Explosives | $12.99 | |
| 3 Force of Vigor | $10.99 | |
| 1 Ghost Quarter | $0.39 | |
| 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth | $44.99 | |
| 1 Outland Liberator | $0.35 | |
| 3 Relic of Progenitus | $6.49 | |
$146.43 Tix @cardhoarder
$3.66 / Week @cardhoarder
$703.54 @tcgplayer
$797.51 @cardkingdom
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Archetype Analysis
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How does it works?
Amulet Titan is a combo deck that tries to cast Primeval Titan as soon as possible. To accomplish this, it uses a variety of solutions, including:
Ramp spells
These are the cards that allow us to put a Titan on board before turn 6.
Amulet of Vigor
This artifact is the key card of the deck, its ability to untap a permanent when it comes into play can be easily abused.
In fact, this card has an insane synergy with Bounce lands, with them we can add 2 mana with just one land drop. Remember that Amulet of Vigor has a triggered ability, so if we have more than one Amulet into play, we may use them to create even more mana tapping our Bounce lands again between each trigger. In other words, with a single bounceland and two amulets in play we can get up to 4 mana with a single land drop!
Closing the game with Primeval Titan
Ok, we have a huge amount of mana and we resolve our Primeval Titan but… How do we win?
The Titan's ability to search our library for lands and put them in into play can be easily abused (remember that we will untap them with Amulet of Vigor).
Lethal damage
We have two lands in our deck that allow us to win the game by just attacking a single time with our Primeval Titan: Slayer's Stronghold and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion.
These lands can be used in combination with the Titan to win the game the same turn it was cast. You just need to search Slayer's Stronghold when the Titan comes into play to give him haste. Then you attack your opponent and use the triggered ability from the Titan again to ‘cheat’ Sunhome into play and use its ability: now you have a huge Titan with double strike and trample swinging for lethal damage!
Valakut
As an alternative win condition we can also do lethal damage using Dryad of the Ilysian Grove + Valakut combo.
The Dryad ability “transforms'' our lands into mountains by giving them all the basic land types. With that, we can trigger Valakut easily without even playing any mountain on our deck. We just need to have at least 5 additional lands and Valakut into play. For example, if we have Dryad in play, we may cast Primeval Titan with 4 lands on the battlefield and then search for 2 Valakuts, each Valakut will trigger 2 times, which means that we will do 12 damage (4 different triggers, each one dealing 3 damage to any target).
Other win conditions
The deck also plays powerful cards that have synergy with lands, like Cultivator Colossus and Tireless tracker, those cards can also become win conditions by themselves.
You can also abuse Urza’s Saga as the last resort available. The constructs can grow easily and become a real threat for our opponents, especially if we draw multiple copies of this land.
Tips and tricks to play Amulet Titan
These are some interactions, tips and tricks for the deck, a few of them are very marginal, but knowing them can give you an advantage in some spots.
- Against Mill, when you evoke endurance, put the triggered abilities on the stack in the right way: in this case you want to firstly resolve the evoke trigger, so you can shuffle it again in your deck when the other one resolves.
- Dress Down kills your Cultivator Colossus if it is on the battlefield. Also, if your opponent casts Dress Down in response, it will die without triggering any ability.
- The interaction with Dryad and Dress Down is interesting: you won't be able to play any extra lands, but your lands will have all the basic land types:this means that Valakut will trigger and that you can add mana of any color.
- Vesuva can copy your opponent lands, this can be relevant in some matchups (you can copy canopy lands, bounce-lands, manlands, urza’s saga….)
- With Dryad of the Ilysian Grove your lands give you any mana, but your Bounce lands can add their own mana or just one of another type ( if you have Selesnya Sanctuary for example, you can add GW, R, U, W, G or B).
- Choke or Boil effects kill all your lands if you have Dryad in play. Also, against merfolks, you won’t be able to block if they have islandwalk.
- Transmuting Tolaria can be used to get your pacts, lands or Engineered Explosives.
