Player’s Championship Qualifier/Round 10 RCQ Recap
This past weekend we had one of our biggest events ever, hitting 6 rounds with a total of 33 players! With so much one the line, it’s no surprise so many people came out to play. This event was both a Round 10 FacetoFaceGames Regional Championship Qualifier as well as one of our end-of-year Player’s Championship Qualifiers! The format was Modern, and our Top 8 was quite diverse and 2 decks in the Top cut featured a new card each from the latest set Tarkir: Dragonstorm. One of those decks would come out on top at the end of the day, Izzet Prowess piloted by yours truly! With the latest addition of Cori-Steel Cutter, it gave the Izzet Prowess deck some much needed longevity to keep the threats flowing while enacting the main game plan of casting spells. The other deck with some new Tarkir fun was Mono-Blue Tron with Ugin, Eye of the Storms in the hands of Michael Giles, who went undefeated in the Swiss! Let’s take a look at the configuration of these decks as well as the rest of our Top 8 lists.
Travis Benedict – Izzet Prowess (1st)
Ben Shields – Amulet Titan (2nd)
Justin Hockney – Dimir Frog (3rd-4th)
Chris Brackley – Boros Energy (3rd-4th)
Matt Bailey – Gruul Eldrazi Breach (5th-8th)
Michael Giles – Mono Blue Tron (5th-8th)
Scott Hendriks – Mono Blue Merfolk (5th-8th)
Chris Brennan – Orzhov Blink (5th-8th)
Our tournament’s runner up and Amulet Titan aficionado Ben Shields gave me some of his time and insights into where a deck like Amulet Titan sits in the format, as well as how the heck this new version with Aftermath Analyst loops ends the game! If you thought one Primeval Titan was bad…
T: Congrats on the awesome finish! There’s not a lot of Amulet players around these parts; how long have you been playing it and what initially made you pick it up?
B: Thank you and congrats on taking down the event. I’ve been on Amulet for about a year and a half now. What made me land on picking it up as my deck of choice for this event was that I felt it had some favourable matchups with the Energy and Eldrazi decks that I was expecting to see and with Underworld Breach being banned from the format there was not an extreme worry about being comboed out by turn 2.
T: That makes sense! Do you think the deck is a lot more powerful since moving to these Aftermath Analyst kill lines? If it’s not too much to write out, how exactly does that kill work? All I know is that it ends in infinite Titans!
B: I think Analyst gives the deck another angle of attack and some additional utility in the lands package from the previous take on Amulet builds with the Boros Garrison/Slayer’s Stronghold includes. Ideally you still want two Amulets on the field and to land a Titan then follow this plan:
Step 1: On the initial Titan ETB you’ll want to grab a Lotus Field and Mirrorpool to make a copy of your Titan with the sac trigger from the Field still on the stack.
Step 2: With the copy ETB grab another Lotus Field and Echoing Deeps to copy your Mirrorpool from the graveyard to copy the Titan again while floating additional mana and still in response to the Field sac triggers.
Step 3: On ETB go get Tolaria West and Simic Growth Chamber, float more mana and pick up the T-West with the bounce trigger and resolve the stack.
Step 4: Transmute T-West for a Summoner’s Pact and find Analyst. Cast and sac Analyst.
Step 5: Return all lands to the battlefield and make two more Titans with Mirrorpool and Echoing Deeps (this interaction does work, Deeps can enter as a copy of Mirrorpool, we had a 10-minute judge call around this interaction in Round 5 lol).
Step 6: Float a ton of mana and make two more Titans.
Step 7: Go grab Shifting Woodland and Urza’s Saga to ensure you have Delirium for the Woodland with Field sac triggers and any two other lands.
From this point forward you can use the Woodland to copy the Analyst and loop it with Lotus Fields and other lands to produce infinite mana and infinite Primeval Titans.
T: Holy moly, that’s sweet! Amulet is the new Splinter Twin! So how do you think Amulet is positioned in the current Modern metagame? Would you keep playing it for the foreseeable future?
B: Haha yes, mix in a Hanweir Battlements to the loop and it’s a true hasty Twin combo! I do like where Amulet is positioned in the metagame at the moment, it feels much stronger than previous iterations of it that I’ve played. I did have a couple last minute sideboard changes in the form of Cavern of Souls and Six which came up big against the Dimir decks. Being able to land an uncounterable Titan in the late rounds of the Swiss is what secured my spot in making the top cut. I do plan to continue to play Amulet Titan for the foreseeable future although it can be a lot of thinking!
T: Awesome, excellent work and thanks for the insight!
B: Thank you and congratulations again! #LongLivePrimeTime
A huge congrats to our players in the Top 8, and a massive thank you to everyone who came out to our biggest RCQ/PCQ yet! Our next big event to look out for will be our Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard Store Championship on May 17th which will also be a Player’s Championship Qualifier! Get those Standard cards ready!
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Written By: Travis Benedict Pro Tour Competitor, Cat Lover |
