All About Amulet Titan

I’m Dom Harvey and I’m an Amulet addict. Back in the day I qualified for my first Pro Tour with Amulet Bloom, which took me to Canada and the US for the first time. When I moved to Canada, I won a SCG Open in Worcester with an offbeat build of Amulet to start a year on the grind and ended it by winning SCG Regionals with Amulet.

More recently, I qualified for the ManaTraders Invitational with Amulet and then won the whole thing playing it in the Modern portion. I also won NRG’s Modern $10k in Minneapolis to qualify for their 2024 end-of-year Invitational.

A few months after publishing the first edition of this guide, I made the Top 4 of Pro Tour: Lord of the Rings in Barcelona going 8-2 in Modern with Amulet! After unceremoniously falling off the PT, I clawed my way back from the underworld by Top 8ing RC Ottawa with old faithful.

I have been immersed in Magic as a columnist, commentator, and podcaster for years (now independently on Patreon too) and am always keen to share my love of Magic with people. I offer coaching, not just for Amulet but to help people achieve whatever their Magic goals are - get in touch on Discord or via the links below!

Discord: domhrv

twitter.com/dominharvia

linktr.ee/domhrv

mtggoldfish.com/player/capriccioso

Who is this for?

This is a love letter to my favourite deck in almost 20 years of playing Magic. I hope that everyone from people picking up the deck for the first time to my fellow grizzled Amulet one-tricks can find something to learn and enjoy here.

This guide is free and will remain free - I want this to be the definitive written guide to Amulet and I want that guide to be a public resource. If you would have paid $ for it and want to show your appreciation anyway, you can do so here or send me tix on MTGO (Capriccioso).

This doesn’t have a constantly updated list or sideboard guide - the goal is to show you how to craft that for yourself given your priorities and expectations, and those are dynamic enough that a fixed list/guide won’t help there. On my Patreon you can find regular updates with my current lists, SB guides, and thoughts - for Amulet and for other decks across various formats.

Why you should play Amulet

Amulet has the richest history of any deck that’s still around in Modern. After bursting onto the scene as a bizarre gimmick a decade ago, it took one Pro Tour by storm and then proved so powerful that the guillotine fell before it could do it again. A small band of devotees did their best to prove the Summer Bloom ban was just a flesh wound and by 2018 the deck was back on the map. After the turbulence of 2019, Amulet was back on top once again only for the ban of Once Upon a Time to send it back into the wilderness. Modern Horizons 2 marked a hard reset for the format that also gave Amulet a new lease on life; three years later, Modern Horizons 3 did that again. A few decks have Amulet beat for sheer longevity but none can boast Amulet’s mix of history and variety. Amulet Bloom, the lists I played on the SCG Tour in 2019-2020, post-MH2(/LOTR) Amulet, and Amulet today all look very different and all have a special place in my heart.

That variety extends to the games themselves. The Amulet nut draws are an amazing rush and feel like a well-earned reward for solving the intricate puzzles where you plan out your Primeval Titan endgame over many turns with your whole deck at your fingertips. With most combo decks you’re done once you assemble A + B - here, that’s just the easy part. Amulet constantly presents you with unique decisions and there are always new corner cases to consider.

You also have unrivalled flexibility in how you build the deck. You have a lot of flex slots to work with and so many different toolboxes that play off each other that changing one card in the maindeck or sideboard has a big impact on your games. You get to enjoy a special excitement during spoiler season as these toolboxes care about broad categories - any promising new land or green creature deserves serious examination. Amulet was the perfect home for broadly broken cards like Field of the Dead, Urza’s Saga, and Once Upon a Time but also made stars out of cards like Cultivator Colossus that other decks ignored.

There’s no consensus even among experienced Amulet players on how to approach certain matchups, what your sideboard should accomplish, or which cards you should play given a particular goal. You have room to take radical approaches to fix bad matchups and the shell is powerful enough to support a lot of wacky experiments. Amulet streamers have a lot of fun trying cards that are probably just great memes for the content but could be flashes of genius.

If you’re looking to pick one Modern deck to invest your time and money in, it’s hard to beat a recurring best deck that also has more replayability and variety than almost anything else. If you want to pick a Modern deck to fall in love with, my entirely biased opinion is that Amulet is the best deck for that too!

Why you shouldn’t play Amulet!

The same things that make Amulet unique make it a bigger commitment. The cards you buy for Amulet have little use elsewhere and the skills you develop playing Amulet are mostly unique to the deck itself (or weird combo decks as a class). If you want to become a well-rounded Magic player, maining Energy or Murktide will serve you much better than the psychedelic Amulet experience.

You also sign up for the swings that come with playing a linear deck in a format with strong hate cards for linear decks. You will lose a lot of games to Blood Moon and Harbinger of the Seas where you feel totally helpless and you will wonder how Force of Vigor ever got printed. If Amulet ever gets back to best deck territory, the format can and will adjust. Even during peacetime, many game store gremlins have a disproportionate hate for Amulet and some of them will figure out how to beat you.

You also run into polarized matchups against other linear decks - for every game you bludgeon Tron on Turn 3, you’re just a coin flip away from Storming out of the tournament. Cards like Boseiju give you some back-and-forth but you will feel that lack of interaction keenly sometimes.

It’s easy (fun, too!) to laugh at this infamous copypasta but it hints at a valuable point. I don’t agree that Amulet was a top tier deck during all of those times, precisely because many of these versions of Modern were so warped that any deck that existed before had to justify its existence. When you have Hogaak, Valki, or Nadu upending everything, you can’t just rock up with the Modern deck you’ve played for years - something has to change (my initial MH3 update was just going to be “play Nadu instead”). In more sane times, Amulet’s raw power and flexibility make it a strong choice most of the time and a fine default. More generally, Modern’s broad base of popularity relies on this being the case - you need to be able to tweak a few cards in your deck of choice to combat some new menace without it feeling hopeless. If I’m playing a Modern tournament, it probably makes sense for me to play Amulet; if I’m not playing it at a Modern tournament that matters, there are much bigger problems.

What is Amulet Titan?

The brief summary is that Amulet is a ramp/combo deck using the unique mana engine of Amulet of Vigor with Ravnica bouncelands (like Simic Growth Chamber) and extra land drop effects to power out a fast Primeval Titan, whose land toolbox makes it the most flexible and powerful finisher in Modern.

It’s easy to see Amulet as a pure combo deck and it’s common for people playing with or against it to fixate on the flashy Turn 2 kills powered by double Amulet - but these are actually just a small part of the Amulet experience. Amulet doesn’t fit the simple Card A + Card B combo deck model but isn’t an ‘engine’ combo deck like Elves or Storm either. If it is a pure combo deck, it’s not a great one - you don’t have the raw speed of the fastest combo decks and your best draws require enough specific ingredients that you can’t expect them often. Elsewhere on the spectrum you have combo-control decks that can play a fair, interactive game before flipping the script with a combo finish - that doesn’t describe Amulet either.

Amulet gets grouped in with other ‘big mana’ decks sometimes but it doesn’t feel like Tron and uses ramp to further its goals very differently from Titanshift in Modern or the familiar ramp decks from smaller formats. ‘Combo ramp’ like the late Mono-Green Devotion in Pioneer is a decent approximation and its Karn toolbox that makes combo lines possible while giving you options in fair games is a good example of what Amulet does on a much larger scale.

Urza’s Saga (+/ Expedition Map), Tolaria West, Summoner’s Pact (/Green Sun’s Zenith), and Primeval Titan each grant access to a deep toolbox and they link up with each other given enough time and mana (Titan finds Tolaria West -> Pact -> another Titan etc). The Titan chain gives you an endgame that goes over the top of almost anything unless the opponent can break the chain while dealing with Titan or fundamentally changing what the game is about. In longer, grindy games you benefit from the in-built card advantage attached to the bouncelands in your deck. With the Aftermath Analyst package you also have a deterministic loop that ignores or overwhelms anything else with the right setup. Your deck is thrilled to fight a ‘big’ game and well-equipped to make that happen.

At the other extreme, the blazing fast Amulet draws that terrify people give you the free wins that are the hallmark of a strong deck - when you have enough draws that beat anything, there’s a limit on how bad any matchup can be. With the return of Storm and Nadu’s reign of terror, Amulet isn’t always the fastest combo deck around - but you’re still fast enough that you have a good chance of racing anything on the play.

These two extremes enable each other. Your goals in the slow, big games and the fast, small games are the same - amass resources and cast Primeval Titan (or something even more powerful). This lets you transition from one plan to the other. If your fast draw loses the Amulet or ramp spell that was meant to power it, you can keep making land drops and play a more normal game - or your slow, resilient draw picks up an Amulet and can suddenly pop off. Compare that to a classic combo deck where you need Card A and Card B together to accomplish anything and extending the game only helps insofar as it buys you more draw steps to do that. For the opponent, the cards and draws that line up well against the fast draws and slow draws may look quite different - and they don’t know which they will have to play at the time they have to decide.

This conceptual shift took some time and some new cards to come together. When Matthias Hunt registered Amulet Bloom for Pro Tour Born of the Gods, he predicted that it “will continue to be a force in Modern as long as Thoughtseize is on the decline” - a natural summary for a combo deck trying to connect many pieces in a specific time frame. A year later, Sam Black and Justin Cohen put Amulet on the map at Pro Tour Fate Reforged, where Abzan Midrange and its Thoughtseizes made up almost a third of the room. A timely revelation about Amulet’s flexibility in shifting roles helped Black to see the deck in a new light:

“People have this perception that Amulet Bloom is a glass cannon turn 2 combo deck, but that's far from the reality. I think of the deck more like a Tron deck with a turn 2 kill. Abzan needs a perfect draw to beat you. If they don't have discard, you can always race them, and if they don't have pressure, you can always rebuild

…

Once you have enough lands in play, you don't need to find Amulet of Vigor and Summer Bloom: you can just cast powerful green creatures that trump their creatures. It feels like playing every other Primeval Titan ramp deck in history against a midrange creature deck--Primeval Titan beats midrange creature decks.

…

Basically every way that people have to disrupt you functions on a one-for-one basis, but the nature of your deck is such that Simic Growth Chamber is basically a real two-for-one and resolving a single Primeval Titan wins almost all attrition wars. If your opponent has the wrong ways to disrupt you, they usually just die. If they have the right ways, you sideboard into a much stronger attrition deck where you have more threats that demand more answers each and just bury them.”

A lot about Amulet and the format at large has changed in the decade+ since that piece but the broad argument remains intact.

Quick Maths

It’s worth memorizing the basic Amulet + bounceland math so you don’t have to figure this out on the fly every time.

With an Amulet, a bounceland = +2 mana (and N Amulets = +2N mana for each land drop you have). If you have three mana from your lands and an Amulet, playing a bounceland as your land drop only gets you to five. Jumping up to six or more will often involve casting your ramp spells on that turn - this handy chart from another guide shows how much net mana you gain from each of these.

(Green Sun’s Zenith for Grazer is the same as Explore)

Lotus Field messes with that math but is mostly a one-shot effect that’s easy to adjust for - Grazer in a Lotus nets +2 mana with one Amulet or +5 mana with two Amulets etc. Sometimes these extra land drops can reup on Lotus if you have Vesuva/Echoing Deeps or can chain Lotus (leaving it in play) -> bounceland -> Lotus (this line lets exactly Azusa net +2 mana with one Amulet for example).

Titan Decision Trees

You resolved Primeval Titan! What now?

(assume here a stock-ish post-MH3 list with Hanweir Battlements as your haste land of choice)

Let’s start with some non-Amulet cases.

No Amulet

Boseiju/Otawara + bounceland

You can directly interact with [thing]! An easy default if a threat is in play and a common hedge against possible concerns (or preemptively shield Titan from removal like Static Prison/Leyline Binding).

Urza’s Saga + Urza’s Saga

Urza’s Saga + X

Urza’s Saga lets you leave a lasting board presence via your lands alone once Titan is gone. Assuming you have no artifacts already and you always can and will make a Construct, your board builds like this (treating the Titan turn as Turn 0):

One Saga:

Turn 1: You have a 1/1

Turn 2: You have two 3/3s (one can attack) and have searched for one artifact

Two Sagas:

Turn 1: You have two 2/2s

Turn 2: You have four 6/6s (two can attack) and have searched for two artifacts

Just making a bunch of power isn’t impressive these days - the fair decks can remove/overpower/ignore them over time unless their draw is weak - but it can force them to spend cards, mana etc that were earmarked on Titan answers.

Tolaria West + bounceland

A default choice when you have no specific priority and want to have options or a redundant threat.

Shifting Woodland + X

With delirium, one Titan trigger now sets up the next Titan/threat without jumping through all the hoops of Tolaria West and with an extra land of your choice.

Haste land + X

If you expect the first Titan to die but have another in hand, this ensures that you can fetch your desired lands with the ETB trigger on the second Titan while still threatening an attack and another trigger.

Crumbling Vestige + X (often 2nd Vestige)

Lets you cast an immediate follow-up spell, such as Grazer to block an attacker (or, if X is a bounceland, to pick up and put back in a land with an ETB effect). At the Pro Tour a Titan -> double Vestige -> channel Boseiju line let me stabilize against Tron from far behind where no other (/pair of) lands would.

Forest + Forest

Forest + X

Insurance against Blood Moon, especially if you’re on the hook for a Summoner’s Pact trigger.

Urza’s Cave + X

If you don’t know what you’ll need soon, Cave lets you ‘store’ that choice for later

In specific builds:

Valakut + Tolaria West/Vesuva (as bounceland -> replay as bounceland or 2nd Valakut)/fetchland

For Dryad lists, Valakut is often an easy route to an immediate win if you have the big lad already; if you don’t, the first Titan may need to set up Dryad for next turn or later, especially if you had to Pact for that Titan and will be constrained on mana next turn.

Bojuka Bog/Khalni Garden/Radiant Fountain/Skyline Cascade etc

These utility lands let Titan have an immediate defensive impact if you’re desperate to stabilize.

Note that a spare bounceland in hand can often free up a slot in these land pairs - instead of Boseiju + bounceland you may be able to get Boseiju + Tolaria West or Boseiju + Urza’s Saga instead - reinforcing the argument for running lots of them.

One Amulet

Adding an Amulet enhances these former options - your Boseiju/Tolaria West + bounceland lines can now Channel/Transmute right away even if you started with no spare mana - and opens up a whole new branch of the decision tree.

These all work if your ‘Amulet’ is Spelunking/The Wandering Minstrel (other than lines that involve copying an actual Amulet with The Mycosynth Gardens)

One Amulet, no spare mana/cards

Haste Titan + use Otawara

Titan ETB finds Battlements + Vestige (Vestige untapped)

Titan Attack finds bounceland + Otawara (float UGX, bounce Otawara)

Use C + UGX to channel Otawara and bounce something (all during declare attackers)

This line is very common against a big Frog/Phlage/whatever, an opposing Saga about to reach Chapter 3, or really any immediate issue; the availability of this line was a big argument for Battlements over Stronghold even before Analyst considerations complicated that further.

Haste Titan + leave up Urza’s Cave (unique uses include instant-speed Bojuka Bog)

(General form: [Haste land + mana for it] -> attack trigger finds X + Y)

With Amulet you can get a ‘free’ Titan attack while fetching any of the pairs of lands in the No Amulet section above…as long as Titan gets to attack. There are more ways to kill Titan cheaply or even for free than ever before, from Galvanic Discharge and Unholy Heat to Leyline Binding and Solitude. You will often have to weigh up whether to chase the bonus of the haste lands or fetch the lands you want right away in case Titan dies.

A few questions to inform that choice:

– The chance of them having that removal only increases as the game goes on, and not just via their draw step - the blue decks are seeing several cards per turn and ~everyone else can still double dip on that draw step via fetchlands for surveil lands. Why would you be less scared of it then than you are now?

– How bad is it if the first Titan dies? If the first Titan is the only Titan and you would be stranded without a threat, that risk is much more real than if you have the next one lined up and could afford to lose this one.

– Does playing around it actually play around it? If there’s a large enough difference between a Titan that gets to attack + fetch more lands and one that doesn’t, they may not need to use that removal spell at all.

– If you decide to play around it now and they don’t use it, how are you going to play around it next turn, or the turn after that? You shouldn’t commit to playing around it in future if the risk-reward calculation no longer points that way but try to anticipate that now if you can.

Simic Growth Chamber + Tolaria West

The default pair for setting up the next threat for over a decade; note that, without U mana from another source, you can’t fetch SGC + Tolaria West with the attack trigger and then Transmute as a follow-up as you won’t have the mana from Tolaria West post-combat.

One Amulet, Pact in hand

Access to various cards makes this an effective or deterministic kill:

Analyst/Lumra

Titan ETB finds double Lotus Field, sac both + two other lands

Pact for and cast Analyst/Lumra, return those four lands + any milled land + any binned lands (wins immediately with Woodland/Mirrorpool respectively, bounceland + Tolaria West/Otawara, or Urza’s Cave)

Dryad

Titan ETB finds Valakut + Battlements, haste Titan

Titan Attack finds bounceland + X (or Lotus Field + Valakut/Vesuva)

Pact for Dryad, make land drop -> Valakut trigger(s)

Springheart Nantuko

Battlements + Vestige (Vestige untapped) -> attack trigger finds bounceland + fetchland -> Pact for Nantuko, bestow on Titan -> crack fetchland, use the G from this and the Vestige to pay for Nantuko landfall trigger -> loop assembled

One Amulet, Zenith in hand

Analyst/Lumra

(3 lands in play when you cast Titan)

Titan ETB finds Vestige + Battlements, Vestige untapped

Titan Attack finds double Lotus (leave both + Vestige in play, sac Battlements + 3 other lands)

Post-combat, you have 7 mana to Zenith for Analyst/Lumra; this returns the four sacrificed lands and anything else milled etc, which won’t automatically let you combo immediately but gets you a lot of stuff

Dryad lines are similar to above depending on your hand

One Amulet, working towards Analyst loop

A Primeval Titan with one Amulet can shortcut you to an Analyst loop over several turns but can get you there right away with certain combinations of lands in circulation and/or enough spare mana. Again, an exhaustive list is less efficient and useful than understanding the end state you need to reach and being able to quickly jump to the branch that arrives there - you want Lotus Field, another Field/Deeps, and Shifting Woodland, and can use Titan to fill in two gaps (if you can haste Titan but without needing to get both Battlements and an immediate R source, that opens up a third slot). Examples:

R/G spare + Analyst/Pact/Zenith in hand:

- Titan ETB finds Battlements + Lotus, use spare R/G and Lotus to haste Titan and deploy Analyst

- Titan Attack finds Woodland + Lotus

1 + R spare (separately) + Analyst in GY:

- Titan ETB finds Battlements + Lotus, use R to haste Titan (sac Battlements + X)

- Titan Attack finds Lotus + Woodland, float + sac both Lotus

- Woodland becomes Analyst and loops inside Declare Attackers (you have the infinite mana/recursion loop and so just need an ‘action’ land to complete it)

Woodland in play, G untapped (can be Woodland) + Analyst/Pact in hand:

- Titan ETB finds Vestige + Battlements, use R from Vestige to haste Titan and G + Vestige to cast Analyst - Titan Attack finds Lotus + Deeps/Lotus, loop

Battlements in play and untapped + Analyst/Pact/Zenith in hand

- Titan ETB finds Woodland + Vestige/Lotus, use R to haste Titan and 1G/2G on Analyst

- Titan Attack finds Lotus + Deeps/Lotus

You can see the patterns here - if you have one piece of the puzzle already, similar methods can help you jump to the finish line.

One Amulet, spare mana

With one spare mana available as you attack:

Haste Titan + Copy Titan

Titan ETB finds Battlements + Vestige (Vestige untapped)

Titan Attack finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, use Mirrorpool to copy Titan (now or later); can do this in response to Lotus’ sac trigger to sac lands you fetched with Copy Titan’s ETB

Hold Up Otawara

The standard Battlements + Vestige -> Otawara + bounceland line is nice to clear a blocker or an immediate threat but with just one spare mana you can hold up Otawara at instant speed for maximum flexibility.