- With Dryad of the Ilysian Grove on the table, crumbling vestige can act as a boros bounceland to haste your titan if your land count isn’t high enough to trigger valakut (add W with the land through dryad and with the Crumbling trigger add R, or the other way around). Remember: this can only be used to give haste to one titan! To give haste to 2 titans (with 2 amulets) you need Boros Garrison.
- With a Titan trigger that searches land + Vesuva, Vesuva can't copy the land that you just searched.
- When you play a creature that lets you play extra lands (specially with Azusa) try to always play first the lands without triggered abilities, with that you avoid passing the priority to your opponent and giving him a chance to kill your creatures.
- You can respond to Urza’s Saga sacrifice trigger and add one mana or create a construct.
- Blood Moon, Alpine Moon and Spreading Seas insta-kill your urza’s saga.
- In some situations, you must avoid sacrificing your fetchlands. If your Dryad is killed in response to a Valakut triggered ability, you can still sacrifice the fetchland and search for a land that will count toward the triggered ability from Valakut.
- Engineered Explosives can be used to destroy Chalice of the Void with 0 counters, as long as you cast them paying 1 colorless mana (you have many lands that add colorless).
- In some cases, you might want to keep Arboreal Grazer in hand and use it in the following turns. This is useful in situations when you have only one amulet on the board; if you draw the second one, your Grazer turns from a +1 mana card into a spell that gives you +3 mana.
- If Dryad and Blood Moon are on the battlefield at the same time, the effect of the last card entering the battlefield will be the one that prevails due to timestamps.
Titan Amulet match-up and sideboard guide
Grixis Shadow
IN: 1 tireless tracker, 1 endurance, 1 bojuka bog, 3 relic of progenitus, 1 engineered explosives, 1 cavern of souls
OUT: 2 urza’s saga, 1 expedition map, 1 summoner’s pact, 1 cultivator colossus, 2 azusa, lost but seeking, 1 explore
GDS has a significant advantage in this matchup, but the sideboard was created with this in mind. On game 1 you can’t do much, just try to develop your plan and try to avoid all the disruption they play; After sideboarding, however, your game plan drastically changes; you become a "control" deck that ramps into big mana spells.
The main reason to side out two sagas is because GDS brings in Alpine Moon, which instant-kills our sagas.
Due to them playing Dress Down the Saga plan and grind isn't really a good option, Cavern of Souls and Bojuka Bog are good replacements for these lands.
As we remove Sagas, Map becomes worse, thus, we remove it in favor of Relics, which is a key card early on in the matchup.
In this matchup, the Arboreal grazer is a great card because it's a 1-mana ramp spell that blocks Ragavan each turn.
Tireless tracker, endurance, and Engineered Explosives are all excellent cards for our post-sideboard strategy. I side out 1 cultivator colossus because, as I said before, it’s usually not great against dress down decks. It's also a seven-mana spell with little effect since you won’t have many lands in hand in this matchup, since your opponent plays a lot of discard spells like Kroxa and Kolaghan’s Command. (Ideally, you'd want to start the game with Grazer in your starting hand).
I cut 1 summoner’s pact because it will make your opponent Drown in the Loch good when we have a Relic in play, and in most of the cases you’ll never want 2 copies in hand.
Azusa is probably one of your most vulnerable cards in this match since it dies easily to many threats (for example, to an Unholy Heat without delirium), and it doesn't block Ragavan.
4C Blink
IN: 1 tireless tracker, 1 kozilek, butcher of truth, 1 cavern of souls, 1 ghost quarter (otd)
OUT: 1 Urza’s saga (2 if you’re on the draw), 1 explore, 1 arboreal grazer
This matchup is very interesting and generally considered even, but we hold a slight advantage. The games vs blink typically lasts a long time, and having a good plan for the late game is quite important. That’s why I bring in Tireless Tracker and Kozilek. Both of them are strong in this match and give us an edge in the late game. I also sideout 1 x Urza's Saga due to Teferi, Time Raveler, and Spreading Seas.
Teferi can't bounce Urza's Saga on the draw, that is why I recommend keeping 3 in games where you're on the play. Keep in mind that our spells will most of the time resolve (they just play two counterspells). That's pretty good, because we don't have to spend time transmuting for Cavern of Souls or similar cards like versus UW and other similar matches.
