Matchup Analysis - Amulet Titan

Key Cards:

Pre-board: Aid, Hammer, Gingerbrute

Post-board: Lavinia, Kaldra, March

Problem Cards:

Pre-board: Saga, Amulet

Post-board: Force of Vigor, Boseiju

Objectives:

• Win the die roll. Being on the play is good.
• Game 1, your plan should be to goldfish them. Kill them as quickly as possible, and only play around Boseiju if it is trivial to do so, OR you know that they have it.
• If you know that they are on Amulet when shuffling up for Game 1, mull very aggressively to find these quick hands. It is scary, but you can very reasonably win on a mull to 5 or even 4 if the hand is strong enough. You are on average, about half a turn or a turn faster. Additionally, they don’t have much interaction pre-board, so play as aggressively as you can.
  • Note: Remember that Boseiju only costs a single green mana to channel if they have Azusa in play.

SB Strategy and highlights:

• Lavinia: While initially unassuming, Lavinia is one of your best cards in the matchup. Here is a short breakdown of the key cards she stops:
  • Force of Vigor:
    • She hard counters the alternate casting since they don’t pay mana for it.
    • Even if they have 2 bounce lands or 1 bounceland and 2 others in play, they cannot cast Force of Vigor. Since Lavinia mandates that the opponent have 4 lands in play, she can often make FoV impossible to cast for the entire game (since the games tend to be so short)
  • Summoner’s Pact
    • Since there is no point at which they can cast Pact with Lavinia in play, it means that you are actually cutting their number of Titans by more than half.
      • Keep in mind that sometimes they use transmuting Tolaria West to find a Pact as a back door Titan.
  • Dismember (on turn 1-2)
    • Sometimes they have dismember to address Kaldra. Lavinia make sure they have to have 3 lands in play to cast dismember. That’s pretty cool.
• Kaldra
  • Most Amulet lists simply have no ways to get a Kaldra off the board. Usually they rely on Force of Vigor and Boseiju to beat Hammer. If they want to boseiju you Kaldra, enjoy your free land.
  • Since Kaldra beats everything in combat, they often cannot attack with a titan against the threat of a Kaldra.
    • This means that they now MUST kill you through Dryad/Valakut.
    • The Valakut kill generally takes considerably more time and resources, meaning you can often kill them first.
• March of Otherworldly Light: March is phenomenal against most Urza’s Saga decks, and there may be no better example than the Amulet matchup. There are 3 primary targets for March in the Matchup:
  • Urza’s Saga: If you are ever able to hold up a single white mana and pass the turn with march in hand, you will often win the game by killing their saga with chapter 1 on the stack. Not only does this exile the saga, but they don’t even get mana out of it.
    • Even if you can’t kill it immediately, stopping them from grabbing an Amulet of Vigor can disrupt their entire gameplan.
  • Amulet of Vigor: Newsflash: answering the card that a deck is named after is pretty good. Kill this card, even if you have to pitch a card to do so. If you can pick off an amulet, it is really challenging for the deck to race you.
  • Dryad of the Illisyian Grove: If you are at the spot in a game where they need to kill you with Valakut, killing Dryad means you will probably win.
    • Additionally, if you exile dryad, it can be challenging for them to keep pace, especially if they are low on cards.
• Blacksmith’s Skill: You’re mostly bringing this in to meaningfully interact with Force of Vigor, as well as protect your SFM, Lavinia, and Kaldra token (in the event they have removal like dismember or prismatic ending).
• Don’t bring in Hushbringer. It seems reasonable, but not pressuring your OP means they can just attack with Titan the next turn and kill you anyway.
• Esper Sentinel sucks in the matchup; it might draw you 1-2 cards, and then you die anyway. Board them out.

TL;DR: You are generally the faster combo deck game 1, so lean into that. Post-board, Lavinia and Kaldra can carry you to a victory.