Two spare mana (any):

Haste Titan + Copy Titan + Use Otawara

With two spare mana, you can perform the first line and still find + use Otawara right away with the copy.

Two spare mana (1R):

Copy Amulet + Haste Titan + Copy Titan twice + etc

Titan ETB finds Battlements + The Mycosynth Gardens, haste Titan + copy Amulet

Titan Attack finds Mirrorpool + bounceland/Lotus, copy

Titan Copy ETB finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + bounceland/Lotus, copy again

Titan Copy #2 ETB finds X + Y

One Amulet, specific lands in play (and/or spare mana):

(Battlements/Tolaria West)

Haste Titan + Transmute

With specific combinations of (untapped) lands and spare mana, you can haste Titan while also transmuting Tolaria West right away for a follow-up:

Battlements + U (find TWest + Gruul Turf)

Tolaria West + R (find Battlements + Simic Growth Chamber)

(Mirrorpool in play + untapped)

Copy Titan + Haste Titan + Use Otawara

Titan ETB finds Vestige + Lotus Field, copy Titan

Titan Copy ETB finds Vestige + Battlements

Titan Copy Attack finds Otawara + bounceland

(Battlements in play + untapped)

Copy Titan + Haste Titan + Leave Up Otawara

Titan ETB finds Vestige + Mirrorpool, haste + leave both untapped

Titan Attack finds Lotus Field + Otawara, use Mirrorpool

Titan Copy ETB finds 2x bounceland -> bounce + use Otawara

This line is easy to miss but can upgrade an unremarkable single Amulet draw into a lethal double Amulet draw:

(Battlements or Mycosynth Gardens in play + untapped)

Copy Amulet + Haste Titan + Copy Titan twice + etc

Titan ETB finds Vestige/Turf + the other one of Battlements/TMG, haste Titan + copy Amulet

Titan Attack finds Mirrorpool + bounceland/Lotus, copy

Titan Copy ETB finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + bounceland/Lotus, copy again

From there you can fetch channel lands, leave up Urza’s Cave, work towards an Analyst loop etc

===

Double Amulet (inc Analyst loop)

Double Amulet sets up a wide range of immediate lethal(-ish) lines. For classic Slayers’ Stronghold + Sunhome and Hanweir combat lines, see the Archive.

REMINDER: An Amulet + a Spelunking does NOT equal double Amulet, just a mostly better single Amulet (see the entry on Spelunking for details); for these lines it’s important to know that Spelunking can interfere with double Amulet as you will only get one use of any land that has to enter untapped (most often Hanweir Battlements for the Mirrorpool on Titan lines). I have flagged up the lines that are off-limits because of this but stay aware of it throughout.

Building Blocks - Mirrorpool

The first ingredient of most double Amulet lines is Mirrorpool - fetching a bounceland with it pays for itself (the bounceland makes GGXX and Mirrorpool taps for the remaining C to activate itself), leaving you back where you started but with another Titan in play, while fetching Lotus + Mirrorpool does the same but nets two mana. Echoing Deeps as Mirrorpool at some point lets you do this again; Hanweir Battlements + a red source lets both Titans attack (barring Spelunking).

Before even figuring out your next step, this parade of Titans will be enough to win most fair games (especially with each of their next triggers giving you a steady stream of channel lands etc). For example:

– Copy Titan, give both haste

– Titan Attack finds Boseiju + Deeps (Mirrorpool), float GC

– Titan Copy Attack finds Simic Growth Chamber + Otawara, tap Otawara twice (UUGGC) and bounce it

– Copy Titan again

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds bounceland + bounceland, bounce Boseiju

You now have 3 untapped bouncelands and Boseiju + Otawara in hand. Alternatively, you can have the attack triggers find Deeps (Mirrorpool) + [Colourless Land] + two bouncelands to hold up an instant-speed Mirrorpool activation.

Triple Titan Attack

Requirements: Urza’s Cave, Battlements, Mirrorpool, Deeps, 2 Lotus; no Spelunking in play

– Titan ETB finds Mirrorpool + Lotus Field, copy Titan (RR floating)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + Lotus Field, copy Titan (RRRR floating)

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds Battlements + Urza’s Cave, float C from each (RRRRCC)

– Use RCC to crack Cave for Vesuva (Battlements), use remaining RRR to haste all Titans

If you go even harder on Lotus and/or Deeps, you can crack the 20 damage barrier with a fourth Titan:

Requirements: 2 Lotus, 2 Deeps, [3rd Lotus/Deeps], Battlements, Mirrorpool; no Spelunking in play

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds Battlements + Deeps #2 (Pool), resolve Amulet triggers for Pool first -> tap Pool for C and then to copy again in response to Amulet triggers for Battlements)

– Titan Copy #3 ETB finds Vesuva (Battlements) + Lotus/Deeps/Citadel, resolve prior Amulet triggers for Battlements + new ones, haste all four Titans and swing for 24

That’s far too “fair”; luckily, our Titan trigger can instead set up the entire Aftermath Analyst loop for a fully deterministic, immediate win.

Analyst Loop

Requirements: 2 Lotus, Deeps, Mirrorpool, TWest; a Woodland anywhere

The basic loop here is as follows:

– Titan ETB finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, copy before Lotus sac resolves (GG floating)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Lotus Field + Deeps (Mirrorpool), copy before Lotus sac resolves (UUGG floating)

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds Tolaria West + bounceland, returning TWest (UUGG + UUGG + UU floating)

– Lotus sac triggers resolve, sac both Lotus + bounceland + X

– Transmute for Pact

(With Lumra: Pact for Lumra -> return 2 Lotus + Pool + Deeps etc and you have the Lumra loop)

– Pact for Analyst, play + sac it (UUGG floating)

– Return 2 Lotus + Deeps (Lotus) + Mirrorpool + TWest + bounceland, returning TWest (net 11-13+ mana here)

You can now Mirrorpool Titan -> Woodland + X (Saga to sac to Lotus if you need another type) for the full Analyst loop (Boseiju/Otawara all their stuff, attack with infinite Titans after looping Battlements etc)

Note that this loop is fine under Spelunking! If you don’t have Spelunking, a more elaborate version lets you threaten the loop through unknown graveyard hate (Endurance, Kozilek’s Command etc) without the risk of losing all your resources and dying to your own Pact:

Analyst Loop (vs potential hate)

Requirements: as above + Battlements in deck, no Spelunking in play

– Titan ETB finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, copy before Lotus sac resolves (RR floating)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Hanweir Battlements + Otawara, use the RR to haste both; sac Lotus + Battlements, leave Otawara untapped

– Titan Attack finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + Vestige

– Titan Copy Attack finds Vesuva (as Deeps-Mirrorpool) + X

– Use a Mirrorpool to copy Titan again

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds Shifting Woodland + Simic Growth Chamber, bounce Otawara

– Use Otawara to bounce the real OG Titan (untapped: Woodland, SGC, Vestige, Vesuva-Pool, X)

– In second main, use Vesuva-Pool to copy Titan; Titan Copy #3 ETB finds Lotus Field + Vestige (sac Lotus + X); 3 mana floating

– Recast the real Titan from hand; OG Titan ETB finds bounceland + Tolaria West, transmute for Pact -> Analyst

These setups fetch Deeps on Mirrorpool at an earlier stage; what if a savvy opponent uses their Command etc to exile the Mirrorpool at the first opportunity?

We can repeat the first steps and pivot easily with a Cave in the deck:

– Titan ETB finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, copy before Lotus sac resolves (RR floating)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Hanweir Battlements + Otawara, use the RR to haste both; sac Lotus + Battlements, leave Otawara untapped

– Titan Attack finds bounceland + Urza’s Cave; bounce Otawara and thus Titan

– Titan Copy Attack finds Vesuva (Cave) + Tolaria West

– In second main, crack Cave for Lotus (GGG UUU)

– Crack Vesuva-Cave for bounceland, bounce Tolaria West (GGG + UUGG)

– Cast OG Titan (G), find 2x bounceland (/Deeps on Lotus) -> transmute for Pact -> Analyst

BONUS

With The Mycosynth Gardens, you can also make another Amulet and even more Titans as insurance:

– Titan ETB finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, copy before Lotus sac resolves (RR floating)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Hanweir Battlements + Gardens, use the RR to haste both and the C from Gardens to turn it into a 3rd Amulet; sac two lands (Lotus + Hanweir)

– Titan Attack finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + Otawara (CC + UUU floating, Pool untapped)

– Titan Copy Attack finds Vesuva (Deeps-Pool) + SGC (CCCC + UUUUU + GG; Pools + SGC untapped)

– Bounce + use Otawara on OG Titan (CC + UUU + GG)

– Copy Titan (C + G floating)

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds Woodland + [land] (C + GGG + XXX; SGC + Woodland untapped)

– Copy Titan again

– Titan Copy #3 ETB finds Lotus + [land] (sac [lands]; SGC + Woodland + Lotus untapped leaving combat)

– Cast OG Titan again in second main, find Tolaria West + bounceland -> transmute for Pact -> Analyst

If this Analyst fails, you still have 2 SGC + Lotus + Woodland in play to pay for up to two Pacts.

Urza’s Cave (/fetchland + shock/surveil) in deck lets you reshuffle the order here to avoid risks from finding Lotus early (or if one Lotus is exiled etc):

– Titan ETB finds bounceland + Mirrorpool, copy

– Titan Copy ETB finds [red source] + Battlements, haste both (bounce whatever)

– Titan Attack finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + Gardens, float C from each and copy Amulet

– Titan Copy Attack finds bounceland + Otawara, bounce Otawara (UUU + UUGG + C floating; bounceland untapped)

– Copy Titan (UUU floating)

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds X + Urza’s Cave; use Otawara to bounce OG Titan

(untapped: bounceland + Cave + X)

– In second main, crack Cave for Lotus, cast Titan

– Titan ETB finds Tolaria West + bounceland -> transmute for Pact -> Analyst

Lands acquired during this sequence: 3 bouncelands, Battlements, Lotus, X, [red source] (but sac two to Lotus and bounce one)

Nantuko

Springheart Nantuko (/Pact for it) in hand makes a single Amulet lethal; with two Amulets, we just need it in the deck. This is very similar to the classic post-combat Dryad lines.

Requirements: Battlements, Mirrorpool, Deeps, fetch, (in hand/deck) Tolaria West

– Titan ETB finds bounceland + Mirrorpool

– Titan Copy ETB finds Battlements + [red land], haste both

– Titan Attack finds Tolaria West + fetch (UU)

– Titan Copy Attack finds Deeps (Mirrorpool) + SGC (UUUGC), bouncing TWest; copy Titan

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds 2 SGC (or SGC + X if you have a fetchable shockland/surveil land)

(untapped: 2 SGC + SGC/X + fetch)

– Transmute for Pact -> Nantuko, bestow Nantuko on Titan (G or 0 floating), crack fetch for Forest or shock/surveil, loop assembled

From here you can easily transition into any Dryad or Analyst etc kill in the deck.

Aftermath Analyst - Why And How?

Aftermath Analyst

MKM brought an innocuous version of a familiar effect that broke out in Standard after some mad geniuses showed off its potential there; it’s natural to port it to larger formats with fetchlands and a deep pool of utility lands + combo enablers. It’s easy enough to push Analyst as a value card without the full overhaul required to embrace it as a combo card (though from either side the ability to use it in that other mode is a big part of its appeal, and once you start to make small changes for Analyst it’s easier to justify the full shift).

Fetchlands (and the surveil lands they find now) are already seen in small numbers; Boseiju/ Otawara and Tolaria West(/Urza’s Cave) bin themselves while doing their thing; Urza’s Saga sacrifices itself on its way out. The self-mill from the first Analyst also juices future Analysts, creating a further incentive to fully commit to this bit. Newer enablers like Malevolent Rumble stock your graveyard and older effects like this get another shot now that self-mill is a benefit (rather than at best neutral and at worst a nuisance if you milled a crucial land or Pact target).

Compared to prior and similar payoffs, Analyst enabling itself and being able to split its cost across several turns is a big deal - you’re shielded from some fail cases like having Cultivator Colossus with no lands or a hand full of six-drops without the lands to cast them. Four mana for the activation is a low bar that doesn’t require one or more ramp pieces to reach in many games and it’s easy for this to yield (far/) more than four mana to ramp towards another payoff itself. A ⅓ isn’t a big or safe blocker but you’ll run that out against Ragavan or Ocelot Pride in a pinch. The low upfront cost makes Analyst safer against some annoying disruption (notably Subtlety, Dress Down), the instant speed activation is a refreshing flexibility for a deck full of clunky sorcery-speed cards, and tying the payoff to an activated ability is useful vs specific hate like Consign to Memory.

The split cost also opens up a new category of fast combo draws with T1 Amulet or T1 Saga -> T2 Analyst setting up a big T3. Enhancing the T1 Saga draws in particular has always been an elusive goal (though from my own and others’ experiences with Analyst so far, the T1 Saga T2 Analyst draws are rare even if available).

As a combo card, Analyst rewards you with loops that let you ignore removal and most things in play completely. MH3 made this much easier with Shifting Woodland as a card that asks less to loop and is independently appealing. The basic loop goes like this:

Requirements:

Amulet (/Spelunking for the 1 Amulet line)

Lotus Field

2nd Amulet OR 2nd Lotus (/Echoing Deeps*)

Shifting Woodland + delirium

(*Note that Echoing Deeps can copy a land returning alongside it via Analyst etc; this is the opposite of the Titan -> Vesuva + X interaction but those outcomes stem from the same rules quirk - the land looks ahead to see what it will be when it enters before it actually gets to that zone, so when Deeps is doing that check it can see the other lands still in the GY but Vesuva can’t see a land that isn’t in play yet)

– Sacrifice Analyst, return + use all lands

– For Lotus Field triggers sacrifice Field(s) and other lands

– Turn Woodland into Analyst and sacrifice it

– Woodland, Lotus, and other lands come back from your GY

Each loop costs 5GGG (2GG for Woodland+ 3G for ‘Analyst’) so this nets mana with a second Amulet (Lotus adds 6, Woodland adds 2, + any other land) or a second Lotus (you return 2 Lotus + up to 2 other sacrificed lands + Woodland each time) for infinite mana. You can also add in various effects from your sacrificed lands with each loop to convert this into a win:

– Bounceland + channel land for infinite Boseiju/Otawara uses (Otawara + Spelunking/Ring can draw your deck here)

– Bounceland + Tolaria West to find Pact (for Titan etc for specific missing lands) or other lands

– Surveil land (or fetchland for it) lets you surveil away your deck and return all lands to play

– Vesuva/Deeps as an opposing surveil land works here too!

– Mirrorpool looping Analyst instead of Woodland gives you Analyst’s ETB trigger to mill your deck

– Urza’s Cave can sacrifice each loop to find any of the above

Once you have milled ~most/all of your deck, you can also use Mirrorpool on your Analyst before sacrificing it each loop (or some other creature, or a spare Woodland as another creature) to make infinite attackers and then sacrifice/use Hanweir Battlements each loop to give them all haste. If you are postcombat, you can Boseiju/Otawara all eligible permanents, and/or gain life with Spelunking + Otawara using a bounceland to return a Cave, and pass with infinite attackers/blockers.

Six or Springheart Nantuko can each act as Pactable ways to loop Analyst on the cheap:

Six: One Amulet + Lotus + bounceland + any other land

Nantuko: One Amulet + Lotus (and 3+ mana from other lands*)

*The Nantuko case illustrates a key point - even if you don’t have all necessary lands in rotation right now, Analyst loops that give you the ETB trigger each time will converge towards that end state if you have spare mana.

MH3 also offered Sylvan Safekeeper joining Zuran Orb as tutorable ways to bin lands on demand for Analyst. So far the popular Analyst packages haven’t gone this far but a list with Analyst as its primary plan may enjoy that option.

Lotus Field

These loops require Lotus Field but to me they are an excuse to give Lotus the audition it deserved all along. Lotus has some unique benefits compared to bouncelands. Jumping up three mana instead of two makes it much easier to reach any vital threshold and removes the need for yet another Grazer or other ramp spell to bridge that final gap; with double Amulet, Lotus gets you to six right away. It makes enough of a colour to pay for any wonky costs (transmute Tolaria West, double G for ~everything). Hexproof means Lotus can’t be tagged by Boseiju, Ghost Quarter etc in response to an Amulet trigger.

It has clear downsides too - it doesn’t have the in-built card advantage or reusability of bouncelands, and without Amulet or a payoff for its mana it can be a very awkward draw that doesn’t play well with your other utility lands. In the slower, more interactive postboard games where sticking Amulet is harder, any unnecessary Lotus Fields start to look like easy cuts.

The first copy of Lotus adds a unique upside to any Titan/Map/TWest and I’m coming around to the view that I should have played at least one all long. Additional copies don’t play well together - but they also incentivize building around it in specific ways to harness its formidable power. An all-in Analyst deck with 4 Lotus is plausible already and it wouldn’t shock me if the ‘stock’ Amulet list in a future generation has a full set.

What about graveyard hate?

These Analyst/Lumra loops make graveyard hate potentially relevant but you shouldn’t worry too much here. There isn’t much hard graveyard hate in maindecks and light hate can be overpowered even if well-timed removal of some lands can shut off some full loops.

Postboard games will see heavier and harder hate but the beauty of splicing the Analyst package into a normal Amulet deck is that you can minimize the Analyst package in sideboarding and be a deck that doesn’t care about the graveyard otherwise.

Graveyard hate that isn’t face up is harder to play against and can punish you for greed (or just for a gamble gone wrong). You may sometimes have to choose between a Titan line that does impressive things or a Analyst line that is deterministic if it works but worse against hate; or how much to commit to a value Analyst while hedging against hate. Going off from a low base of resources with these lines often involves throwing everything into the maw of a Lotus Field where, if you don’t go off, you’re left with nothing - don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by letting that Endurance be a blowout.

Lumra is out of favour currently as its loops are vulnerable to removal like Solitude and the trigger is weak to Consign to Memory, which is more popular even in maindecks than ever.

Scapeshift

Analyst was a compelling option in its own right but also offered a compact, low-effort (to set up, not to explain…) deterministic win for a classic combo card begging to be broken here: Ring-era lists began to dabble with one or two Scapeshifts but recent experiments in maximizing Shift have paid off; as of the most recent update, I think the Scapeshift OHKO is the single most powerful angle in the deck and is worth leaning into as hard as possible.

The most basic kill, assuming no other resources:

Requirements: One Amulet + 4 lands

– Shift for 2 Lotus, bounceland, Tolaria West (9 mana)

– Resolve the bounceland trigger first, picking up Tolaria West, then sac bounceland + 2 Lotus to the Lotus triggers

– Transmute for Pact -> Analyst (1UU + 4GG, using all the mana you made before)

– Analyst returns 2 Lotus + bounceland + Tolaria West + the four lands sacrificed initially (13+ mana); bounceland picks up Tolaria West again before the Lotus Fields eat each other + more

– Transmute for Pact -> Titan + cast it (4 mana)

– Titan ETB finds Woodland + X (Analyst); if you milled no other lands, X can be a Lotus Field for exactly enough to start the Analyst loop as above

– If Analyst loop: you have a full loop with Tolaria West bouncing + transmuting each time so you can find all lands from your deck and include channeling Boseiju/Otawara into each cycle

(Two Amulets + 3 lands does the same fetching one Lotus instead of two)

Four lands and four mana is a relatively low bar that you can meet naturally in most midgames without the gymnastics of making six mana in one turn for Titan. While Scapeshift is heavily dependent on Amulet/Spelunking, this lower cost hedges against the classic fail case of drawing too many payoffs without the resources to cast them.

This is the most important line to memorize and the baseline goal for Scapeshift in most games but a key selling point of Scapeshift as a payoff is its flexibility - as you adjust these initial conditions, you can find even faster wins or fight through counterplay. That loop has an obvious weakness to graveyard hate but against permanent versions a Shift with more time/lands/mana can include Boseiju + bounceland into your Shift pile (bouncing + using it before Lotus triggers resolve) to swat away an on-board Nihil Spellbomb/Relic of Progenitus (or Damping Sphere, Needle/Flute, and so on).