The key to this matchup is playing around Solitude and Ephemerate, you must try to avoid deploying too many threats at the same time, and also pay attention to the lands you search with your Primeval Titan. If you cast it and it’s your only big threat, giving it haste might not be the best option, instead try searching for Tolaria+bounceland or Saga+Tolaria.
One of the best cards to do so is Cultivator Colossus. It's a very strong card that our opponent will be forced to deal with as soon as possible with Solitude. As a result, we'll be able to put our other threats into play without opposition in the following turns.
If it’s not necessary, don’t play your Amulet of Vigor in turn 1, try to play around Prismatic Ending as much as you can, and cast your amulets when you really need them.
Since you can't use counterspells to protect yourself from Spreading Seas, the most crucial thing is to plan out your land drops in order to minimize the impact of the card; consider playing Bounce lands after your ramp spell has resolved.
For example, cast dryad and play bounceland as your second land drop, because if your opponent casts spreading seas on your bounceland, dryad will most likely survive.
Burn
IN: nothing
OUT: nothing
This is clearly our best pairing; your early creatures like Arboreal Grazer and Dryad of the Ilysian Groves block their creatures in a very clean way, in game 1 they don’t interact too much with you and you have the recursivity of radiant fountain + Bounce lands to gain a bunch of life. Post side games you just have to play around Deflecting Palm and take care of Path to Exile and Smash to Smithereens.
If your opponent has two mana open avoid attacking with primeval titan to play around Deflecting Palm. The key to play around this card is having Dryad + Titan on the battlefield, so you can search for 2 Valakut with the Primeval Titan triggered ability and kill your opponent before the combat damage phase. Again, try to get the most out of your amulet of vigor and don’t expose it to a Smash to Smithereens until it’s needed. You might want to bring in Engineered Explosives, but personally, I don’t like them at all because I think they are a bit slow and don’t fit very well with Amulet of Vigor and Arboreal Grazer. The key to winning this match is being proactive.
Hammer
IN: 3 force of vigor, 2 engineered explosives, 1 ghost quarter.
OUT: 2 explore, 1 cavern of souls, 1 cultivator colossus, 1 tireless tracker, 1 expedition map
This matchup is favorable for Amulet Titan. Hammer doesn't have many ways to disrupt our strategy, even after sideboarding. Game 1 is pretty straightforward. Both decks try to deploy their key cards as fast as possible. Arboreal Grazer is a pretty good card because it's an excellent blocker against all his creatures, including Inkmoth Nexus.
In post-sideboard games, you just have to take care of cards like Prismatic Ending, Seal of Cleansing, Path to Exile, and Thoughtseize; they are annoying but not as decisive as Force of Vigor and Engineered Explosives. Other cards that they can bring in after sideboarding are Cathar Commando and Hushbringer.
Ur murktide
The sideboard for this deck is determined by whether or not they play Blood Moon in their decks.
If they play blood moon:
IN: 3 relics of progenitus, 1 outland liberator, 2 force of vigor, 1 cavern of souls, 1 bojuka bog, 1 tireless tracker, 1 endurance.
OUT: 4 urza’s saga, 2 azusa, lost but seeking, 2 cultivator colossus, 1 explore, 1 summoner’s pact
If they don’t play blood moon:
IN: 3 relics of progenitus, 1 cavern of souls, 1 bojuka bog, 1 tireless tracker, 1 endurance.
OUT: 3 urza’s saga, 2 azusa, lost but seeking, 1 cultivator colossus, 1 explore
In this matchup, the plan is very similar to the Grixis Shadow's one. The main differences are that they do not have as much discard on their side and Blood Moon, which is a key card against us.
Controlling their graveyard is the most common way to win, to do that you have 3 copies of Relic of Progenitus, Endurance and Bojuka Bog, that can be replayed with Bounce lands. If you get one of them into play you nullify all their main threats (they can’t cast Murktide easily, Dragon’s Rage Channeler is just a 1/1 that surveils and Monkey can be easily blocked by your creatures) and OP’s better removal (Unholy Heat) it’s just a bad shock.
