by Johnny Cycles, March 25th, 2024

Hello! Welcome to a special edition of Keeping Modern Janky! It’s a bonus article with game play! As mentioned in my first Amulet Dinos article, I wanted to try a new direction with the deck and I included the following decklist:

Decklist – Amulet Dinos Midrange

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (26)

4 Arboreal Grazer
4 Belligerent Yearling
2 Itzquinth, Firstborn of Gishath
4 Pugnacious Hammerskull
4 Wayward Swordtooth
4 Regisaur Alpha
4 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells (4)

4 Explore

Artifacts (4)

4 Amulet of Vigor

Lands (26)

1 Boseiju, Who Endures
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Forest
4 Gruul Turf
1 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Mountain
4 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Slayers’ Stronghold
1 Stomping Ground
2 The Mycosynth Gardens
4 Urza’s Saga

Sideboard (15)

4 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Shadowspear
3 Veil of Summer
3 Heroic Intervention
3 Force of Vigor

I had so much fun playing my first Amulet Dinos deck that I couldn’t wait until next month to try a slightly different build. The honest truth, though, is the lure of Regisaur Alpha into Ghalta, Primal Hunger was too hard to ignore. Tapping for seven mana with any of our 2- or 3-drop Dinosaurs on the battlefield lets us cast both on the same turn and attack with a hasty 12/12 trampler. And since we needed to hit seven mana to cast Ghalta and Mavren in our first build, I wanted to see if this combo was more powerful.

Furthermore, at 5 mana, Regisaur Alpha will hopefully bridge the gap between our early set up and our finishers in a way that will help lower our opponent’s life total in the mid game and give us some wins out of nowhere. In some games, it will be our finisher. In others, it will set us up to swing for lethal the turn we resolve Ghalta, Primal Hunger, which can be as early as turn 3. With this plan in mind, we’re playing the full playset of Ghalta to give us the best chance of closing out the game when we need to.

Otherwise, the deck is largely the same. I’m still trying to live the dream of turning Belligerent Yearling into a 12/2 trampler. Will this be the deck that finally rewards my determination?

Hmm…which one is better?

One new addition was Itzquinth, Firstborn of Gishath, but I ended up cutting the 2-drop after some testing. We don’t really want to cast it on curve, but we want to commit creatures to the board to ramp us into Ghalta, Primal Hunger. This contradiction became apparent pretty quickly. It’s also a good example of the first rule of Magic: Read the **** card! In my head, I had Itzquinth, Firstborn of Gishath‘s ability mixed up. I assumed it triggered whenever another Dinosaur entered the battlefield, not only itself. I also ran into a glitch on MTGO that wouldn’t let me click past its trigger when there were no other creatures on the battlefield. So, it got the axe.

In its place, I brought in two copies of The One Ring. Seems like an upgrade.

The land count fluctuates some over the course of my practice games, as does my sideboard plan. I cut Heroic Intervention for Brotherhood’s End. Finally, if you pay careful attention, you may notice the videos are not quite in the order in which I played them. This is because I played a single practice match a few weeks ago and thought I had it saved and so I labeled the later matches accordingly. Thus, Match 1 below was really Match 5.

Practice Match 1 vs. Domain Zoo

Practice Match 2 vs. Yawgmoth

Practice Match 3 vs. Izzet Murktide

Practice Match 4 vs. Bant Graveyard Shenanigans

Practice Match 5 vs. Domain Cascade

Practice Match Record: 2-3

Conclusion

Our record is about average for my janky decks. And, as with most of them, the deck felt competitive. Yawgmoth was by far our worst match-up. We just don’t have the interaction to battle their strategy, which means we need our fastest, most aggressive start to have a chance. We didn’t see that in either of our games. I know Yawgmoth is one of the top decks in Modern, but I don’t run into it as much as Rakdos Scam, Domain, or Izzet Murktide. Until I see it more, I’m not sure I’ll tweak my sideboard to fight against just it.

Domain Cascade was a new take on an old archetype that the most recent banning was supposed to weaken. What a frustrating game that was and what a frustrating reality for Modern. Cascade doesn’t seem any worse. If anything, the banning forced new innovations from players that arguably made the deck stronger.

Digression – State of Modern

Before I get to more thoughts on my deck, let me take a moment to give my opinion on Modern in general. First, the positive. In the free play part of MTGO, there is a lot of diversity, as you might expect. A good example of this is the Bant Graveyard deck we played. Our opponent was doing something unique with what was obviously a well-refined brew. Over the course of many videos and articles, we’ve played a lot of different decks, fun builds, and interesting takes on familiar archetypes.