This may be the most common single line but most Shifts will deviate from this in some way - either because there’s some problem to overcome (some land or spell is in the wrong zone, there is known disruption to play through, you are worried about possible disruption in hand, you are missing some resource) or because you have extra tools (a land drop spare, extra mana, a payoff already in hand, some card already in the ideal zone) that enable Shift under looser initial conditions.

With other pieces available, Shift can fill in the gaps for even less (assume one Amulet here):

Two lands, Titan/Pact in hand

One land, double Amulet, Titan/Pact in hand

With just two lands (not uncommon if Saga fetched Amulet or you deployed a bounceland earlier etc),

Scapeshift for double Lotus vaults you to that crucial six-mana threshold. In a natural double Amulet hand, bounceland -> Shift for Lotus is yet another enabler for a T2 win. With three lands, you can use it as a less committal Ritual for Titan by fetching a mix of bouncelands + Vestiges

Three lands, land drop remaining, Titan in hand (real Amulet)

Here you can set up the double Amulet + Titan lethal - Shift for Lotus + bounceland + Mycosynth Gardens, bounce Lotus + copy Amulet in response to Lotus sac trigger, replay Lotus -> cast Titan

Three lands, Analyst/Pact(/Zenith) in hand

With a more direct route to Analyst, you can jump right to Lotus/bounceland/TWest or Lotus/Lotus/Woodland (or Cave) etc as needed

Three lands, Shift in hand, one spare mana (any)

Double Shift hands are more common with a full set in the deck and with some care they can play off each other:

– Shift 1: 3 Crumbling Vestige (or ideally Deeps as Vestige), 4GG (+1) floating

– Cast Shift 2 (3 floating)

– Shift 2: Lotus Field, bounceland, Tolaria West (you now have 3UGG + the floating 3 for the 9 mana needed to complete the usual TWest -> Pact -> Analyst loop)

No Amulet

Without Amulet, Scapeshift has to be a setup card: Saga for eventual Amulets, Shifting Woodland as a threat, Boseiju/Otawara + bounceland etc

If you already have Analyst, Shift can pay for itself by fetching up to 4 Vestiges (or Vesuva/Deeps as one) so that you can crack Analyst right away.

Beating Consign to Memory

Consign poses a unique and complicated problem for Scapeshift lines. If you have Amulet rather than Spelunking, the untap triggers for Lotus Field etc are valid targets for Consign and it can choke your mana production while letting Lotus Field devour your lands; even with Spelunking, Consign can also counter those triggers or your bounceland triggers to stop you picking up Tolaria West or sacrificing lands to Field. Replicate means the threat posed by Consign scales with the mana they can hold up; Consign for U is easy enough to beat, Consign for 2U will melt your mind.

With a fifth land and a spare mana, a second bounceland (or Urza’s Cave threatening bounceland or Vesuva-as-Lotus) stops a single Consign from breaking this sequence.

With two Amulets, you can add a bounceland or Cave to the stock three land Shift pile (Lotus + bounceland + Tolaria West) for the same outcome.

Beating a ‘bigger’ Consign usually involves baiting a misplay from the opponent or the ability to pivot into a fair Titan turn (if your Lotus is stranded in play).

The minimal Scapeshift kill has many bottlenecks where almost any stack interaction will punish you for this all-in line - Force of Negation, Subtlety, and Consign (even Spell Snare, Strix Serenade etc) as well as actual Counterspell. However, many of these disappear if you have another route to a payoff already and don’t need to jump through hoops to get Tolaria West in hand to transmute for Pact. I’ve had great results maxing on Scapeshift and Green Sun’s Zenith in tandem as Zenith is both the ideal setup card (Grazer or even the dreaded Dryad Arbor) and a direct route to Analyst/Titan on the other end. This combination is the perfect threat against the Jeskai Blink decks that are all the rage for this RC cycle (November 2025) - Consign, Strix Serenade, and Subtlety all punish the typical Titan lines as well as the all-in Shift kill but are mostly ineffective against Shift + Zenith.

Additionally, many of the best tools against these blue decks are the lands with spell-like effects: Urza’s Saga, channel lands, and especially Shifting Woodland (2GG tutor for Woodland would be an appealing card in many scenarios if a threat was countered/milled already) and finding bouncelands to continue making your land drops is valuable too. If you have time, Scapeshift will give you the tools for a grindfest.

It sounds flippant but if shoving on Scapeshift would lose the game to a Consign… don’t do that? Or at least don’t blame Shift if you do! The relevant comparison here is how the cards you would replace Shifts with handle that problem; if you’re casting a desperation Shift, it’s unlikely that any of the alternatives would save you (whereas Shift as least has tremendous upside if it works).

Card Notes - Core

Bouncelands

Bouncelands are the deck’s core engine piece, working with Amulet effects to generate obscene amounts of mana on combo turns and delivering a flexibility and card advantage that shines in longer games.

These days any new land that adds multiple mana is very narrow and/or demanding or comes with several safety valves. The bouncelands enter tapped as an immediate drawback and bouncing a land means you aren’t jumping ahead on mana; Amulet of Vigor erases the tapped clause and the extra land effects negate the bounce effect or flip it into an advantage, letting you use the same bounceland repeatedly as a mana source. With utility lands like Boseiju or Tolaria West, your bounceland can ‘draw’ you a specific spell rather than yet another land.

Current iterations of the deck (late 2025) lean much less on bouncelands than any prior version - Analyst and/or Scapeshift mean Lotus Field pushes out marginal bouncelands and the move away from cards like Dryad and Azusa lessens the need (and reward) for having a steady stream of land drops and the likelihood of reusing the same bounceland to generate mana with Amulet. Those Shift/Analyst loops demand access to a few bouncelands in the deck but don’t care beyond that.

Despite that, I still find myself hoping to draw a bounceland constantly - they are Arboreal Grazer’s best friend and a perfect pair with Spelunking - and they are the key to keeping up in slower matchups or low-resource games (especially when you mulligan). Drawing the first bounceland is often the key to your draw being functional.

Every other engine piece has a natural limit on how many copies you can play - you have four Amulets and four Titans and have to work hard for artificial redundancy on those elsewhere. Every other land in the deck has a narrow range of card counts - you know you can only have 4 Urza’s Saga and only want the first haste land, and most debate focuses on edge cases (2 or 3 Boseiju?) or broad principles (how many T1 G sources for Grazer?). Bouncelands are the tricky exception - there’s effectively no cap on bouncelands but once you go over a perceived minimum any ‘excess’ bounceland faces stiff competition from all other marginal lands.

Amulet of Vigor

Amulet of Vigor is at once the most powerful and most misunderstood card in the deck. Throughout this guide I distinguish between the Amulet and non-Amulet games because they feel like you are playing different decks from separate formats. The Amulet wins are often easy (though they may create tricky problems to solve along the way), flashy, and memorable. Amulet is what makes the deck so strong and is worth building the whole deck around - but if the deck was wholly reliant on Amulet to win, it would be just a flash in the pan. Recent iterations focusing on Shift/Analyst depend more on having an Amulet than the classic lists and have to be built with that in mind.

If newer Amulet players tend to lean too hard on Amulet, the player across the table is probably even more obsessed with it. Amulet fans used to joke that “the deck’s called Amulet!” because people would routinely overboard narrow answers that only hit Amulet. This wasn’t necessarily wrong, especially for fast linear decks that could race non-Amulet hands, but it’s to focus on the deck’s namesake at the expense of other factors.

Your best draws revolve around Amulet and these are the draws you need when speed matters most. Here you can take the risk of aggressive mulligans to find Amulet because Amulet itself shifts the focus from card quantity to card quality, turning a deck that needs a lot of actual cards to function to one that just needs a few specific cards. Consider this five-card hand from a classic list:

Amulet, Dryad, Titan, Forest, bounceland

With Amulet, this hand represents a dangerous Turn 3 Titan; replace Amulet with any other card in the deck and this hand is far from doing anything or doing it quickly. In turn, the bouncelands let you play a slower, manual game if you failed to find an early Amulet or it was removed etc

Notes:

– If you have time against decks with sorcery-speed removal like Static Prison or Prismatic Ending/Wrath of the Skies, consider holding Amulet until you can cast it + go off in one turn (especially if you have The Mycosynth Gardens waiting or a Saga ticking up to set up a double Amulet draw)

– Similarly, in post-sideboard games against heavy interaction for Amulet, it’s often better to hold it until they take the shields down (which is more likely against a seemingly non-threatening non-Amulet draw) rather than letting them using their card/mana effectively. This is highly relevant now against Consign to Memory; against Jeskai Blink, letting them spend their mana to trade with Amulet on T1 lets them unload their other clunkers on curve whereas playing your must-Consign card on T2 will delay them from releasing Phelia.

Spelunking

If you’re here for a rules FAQ, good news!

(from @adamwasmo)

An even simpler TL;DR: Look at the land you are asking about. Does it say on the printed text "[this] enters (the battlefield) tapped"? If not, you have an untapped land! If yes, you choose whether it enters "tapped" or "untapped". Whether that land comes in as a land drop or via Titan/Grazer/Colossus etc is irrelevant.

If you have either Amulet or Spelunking, it doesn't matter; if you have one Amulet and Spelunking, you effectively control one Amulet effect (with some Spelunking-specific upsides I'll come back to). The scenario that trips everyone up is double Amulet + Spelunking, where a land coming in untapped robs you of the second untap trigger from Amulet and the mana or activation that comes with it. This blocks some corner cases (using Grazer to put in an otherwise untapped land for two activations or for an extra mana) but the main one is being unable to use Hanweir Battlements (or formerly Slayers’ Stronghold) twice.

Why is this confusion worth it?

Spelunking offers a close approximation of Amulet of Vigor's effect, which is already enough to pique your interest. At this price point you don't get the explosive starts that Amulet enables but you still make your bouncelands broken and light a fire under your Titan turns as Amulet always has.

You get some relevant upgrades too. Let's say you control Spelunking and your board is:

Tolaria West, Forest, Boseiju, Urza’s Saga

You can play a bounceland and tap it for two mana right away to cast Titan without needing to have an Amulet trigger resolve and give Villain a window to blow it up with a card like Boseiju or Field of Ruin. When that Titan resolves, you can fetch your haste land and a mana source of it untapped and activate it immediately without giving them that same chance to hit it and remove your access to haste.

Stapled to this Amulet riff is an Explore - a card many already swear by on its own merits and an immediate rebate on your Spelunking. Even if you have the first Amulet effect, you need the lands to pair with it and the payoff for that mana - this bonus Explore helps to tie that together. If you’re building towards Scapeshift, finding the first Amulet is crucial and the Explore helps amass enough lands to make it lethal.

Spelunking lines up well against the removal aimed at Amulet. It dodges Consign (though that can still trade for the Explore trigger) and it’s much harder to remove with Prismatic Ending and especially Wrath of the Skies. The ‘Amulet + Explore’ package inherently trades up on cards vs removal; in the mirror especially, having to Boseiju/Force of Vigor a Spelunking feels horrible. Spelunking often feels like the best enabler vs the slower decks (especially those full of Consign/Ending/Wrath) and even against faster matchups like Energy the post-SB games are slower and grindier as they spend cards cutting off your enablers; extra access to Spelunking via Rumble, Stock Up etc is a real draw to those cards.

Many players questioned the role/need for Spelunking on its release (and how it worked with Amulet… incessantly… without searching for any previous answers…) and it was hard to fit a full set in the Ring era (though in retrospect it was maybe right all along) but since then it’s been a staple.

Note the outcomes with Vesuva, Deeps, and both for the Cave check. Spelunking puts in:

Vesuva -> Deeps (no copy): YES

Vesuva -> Deeps -> X: YES

Deeps -> Vesuva (no copy): YES

Deeps -> Vesuva -> another Cave: YES

Deeps -> Vesuva -> non-Cave: NO

The Cave sidequest is a fun and occasionally relevant distraction. Echoing Deeps is a core part of the Analyst package; Sunken Citadel hasn’t lived up to the early hype but is still seen sometimes; Urza’s Cave is a promising candidate from MH3; Pit of Offerings is a fine riff on Bojuka Bog if you want one of those. If you need Titan to gain life with a Spelunking in hand, Deeps + bounceland (or even Deeps as a bounceland that bounces itself) is an easy default set of targets. Tragically, Cavern of Souls and Gemstone Caverns are NOT Caves?!

Arboreal Grazer

Initially a contextual replacement for Sakura-Tribe Scout in a world of Lava Dart and Wrenn and Six, Arboreal Grazer has established itself as an essential part of the deck. Stopping Ragavan in its tracks was part of that - it’s safe to say Grazer is actually the best monkey in Modern - but it’s also a core part of the ramp roster that makes the deck tick.

Without Amulet, Grazer is your easiest route to a fast Titan. Turn 1 Grazer -> Turn 2 Azusa/Dryad/Spelunking -> Turn 3 Titan is a relatively undemanding draw that gets you to your target on time without relying on Amulet. The Amulet draws are why the deck is so powerful but they don’t need the help and, as above, the card Amulet is often under pressure. Being able to produce a fast Titan in non-Amulet games is necessary for the deck’s consistency and Grazer is a good enough defensive tool that it also buys time for some slower hands. It’s easy but dangerous to skimp on green sources for Turn 1 Grazer - the ‘Turn 1’ is just as important as the Grazer.

With Amulet, Grazer is your Rite of Flame equivalent that lets you jump up in mana on your big turn. With one Amulet, Grazer adds one mana; with two Amulets, Grazer adds three mana. Grazer costing a single mana helps the double Amulet draws raise the roof right away, including specific cases that wouldn’t be possible otherwise:

Turn 1: The Mycosynth Gardens, Amulet

Turn 2: Play a bounceland (CG), copy Amulet with Gardens (G), Grazer putting in bounceland (CCGG) -> use other ramp spells to go off

Turn 1: tapped land (Tolaria West/Valakut)

Turn 2: Amulet, bounceland (CG), Amulet #2 (G), Grazer putting in bounceland (CCGG) -> continue

Grazer is the cheapest way - or, if your land drops are exhausted, the only way - to get a specific land out of your hand or bounce + reuse a land. Titan -> Vestige + X -> Grazer (or, for defensive lands like Khalni Garden/Radiant Fountain, Titan -> Garden/Fountain + bounceland -> Grazer back in the Garden/Fountain) can let you stabilize in very tight games.

Turn 1 Grazer -> Saga lets you get partial or full value from Saga while still setting up a fast Turn 3 fuelled by Amulet if necessary.

Grazer’s reach is vital for stabilizing when a slow Titan or Construct tokens could only gum up the ground. Once this meant Murktide Regent/Ledger Shredder/Dragon’s Rage Channeler or a suddenly hammer-wielding Inkmoth Nexus/Ornithopter; now it means Guide of Souls and Psychic Frog or Slickshot Show-Off and Quantum Riddler.

Note that with Crumbling Vestige, Grazer can ‘pay for itself’ leading to sequences like Turn 1 Grazer -> Vestige (G), Grazer (ideally into a bounceland)

Explore or Malevolent Rumble?

This is the Amulet perverts’ sectarian conflict - people have strong preferences!

Explore is a safe way to fill out remaining slots and helps you reach the right density of ramp in the deck without the diminishing returns of drawing too many cards like Grazer that only ramp with no lands for them or no payoff for that mana. In a deck that cares about both the quantity and quality of its cards, Explore keeps your card count the same and offers a redraw towards any missing piece.

The issue with Explore is that it doesn’t fill any of those roles well. When you care about speed Explore is the slowest and smallest ramp spell - a hand with just Explore as ramp isn’t much closer to six mana for Titan or any other threshold. When you are constrained on some resource and hoping to use Explore’s unique selling point of finding more cards, all you get is a single random card. If your hand doesn’t have a threat, Explore does little to fix that; if you don’t have the spare land to pair with it, Explore doesn’t dig deep for it (and may be a risky gamble in a land-light hand if you had to use a temporary green source like Vestige or a high-commitment one like a bounceland to cast it). At the other extreme, if your hand is full of lands, Explore doesn’t let you unload them much faster and is unlikely to find a payoff. Explore excels when your hand has a mix of everything but these are already favourable conditions and I want the cards that boast about their consistency boost to fill specific gaps elsewhere.

Explore shines when the opponent is attacking your resources and you want this ‘normalized’ form of ramp rather than the more swingy ramp spells that require extra resources to function. Other options for these flex slots place various incentives or constraints on your deckbuilding that force tough choices elsewhere; Explore helps your deck be a little better at the goals it always has.

Malevolent Rumble is the most promising card selection effect for these decks since Once Upon a Time - ‘nonland permanent’ covers most of your key pieces and the Eldrazi Spawn offers a partial rebate this turn or ’ramp’ for future turns. Rumble’s contextual strength and your general impression of it often hinges on how reliable that ramp is - if your sequencing relies on that Spawn surviving it might just let an otherwise weak removal spell set you back a turn. With more and more cards like Woodland/Deeps, Six/Icetill Explorer, and Analyst turning the self-mill into an upside, Rumble can give extra value beyond directly finding one (hopefully ideal) card.

Every Amulet player knows the feeling of fanning open a hand that has almost everything but needs a bounceland to pop off or is just missing a threat; Rumble promises good odds of finding any one thing at a fine rate, easing some of the competition for slots between the marginal bounceland and marginal threat etc. Rumble gives some additional access to SB singletons for Saga or Pact - you won’t draw your one Vexing Bauble often but in some games you will just Rumble into it and pick up a new plan on the spot.

The odds here can be worse than they look. The first Amulet effect is key and Rumble lets you dig for it - but there’s a big difference between Turn 1 Amulet and a later Amulet via Rumble in draws that have to go fast, and by the time you Rumble that Urza’s Saga it sees may be too slow to matter. It can find Titan itself but misses Zenith and Pact and other forms of redundancy there and also misses unique payoffs like Scapeshift.

Rumble is often compared to and competing with Explore - they fill the same slot on the curve and both aid your early development - but they do this in their own ways and shine in different circumstances. “Should I play Explore or Rumble?” isn’t a useful question in the abstract and depends on your prior deckbuilding choices and philosophy (and those should make your decision clear) - and the correct answer may well be “neither”. Some lists have done well with even splits of everything - 2 Explore, 2 Rumble, 2 Zenith etc - that look cowardly and scared of commitment or smart and balanced depending on who you ask, suggesting that the ‘right’ answer may be unknowable and/or not matter that much. There’s some sound theory here, though - drawing multiples of each of these cards is often awkward and they complement each other to an extent.

Green Sun’s Zenith

Zenith and Amulet enjoyed a brief fling together in a very different context - the more ambitious builds of Cloudpost at the first ever Modern PT - but have been apart for more than a decade since Zenith's ban soon after. Many years later I had given up hope of ever getting to consider it for Amulet but I'm glad it's back in the mix. Its release coincided with the Ring ban so it became an immediate frontrunner to fill those slots. The early returns suggest it's not that easy, though - Zenith needs extra support elsewhere.

If you play Zenith, do you have/get to play Dryad Arbor? Without the stack of fetchlands enjoyed by most Zenith decks you don't get much other upside just from registering it and drawing it is painful. T1 Zenith for Arbor is yet another way to jump to three mana on T2 for cards like Spelunking (/Dryad/Azusa etc) setting up a T3 combo - but cheap threats like Ocelot Pride and Ragavan force any fair deck to be ready with removal early and it has a particular weakness to cards like Kozilek’s Command and Wrath of the Skies.

At the other end, Zenith is inefficient in a role where every mana matters - a relevant 5-drop to Pact for is still near the top of the Titan wish list while Colossus showed just how big the gap between 6 and 7 mana is in practice - and can't even build your own Rite of Flame with Arboreal Grazer the way Pact does unless you have double Amulet. Gamers who looked for any excuse to trim Pacts can't just swap them for Zeniths without damaging the deck's operations.

Zenith is more palatable as extra copies of everything - another threat when you have all mana and no action, a two-mana Grazer when you just want to ramp, and pivot threats like Six/Icetill Explorer. Ideally it isn't your first copy of any one effect but it's a welcome boost to your redundancy. For classic lists leaning on cards like Dryad, Zenith ties the room together neatly.

