Field of the Dead is Stronger Without Scapeshift

Deck Standard

CaptainJamoke August 1, 2019 3 min

Traditionally, Magic the Gathering has operated with a few set-in-stone fundamental design theories. One of the most impactful is that of resources – your lands. Your deck cannot be composed entirely of non-land cards- you must pay a cost to play a spell.

This fundamental notion is why cards have casting cost. An effect must be bought. Stronger effects typically have a higher cost, be it in total mana cost or a prohibitive color requirement seen in cards such as Goblin Chainwhirler, Steel Leaf Champion, and Niv-Mizzet, Parun.

Accordingly, you have to play lands in your decks to play non-land spells. And lands, as you know typically do nothing on their own. Most decks will typically be comprised of somewhere between one-third and one-half total lands, and that portion of your deck’s primary purpose is to allow the non-land portion to be played. You won’t kill someone with just lands. Usually.

Again, this is a fundamental concept behind the design of the game itself. Players must dedicate a significant portion of their deck to exist solely as resource generation. Cards are designed with this limitation in mind.

Magic is based on the concept that a certain portion of your deck must be lands.

However, Magic 2020 released a card that topples this paradigm. Field of the Dead. Presently, Field of the Dead is being utilized in a very limited and narrow capacity through its synergy with Scapeshift. While this returning archetype is strong enough to take some surprise wins, it's limited. It fails to capitalize or understand what makes Field of the Dead so strong.

Field of the Dead is strong because lands in a deck running Field of the Dead are no longer resources. They are now kill conditions, they now build your board state, they remove the, “I lost because I was mana flooded, and I only topdecked lands.” Field prevents the, “The control player countered everything. I was locked down! I couldn’t do ANYTHING!”

That’s gone. No more land flooding woes. Field of the Dead makes floods good.

Just ONE Field of the Dead in any deck will greatly improve the control matchup. You need to play 7 unique lands, but that is VERY easily achievable presently.

The big problem with Scapeshift is it operates under the typical Magic paradigm. The deck all-ins under the concept of a big win. You need to protect your Scapeshift from being countered. If Field of the Dead is removed, the Scapeshift player usually loses.

This deck bypasses that need. We don’t need no stinking Scapeshift. It's too slow. It's too restrictive. It has a cost.

Instead, we can play Field of the Dead and support it with cards that naturally bring it to full effectiveness, and which are also strong on their own.

One more paradigm that we need to look at; the Rock, Paper, Scissors of archetypes, meaning that Magic decks can be boiled down into, essentially, three major archetypes.

Aggressive (Rock): loses to midrange, but beats control.

Midrange (Paper): loses to control, but beats aggressive.

Control (Scissors): loses to aggressive, but beats midrange.

One archetype in particular, benefits greatly from Field of the Dead. Midrange.

Midrange loses to control because it can be outvalued. Control can usually two-for-one midrange decks with wipes, permission, and overall value generation. Essentially, control causes the midrange player to run out of gas.

Field of the Dead, on its own, allows the midrange player to keep pushing. Who cares if control can two-for-one (or more) when you can rebuild your entire board every turn. By playing a land.

Golos Field

Main 60 cards (28 distinct)

Lands - 28

Side 15 cards (5 distinct)

Maybeboard 9 cards (9 distinct)