A turn 3 Blood Moon is a turn too late to stop Scion of Draco.

Now for the negative. The top decks are slowly all morphing into 4- and 5-color Money Piles. Wizards has printed so many Domain cards without adding any new hate to combat them that there is very little drawback or risk to splash for a third, fourth, or even fifth color. We saw this in our Gideon Tribal match-up with a traditional Rakdos Scam deck that was splashing White for Solitude, among other cards. What this means is it’s almost all upside to play 4- and 5-color decks, as all it does is give you access to the best cards in each of the colors. And, as one may expect, the Evoke Elementals, along with other MH2 Domain cards like Scion of Draco, are overrepresented in these decks.

The recent printing of Leyline of the Guildpact has further powered up the Domain cards. This one-of-a-kind enchantment has led to some sweet innovation, which is great, but it has also lowered the risk of playing greedy 4- and 5-color mana bases to nearly nothing. The biggest example of the detrimental impact of Domain cards in conjunction with Leyline of the Guildpact is the Domain Cascade deck we played in the final match. A deck that literally just got hit with a ban has bounced back even stronger.

Where does Wizards go from here?

This is not the place for another article on how Wizards can fix Modern, though be on the lookout for my MH3 Wish List. However, at this point, I’d love to see Modern Horizons 3 be full of hate against today’s archetypes, rather than new cards that support them, or more cards that hate on fair, midrange strategies.

Conclusion Part 2

Our midrange version of Amulet Dinos was a lot of fun. There are some sweet synergies and lines of play that make the deck both explosive and rewarding to an experienced pilot. The addition of Regisaur Alpha played out much as I had hoped. It gave us both a midrange threat and a way to win games from nowhere. Putting seven power on the battlefield really helped ramp us into a cheap, hasty Ghalta, Primal Hunger.

We never really got to see the synergy and power of Belligerent Yearling, except against Bant Graveyard in a game where it didn’t matter, as our opponent was fogging us every combat.

Wayward Swordtooth is one of our key combo pieces if we have a hand that can go big. However, Pugnacious Hammerskull was just as often our best turn 2 or 3 play, as a 6/6 is difficult for many decks to deal with. I think this is our most effective deck against Izzet Murktide, which was a pleasant surprise. Our Cavern of Souls shuts down many of their answers, while even multiple copies of Unholy Heat can’t answer all of our 5/5, 6/6, and 12/12 creatures.

Mathematically, the deck has the potential to cast Ghalta, Primal Hunger on turn 3.

With 2 copies of Amulet of Vigor, a basic land, a bounce land, a Wayward Swordtooth, and either a Regisaur Alpha or Pugnacious Hammerskull, we can cast a turn 3 Ghalta, Primal Hunger.

Turn 1: Forest, Amulet of Vigor.

Turn 2: Amulet of Vigor, Gruul Turf, get four mana, return Gruul Turf to our hand. Cast Wayward Swordtooth, one mana floating, play Gruul Turf, get four mana, cast Regisaur Alpha.

Turn 3: Hasty Ghalta for .

We can get one down even faster with the same opening hand, except with two copies of Wayward Swordtooth. Instead of playing Regisaur Alpha with our five mana, we cast the second Swordtooth, play the Gruul Turf again for an additional four mana, giving us six total. Ghalta, Primal Hunger would only cost in this scenario, as we’d have ten power on the battlefield.

This kind of speed and power is comparable to Amulet Titan decks and one main reason I’ll keep coming back to Amulet Dinos.

That being said, in today’s Modern, the way such an amazing opening hand would probably play out is either, Rakdos Scam gets double Grief triggers to steal our main combo pieces; Domain decks cast Leyline Binding on our Amulet of Vigor on turn 2 if they’re on the play, or on our Ghalta, Primal Hunger if they are on the draw; Cascade decks cast Force of Negation or Subtlety to slow us down; or Money Pile casts Solitude to kill our Swordtooth.

You get the picture. Of course, Modern isn’t played in a fishbowl. Our opponent will interact with what we’re doing. And if they don’t, then it probably means we’re playing against Tron, Amulet Titan, Scapeshift, or Vengevine, at which point they’re hoping to kill us by turn 2 or 3, or reset the board on turn 3, regardless of what we’ve done.

However, the above does show the potential this deck has to win quickly and with authority. If this is something you’re interested in and you don’t want to play the industry standard, then I highly recommend trying out Amulet Dinos!

As always, thanks for reading and watching! I’ll post more gameplay of both versions of Amulet Dinos in the near future.