Zenith is much stronger than Pact against Moon/Harbinger, only requiring a single G to access an answer or threat with >1 G pips, and lets you preemptively play around these and other hosers in spots where Pact introduces lethal risks. Zenith is a more reliable payoff against the usual blue wall of reactive cards but also against the splash damage from other combo hate like Orim's Chant.

It can also be used early to set up combo lines over several turns (compared to the only example with Pact of T1 Amulet T2 Pact for Azusa as described earlier), extending Analyst's flexibility to your tutors:

T1 Amulet

T2 Vestige/bounceland, GSZ for Analyst

T3 2+ mana land, crack Analyst

Or, revisiting some old favourites:

T1 Amulet/Saga

T2 GSZ for Sakura-Tribe Scout

T3 bounceland + Scout in bounceland -> 6 mana for Titan

T2 GSZ for Elvish Reclaimer can set up lines like T3 Reclaimer for Saga in draw step to set up T4 crack Saga for Amulet or store a mana for your combo turn (as Reclaimer for Lotus Field nets one mana) - or just holding up Reclaimer for Bojuka Bog/Pit of Offerings against a GY combo deck etc

Keep the Zenith tax in mind when plotting out familiar lines if it's your only payoff - for example, if your hand is:

GSZ, GSZ, Saga, Mycosynth Gardens, bounceland

T1 Saga -> T2 Gardens -> T3 float + copy Amulet only lets you go off if you have Azusa in the deck (as GSZ for Grazer only gets you to 6 mana and the 2nd GSZ for Titan costs 7) but is trivial if either Zenith is a Grazer or a Pact/Titan.

With the overlap of Pact and Zenith you enjoy even more access to a bottomless toolbox of green creatures. This redundancy has obvious benefits - it's easier to fall back on Dryad + Valakut with even more copies of Dryad - but these tutors have conflicting incentives on the margins. Some cards need to be in certain zones (Zenith won't help if you want to channel Colossal Skyturtle, bestow Springheart Nantuko, or cycle Generous Ent) or have timing restrictions (Pact for Endurance is a lifeline against combo decks that don't care about sorcery-speed Endurance off Zenith). Pact is best used to set up one immediate play that swings the game to dodge the Pact tax next turn, so you can't use it for cheap creatures early and it's inefficient to Pact for them later; Pact for Collector Ouphe is unreliable while Zenith for Ouphe is a great threat you can unleash ASAP.

Lots of ludicrous green creatures have been tried as backup threats for Pact but Zenith lets you extend that to cheaper cards like Hexdrinker or Elvish Reclaimer for the first time. Pact's limitations prevented you from going too wild with it as you can't have too many expensive cards - but Zenith encourages you to have options at every spot on the curve. Giving yourself enough tools to make Zenith flexible and help against common failure modes (having too many threats but low resources -> you want a cheap ramp or CA creature) without diluting your deck too much is a tricky balancing act.

Each set brings a new batch of cards that don’t make the cut on their own but are interesting when you have an extra 4+ copies via Zenith. The Wandering Minstrel is a perfect example - an Amulet effect on a green creature has been a bucket list item forever but the card fell flat, largely because most people don’t want to fully commit to Zenith.

A non-exhaustive yet exhausting list of possible Zenith targets can be found in the Appendix.

Summoner’s Pact

At a glance Summoner’s Pact is a Primeval Titan that can be something else in a pinch but one mark of a skilled Titan player is getting the most from their Pact. See the Archive for details on how Pact was often a subtly good setup play in older lists; here in the Analyst era, Pact is a crucial link in the Tolaria West chain that makes those loops easy to assemble.

For a long time, Pact was both a workhorse and a necessity - you needed it as extra copies of Titan and found creative ways to use it elsewhere. Now that there’s a wider spread of payoffs, you can afford to trim Pacts under hostile conditions. MH2 and MH3 introduced a scary spread of blue reactive cards that punish a Pact turn (and the turn after that where you have to pay for it), from Counterspell and Dress Down to Subtlety and Flare of Denial (and Sink into Stupor, Consign to Memory etc). Against these blue decks you want to be able to shave Pacts without lowering your overall threat density or messing with your SB mapping and so starting the minimal # of Pacts to keep your combo packages intact makes sense. If the format goes through a phase of linear combo shootouts, a greater emphasis on Pact may be in order.

Notes:

– Use a visual cue like a die or coin on your library to remind you to pay for your Pact. I don’t care that you’ve never missed a Pact trigger before or that you’d have to be stupid to lose a game that way - better players than you or I have lost that way before and will again, and a good player takes easy steps to avoid unnecessary losses so that they can focus on the more tricky spots.

– Sometimes you don’t know if Pact will resolve and the answer will change your other sequencing (maybe you want to keep a new bounceland in play instead of picking it up) but Pacting first gives away information (maybe they are sitting on a Boseiju that they will fire off on your bounceland in response to Amulet triggers if they know this is your big turn). In those spots you can play the bounceland, resolve the Amulet trigger to ensure you get the mana, and then cast Pact in response to the bounce (/Lotus) trigger. Similarly, you can Pact in response to the final chapter trigger from Urza’s Saga or Titan’s ETB/attack trigger if that outcome would change your choice.

– In games that will go long, look for chances to play Pact in advance and get the cost out of the way if you know you can’t go off next turn. This also lets you play around Force of Negation by Pacting on the opponent’s turn in advance and can be relevant against cards that punish Pact coming down before your Titan turn (such as Damping Sphere or Vexing Bauble).

Urza’s Saga

Urza’s Saga is one of the most bizarre and intriguing cards to enter Modern in years but it was an immediate hit for Amulet and remains a core part of the deck even if its role seems more narrow now.

Contextually, Urza’s Saga let Amulet keep up with the pushed interaction in the same set. It’s hard to be a combo deck with lots of moving parts in a world of Counterspell, Grief/Solitude/Subtlety, Unholy Heat, Prismatic Ending, and the like. Urza’s Saga generates several threats and digs up your namesake enabler while dodging most mainstream interaction. Later, Saga lets a Primeval Titan that’s dead on arrival leave behind a substantial board presence in a way that hasn’t been possible since the loss of Field of the Dead.

Beatdown Backup?

Your Constructs are not powerhouses by default as they were in artifact-heavy decks like Hammer - decks that rely on having the biggest beaters on the board can overpower your Constructs while other linear decks routinely ignore even those bigger attackers. Saga is primarily a threat of this sort against control decks that have to answer every threat presented eventually or tempo decks that use reactive tools to support their proactive threats. Here, Constructs can bleed answers intended for Primeval Titan or force the opponent to play at an awkward rhythm, opening a window to sneak another threat in.

As the format’s power level keeps rising - especially with the other straight-to-Modern sets - the Construct plan looks more and more ambitious. LOTR made this painfully clear with The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters and the pattern continued with MH3. Combo could still ignore your Constructs as ever but now control could beat them with Phlage and Wrath of the Skies while the aggro deck of choice goes off with Guide/Pride/Ajani/Phlage and the ramp decks go over or through them at their leisure. Against the tempo deck of choice the new threats are problems too - a single Frog can beat the board and Abhorrent Oculus or Murktide Regent invalidate your motley crew.

Combo Piece?

Even when it can’t offer a Plan B, Urza’s Saga lights a fire under your Plan A - you have more access to the first Amulet that makes everything tick and the second Amulet that lets you go totally berserk. A hand of Saga + Amulet with a bounceland and a Titan/Pact represents a Turn 3 kill with no additional ramp.

There’s a big difference between Turn 1 Amulet and a Turn 3 Amulet via Saga. Turn 1 Amulet allows more expensive setup plays on Turn 2 - formerly Dryad/Azusa, now Zenith (for Analyst etc) - as a bridge to Turn 3 combo and, if you can’t go off the turn Saga does, losing the mana source from Saga stunts your development for future turns. Finding ways to make Turn 1 Saga more reliable is a key, ongoing challenge - see the Need For Speed section.

Note that this deck has a minimal Urza’s Saga toolbox. There’s not the usual Shadowspear to juice up your Constructs and Haywire Mite isn’t automatic here as it is in every other green Saga deck. I used to play a maindeck Relic of Progenitus and would do this again (or Soul-Guide Lantern etc) if graveyard-centric decks take over again. Expedition Map made the cut because it addresses the common fail cases when you have Amulet (not having a bounceland/not having a mana sink like Tolaria West) and lets you chain Urza’s Sagas or grab utility lands like Boseiju/Cavern in a pinch. Vexing Bauble threatens to suddenly invalidate their free interaction (and/or key combo pieces like Lotus Bloom), allowing you to resolve Titan through Subtlety or attack with it freely through Solitude.

In Modern at large, Urza’s Saga is partly kept in check by the blowout potential of the cards that do interact with it. Unlike Saga decks like Hammer that leaned into their low curve and could afford to lose a land drop, Amulet is a ramp deck that can’t stand being Sinkholed. Getting destroyed by a random Naturalize effect because you unnecessarily exposed a Saga early is an easy way to lose a winnable game. Weighing this risk vs reward question is a key to success especially in postboard games where hate like this is common.

With the Final Fantasy rules change to Sagas, Blood Moon and friends are no longer Saga’s worst nightmare. When Moon resolves Saga will not die instantly and is frozen in play with its current abilities - so, if your Saga had reached Chapter 2, you have a permanent Construct factory! As above, this doesn’t beat most opponents any more - but it gives you a glimmer of hope rather than an extra kick in the teeth. This means Saga is no longer an obvious candidate to cut against Harbinger of the Seas and can remain in your deck as a decent backup threat against reactive blue decks.

Know the timing rules with the final chapter.

– Once the final chapter trigger goes on the stack in your mainphase, you have priority. If you pass, the opponent can pass back and you won’t have a chance to float mana or make a Construct before the ability resolves. You may want to do this intentionally if you expect the opponent has a reason to respond to the trigger before it resolves and fetches Amulet and want to maintain the option of making another Construct if they do (or keeping your mana to go off with that Amulet if they don’t). Otherwise, be sure to float the mana/make the Construct before passing priority.

– You can respond to that trigger with Summoner’s Pact if Pact resolving would make a difference to whether you float mana vs making a Construct in response or what you would fetch with it - or, if you plan to fetch Bauble, so that Pact resolves at all.

Sideboard Cut?

When to shave or cut Urza’s Saga in sideboarding is often contentious. Some useful heuristics:

– How easily can they answer Saga at a profit?
– How likely is the game to be more ‘fair’? How effective are average Constructs in those fair games?
– How good is Saga at helping me make a fast Titan in a race and is that what the game is about?
– How much worse does Saga become if I’m on the draw?

More so than most cards, the role and value of Urza’s Saga is likely to change post-SB and swings heavily on the play vs on the draw - it can be good ‘in the matchup’ in G1 and still be right to cut, or good enough OTP but not OTD. The play/draw difference often outweighs any assumptions/info I have about specific or incidental hate for Saga.

Vesuva

Vesuva is the ultimate ‘utility land’ - it doubles up on others when needed and rescues you when a unique land is already in play (e.g. your haste land is in play and tapped but you need to haste the Titan you just cast). The first copy is automatic and it’s easy to talk yourself into more (though ever harder as more tempting lands are printed, even though these present more good scenarios for Vesuva).

Vesuva tests timing/rules knowledge while expanding your tactical options.

– Vesuva can only copy a land already in play: if your Titan trigger finds Vesuva + X, Vesuva can’t copy X. Cultivator Colossus puts lands into play sequentially so Vesuva can copy a land that Colossus put into play earlier in the resolution of its trigger (you choose a land to copy before drawing a card and continuing this process).

– Playing a land is a special action that doesn’t use the stack. The choice of land to copy with Vesuva is made as Vesuva enters play and also doesn’t use the stack. If you have priority, Vesuva can enter play as the opponent’s fetchland without them having a chance to sacrifice it ‘in response’. With an extra land effect you can play a land and immediately play Vesuva as that land (assuming no trigger is put on the stack) before the first copy can be hit by something like Boseiju or Fulminator Mage.

– You can choose to copy nothing with Vesuva and have it enter play untapped. This most often comes up when you control Dryad and need an untapped land (which can still tap for any colour thanks to Dryad) or the opponent controls Urborg/Yavimaya. This also matters if you need to make extra land drops with Azusa/Dryad and want to avoid putting an Amulet trigger on the stack (or a self-generated trigger from a bounceland etc) that can be responded to with removal.

– Vesuva can also be a dummy land drop in a hand with no other non-bounceland lands.

– A Titan trigger can find Vesuva and have it copy a bounceland to return itself to your hand. This helps if you don’t know which land you want to double up on yet or need a more flexible, generic land drop.

Specifically, if you are aiming for a Valakut kill with Dryad and have spare land drops but no extra lands, finding double Valakut generates less triggers than finding Valakut + Vesuva (as bounceland), playing Vesuva-as-bounceland until you have one land drop, then playing Vesuva as Valakut.

Vesuva can also copy opposing lands - there’s a much smaller range of cool utility lands around post-MH3 but examples include:

– Urza’s Saga (any Saga deck)

– Arena of Glory (most red decks)

– Surveil lands (~any deck with fetches)

– On-colour fetchlands for your own surveil lands

– Shifting Woodland (some green decks)

– anything in the mirror

– Ghost Quarter vs decks trying to Quarter you

After a rules change several years ago, Vesuva can no longer copy a land as it enters under Blood Moon - you will always get an untapped Mountain.

Echoing Deeps

Another highly flexible tool with specific combo applications. At first, this flexibiltiy was mostly illusory - it wasn’t clear which lands you would actually want to copy, your lands weren’t being blown up enough to want to hedge against that, and your relevant lands didn’t bin themselves. The discovery that it could be your double Amulet ‘kill land’ in Mirrorpool/Battlements builds opened the door; now, with more and more cards that fill your graveyard or interact with it, Deeps’ slot is secure.

Deeps shares a lot of Vesuva’s timing quirks but the outcomes are sometimes different - notably, when resolving Analyst/Lumra, Deeps can enter as a copy of another land that’s returning at the same time. This is because the game looks ahead to check what a card with these effects will enter as while it’s still in its current zone - so Vesuva is still in the library during this check (and so cannot copy the other land your Titan trigger finds) but Deeps and the land it wants to imitate are still in the graveyard. This makes the Analyst/Lumra loops much easier as Deeps can be your 2nd Lotus Field etc.

Vesuva + Deeps can yield various results: Deeps on Vesuva can copy a land in play; Vesuva on Deeps will copy the land you chose with Deeps unless you didn’t copy anything - here, Vesuva-Deeps can now copy a land in a graveyard. With Spelunking, you look at the final land (the Vesuva-copy or Deeps-copy, or naked Vesuva or Deeps) to determine if you have the choice of tapped/untapped

In a fetchland + surveil land format, Deeps can often copy an opposing fetch (any green fetch, or a fetch with the right secondary colour for your UG/RG/etc surveil land); even if you don’t have a(/nother) surveil land, this can be smart to find basic Forest and stock your graveyard for a later Analyst.

Boseiju, Who Endures

Boseiju was the ultimate wish list item for Amulet - if you offered it as an example of what you wanted, it would seem like an absurd fantasy. A flexible removal spell attached to a land that’s also an untapped green source is everything you could ask for and let Titan offer a clean answer to some problems for the first time.

Boseiju’s efficiency and versatility means that many decks run more than just the one ‘free’ copy you see in most green decks. 3-4 copies is common in Amulet and the ever-increasing competition for slots is the only reason not to run the full set.

It’s more difficult than you might think to have 1G spare and Boseiju ready to go early in the game, especially with many lists running increasingly few untapped G sources (and Boseiju accounting for many of those itself), unless you have Amulet. This self-corrects a little in the matchups where you board in as many Boseijus as you can but early access to Boseiju is another compelling reason to have more total G sources in your deck.

Common Boseiju targets among top decks include:

Energy: Static Prison, Blood Moon, SB hate cards

Domain Zoo: Scion of Draco, Leyline of the Guildpact, Leyline Binding

Ruby Storm: Ruby Medallion

Belcher: any land, Belcher, Lotus Bloom

Eldrazi/Tron: double mana lands, SB hate cards (exposed Stone Brain, Disruptor Flute etc)

Boseiju’s legendary creature discount is easy to miss (Azusa, Six, The Wandering Minstrel, Lumra some aesthetically horrible Ninja Turtle legend coming soon that mentions lands somehow)

Tolaria West

Tolaria West gives the deck another layer of flexibility but also the inevitability that makes it so powerful - the first Primeval Titan now unlocks the second (which unlocks the third via another Tolaria West or Shifting Woodland, Urza’s Saga etc). Tolaria West finding Summoner’s Pact means that any effect that finds a land can find a creature, given enough time.

This comes at a cost - you are splashing a double blue card in a mostly mono-green deck with a bizarre manabase. Many of the more subtle sequencing decisions involve preparing to Transmute a Tolaria West you might not have yet in a few turns. Are you meant to play Tolaria West so that you have a second blue source and can pick it up with a bounceland, or hold it so that a second Amulet means you can make UU by playing Tolaria West and use another land drop to pick it up with a bounceland immediately?

Transmute finding any card that costs zero extends the toolbox further - other Pacts and Engineered Explosives were staples of old lists largely because you can transmute for them, and thus find them with Primeval Titan.

Hanweir Battlements (and friends)

See previous editions for the details of the Slayers’ Stronghold vs Hanweir Battlements debates. Now there is a firm consensus around Battlements and a big part of that it its less demanding activation cost opening up more lines - it’s easier to have a spare red mana lying around (e.g. in games where you don’t have Amulet and can Titan for Battlements + bounceland -> replay Battlements + activate) or to get red mana when you already have Battlements (Titan can find Vestige and another utility land).

In Dryad-heavy lists, Valakut + Battlements sets up Dryad well even if you don’t have Dryad or Titan dies before combat; Vestige + Battlements leaves you with more untapped mana for later phases (a common line is finding Otawara + bounceland with the attack trigger, with Vestige giving you exactly enough mana to channel now).

Crumbling Vestige

Crumbling Vestige is an unsung hero of the manabase that opens up unique lines in both low-resource and high-resource games. Without Amulet, it allows Primeval Titan (or Cultivator Colossus) to rebuy mana immediately to let you follow-up with another spell - say, Arboreal Grazer as another blocker or Dismember in post-SB games - or use Battlements/Tolaria West/Boseiju when you wouldn’t have the right amount or colours of mana otherwise. At the PT I stabilized from a slow start vs Tron where Titan -> double Vestige let me still channel Boseiju after casting Titan.

With one Amulet, playing Vestige -> bounceland returning Vestige -> replay Vestige gets you the same amount of mana as playing the bounceland repeatedly while letting you keep this additional land in play. Vestige is great at ramping to Scapeshift without setting back your land count for it and is often the ideal thing to find with Shift (and in high quantities!).

If you have T1 Amulet, Vestige lets you play a 3-drop on T2 without committing your only bounceland; when you resolve Spelunking, it’s an ideal card to put in (or bounce back) for an immediate follow-up play. Turn 1 Urza’s Saga + Amulet means T2 Vestige lets you activate Saga without a bounceland (that would have to return itself or the Saga for little gain).

In common mid-game positions where you have Amulet and several lands but need to draw a bounceland to jump up to Titan mana, Vestige can fill that gap and give you more outs.

As in the Grazer section, note that Grazer -> Vestige is mana-neutral even without Amulet.

Note that Vestige is the only land that ramps in this way under Damping Sphere

Shifting Woodland

An integral part of the main Aftermath Analyst loops (see that section for details there) but Woodland was already an appealing card for classic Amulet lists. In broad strokes, Woodland shares Saga’s strength vs the interaction that is usually good against you and lets you stick the threats you have built your deck around. It lets half of a Titan trigger set up the next threat without the heavier commitment of finding + picking up Tolaria West and transmuting for Pact (with all the risks/demands of that card) + paying for that next threat. Woodland is a useful form of redundancy against heavy discard and often the most important card against the blue decks and their wall of Counterspell/Force of Negation/Subtlety etc. When your Amulet effects are under attack, Woodland can eventually become an Amulet/Spelunking to power a big turn.