The last cards that we must have in mind is Dress Down (that’s why we side out Cultivator Colossus) and Counterspell (you have 3 Cavern of Souls and a lot of relevant cards, like Tracker, Dryad and Titan).
Green tron
IN: 1 ghost quarter, 1 outland liberator
OUT: 1 cavern of souls, 1 tireless tracker
This pairing is very easy to play through because it’s basically a race. You have to kill them as fast as you can. Try to keep good hands that kill on turn 3 or 4 (just if you are on the play). I usually aggressively mulligan in this matchup.
Before assembling Tron on game 1, they don't interact with you. And in post-sideboard games, they just play some copies of Wilt/Nature's Claim/Dismember.
A key card, Ghost Quarter, can be searched with Primeval Titan and untapped if you have an Amulet of Vigor, or replayed by bouncing it with a bounceland. Ghost Quarter usually gives you a time walk, because they have to spend another turn searching for the land you destroyed.
That means that you untap with a primeval titan in play, which results in a quick victory a huge amount of times. To increase the chances that they draw a forest as the draw of the turn, try to always activate Ghost Quarter after their draw phase. Also try to always destroy the last land they searched, if this isn't possible, destroy Urza's Mine or Power Plant to force them to play a second copy of their weakest tron land (they only produce two mana instead of three).
UWx control decks
IN: 1 cavern of souls, 1 tireless tracker, 1 kozilek butcher of truth, 1 ghost quarter (if you are otd).
OUT: 1 urza’s saga (2 if you are otd), 1 arboreal grazer, 1 radiant fountain.
This matchup is pretty interesting and fun for both sides. It's also a tricky one on the Titans' side, but playing it well will boosts your win percentage significantly
As always, try to play your Amulet of Vigor just when it's needed. Bear in mind that if they counter it, you can play additional threats on the same turn, usually forcing them to use Prismatic Ending on their next turn to deal with them. This will screw their mana curve and leave them without mana open.
This match usually lasts for so long, for that reason transmuting Tolaria West to a Cavern of Souls is usually a great plan. Try to punish them on the turns that they tap out to cast a huge spell, like a supreme verdict or a planeswalker.
Don't play the Cavern of Souls until needed; You want to persuade your opponent that their counterspells are still effective.
The most important thing to remember when playing around Supreme Verdict is that you should avoid deploying too many threats at the same time. If the card results in a 3x1 or better, you are probably playing too aggressively.
Solitude and Dress Down are two other cards that you should be wary of. One final tip: try to maximize the value of your cards, for example, play Tracker when you have at least 1 more land drop available; or Play Urza's Saga on turn 2 (or turns after) to get the 2 construct tokens from it.
Mirror
IN: 3 force of vigor, 1 ghost quarter, 1 outland liberator
OUT: 1 cultivator colossus, 1 cavern of souls, 1 urza’s saga, 1 tireless tracker, 1 explore.
Winning the dice roll is pretty relevant in the mirror match. Game 1 it’s just a race against your opponent, who has the best hand wins. After sideboarding, the strategy does not change at all. Try to keep hands that cast Titan in turn 3 or that have Force of Vigor. Be aggressive with the mulligans in the mirror. Ghost quarter is pretty good, searching it with your Primeval Titan will help you survive till next turn, and if you untap with Primeval Titan in play, you have a huge edge of winning the game.
If you liked this article maybe you will also find interesting on of the following ones Pioneer Azorius Control Sideboard Guide, Legacy Delver decks: In-depth and Sideboard Guide, Pioneer Golgari Elves Guide, Modern Goblin In-depth guide: sideboarding & tips vs the meta, Going Spicy: UW Wrenn and Six in Modern, Modern Goryo's Reanimator Guide
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Modern & Legacy grinder
I'm a biologist from Barcelona who enjoys playing all constructed formats, particularly Modern and Legacy. I really love any kind of combo decks and attending huge tabletop Magic tournaments.
