BAMulet Titan: Turning to the Dark Side to Attack the Metagame!

Hi all,
Welcome back to another article about Amulet Titan! This time we’re going to be spicing it up and talking about an interesting innovation that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.

The bad news is that with Tales of Middle Earth: Lord of The Rings cards added to Modern, the metagame has been shaken up in a very interesting way where we now have some of Amulet’s worst matchups at the top of the meta.
The good news is that with Tales of Middle Earth: Lord of The Rings cards added to Modern, we have some new and exciting tools to help us fight against these matchups.
Scam, Living End and Murktide are amongst the top decks at the moment, so let’s take a moment to understand why these can be tough matchups.

The Bad News:

Rakdos Scam (11.8% of the meta)

One of the hardest cards for amulet to beat is Ragavan. We don’t have many ways of defending ourselves from it outside of Arboreal Grazer, and the mana advantage it provides can spell nightmares for us as they can back up that pressure with disruption such as Thoughtseize, Terminate, and Blood Moon. Scam’s ability to pressure us quickly while also threatening to Blood Moon makes it a nightmare matchup for sure!

Living End (8.3% of the meta)

Living End can be tough to beat due to their free interaction in the name of Grief and Force of Negation. Even if we do manage to land a Titan, it can be wiped off the board for just three mana as the opponent’s plan is to cascade into Living End. Post Living End, a 6/6 giant is usually not enough to fight through the opponent’s massive board, as they have discarded a ton of creatures to draw additional cards and find lands within their deck.

Murktide (6.7% of the Meta)

This is another challenging matchup due to cards like Ragavan. Ragavan and Dragon’s Rage Channeler are mana-efficient creatures that create pressure and provide additional advantages. Beyond that, Murktide plays a suite of counter magic and removal that can really throw a wrench in things. Post board you can expect some number of Dress Down and Blood Moon to cause further problems for our deck.

The Good News:

Orcish Bowmasters

Orcish Bowmasters is one of the breakout cards from Tales of Middle Earth: Lord of The Rings. While this may not seem like a slam dunk for Amulet, I’ve been finding great success with it. The orcs give us additional angles of attack, punish the opponent for drawing additional cards, and, most importantly, It lines up incredibly well against Ragavan and creatures of the like. Historically, Amulet has not had great answers for Ragavan and I believe Orcish Bowmasters to be a great solution here.

Tear Asunder

When this card was originally suggested to me, I disregarded Tear Asunder because I assumed it was just a more expensive version of Haywire Mite. Upon further ponderings it became quite clear that this card is a HOUSE. Being able to exile all the problematic artifacts and enchantments, Such as Blood Moon and The One Ring, while also being able to Exile other permanents like Murktide, Teferi, and even Elesh Norn makes this card powerful (The look on my opponent’s face when I exiled their Elesh Norn was great. Sorry-not-sorry, Will!). The extra mana needed to kick the card is negligible in our ramp deck and the flexibility that this card provides at instant speed makes it an incredibly powerful sideboard card.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

Sheoldred might be a bit of a meme, but I just can’t help myself. This card has continued to impress me every time it sticks. The casting cost may look to be a bit difficult to achieve, but I promise it’s worth a try. Not only does it have great Synergy with and against The One Ring, it also punishes opponents who are in the business of drawing additional cards. Sheoldred is not just a 4/5, her abilities also go a long way in taking the pressure off our life total and putting it all on our opponent instead.

The Mana Base (pun not intended… Unless?!)

In order to cast all of these black cards I’ve added two Overgrown Tombs and three Verdant Catacombs to our list (10 black sources + 2 caverns in the main). This helps us greatly in playing out of Blood Moon as we have three Forests and three fetches for a total of six basic forests (more or less) in our deck. Having two Overgrown Tombs and three Forests gives us five lands that we can search for if our opponent decides to go for a Boseiju-lock. Lastly in regards to the fetches, three fetches also adds some additional equity to our Dryad + Valakut games as well. Outside of this we also have Bojuka Bog which is a powerful land against Murktide and Living End. Let’s not forget that all these additional black sources makes Dismember out of our sideboard a little more flexible as well!

The List:

This is the deck list that I played in a recent team tournament on Sunday July 16th. We ended up winning splitting in the finals as top seed VS a team we beat previously so that we could go home early and grab some ice cream for the road (very pog).  Not much to say for a tournament review, the deck was just firing on all cylinders that day. Here’s a picture of one of my favorite board States that I’ve ever had with amulet.  This was turn two against burn!

You can find all these cards and more at Fusion Gaming — Amazing customer service, competitive buy-list, and great deals on Magic Singles.

Final Thoughts

As far as changes I’d like to make to this list, I don’t think I have any at the moment. I was very happy with this! Going forward, if I wasn’t expecting to see Scam or Murktide, I would likely not play this version. With those two decks being at the top of the metagame however, I’m very happy to have Orcish Bowmasters in my main deck. There is a world where I could see moving them to the sideboard, but I will leave that adventure for you to have.

Thanks so much for reading,
Ryan “GR_DONKIN”