Amulet doesn’t have the suite of fetchlands + cheap cards + freebies like Mishra’s Bauble that power Unholy Heat and other delirium cards in other Modern decks so you don’t ~trivially get there just by playing Magic here - in the evergreen Explore vs Malevolent Rumble debates, Rumble finding and fueling Woodland was a big point in its favour. However, you can lurch towards delirium in other ways - Urza’s Saga is two types (including the normally elusive enchantment) and can find a third (self-sacrificing artifacts like Map or Soul-Guide Lantern/Vexing Bauble; Haywire Mite gets you full yahtzee), Dryad (and Nantuko) gets you two, Summoner’s Pact suddenly gives you an instant, and so on. In the matchups where Woodland is at its best, the opponent does some of this work for you by countering or discarding your stuff - a card like Spelunking will get put there for you.

Woodland can give another layer of resilience to some of your sideboard cards, becoming a hate card they had to remove or a Lantern/Bauble etc that was already used. Working well with Woodland is a nice perk for potential silver bullets or backup threats - for example, Colossal Skyturtle is a Pactable way to get out from under Harbinger of the Seas for a turn and an enchantment creature that bins itself is a big jump towards delirium in a matchup where Woodland is likely pivotal.

Note some weird uses and interactions here:

– If you want to copy a Titan to attack with it or Ring to activate, Woodland must remain untapped; if you are copying most other things, you should tap Woodland for mana before it becomes something else

– You can slowly build a permanent Urza’s Saga (activating in your draw step each turn you want to gain a counter; you start at 0 lore counters so it takes a while to gain the Construct ability, but once it has this it keeps it and your 'Saga' won't expire; you can also do this again and let it go off on Chapter 3 if you need that Amulet etc)

- Copies Dryad or Valakut to set up that combo; notably if your Dryad is removed with Valakut triggers on the stack you can then turn Woodland into Dryad and they will still go through

Urza’s Cave

Not just a literal Cave for Spelunking but an inherently promising effect in a land toolbox deck. Certain effects are much more valuable at instant speed (Bojuka Bog is unreliable against a lot of the GY decks but much better as an instant; Valakut triggers can shoot a wider range of things) and Cave can fetch a bounceland to save or pick up a land on demand. When you are resolving a Titan trigger but don't know what you’ll need, Cave lets you store part of that choice.

More generally, Cave gives you more access to other situational lands; you might want a Radiant Fountain in your deck somewhere and there will be spots where you want two or just need to find the first one but it's hard to spend a slot on another Fountain when you can make the same case for many lands. Sometimes you just need the first bounceland to achieve lift off but don't want to risk the excess bounceland draws in other games, and so on; in Analyst loops, Cave can find the first/next Lotus Field and also converts the full loop into a win.

If nothing much is happening, Cave can find Saga to start grinding; sometimes you want a Mycosynth Gardens to copy Amulet or a SB card etc

Specific lines include:

- With a Lotus Field in your deck (or Vesuva/Deeps for it), Cave is +2 mana with double Amulet

- On top of finding Valakut for Dryad, Cave can be a fetchland for another Valakut (Vesuva or a natural copy), an actual fetchland (Cave -> fetch -> other land, giving you 3 triggers for each for each Valakut), or extend that chain with more mana (Cave -> Deeps as Cave -> fetch -> land)

The Mycosynth Gardens

Gardens/TMG doesn’t find the first Amulet to get things going but it turns a single Amulet hand into a double Amulet hand. Bearing in mind that there is already a vast difference between hands with and without Amulet and that it makes sense for your deckbuilding choices to hedge for the games where you don’t have Amulet as these will be much harder, it might seem like TMG is win-more as it only upgrades hands that don’t need the help.

In practice, there is a world of difference between single and double Amulet hands too. Single Amulet hands that can produce one Titan that has to puzzle its way through interaction can now chain the first Titan into a second Titan and roll over any resistance. Hands without a natural Titan can transmute Tolaria West and cast Titan in one turn much more easily. Cultivator Colossus is easier to cast and has a much bigger impact. Hands with redundant threats and more ramp can present multiple threats in one turn to overwhelm the single Counterspell the opponent can hold up.

In the Urza’s Saga section I mentioned that TMG boosts a class of Saga hands that need the help but it also pairs well with Saga in slow games - TMG can’t copy the Constructs (it specifies nontoken artifacts) but it can copy the Amulet found by Saga, growing the Constructs into serious threats and letting you pop off with your multiple Amulets the moment you find the missing combo piece.

A common concern about TMG is that it makes you weaker still to Force of Vigor or other cards that go after Amulet. You can quickly see that this is flawed - you aren’t forced to use TMG so that added risk only exists if you choose to take it on - and in fact TMG offers a form of protection against artifact hate by threatening to copy Amulet in response to removal. Against likely artifact removal it may make sense to delay casting your Amulet until you have the shield of a TMG activation.

Strip away the text that makes it rare and TMG is a Shimmering Grotto. That’s better than it sounds here - it can be that second blue source for Tolaria West in the mid-game or the missing red/white mana to activate Slayers’ Stronghold or Sunhome. If you want to support a small sideboard splash, TMG offering fixing lets you have enough sources without mangling the rest of your manabase beyond repair.

The biggest change that TMG brought to Amulet is that it’s another potential 4-of land in a deck that already struggles to fit every land it wants despite running the highest land count of any mainstream Constructed deck. It makes sense to play 4 at first to see the card in action more often and test how good it is in multiples, and the early consensus has settled on the full set, but it wouldn’t surprise me if lists start to shave copies if even more good lands are printed or they want to try something experimental. Shaving copies in sideboarding also makes sense when you are moving away from Urza’s Saga or trying to become less reliant on explosive Amulet draws.

See the sections on Titan and Shift lines above for corner cases where access to the first Gardens opens up new routes by itself.

Card Notes - Alternative Spells/Lands

Cultivator Colossus

Cultivator Colossus was an exciting pickup that sparked renewed interest in the deck. Some of this was based on a misunderstanding of the card (no, it doesn’t go infinite with a bounceland!), some of it was based on the card’s skill at producing great Twitter screenshots and good brain chemicals. Many post-VOW lists leaned hard on Colossus, with 2 or even 3 copies and more emphasis on other cards that worked well with it, but these days you tend to see just the first copy as an additional threat that can overwhelm interaction that might stop a single Titan.

Colossus loses value in post-sideboard games where you tend to shave lands in favour of spells, your resources are under more strain overall, you run into sideboard cards that line up well against Colossus (Consign to Memory, formerly Dress Down) or make it harder to cast, and it’s harder to protect the Amulet that makes it much easier to cast and benefit from Colossus.

The easiest way to understand the trigger is that each land already in your hand cascades into a spell and you get to put any lands revealed along the way into play.

With n lands in hand, m lands in your library, and k total cards in your library, the expected number of lands you will put into play with Colossus (assuming you put in all lands in hand and always continue the chain where possible) is as follows (via Julian Wellman):

E(n,m,k) = n + nm/(k-m+1)

Assessing the likely impact of Colossus starts with identifying how many remaining spells in your deck are ‘hits’ and the odds of hitting these (do you need to hit exactly Titan or Pact, and how many of these combined are left?) and the same for relevant lands (Tolaria West represents Pact for Titan). These can play off each other - Dryad and Valakut might be irrelevant individually but win the game if hit together. It’s tough to calculate these odds on the fly and weigh them against the different, implied risk of a Primeval Titan line that has a deterministic outcome but might fall prey to interaction.

My default vibes-based heuristic: one land in hand means Colossus is likely to fizzle, two lands is a fine gamble, and three lands is likely to ‘work’ (by generating at least one more threat).

Notes:

– Triggers generated as Colossus’ ability resolves go on the stack together after it finishes resolving - you choose the order these join the stack and resolve (for example, if you have double Amulet you want Saga’s first chapter trigger to be on the stack above the Amulet triggers so that Saga can tap for mana twice).

– Choices made as lands enter the battlefield (choosing a land to copy with Vesuva or a creature type for Cavern of Souls) are made immediately before you draw the card and keep going. The relevant wording here is “As X enters the battlefield…” (as opposed to “When X…” for triggers).

– If you control zero lands (which can happen in T1 Saga -> Amulet/Gardens lines), Colossus will die instantly - but you will still resolve the trigger and should be fine.

Springheart Nantuko

A quirky card in value games (though we have to work much harder for the multiple triggers that the fair fetchland decks have on tap) that opens up a range of unique infinites for us.

With one Amulet:

Grazer + bestow Nantuko + bounceland = infinite Grazers (infinite power iff access to Oran-Rief)

Dryad + bestow + bounceland = infinite Dryads

(Analyst + bestow sets up easy Analyst loops; other fringe options like Cultivator Colossus or Titania also trivially go infinite)

With two Amulets, the Grazer and Dryad lines also make infinite mana immediately; with two Nantukos (one bestowed, the other anywhere), the one Amulet lines also make infinite 1/1s.

Nantuko obviously goes infinite with Titan too but notably creates an immediate Titan infinite with Nantuko/Pact in hand with one Amulet:

– Titan ETB finds Vestige + Battlements, haste Titan (Vestige untapped)

– Titan Attack finds bounceland + fetchland

– Post-combat, bestow on Titan and crack fetchland, using the [Forest] + Vestige to pay 1G for landfall trigger

– Titan Copy finds any lands, pay for trigger; repeat

This easily transitions into a Dryad + Valakut kill or Analyst/Lumra kill via Tolaria West.

With two Amulets, Titan alone with a Nantuko in deck goes infinite:

– Titan ETB finds bounceland + Mirrorpool, copy Titan (bouncing whatever)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Battlements + [R land], haste both Titans

– Titan Attack finds bounceland + Deeps as Mirrorpool, float mana (2C)

– Titan Copy Attack finds Tolaria West + fetchland, tap TWest twice (2CUU)

– Use this floating mana on Deeps-Mirrorpool to copy Titan

– Titan Copy #2 ETB finds two bouncelands returning TWest + anything

– Postcombat, transmute for Pact -> Nantuko and bestow on Titan, then crack your fetch for a landfall trigger and start the chain

A Lotus Field simplifies this and doesn’t rely on the graveyard via Deeps:

– Titan ETB finds Lotus Field + Mirrorpool, copy Titan (floating RR)

– Titan Copy ETB finds Battlements + Tolaria West, haste both Titans

– Titan Attack and Titan Copy Attack find two bouncelands + fetchland + any , returning TWest

– Postcombat, transmute for Pact -> Nantuko and bestow on Titan, then crack your fetch for a landfall trigger and start the chain

At a glance, this is a lot of power contained in one slot and it’s tempting to lean harder on Nantuko to make these lines more common. In practice, the infinite Grazer blocker line doesn’t lock up the game even vs most current aggro decks (Boros/Mardu Energy easily win outside combat via Phlage/Goblin Bombardment) so only the Dryad (for lists with 3-4 Dryad) and Titan lines are realistic. A swarm of 1/1s rarely goes the distance in a format that has had to adapt or die vs Ocelot Pride.

Fetchland (/+ shockland/surveil land)

Many lists run a fetchland and some have a shockland to pair with it. This is the easiest way to support a proper splash but is also seen in effectively mono-green lists to support Tolaria West.

Fetchlands make Dryad + Valakut lines much more powerful (instant speed triggers) and the first fetchland often makes the cut for that reason alone.

Like any land that enters tapped, a shockland (and thus a fetchland) nets mana with double Amulet. Some examples:

– T1 Saga + Amulet, T2 fetchland; on T3 you float C from Saga finding another Amulet, sacrifice fetchland for Breeding Pool (CUU), transmute Tolaria West for a missing bounceland

– Find a fetchland with a Titan trigger and sacrifice it for a tapped land on your upkeep to get two mana for Pact payments (whereas a bounceland returning a land previously means it wouldn’t net mana as required)

– An opposing Boseiju (on your one bounceland, for example) lets you find a tapped land to still net mana

Beware of playing a shockland tapped if this would put an Amulet trigger on the stack and give the opponent a window to kill Azusa/Dryad before it finishes its work. You can pay 2 life to have it enter untapped to avoid this.

Surveil lands

The MKM Surveil lands have transformed Modern, overperforming in every shell that can fit them. Amulet isn’t an obvious candidate for these - no fetchlands in most lists and surveil is meaningfully worse than scry when you have specific one-ofs you need to remain in the deck - but once you find your surveil land you can often bounce and replay/copy it several times per game. For a deck with a lot of lands and a lot of conditional spells, getting card selection from your lands is a great upside - you just have to work a bit harder for it. The same fetchland + shockland incentives above apply here.

Surveil lands also boost Generous Ent and give you a nice consolation prize from an opposing Boseiju - Ent is less important now with no Living End and fewer Moons around but if you find yourself wanting multiple Ents the first Surveil land starts to look very appealing (and makes splashing that secondary colour even easier).

A surveil land (and thus a fetchland) is a ‘kill land’ for Analyst loops - you sacrifice and return the surveil land each time to mill your deck on demand. Pre-loop, fetch for surveil milling a land juices Analyst substantially by itself. With Analyst and Woodland wanting a packed graveyard, self-mill is an active benefit now.

Against decks full of fetchlands, Vesuva and Echoing Deeps can hijack those for more surveillance.

Cavern of Souls

This was your superweapon against blue interaction when that implied a much more narrow range of cards and the printing of literal Counterspell into Modern made Cavern a MVP. These days Counterspell is a rarity and many common blue cards bully you through other means - Consign, Subtlety, Sink into Stupor, Force of Negation (versus Metallic Rebuke, Flare of Denial, and Strix Serenade as Cavern ‘hits’). With fewer Pacts and setup creatures like Dryad and more diverse payoffs like Zenith/Shift, it’s less common that you actually put a relevant creature on the stack (at least in G1) and that Cavern would shelter it. You can still consider Cavern for a slot but be keenly aware of its limits.

(People often ask about Mistrise Village, another cute Scapeshift tool but too clunky in most normal games; even the control decks these days are combo-control decks trying to pair Narset with Day’s Undoing or Time Walk you with Orim’s Chant, you won’t have infinite time to get extra mana in place)

Castle Garenbrig

A self-contained form of acceleration on a land that jumps you to Titan mana is very useful - on Castle’s release, it went from an experimental 1-of or 2-of to a clear 4-of quickly and the manabase was totally overhauled to enable it. See the Need for Speed section on how Castle can speed you up by a full turn where yet another bounceland etc could not.

Gemstone Caverns

Gemstone Caverns operates on the same principle, increasing the quantity of acceleration without the diminishing returns of the ramp spells. In your opening hand Caverns acts almost like another Arboreal Grazer (though again you’d rather have Caverns + Grazer than double Grazer much of the time) and sets up its own unique lines:

T1: Caverns, Saga

T2: Land, activate Saga

T3: Activate Saga again if desired and/or go off

Accelerating Saga activations is highly appealing but only possible with untapped G source + Grazer otherwise.

T1: Caverns, The Mycosynth Gardens, Amulet

T2: Copy Amulet without having to use a land drop, letting you play bounceland -> Grazer/Explore/Azusa/Pact -> Titan

T1: Caverns, land

T2: Land, Azusa/Dryad, extra land

T3: More land drops, Titan

Gemstone Caverns only does its thing on the draw, making it an easy card to cut or leave on the bench otherwise, but this is when being able to ramp quickly is most important.

It’s hard to get many reps with a one-of that has to be in your opener and automatically leaves your deck on the play but I’ve been very impressed by Caverns and give it a strong endorsement.

Sunken Citadel

Sunken Citadel is a broken card that hasn’t been broken yet - it’s hard to believe that its career high is letting bad control decks use Field of Ruin faster.

It's easy to list appealing uses in Amulet - transmuting Tolaria West suddenly becomes cheap and easy, Boseiju and Otawara are even more of a freeroll, and activating Urza's Saga commits less of your turn. The steep costs of Shifting Woodland and Mirrorpool become easier. It’s excellent with Castle Garenbrig - some early post-LCI lists found room for a bunch of Castles + Citadels but this required big sacrifices.

Lists that don’t want a red splash or Dryad/Valakut but still need a red source for Battlements get to freeroll a Citadel as their go-to there.

Arena of Glory

Often dismissed immediately because people for some reason assume this is replacing the actual haste land but in reality this is another way to get an explosive Titan without Amulet. Not needing to find a way to give haste with the ETB trigger frees you up to get a utility land with that one and then Vesuva it with the attack trigger or get the full spread of threat lands (Saga etc) + bouncelands or whatever that you want. With an Amulet you get the OHKO from my Through the Breach Amulet days - Teetering Peaks + Vestige/Wx bounce -> Vesuva on Peaks + Sunhome. Arena is specifically very good with Roxanne or some other Pact bullets.

Ultimately it's hard to find room and you can't lean into these other lines unless you reliably have Arena so you have to play more Arenas (since you need to find it naturally) + requires a heavy red commitment so this is a tough sell.

Bojuka Bog (/Pit of Offerings)

Graveyard hate attached to a land is unique and valuable but make sure you have realistic aims for it. Many decks incidentally use the graveyard in some way - sometimes just ‘escaping Phlage’, a subtheme ala Prowess dabbling in delirium with DRC/Violent Urge/Unholy Heat, or our own Analyst lines - but how good Bog is against these doesn’t scale cleanly with how strong that commitment is (it’s very hard to line up Bog against an opposing Analyst, for example). The namesake combo in Esper Goryo’s relies on the graveyard but it’s rare that their Goryo target is exposed to a sorcery-speed effect like this; by contrast, Broodscale doesn’t look like a graveyard deck at all but the slower games often come down to Emrakul, the Promised End and delaying the inevitable for a turn or two can be decisive. There aren’t many decks like Dredge or Phoenix in pre-MH1 Modern where a Bog (natty or otherwise) will hobble them

This changes if you have instant-speed access via Urza’s Cave, Elvish Reclaimer (itself via Green Sun’s Zenith etc), or old-school tricks like Sakura-Tribe Scout. Scavenger Grounds (/Abstergo Entertainment) is a more expensive but self-contained option here.

I’ve liked Pit of Offerings as an alternative for when you just care about exiling specific cards rather than everything (Phlage, reanimation targets etc) as it produces relevant colours more often and most importantly is a Cave for Spelunking.

Khalni Garden/Radiant Fountain

Staples in older lists that had to stabilize and win through combat over several turns with Titan more often, these are still the best in class for defensive lands depending on the common threats. Khalni Garden enjoyed a resurgence when blocking Ragavan was a top priority but is less reliable now that most premium threats have evasion; Radiant Fountain/Adventurer’s Inn remains a solid buffer against any pressure on your life total. Finding it can be the key to letting a weak Titan buy a turn; drawing it lets you use your bouncelands to double-dip, making slightly slower hands good enough when you effectively start the game at 24+ life.

Skyline Cascade

A Tristan Wylde-LaRue brainworm, Cascade excels against large or pesky single threats especially if they ignore blockers or outpace lifegain - Ragavan, Phelia, Psychic Frog, Murktide Regent, Phlage, Quantum Riddler, Scion of Draco etc - and a blue source is a better default than another colourless/off-colour land.

For some reason many expect the card to tap the creature too and are underwhelmed by it as a result. If that was the case it would have had a guaranteed slot in every Amulet list for a decade - as I luckily explained to Amulet addict/main character Jack Potter (HouseOfMana) before he ordered a Japanese copy that neither he nor his opponents could read.

Disciple of Freyalise

‘Pactable, untapped G source’ has been a wish list item forever but as lists shave Pacts it starts to look like a poor use of a slot.

Sideboard Choices + Changes

Toolbox Traps?

Amulet generally doesn’t get to change a lot in sideboarding - your spells are all important and you need a certain density of each type of spell, and you need to maintain a high-ish land count for your deck to function. Your tutors mean that you only need to use one or two slots for consistent access to a game-changing effect but with so many partially overlapping toolboxes it’s hard to know how to distribute those effects between them.

Take graveyard hate as an example. Bojuka Bog letting Primeval Titan exile graveyards is highly relevant when you care about that sort of thing. Endurance lets you find hate with Summoner’s Pact; Keen-Eyed Curator does the same for Green Sun’s Zenith (or the even more elaborate Zenith -> Reclaimer -> Bog). Soul-Guide Lantern lets Urza’s Saga threaten graveyard hate; Tormod’s Crypt does too and is a target for Tolaria West as well as boasting a unique efficiency. If you earmark 4-5 slots for graveyard hate, you can dabble in each without much thought but, if you only have 1-2 slots, how do you choose?

Not all hate is created equal. Endurance having flash and good stats makes it a relevant threat that warps how the game is played - it’s great against Prowess, for example - but it’s unreliable as hate when the main Graveyard Deck is harassing your hand with Thoughtseize and your triggers with Consign. Relic/SGL replacing itself makes it a fine card against decks with minor graveyard synergies where dedicating an entire card that doesn’t help your main plan is unacceptable. Bog is often the worst of the bunch but being a land gives it a high floor that lets you keep it in the deck when the others wouldn’t cut it. These cards are different enough that ‘just play the first copy of each’ isn’t a good default. You have to identify how good each candidate is at the job and how much importance to place on their respective toolbox access.

What about Naturalizes? Boseiju isn’t just a land, it’s a great land - any answer to awful artifacts has to justify itself over another Boseiju. The Insidious Fungus/Reclamation Sage/Outland Liberator etc for Summoner’s Pact used to be automatic and now rarely makes the cut; other Urza’s Saga decks leapt on Haywire Mite but Amulet hasn’t. Force of Vigor is a superweapon when you really care about nuking several or specific targets (and is your best card in the mirror) but it’s either the best or worst card for the job with little room in between.

General Principles

Amulet is a combo deck that cares about card quality and quantity so the cost of drawing a card that doesn’t further your main plan is higher than for most decks. The strongest sideboard cards usually clear that bar easily but any marginal cards should come under careful scrutiny. Dismember has targets against many decks but it’s not worth bringing in just to trade with random stuff - those creatures should be essential to their gameplan or painful for yours.

It’s worth remembering that postboard games in a matchup can have a different rhythm - they tend to be slower and more interactive as both players replace their dead cards with directly relevant ones and it’s harder to keep any one threat or enabler around. Game 1 against Affinity is a race; Games ⅔ can be a weird slogfest where neither player gets to do much for a while and the cheaper threats/value cards like Six/Icetill Explorer can do great work. This should inform your sideboard choices and mapping but also mulligans etc - that fast but fragile hand you placed your bet on in Game 1 is probably worse postboard (without any other context).

In a closed decklist tournament, it’s tough to know how much to hedge against certain lethal SB cards - you can easily ‘get got’ by an unexpected Harbinger of the Seas, Blood Moon etc - and opps will do strange and unexpected things because they misunderstand the deck/matchup. You can anticipate some common errors - overvaluing graveyard hate and especially Surgical Extraction - but don’t make your own deck worse to run away from a phantom.

Land Count

Some of these toolbox sideboard cards will be lands for Titan - and, when you can’t cut many spells, upgrading your lands is a good way to get mileage from your sideboard slots. You know you can bring in any SB Boseijus in many matchups, which is more than can be said for more narrow spells. Something like a SB Khalni Garden makes Titan more flexible but lets you maintain your desired land count while having an additional defensive tool early in a way that a spell could not. Cavern of Souls can be your hedge against Counterspell but also your extra G source for T1 Grazer against aggro.

The reasons above suggest a higher land count post-SB - the games are more grindy and with your enablers under more pressure you are more likely to fall back on making your land drops manually - and, contextually, the threat of land destruction or taxing effects might point the same way. This is informed by how your deck is designed - if you are heavy on extra land drop effects, you need a higher baseline land count. However, Urza’s Saga as a core part of the manabase complicates that if you are treating it as a partial land for that count - if you want your SB plans to allow you to shave/cut Saga OTD or against Moon effects etc, you also want some all-purpose lands to replace them with. Even if their abilities aren’t relevant, their effectiveness as a land is a key tiebreaker - you’d rather have Cavern of Souls than Bojuka Bog. The current crop of lists start with an artificially high land count and also board out Saga less often now so there’s less pressure to rebalance that land count through other means.

Splashes

For a mono-coloured deck with 30+ lands, Amulet has a disturbingly shaky manabase. Green is the best colour (and why do you need other colours anyway? Aren’t I good enough for you??) but some effects require flirting with the enemy.

Amulet lacks the heavy fetch + shock/surveil/basic infrastructure that makes a small SB splash trivial in many decks but has its own ways to tempt you there. You can switch your primary bounceland to your new splash colour, Crumbling Vestige (+ The Mycosynth Gardens) is a conditional source, and you can work in a small fetch/shock/surveil package (though this means more slots on lands and less room for Boseiju or more basics so it’s not ‘free’).

Blue is the most natural splash as you freeroll Otawara + Tolaria West as extra sources and these in turn want you to have other U sources to activate them more consistently. Unfortunately, the most enticing blue cards are the cheap counters - Consign to Memory, Mystical Dispute, and Strix Serenade are all fantastic options - and these are inherently hard to cast early when so many of your blue sources enter tapped (SGC, TWest) or are only active on your turn (Vestige). These cards can still shine but only later - you’ll gladly Dispute a Subtlety to force through your threat but you’ll rarely get to Dispute that T2 Psychic Frog. Stock Up is a popular and much easier splash right now, and a big draw to keeping blue as your default secondary colour.

Red was easier for Dryad lists to freeroll with 1-2 Valakut (and Dryad itself made any splash much easier) and is the next default thanks to Hanweir Battlements. The red sweepers (Firespout, Pyroclasm, Fire Magic) are the main draw to red as long as Boros Energy is popular; Lithomantic Barrage is a fine Ashiok hedge that kills most threats vs Boros and elsewhere, and you can talk yourself into various R/RG cards you plan to cast under Blood Moon.

Black and white are the hardest splashes here and also offer the least but the door is open if some compelling GW/GB creature pops up for Zenith/Pact or you want a more radical plan for some matchup.

You can usually support at most one splash using these methods, or maybe two if it’s exactly U + R; when I was trying to do both, I had multiple fetchlands MD and one surveil MD + the other SB (so I could always have the ‘right’ one in my deck for my splash in the matchup, and vs slower decks I would happily have both surveil lands in)

Building Amulet for Pro Tour LOTR

Building my Amulet list for the Pro Tour put these principles to the test. While it achieved great results for me and mostly succeeded in the goals I set for it, the misses there are educational too.

The spells in the maindeck were easy to fill out. I expected a lot of 4C Omnath/Ring variants so felt priced into the MD Colossus and I was wedded to the second Azusa.

The lands were much harder:

– Gemstone Caverns remained a tantalising piece of theorycrafting rather than a rigorously tested idea but I was even more confident in it given the value of any way to ramp into The One Ring.

– Cavern of Souls is the most surprising omission - I accurately predicted close to zero Murktide at the Pro Tour but more people bought into the Magic Online hype around UB Ring Control than I expected and I wished I had a Cavern of Souls somewhere for them.

– MD Otawara was the easiest hedge against Elesh Norn from 4C and welcome insurance against random stuff.

– The 2nd Crumbling Vestige raised a lot of eyebrows but I’ve always wanted as many as I could get away with and I felt I could sneak in another here. You could cut it for the Cavern of Souls or something but that is a substantial cost; having access to 2nd Vestige for Titan -> double Vestige won me a game that would have been tough otherwise and just drawing a Vestige was often great as expected.

– Bojuka Bog’s pitch for a MD slot fell flat in a world without Unholy Heat and Murktide Regent but stood out as a way to diversify my graveyard hate against Living End.

– Amulet classics in Khalni Garden and Radiant Fountain made a return as useful speedbumps against Scam in particular. Fountain helps stabilize in close games vs evasive attackers like Grief/Voidwalker and the usual Fountain -> bounceland -> replay Fountain lines give you a nice buffer and mitigate life loss from Ring. Khalni Garden is a little less reliable as a defensive tool vs Bowmasters but soaking up 8 damage from Fury or giving you a second blocker for Grief is great and it can stop T1 Ragavan running away with the game.

– Tear Asunder was part of my plan against 4C as an answer to Elesh Norn that can actually remove Ring (or free something from Binding in a pinch). This required a switch to Golgari Rot Farm as the secondary bounceland (though I wanted some of these already for matchups where I board in Dismember and saving life can be crucial).

– Pact of Negation is useful against control decks and can be part of the plan against Murktide - though cutting Cavern of Souls entirely is hard to justify if this is a big part of the argument for Pact, the control decks gaining steam before the PT loaded up on Subtlety which trumps Cavern and demands Pact. It’s also a strong tool against Cascade decks, from Rhino’s varied spread of instant-speed interaction (including their own Subtleties and new hit Flame of Anor) to Living End’s… well, Living End and any brave souls who stuck with Creativity.

– Swan Song isn’t an all-or-nothing card: as a known quantity in an open decklist tournament it’s nice to force the opponent to respect these high-impact one-ofs even if you don’t plan on boarding a bunch of them any more. This has a lot of overlap with Pact but could also hedge against hateful Yawgmoth lists, the mirror, or the unknown (some spell-based combo deck that seemed like a good response to 4C, for example).

– Tormod’s Crypt was my last addition to give more respect to Living End, which had faded from its peak just after LOTR’s release but might have a resurgence at the PT if a larger team decided it was the deck to play. I’ve liked having more diverse GY hate like Relic of Progenitus or Soul-Guide Lantern (which can be part of your SB plan vs Scam OTP to fizzle Feign Death etc) but here I mostly just cared about Living End, where Crypt can be found with Tolaria West and is free on either end for when that efficiency matters. This illustrates the principle I discussed above - this is less about wanting more graveyard hate and more about ensuring that within that I have the right hate cards and maximizing my access to those.

– Wurmcoil Engine is an additional threat against Scam and Murktide that can be cast under Moon at the same spot on the curve as Titan, stabilizes any close game, and is another source of lifegain for Ring. Given Ent’s overperformance I think turning this into another Ent would have been a smart move (and may have let me cut Crypt for something more versatile).

Note that, with very little Murktide expected, my approach of ‘figure out your plan there and then fill in the rest’ didn’t apply and I could start with a clean slate. As soon as two weeks later, with Preordain unbanned as an explicit nod to Murktide, I was playing a different list that used that usual structure.

I flirted with a lot of other builds too. With Karn being so good with/against Ring as well as 4C (and the Tron resurgence that I didn’t anticipate yet), I tried lists that paired those for maximum threat density. Once you have Karn and Ring, Ancient Stirrings can finally find a threat often on top of its other strengths - but fitting all of that in the same deck is very difficult. The 4 Stirrings 4 Saga 4 Mycosynth Gardens 4 Amulet 4 Karn 4 Ring core borrowed from the Spike Amulet deck is a great starting point but the rest of the usual Amulet fluff still seemed like the best way to fill that out.

The One Ring opens up a whole new plane of tempting lands. Academy Ruins can recur a discarded/countered Ring to ensure one sticks but also lets you loop Rings for endless protection (while still drawing a card with each new Ring to see new cards, unlike the Solitary Confinement play pattern). Minamo, School at Water’s Edge untaps Ring (or, if you have double Amulet and you Grazer/Titan it in, untaps it twice!).

Once you get that rush you can chase it in other ways. Twiddle effects and Hidden Strings work with your bouncelands (or Lotus Field…) too. I’ve occasionally wondered about Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner anyway - a ramp spell you can pay for in advance that rewards you for casting Titan and is excellent with Urza’s Saga.

Ultimately, I spent enough time considering other decks that I didn’t leave myself enough time to properly test these more radical approaches. If I had been honest with myself from the start and embraced my one-trick lifestyle, I could have put that work in and learned a lot + had fun in the process.

Building Amulet for Pro Tour EOE

Mason Buonadonna’s PT EOE T8 list was a great starting point for the rest of the season; you can follow his reasoning in my interview with him on my podcast and his detailed guide

I worked with Sanctum of All on their list which took Andrew Elenbogen and Ryan Condon to T25 with 8-2 and 7-3 records in Modern respectively:

I went into detail on my thoughts on this list, Mason’s list, and Amulet in general at this time on my Patreon; Ryan Condon went into a lot of detail on theirs and you can find Andrew Elenbogen’s here.

Mulligans - Principles

Mulligans with Amulet are more of a pseudoscience than an art. There are competing pressures for card quantity and card quality and in the dark it’s hard to know how aggressively you should search for a nut draw.

The benchmark for the average hand (without any matchup context) has changed a lot over the years - the slower, ‘manual’ Titan hands that were good enough through pre-WAR/MH1 Modern look feeble today but you have a wider range of hands that threaten to do something powerful quickly or have high upside if they find their missing piece. “I want to cast Titan by Turn X with Amulet in play” was once a useful if vague guideline; now there are more Amulets, more alternatives to Titan (from Scapeshift and/or Analyst to Cultivator Colossus) and redundancy on Titan, and Titan resolving can mean many different things (a shower of Valakut triggers, an immediate transition to a Shift/Analyst loop that no longer cares about Titan, interaction via Boseiju/Otawara… or ‘just’ an attack and some setup ala a decade ago).

How keen should you be to chase the nut draw? The key principle here is that most hands are missing some ingredient of it - it’s hard to have an Amulet, a payoff, extra ramp, and lands to power that all at once even with more cards like Scapeshift and Zenith that can fill several roles. This is part of why the London Mulligan didn’t benefit Amulet as much as other linear decks that rely on a single card or package or multiple cards with a flat value (Tron - you need your three Urza lands but they are interchangeable beyond their names). You find your most important card more often but it still needs other pieces to work - and the non-Amulet hands care about card quantity as well as card quality.

You have to weigh up how essential that missing piece is, how much time you have to find it, and how easy it will be to find. You can group hands according to what they are missing:

No Amulet: If your hand needs exactly Amulet to improve (e.g. you have a land-light hand that can’t work towards Titan manually), your odds are poor - you have no way to find it, few copies (even counting Urza’s Saga as a valid Turn 1 draw), and Amulet can be time-sensitive in how it enables your fast draws. Part of the pitch for Rumble is making some of these hands keepable - but what if you miss?

Amulet but no other ramp: Many hands have Amulet and a bounceland but no other ramp to use with them to jump towards your threat. These hands tend to be safe keeps - with Amulet any of your ramp, Pact/Zenith, another Amulet, or an immediately topdecked Saga/Gardens etc should get you to an enhanced Titan on time.

No bounceland (or Vestige, Lotus etc): Hands that have Amulet but no bounceland can have polarized outcomes - you either flounder around doing nothing or find the land and pop off. Improving your odds with these hands is a big reason to play a high bounceland count, pad that artificially (more Vestiges), or run smoothers like Rumble.

No payoff: Threat density is a real issue but you only need the threat on the turn you ‘go off’ so you have several turns to find it. This varies by matchup too - if Saga counts as a threat either because it’s the rare matchup where Construct beatdown is realistic or you have a banger to fetch with the final chapter (Vexing Bauble, SGL), that gives the count a nice boost.

Learning From Scams

When Scam was Modern’s supervillain, that matchup offered an extreme example of these principles. Scam had a lot of disruption that attacked from every angle - heavy discard via Thoughtseize and Grief, removal, Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon, and ways to blow up Amulet - as well as a fast clock. Any hand was weak to at least something and there was no way to know how well your hand would line up against theirs - but, if you chose to mulligan, your new hand would have the same problems with fewer cards to work with! There was no silver bullet for the matchup - and, even if there were, you couldn't mull for it as it would get sniped from your hand too often.

As a result, my mulligan strategy against Scam was to not focus on any one card in my deck and instead increase the density of relevant cards to maximize my odds of having/rebuilding a functional draw after their barrage of disruption. I would gladly keep hands that looked mediocre in the abstract and unable to keep up with the consensus best deck in the format - only to consistently beat strong hands in what looked like a stroke of luck.

This was a useful test of mental game too. Some hands would line up poorly against theirs; slow draws might die on Turn 3 to scammed Fury. Blood Moon still stole games on its own. Recovering from discard relied on overt variance - you could fill your deck with good hits and still miss. The games were swingy and often felt beyond your control but if you accepted that premise the battle was already lost.

RC Portland winner Pete Husisian’s article goes into more detail on this principle

Hand Assessment + Sequencing

(NOTE: This section still needs modernising with recent examples but I want to get the main update out there first)

Let’s work through some examples - these predate MH3 but the principles here still apply.

(Simic Growth Chamber, Golgari Rot Farm, Tolaria West, Boseiju, Amulet, Grazer, Titan)

This is a strong hand on course for a good Turn 4 Titan but we can speed that up:

Turn 1: Boseiju, Amulet

Turn 2: Untap and tap Tolaria West (U), cast Grazer putting in SGC (UUG), pick up and Transmute Tolaria West for Summoner’s Pact

Next turn playing a bounceland will get you to 5 mana and Pact can find another Grazer or Azusa to make that final jump to 6 for Titan.

We can reverse this (Turn 1 Grazer putting in TWest, Turn 2 use Boseiju to cast Amulet and play SGC -> Transmute) if you need Grazer as a Turn 1 blocker or are worried about Prismatic Ending etc hitting Amulet.

The key here is finding this way to Transmute early but this doesn’t have to be for Pact - against a Counterspell deck in a slower game you can find Cavern of Souls and use it to protect a Turn 4 Titan instead.

(Ravioli, a mischievous lil’ guy with a cute white tummy; Breeding Pool, Misty Rainforest, Tolaria West, Selesnya Sanctuary, Amulet, Azusa, Dryad)

This hand doesn’t have a threat yet but Azusa alone gives you enough mana to Transmute Tolaria West for Summoner’s Pact and cast Titan on Turn 3, with Dryad as a useful backup.

This is a much trickier one - you’re only missing a payoff but don’t even have an indirect route to that or another redeeming feature for the hand. In a matchup that’s just about speed I would keep this as you have the ability to kill quickly if you hit the threat but that is a real bottleneck here.

(Misty Rainforest, Boseiju, Selesnya Sanctuary, Simic Growth Chamber, Azusa, Dryad, Summoner’s Pact)

This is a Turn 4 Titan hand with little room to improve unless you draw Grazer/Amulet immediately (which makes the hand strong) and even in a matchup where Boseiju is crucial, the other lands in this hand make it hard to use it or hold it up while still developing your board. I’d mulligan this in the dark or against most known matchups.

(G1 OTD, no info)

(Forest, Tolaria West, Boseiju, Boros Garrison, Simic Growth Chamber, Explore, Dryad)

This hand lacks a threat and couldn’t deploy it quickly anyway - but you have good lands, an eventual route to a threat via transmute, and Explore as a wildcard. A hand like this illustrates my issue with Explore - it doesn’t make you meaningfully faster here, it’s hard to evaluate the strength of that wildcard, and a single ‘cycle’ doesn’t get you much closer to what you’re missing. I’m more inclined than most to keep hands like this on the play but this is a mulligan on the draw without confirmation that you’re against a slow deck.

(Urza’s Saga, 2 Valakut, Forest, Simic Growth Chamber, Arboreal Grazer, Summoner’s Pact)

With Turn 1 Saga (itself or via Grazer) finding Amulet, this hand is just one piece away from Turn 3 Titan - and Pact being the payoff means can be more flexible about what that piece is. Any Amulet/Azusa/Titan/Pact gets you over the line.

There are more options - Turn 1 Grazer -> Saga lets you activate Saga on Turn 2 + 3 if you find an untapped land, with Pact in the chamber for the right moment. A secret third thing appears when you see that this is a land-heavy hand with double Valakut where Dryad might represent a serious threat. Turn 1 Grazer -> Valakut, Turn 2 Pact for Dryad (assuming they can’t kill Dryad or after drawing a green source), lets you start triggering both Valakuts on T3 with any other land. As with many of these forward-looking lines you don’t have the resources to embrace this yet but it’s worth being aware of these options depending on what the opponent is doing and what you draw over time.

(Saga, Saga, Gardens, Forest, Boseiju, Growth Chamber, Azusa)

An odd hand that once again has everything except a threat. This hand will make enough mana that indirect threats like Tolaria West can add to the count and the first/second Saga can fetch Map to solve that problem if everything else is in place. A naturally drawn Amulet or Grazer would also improve the hand, giving you more than enough outs to roll the dice. If Saga is a relevant threat or Boseiju a relevant answer in the matchup, the hand becomes better still. It’s harder for the second Saga to have enough time to pop off on the draw but I’m keeping regardless.

(2 Saga, Gardens, Misty Rainforest, Selesnya Sanctuary, Dryad, Summoner’s Pact)

This is the exact hand that scared some away from Dryad entirely in the all-in lists: T1 Saga, T2 Gardens, T3 float + find Amulet + copy means that bounceland -> Dryad -> bounceland only gets you to five mana (whereas any other ramp spell from Grazer/Explore/Azusa would get you there). However, you have so many copies of those combined (and any Amulet/Pact/Titan works too) that this worry is overblown and doesn’t shake my faith in this otherwise outstanding hand at all. If the opponent can contain your explosive start, double Saga lets you happily sign up for a grindy game.

(Sunhome, Saga, Misty Rainforest, Selesnya Sanctuary, Expedition Map, Azusa, Summoner’s Pact)

This hand appears to fit the standards set out above - a baseline of T3 Azusa -> T4 Titan with some flexibility via Map, and T1 Saga can set up T3 Titan with any other ramp spell/Pact/Titan. This T1 Saga line has fewer outs than normal - drawing another Pact doesn’t work since we can’t pay for both in one turn and relying on Azusa here is dangerous in the face of removal - and as always these Saga lines are less appealing on the draw. I’d still keep this on the play but would agonize on the draw.

Puzzles

This document gives dozens of puzzles that cover common and uncommon situations to sink your teeth into. I’ll go through a worked example of my own here; send me more good puzzles if you have them!

We know Villain has a Boggart Harbinger that will make Snoop lethal if they untap (fetching Kiki-Jiki to let Snoop copy itself infinitely and then copying Harbinger to find Sling-Gang Lieutenant to sacrifice the tapped Snoops). We have to win or neutralize that threat this turn.

Try this for yourself first without reading further.

Let’s look at our mana and land drop constraints first. Gruul Turf as our land drop gets us to 4, each Grazer or Azusa gets us +1, so we can make 6 now. We can use Pact for another Grazer to get to 6 without tapping Stronghold if we decide that makes our eventual Titan choices better. So one approach:

– Land (4), Azusa (5), Grazer (6), Pact for Grazer (6 with untapped Stronghold), leaving Gruul Turf in play and picking up Forest

– Pact for Titan and cast it, get Valakut + Crumbling Vestige (make W). Activate Stronghold leaving Vestige untapped

– Attack trigger fetches two green sources (say bounceland + Forest bouncing Vestige)

– Cast Dryad postcombat, use its extra land drop to replay Forest and trigger Valakut killing Snoop

Board: Turf, Stronghold, Valakut, bounceland, 2 Forest, giving you 8 mana including quad G to pay for both Pacts even if Dryad dies

Alternatively:

– Land (4), Azusa (5), Grazer (6), leaving Gruul Turf in play and picking up Forest

– Pact for Titan and cast it, get Boros Garrison + Vesuva copying Stronghold, give Titan haste + bounce Vesuva

– Attack trigger gets Valakut + bounceland, bounce Stronghold

– Cast Dryad postcombat, use its extra land drop to replay Forest

– Pact for Grazer and put in Vesuva copying Valakut, getting two triggers and killing Snoop

This leaves you with an extra total mana, the same green mana coverage, and a second Valakut.

Can we do better? Blood Moon is unlikely given their plays so far (missed land drop and no non-Cavern lands, top card is known) but it would beat these lines and if we can play around it at no cost we should. A more unusual sequence gets us there:

– Land (4), Grazer (5), Pact for Grazer (6), leaving Gruul Turf in play and picking up Stronghold

– Pact for Titan and cast it, get Crumbling Vestige (make G) and Selesnya Sanctuary picking up Turf

– Use the G and Sanctuary to cast Azusa. Float C from Vestige and use the first extra land drop to play Turf, picking up Vestige

– Use Vestige’s mana and Turf to cast Dryad

– With Azusa’s remaining land drop and Dryad we have two land drops - we use these to play Vestige (make W, tap for R with Dryad) and Stronghold, giving Titan haste

– Attack trigger finds Valakut + Simic Growth Chamber, triggering Valakut twice and killing Snoop; pick up Vestige

– Postcombat, tap Valakut for U (with Dryad) and Chamber to transmute Tolaria West for Boseiju

Board: Turf, Sanctuary, Chamber, Valakut, Stronghold, Forest

Against Blood Moon you can Channel Boseiju for G (discounted by Azusa) in response to your Pact triggers and still have 4GGGG to pay for Pact.

And now a truly fiendish puzzle:

(You are resolving Scapeshift for 3 vs Boros Energy, with two Amulets and no mana floating. Your hand is 2 bouncelands, Lotus Field, Grazer; your library has 1 TWest, 1 Analyst/0 Lumra, 0 Cultivator Colossus. If their one card is blank you have the usual easy loop; can you beat a Thraben Charm?)

You will quickly run into obstacles if you pursue any conventional line - but there’s a glimmer of hope if you’re able to be truly creative. I did not see this while costreaming and definitely would not have seen this in a tournament setting but it’s a great puzzle to tackle as an exercise.

…

Scapeshift for 3 finds:

TWest, SGC, Mirrorpool bouncing TWest (UU + UUGG + C, leave Pool untapped)

Cast Grazer (UUUUGC), put in Lotus (4U 7G C) sacrificing Lotus + SGC

Transmute for Pact (U 7G C)

Cast Pact and copy with Pool (U 5G), find two Titans

Cast Titan 1 (none floating), find 2x Vestige (GG CCCC)

Cast Titan 2, find Lotus + Hanweir, haste both and leave Lotus untapped (sac two Vestiges)

IF: they Thraben Charm to kill a Titan pre-combat

Titan attacks, find Vesuva (Lotus) and Deeps (Pool); Lotus makes 6G, use 4G + C from Pool to copy Titan (GG floating, Lotus untapped, new Lotus sac trigger on stack)

Titan Copy ETB gets Woodland + SGC; delirium from Shift + Pact + land + dead Titan)

Respond to Amulet triggers for Woodland by copying Mirrorpool (GG + GGUU from SGC, Lotus untapped -> tap Woodland-Pool for C and then use it to copy Titan again, U floating); bounce + Lotus triggers on stack

Titan Copy 2 ETB gets Otawara + X; bounce Otawara + use it on Ajani, sac X + Hanweir

You have 2 Lotus + SGC in play next turn to pay for 2 Pacts

Titan attacking now + 2 Titans on defense, so probable lethal next turn + good blocks

You die to 2nd Ajani/Bombardment/most removal

Matchups

Jeskai Slop

Jeskai was the breakout star and champion at RC Houston and has remained the most popular deck + fair deck of choice since then. 4 MD Consign pins Titan in tandem with Solitude/Phelia and is a nightmare for those determined to shove carelessly on Scapeshift. MD Strix Serenade is the latest insult that makes even resolving a threat that much harder, and the average Jeskai SB contains a wide array of nuisances (more counters, Subtlety, Wrath of the Skies, Obsidian Charmaw; to say nothing of the truly dedicated haters and their Ashioks etc).

This sounds hopeless on paper but as you face the deck you realize that it doesn’t really do anything. It borrows the best aspects of Energy, Blink etc but doesn’t use any of them to full effect and is less than the sum of its parts. It can cheat in Riddler but not consistently, it has both bad mana and a bad distribution of colours for its pitch spells, often draws redundant legends, and so on. It’s common to feel behind and jam out of desperation only for your spell to resolve (or for the second or third payoff to resolve if they aren’t applying pressure).

Noncreature spells can exploit this odd patchwork of reactive cards - Green Sun’s Zenith is easier to resolve than the creature it finds, and Scapeshift looks highly vulnerable… unless you already have a route to Analyst via Zenith and that A + B combo suddenly dodges the relevant interaction. Vexing Bauble isn’t the all-star it is against Goryo or dedicated Blink (in part because you want to cut most/all Sagas here so it’s not searchable) but still useful as they struggle to remove threats without pitching Solitude and your value creatures like Six/Icetill Explorer shine here. Against their reactive draws, you have more room to sculpt your own with cards like Malevolent Rumble or Stock Up.

Your own interaction is tempting - Dismember/Barrage for Ragavan/Phelia, blue counters if you have them - but none have truly broad coverage.

There’s no one easy trick here - you have to be flexible and thoughtful during the games and navigate around their stuff well. The games are tricky but you will win enough of them.

Boros Energy

‘Fast combo deck that doesn’t care about their removal’ is the ideal formula for a good Energy matchup and Amulet mostly lives up to that. The best Boros draws beat the board in any fair game and have enough removal/reach to punch through blockers and overwhelm efforts to stabilize. Guide of Souls makes big ground blockers even worse, and they can trivially go wide around any one thing. A naked Primeval Titan will die on sight just before you die too. Their damage output is usually face-up with a few variables (maybe an extra 3 from Phlage/Bolt or extra 2 from Guide of Souls etc) but Bombardment can win games in spots no other card would and a flipped Ajani can halve their clock.

The Analyst package (and now the Shift package too) shines here, beating any amount of cats and dogs and bolts as long as you have the pieces in place. In general, creature combo decks struggle against Energy while fast, spell-based combo decks shine and the Shift kill moves the deck in that direction. Dryad + Valakut can outpace their lifegain and clean up their board (though if you need several triggers for Phlage or a Guide of Souls that buffed itself you may struggle to do this often and early enough). Four toughness beats Bolt or Phlage but is still easy pickings for Ajani or a Discharge that they can safely save for it, making its output polarized and unpredictable.

Static Prison gives them cheap, all-purpose interaction that shares all the weaknesses of Leyline Binding but can stunt your development if you let it catch Amulet - consider holding Amulet until you can get an immediate return from it if your hand allows. Thraben Charm is a common 1-2 of MD and all modes can be lethal (see the last entry in the puzzle section!).

Blood Moon is their scariest SB card and often a scary MD card too; in open decklists (or settings where you know your opponent can put you on Amulet), they can prioritize any MD Moons very highly and you should value finding and holding up Boseiju accordingly.

You will catch some splash damage from hate aimed at other combo (Damping Sphere, Orim’s Chant), big mana (also Damping Sphere, Charmaw/Phantom, Blood Moon), and graveyard decks (Surgical Extraction). Expect some extra pressure on Amulet and Saga from stuff like Wear/Tear; every SB will have Wrath of the Skies but there is no clear consensus on whether to bring it in or how highly to value it.. Orim’s Chant in particular is brutal for all-in Pact or Scapeshift lines so baiting that or sniffing it out is key if your draw is reliant on those. Jeskai over Boros means Consign - if you see blue lands, react accordingly.

Boros builds a board with a bunch of small creatures that work well together so cheap mass removal can buy a lot of time. Your choice of Fire Magic/Pyroclasm/Firespout depends on how much you value instant speed, efficiency, and killing 3 toughness creatures (Voice of Victory or anything buffed by Guide of Souls).

More access to Boseiju (+ basic Forest via Generous Ent) is a nice hedge against Moon as well as Static Prison, Damping Sphere etc; Force of Vigor is the most reliable Moon answer and the most efficient answer to these cards under pressure (or the only answer when they have multiple hate cards). Boseiju is also a welcome answer to Goblin Bombardment; against Bombardment + Ajani, killing it in response to Ajani being cast (or the -0 ability if it’s the only other red permanent) is vital.

UR Prowess

Prowess is contending for the title of best aggro deck with Energy. This is a good matchup in theory and practice - the game is a pure race with little to no interaction from them (at least pre-SB) but your nut draw and average lethal draw are both faster and Arboreal Grazer ramping + blocking can swing races by a turn or more. The mass adoption of 4 Mutagenic Growth + some # of Violent Urge lets them goldfish on Turn 3 with impressive consistency if left to their own devices.

The main decisions in G1 involve being comfortable with including the unknowns in your combat math - if they have Slickshot and one Growth but not two, if this DRC trigger mills a Lava Dart, and so on. Things are less clear post-SB because they have a lot of interaction if they want it - up to 4 Consign and some Unholy Heat and/or miscellaneous stuff like Spell Pierce/Surgical/Flood Maw - and it’s not obvious how highly they will value those. Their best cardflow tools like Expressive Iteration are slow here (and some of the natural cuts if they want to load up on these cards) and they have to spend cards to keep Prowess/Cutter triggers coming so they can’t afford to be overly reactive. Those cards are all as cheap as you can get but the whole point of Prowess is to maximize its small amount of mana every turn so holding up unused mana is a real cost - and a sign of what they might be holding.

The only sweeper I like here is Firespout is 3 damage is so much more than 2 against DRC (and any spell + Swiftspear or Cutter token). I think Dismember probably isn’t worth it unless you know they have a lot of Violent Urges. Lifegain is at its best here (Fountain/Inn or extra Caves for Spelunking) and graveyard hate is surprisingly good vs DRC/Urge/Heat (narrow hate like Tormod’s Crypt is too marginal but cards like Bog/Pit/SGL are nice and Endurance is excellent). Reach and >3 toughness is a good combination - Six isn’t necessary for its grindy potential here but its stats + buying back Grazer (or a Consigned Amulet etc) can buy a lot of time.

Some light splashes are possible - white for Prismatic Ending and Wear/Tear, black for Thoughtseize, green for Pick Your Poison.

Domain Zoo

Zoo is enjoying a resurgence and we’re enjoying that too - it’s a good matchup even with recent lists becoming more hostile (explicitly and incidentally). Without Leyline of the Guildpact their mana is awkward and the play pattern of casting one clunky threat per turn while holding up interaction requires a lot to go right. Leyline Binding as the main removal spell is easily trumped by Boseiju (which also doubles as removal for literal Leyline or Scion of Draco without it); a Titan that gets to tutor up Boseiju is very difficult to remove. MD Consign and Doorkeeper Thrull can delay that and the Thrull -> Phlage (+ Arena) nut draw is their easiest way to steal games.

They have access to the whole colour pie but can’t afford to be too ambitious with their mana and in practice their SB options fall into a narrow range: more blue stack interaction, Disenchants, and some permanent hate (Damping Sphere or the dreaded Ashiok). On our end Dismember is much better here than it was against the more efficient aggro decks in Energy and Prowess; tagging the Kavu or Scion that’s their only source of pressure buys a lot of time and hitting Thrull removes a hate card while preventing their own ‘combo’.

Affinity

The printing of Pinnacle Emissary let Mox Opal get up to mischief again and ushered Kappa Cannoneer into the front lines of Modern. This is a welcome development for Amulet, which can shrug off and outrace even the fastest Emissary/Kappa draws but also has easy Boseiju access and strong SB cards.

Pay attention to possible Saga bullets: Tormod’s Crypt, Pithing Needle, Aether Spellbomb; Haywire Mite is one of the scariest cards in lists with access to green, which you can sometimes infer even in closed decklists (if you see fetchlands, for example).

The PT lists loaded up on Tormod’s Crypt and Engineered Explosives as extra zero-drops that both have relevant text here. Crypt is a face-up nuisance for Analyst lines but Explosives can blindside you if you are all-in on a double Amulet draw.

Stack interaction in G1 consists of a few Sink into Stupor + Metallic Rebuke. Both are often somewhat telegraphed and neither is a ‘hard’ counter so with time you can work around them. Most sideboards have the usual smattering of Consigns but the real threat comes from Moons/Harbinger/Ashiok. These can be hard to cast (not least if you are attacking their mana with Ouphe/FOV) and they can easily have an otherwise nonfunctional draw that gives you time to recover but the usual upside is there. You were boarding in your Moon answers anyway and can board in Dismember for Magus/Harbinger or your chosen Ashiok hedge as needed; if they have a mix of each it’s hard to target in this way but all of your answers have other uses so it’s reasonable to overload on them.

Force of Vigor is great of course but timing it properly is tricky and against Moon lists there’s a larger question of whether you try to beat the rest of their draw and save FOV as a Moon answer. Collector Ouphe isn’t as game-ending as Stony Silence was against boomer Affinity but it’s still very strong. Vexing Bauble is excellent OTP and fine but more marginal OTD.

Esper Goryo

The Goryo recipe is very scary for Amulet - a fast combo backed up by proactive (Thoughtseize) and reactive (Consign, Subtlety and/or Solitude, Force of Negation) disruption. In practice they are mostly all-in on the combo here - a Frog on its own is unlikely to go the distance (though savvy Goryo players will build a big Frog quickly to shorten that clock) and Quantum Riddler is less impressive here than elsewhere - and that combo has a lot of assembly required so you often have more time and equity than you ‘should’. Adjust their range accordingly - if they aren’t going off or aggressively churning through cards, their hand has to be something worth thinking about - but don’t be too pessimistic. You also can’t realistically beat their nut draw so it’s not useful to live in constant fear of it.

Graveyard hate is the priority here. Bog/Pit is fine but there’s a big premium on instant-speed hate (which can include those lands via Urza’s Cave or Elvish Reclaimer). For your other toolboxes, Soul-Guide Lantern/Ghost Vacuum etc and Keen-Eyed Curator (if high on Zenith) are the best in class; Endurance is a natural fallback here but its weakness to both discard and Consign is a problem. Vexing Bauble is a useful tool against all the free spells and is often instrumental in letting you combo safely despite a resolved Goryo -> Atraxa stocking their hand.

As is often the case, I don’t like pure value cards like Tracker here but flexible value cards that also have combo applications like Six are worth it. I would shy away from fighting over the setup creatures with Dismember but similar effects with a buyout like Aether Spellbomb/Otawara or more flexibility like Into the Flood Maw (one of the few good Ashiok answers, if they pick that up) are fine.

Amulet

The mirror is a crapshoot - go fast and pray for the best - but Boseiju adds a layer of interaction that was missing before. Amulet can be a necessary target but still a dangerous one as it gets them closer to natural Titan mana; replacing Saga or Gardens with a Forest leaves them with the same baseline amount of mana but stops them aiming higher. Sniping a bounceland is a high-risk line that can shut them down if they don’t have another. If they can start going off, hitting the right land at the right moment (sometimes Hanweir Battlements or Mirrorpool in a Titan line or the Tolaria West/Shifting Woodland that chains into the next step in a Scapeshift line) is often your only out.

The threat of Force of Vigor creates a weird dynamic in postboard games. Amulet’s best draws get hit hard by Force of Vigor and having Force is enough to justify an otherwise slow hand. If your opponent keeps seven, they could have a fast Amulet draw that will run you over and make you have an even faster draw or your own Force… or they could have a Force of Vigor. If they keep seven and don’t lead on Amulet/Saga, you should expect Force - if you can afford to play slower by a turn to minimize its impact, strongly consider it. This means the good Grazer -> ramp -> Titan draws can be more stable than a top of your range Amulet start.

Being on the play is an even bigger advantage than normal with this in mind. A good Turn 3 Titan hand is strong on the play and too slow against an identical hand on the draw. This gives the player going second an incentive to mulligan for the nuts or a Force of Vigor hand that can break serve, which in turn lets the player going first keep slightly slower but more stable hands.

Ruby Storm

Storm is back and more functional than ever! Back in the day Gifts Storm was the perfect example of a tough matchup on paper - a fast, redundant combo deck with key enablers you couldn’t kill and some interaction via Remand etc - but their deck misfired a lot and a timely Dismember for Baral or similar post-SB stole a lot of games. Ruby Storm implements that recipe for the Modern Horizons era with much greater consistency and is a nightmare matchup as a result.

Game 1 is a pure race - win the die roll and try to kill on Turn 3, and mulligan aggressively for a hand that can if you know the matchup. Most hands that ‘just’ make a fast Titan aren’t enough - without immediate kills via Dryad or a follow-up Analyst loop you can easily die anyway even if you can hold up Boseiju/Otawara.

All you can do is pick how much you want to care about Storm and choose your SB cards accordingly. Graveyard hate looks good as most of their big turns officially lock up a win with Past in Flames/Underworld Breach but with enough time they can simply go off through that and a flipped Ral ultimate beats it so treat this as a delaying tactic at best.

When all of the ‘Medallion effects’ were creatures, targeting those was an easy default. Now, Ral has a good chance of flipping with another spell in response to Dismember and the cards that might kill Ral won’t hit Ruby Medallion. We have some natural answers to Medallion via Boseiju but giving them a land with that means they can often just keep going (and you are dead to the next enabler); Force of Vigor is a more effective answer but that’s still spending two cards to kill an enabler half of the time and crossing your fingers that this is enough.

They *could* be a Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon deck too - stock lists don’t have them now but they have done before and will again; you have some complaint equity if you get Mooned by Storm but can’t be totally blindsided by it.

Blue Belcher

The main litmus test for Pro Tour EOE (and its eventual winner!), Blue Belcher has fallen off dramatically since then but remains a fringe player. This felt like a nightmare matchup at first - they are slower than you and capped at a Turn 4 kill but back that up with a full platter of free spells plus other interaction and scary SB cards like Harbinger of the Seas. As lists became more refined and focused on this matchup, it started to look close or even favoured - and passing this test made registering Amulet for the PT look possible.

My advice to players picking up Amulet for the PT was to play a lot against Belcher, not just because of its popularity but because navigating that combo-control squeeze was the perfect way to test your abilities and improve rapidly. The games are weird and can take lots of sudden turns - you have to feel comfortable improvising and feeling confused/stupid sometimes.

Boseiju is Vindicate for 1G pre-SB - if you are OTP or have several copies, hitting a land to set them back feels automatic but with Lotus Bloom suspended or threatened via Whir there’s more pressure to save it as the game drags on. Many lists will have a SB basic (Mountain, sometimes Island) as insurance against these effects so expect them to get something back when you fire off the first Boseiju there.

Keep track of which counters are in range - Flare of Denial becomes free with Fallaji Archaeologist/Thundertrap Trainer, Disrupting Shoal can consistently pitch counter a MV 2 or MV 3 spell but not much else (though hardcast Shoal can counter Pact for UU), UU means Jwari Disruption (or Counterspell in the creature-light lists), 1UU means Sink into Stupor and hardcast Flare. Post-SB, expect Consign to Memory and sometimes more Force of Negation/Subtlety.

Analyst and Woodland lines become better by default here as they are better against the various blue cards; with Woodland specifically, try to save a land drop if turning it into Titan against open mana so you can replay it post-combat if they have Sink into Stupor.

Vexing Bauble is excellent against their wall of pitch spells as well as Lotus Bloom and lets Urza’s Saga represent a new threat - this is one of the few matchups where Constructs + interaction can beat a reactive hand. Collector Ouphe is as good as it looks and Zenith widening access to Ouphe is a strong point in its favour if Belcher is popular. Force of Vigor is much worse than it looks to some; I bring more cards in here than anywhere else generally but wouldn’t touch Force. It’s easy to have more SB cards than you can fit here without even trying but you also have more room here; many of your MD payoffs like Pact/Shift and enablers like Grazer are suspect. This is the only mainstream matchup where Titan itself isn’t a sacred cow and you will often find yourself playing like a strange prison deck more than a sleek, fast combo deck.

Broodscale

The Broodscale combo is fast and consistent against decks with ~no removal and that kind of creature combo is generally tough for Amulet but the saving grace here is that the Blade of the Bloodchief half (as well as a lot of the support cards like Urza’s Saga) is an artifact that you can tag with Boseiju G1 and blunt with Collector Ouphe/Force of Vigor post-SB. Meanwhile they lack relevant interaction for your best draws (barring the one Haywire Mite that still shows up a lot via Saga and Stirrings/Rumble or a timely Kozilek’s Command against an Analyst line) so you will often win the pure races.

The adoption of Emrakul, the Promised End as an endgame means you can’t turtle up indefinitely behind a wall of Boseijus etc. Double Fleshraker can also deal lethal out of nowhere so even a high-ish life total isn’t necessarily safe.

Their sideboards have a bit of everything - their own Naturalizes (including Stirrings/Rumble hits like Thief of Existence), removal (Unholy Heat), hate (Damping Sphere/Disruptor Flute), the occasional Warping Wail. Your Naturalizes + Dismembers are nice pickups; sweepers look tempting against Fleshraker and Eldrazi Spawn generally but again I think it’s hard to get more than a virtual one-for-one and at a steep price.

This is one matchup that can turn into a surprising slog postboard especially when it becomes hard to stick an Amulet; your grindy cards are better than they look, especially if they aren’t vulnerable to their Naturalizes and Kozilek’s Commands. The threat of Broodscale combo on one extreme and Emrakul at the other creates a tough squeeze - the fast but flimsy hands can fold to interaction, the slow hands can be outmuscled - but their draws are even more disjointed here and if their answers line up poorly you can plow through them.

Problem/Hate Cards

Consign to Memory

Consign is an oddly effective and complicated card against Amulet. The namesake is a colourless card - but one that’s hard to tag with Consign unless you are OTD and offer it up (gauging whether you want to run out T1 Amulet is a key skill post-SB against blue decks).

The everyday operations of the deck as well as the key sequences in your combo turns are full of triggers and it’s vital that you are clear on what’s a triggered ability vs an activated ability (or a secret third thing) - triggers ~always involve the words ‘when/ever…’ or ‘at…’, whereas activated abilities involve a cost and the ability separated by a colon (“:”). So:

– Gruul Turf entering tapped is a replacement effect; Gruul Turf returning a land (or being untapped by Amulet) is a triggered ability; Gruul Turf tapping for mana is an activated ability (specifically, a mana ability that doesn’t use the stack).

– Using Hanweir Battlements, transmuting Tolaria West, and channeling Boseiju/Otawara are all activated abilities.

– Urza’s Saga has three triggered abilities; the first two give Saga activated abilities.

– Lands entering tapped is a replacement effect; Spelunking applies an additional replacement effect (and thus can’t be responded to or Consigned) whereas Amulet triggers when a land enters tapped (this can be Consigned)

– Vesuva and Echoing Deeps choose lands as a replacement effect as they enter play (this can’t be responded to or Consigned)

Consider what Consign might do in a normal game:

– Counter any of Urza’s Saga’s chapter triggers (to stop it producing mana; gaining the Construct ability; or from finding a Amulet etc)

– Counter an Amulet trigger to deny that mana at any point (replicated Consign can counter triggers from multiple Amulets!)

– Counter a return trigger from a bounceland (if you would pick up a channel land/Tolaria West or if you have multiple land drops but need to use the same bounceland for each)

– Strand a Lotus Field in play by preventing it from sacrificing itself or other lands

– Stop Vestige from making coloured mana (this trigger is not a mana ability and does still use the stack like any other)

– Counter a Valakut trigger

– Deny you the ramp from Grazer/Spelunking

– Counter a Titan ETB (or Lumra, Colossus etc) trigger or attack trigger

– Stop the ETB trigger on the Endurance you had to desperation Pact for

– It does NOT stop Analyst from returning lands (but if you don’t have all the right pieces yet it can counter the mill trigger, or choke you on mana by countering an Amulet trigger)

It’s impossible to stop them from Consigning something, and often impossible to stop Consign hitting anything meaningful - so then you have to focus on baiting it out or playing through it. Unless you lost all your lands in the Lotus Field and/or made a Pact with a Summoner, you won’t inherently lose to Consign halting a Titan - Colossal Dreadmaw is a joke but, if they are throwing away a card each turn to stop it being so much more, it starts to be a problem.

Some interactions to note:

– You can Consign the Replicate trigger on their Consign

– The individual copies of Consign can be countered after replicate resolves (say you have a Mystical Dispute and they are trying to stop several different triggers)

– Veil of Summer doesn’t stop Consign from countering abilities, only spells; ditto Cavern of Souls

Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon/Harbinger of the Seas

Blood Moon is the scourge of conventional Amulet and remains one of the strongest tools against you no matter how many sacrifices you make elsewhere to fight it. After losing single handedly to Moon enough times it’s very tempting to embrace dedicated anti-Moon plans but be honest about yourself about how often you actually beat Moon even with these plans - if you just give yourself the illusion of ‘playing Magic’ but lose those games anyway, was it worth it?

Boseiju, Who Endures was a massive improvement for Amulet in general but a big part of that is giving you a maindeckable and tutorable out to Moon that has low opportunity cost as a good land. With enough copies of Boseiju (and ideally basic Forest) and ways to find it, you have decent counterplay vs Moon without trying hard and don’t need to load up on narrow answers - though you can go back to a Pactable answer like Outland Liberator or Foundation Breaker in Moon-heavy metagames.

With that in mind, Magus of the Moon (and now Harbinger of the Seas…) is actually much scarier - there’s no analogue to Boseiju for problem creatures and the Pactable answers are conditional so you often have to resort to actual removal. If Amulet becomes too popular, most existing Moon decks can buy a lot of equity in the matchup by switching to Magus (though this makes it much more fragile vs most other decks they would want to Moon, so this is thankfully limited).

It’s easy to reach for your Force of Vigors whenever you see Moon but the context matters here. The highly disruptive Moon decks - BR Scam in its heyday, UR Murktide during other decks’ heydays - have a long list of problem cards for you and it’s rare that Force (or other Naturalizes) catches anything else. Drawing a dead Force is a big cost against heavy discard or a wall of counters - and those can stop it from working even if it finds its mark. Maxing on Boseiju is a much more reliable strategy there even though it has other setup costs.

I do like Force more against Moon decks that fight you on the board rather than the hand/stack, especially if they have other decent targets or other Force-able hate cards. Boros Energy is a Moon deck that has also has Static Prison and other hate like Damping Sphere, and you know that your Force will resolve and unlock your whole hand.

On top of direct answers to Moon you want colourless or single-green cards that you’re happy to cast under it. Dryad is ideal here, letting you make more land drops and cast Colossal Dreadmaws. In Dryad vs Moon the card with later timestamp wins out - your basics will always tap for any colour but your nonbasics will only tap for R unless you cast Dryad post-Moon - so you have to weigh the risk of delaying your development by holding Dryad vs giving yourself better odds against Moon. The 2/4 body is sturdy against the Lightning Bolts and small attackers that tend to accompany Moon too. Setup cards like Malevolent Rumble and threats like Springheart Nantuko, Six, or the much-missed Tireless Tracker all tick this box in their own way; Generous Ent was a valuable addition as a ‘Pactable Forest’ that is also just great to cast sometimes.

If you do have the answer, think about when to use it. Under Moon your bouncelands are Mountains without the tapped/bounce a land drawbacks - you can play these out as normal lands and then Boseiju the Moon leaving yourself with access to more mana than you would have had otherwise. Even against two-colour Moon decks, they may only have time to find one basic if they are racing to Moon you ASAP and you may have more time to line up your post-Moon play if you wait a bit and leave them hobbled by their own Moon. The same goes for Dismember against Magus/Harbinger.

Ashiok, Dream Render

It was never a secret that Ashiok is great against Amulet but people are finally showing enough respect to bring it again. Contextually it can be easier to handle than Moons - the games where you just cast a Titan and attack it down - or even harder, effectively ending your participation in the game entirely.

Moon and Magus/Harbinger were known quantities that were covered by existing MD/SB cards. Ashiok poses a unique problem that demands its own solutions and many of these are silly - I’ve seen people splash every colour (and colourless!) for increasingly baroque Ashiok answers that are narrow elsewhere and not even great at handling Ashiok. The usual temptation to cram every toolbox full of answers is at least off-limits here thanks to Ashiok itself but that hasn’t stopped anyone. Unless some creative solution is found or a new toy is printed, I think the sensible responses to Ashiok are:

– Ignore it: it’s not that popular, it won’t always show up on time, and you can sometimes beat it anyway

– Attack it: many of your Pact/Zenith targets pressure it well and Constructs or Titan can chip in too

– Cheap + flexible removal: Into the Flood Maw in blue, Lithomantic Barrage in red (can pair with cards like Stock Up to dig for these), maaaaybe Null Elemental Blast in a format with lots of Goryo/Zoo

Force of Vigor

There’s no shortage of good hate cards or good free spells in Modern but Force of Vigor is the terrifying intersection of the two. Postboard vs any deck with a lot of green cards you will often find yourself confident that you can run over the opponent - unless they have exactly Force of Vigor, which will flip or end the game on the spot. Force is one of Modern’s safety valves against Amulet’s dominance - if it ever rises above its station, green decks of all stripes can just play a bunch of Force of Vigors and they should be fine.

The unique power of Force is that it’s best against your best hands. The double Amulet starts of legend and the Saga + Amulet or Amulet -> Dryad/Spelunking curves get blown out by Force; if the rest of their deck or draw can handle the more normal draws, Force gives them coverage against the best ones.

Playing around Force often means taking it slow - not shoving on Turn 1 Saga (or playing Saga at all until you have another way to keep developing like Azusa), holding Amulet until you can get immediate value from it or hold up The Mycosynth Gardens to copy it in response to Force, and not exposing multiple targets at once.

Against the threat of superweapons like Moon and Force you should look for information where you can to assess the risk. For example, suppose your Yawgmoth opponent keeps 7 on the play in Game 2 and just plays lands on Turns 1 and 2. Their deck is full of one-drops and two-drops so the odds of them having none are low and they need to have material on the board for Yawgmoth or Chord to function so it’s dangerous to keep a hand without them unless you have a very compelling reason. All signs point to Force - it would justify keeping a hand this slow, with no early plays they have more cards in hand so the basic odds of Force + green card are higher, and they might be holding back a castable green card as Force fodder. Here I would go out of my way to minimize my exposure to Force if possible.

Conclusion

That’s all… for now! Please reach out with any feedback or questions.

Timeline

2005-2006: Ravnica is released; the bouncelands (‘Karoos’) quickly jump up pick orders and are everywhere in Standard. Despite coexisting with Azusa, Bloom, and Sakura-Tribe Scout, this synergy goes unexplored outside German Nationals and the Snakes deck very late in the format

February 2010: Amulet of Vigor is printed in Worldwake; most attention is on Jace, the Mind Sculptor instead.

“I’ve heard that a lot of people are talking about Amulet of Vigor, but I’m just not seeing it. Yes, it’s awesome with Ravnica duals, but is that really your plan in Extended? You’re going to hope to draw an Amulet of Vigor and play enough Ravnica duals that it generates a bunch of mana? What expensive spells are you going to play with that mana, and what are you going to do when you don’t have the Amulet? Maybe you just want to play it in Standard with a lot of “enters the battlefield tapped” lands. That’s fine, but how many of those can you really play? And once you’ve done all this work in deckbuilding, isn’t it basically just a Birds of Paradise at best? I’ll admit that I’m not usually the person to find the awesome combo cards, but this one just looks terrible to me.” - Sam Black (who would help make Amulet the best deck in Modern later)

September 2011: Pro Tour Philadelphia sees the debut of Amulet of Vigor as a catalyst for Cloudpost decks. Gerry Thompson almost incorporates Summer Bloom + Gruul Turf into his list, Dave Williams follows through

April 2012: Avacyn Restored is released, bringing the final piece in Slayers’ Stronghold; very primitive Amulet Bloom lists appear on Magic Online towards the end of the year

February 2013: A list credited to Robert Wilbrand is featured in a CFB article, bringing the deck into the public eye; Gerry Thompson soon follows up and other articles track its development

February 2014: Amulet breaks onto the big stage at Pro Tour Valencia, with Matthias Hunt playing for 8-0 on Day 1 and giving a deck tech. Other notable names choose the deck for the PT including Stanislav Cifka, Ivan Floch, and David Williams

Mid 2014: Bence Bokor (LordCommanderSnow) achieves the highest win rate on Magic Online with Amulet (and would go on to win two PTQs in 2015)

Late 2014: With the format warped around Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time, Amulet picks up several finishes in the slippery hands of Stephen Speck. A young Piotr Glogowski/kanister makes T8 at GP Milan

February 2015: Sam Black and Justin Cohen play Amulet at PT Washington DC with Sam playing for T8 after IDing with Justin, who finishes in 2nd (Kevin Grove also racks up a 8-2 record in Constructed). Amulet officially becomes the apex predator of Modern

January/February 2016: As expected, Summer Bloom is banned and Amulet’s reign of terror ends. In a nice coda to Bloom’s run in Modern, Bobby Fortanely wins the last pre-ban Open

August 2016: Kevin Grove finishes X-2 at GP Lille with an early list of Amulet Titan

Late 2016/Early 2017: Another wave of bannings prompts renewed interest in Amulet, with Fortanely putting it back on the map at GP Vancouver. A small band of stalwarts continues to fly the flag at SCG Opens and GPs

2018-2019: Michael Mapson places 2nd at GP Hartford; Daniel Caixeta makes T8 in Sao Paulo;

the finals of SCG Charlotte is an Amulet mirror, won by Will Pulliam. In early 2019, Amulet die-hards take over the SCG Tour

2019: War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, Core Set 2020, and Throne of Eldraine each have an incredible impact on the format. The printing of Field of the Dead and then Once Upon a Time + Castle Garenbrig lets Amulet keep up with this rising tide after Hogaak’s successive reigns of terror finally end

February 2020: Theros Beyond Death bestows Dryad of the Ilysian Grove on Amulet and inflicts Uro and much more on the rest of the format. The January bans had just killed off UG Urza with the loss of Oko and Mox Opal so Amulet stands alone again as the best deck in Modern

March 2020: Bans catch up with Amulet too as Once Upon a Time is history; Amulet recedes into the background again just before companions devastate Constructed Magic

May 2021: After a tumultuous year, Modern Horizons 2 upends the format completely. Amulet joins the ranks of Urza’s Saga decks and is one of the big winners in the early weeks as the format figures itself out

April 2023: This is published!

July 2023: I Top 8 Pro Tour LOTR with Amulet, giving hope to Amulet copers everywhere

May 2024: Modern Horizons 3 causes another massive earthquake; Nadu wrecks Modern and pushes Amulet out of the format in the short-term

August/September 2024: Nadu is banned, opening up Modern again; experiments with Aftermath Analyst etc begin in earnest

October 2024: I finally get around to publishing this massive MH3 update and rewriting the whole thing

December 2024: The One Ring is banned; Looting and Opal are banned to much surprise and we get Green Sun’s Zenith as a treat

January/February 2025: Mox Opal unleashes Breach on Modern for a hot minute; Amulet holds its own as one of the few non-Breach decks

September 2025: Amulet puts up a commanding performance at Pro Tour EOE, with Mason Buonadonna in Top 8 and the highest overall win rate; it continues to perform well over the RC cycle and is called out in the November 2025 ban announcement

Resources

Many of these were out of date even when I was originally working on a guide in 2019 but for readers who want to trace the deck’s development over time these are useful historical archives.

There are many assorted Amulet feature matches from SCG/GP/other events on YouTube.

Unfortunately, site redesigns that nobody asked for at all major content hubs along with a lack of concern from people in charge has led to a lot of link rot, especially for the old CFB articles. These are grouped at the end to note their existence in case you want to dive deep in the Wayback Machine.

The outdated articles that were linked here can be found in the Archive document in the equivalent section’

There are many Amulet mains who stream on Twitch: reidq7, mistakenn69, houseofmana

Pete Husisian - How To Keep Awful Titan Hands (and Win!)

Puzzle Book

Dominaria’s Judgment episode all about Amulet

Dominaria’s Judgment episode - PT LOTR report

Appendix

Zenith targets:

Threats/Enablers:

1 - Hexdrinker, Elvish Reclaimer, Sakura-Tribe Scout, Sylvan Safekeeper

2 - Keen-Eyed Curator, Springheart Nantuko, Fanatic of Rhonas, Lotus Cobra, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Floriferous Vinewall, Tarmogoyf

3 - Six, Grist, Courser of Kruphix, Glarb, Kutzil, Ramunap Excavator, Zimone, Slogurk

4 - Icetill Explorer, Brightglass Gearhulk, Blossoming/Bedrock Tortoise

5 - Roxanne, Vorinclex, Titania, Fecund Greenshell, Gitrog

6 - Lumra, Bonny Pall, Dromoka

7 - Cultivator Colossus, Dragonlord Atarka, Atraxa

Answers:

1 - Insidious Fungus

2 - Collector Ouphe, Gaddock Teeg, Keen-Eyed Curator

3 - Endurance, Grist

4 - Yasharn, Altered Ego, Dewdrop Entrancer