Hello everyone and welcome to my take on the current Scapeshift trend in standard!
This deck started as an improvement of an older jank deck based around Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Scapeshift. With Core set 2020 out, it's time to brew again and take Scapeshift out of the binder!
Scapeshift is currently a very fun card to build around, especially with the payoffs available:
There are many different ways to make Scapeshift work in standard, going the elemental way, sultai, golgari , gateshift... Today I want to show a simple version in green and blue, reminiscent of the modern Titan Valakut Scapeshift deck!
The deck
The idea of this deck is the same as Titanshift: ramp into powerful threats, or combo kill the opponent, or grind them just by playing lands! This deck is a powerful and grindy midrange deck, using Scapeshift as an alternate combo win condition.
Speaking of the combo, here it is. It is basically a one card combo: cast Scapeshift with 7 or more lands on the battlefield, sac' them all and get as many Field of the Dead as possible with at least 6 other lands with different names! This will create a huge swarm of zombie tokens and is often enough to close out the game.
To get to 7 lands as quickly as possible, we play a lot of creature based ramp and other spells. The deck plays 26 lands to make sure we get the full potential out of them. The manabase is thought to easily get to 7 different lands even without Scapeshift. As such, in the late game, each ramp creature and each land drop will also create zombies!
If we're not creating a hord of zombies thanks to Field of the Dead, the deck tries to overwhelm the opponent with huge threats difficult to answer, like Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar and Cavalier of Thorns. Multani interacts really well with scapeshift because it checks the lands in the graveyard too! We can also get it back from the graveyard by bouncing two lands that we can replay to create more zombies with Field of the Dead! Cavalier of Thorns is a real powerhouse, it helps us on the ramp plan, is a good beater, can get a Multani in the graveyard and ensures a good draw when it dies. The best part is that Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar and Cavalier of Thorns are both elementals, so they trigger Risen Reef!
Neoform is the glue that make the deck work. Almost all our creatures have an enter or leave the battlefield effect! It is a way to get World Shaper in the graveyard to bring back all our sacrificed lands, it transforms our ramp creatures into threats and gets pertinent creatures after sideboarding!
Sideboarding
Against controlly matchups, we have four Veil of Summer in the sideboard: this card is absolutely insane against mono blue, dimir, grixis and esper. We can say no to discard spells such as Thought Erasure and Duress, make our spells uncouterable in response to Dovin's Veto and protect our threats from powerfull removals like Vraska's Contempt or Mass Manipulation. Even with Teferi, Time raveller on the battlefield, the card is still a sorcery that makes our next spells uncouterable!
Against planeswaker heavy decks, two Mass Manipulation are a great way to flip the tables. We also have a single Sorcerous Spyglass to shut down a problematic planeswalker in the early game.
Samut, tyrant's smasher is here if the opponent plays a lot of board wipes. With Samut, our zombies can directly attack for lethal after Scapeshift!
The sideboard also includes other match-up dependants cards, like Crucible of Worlds for especially long and grindy match-ups, Vine Mare a strong elemental against black decks, Reclamation Sage against troublesome artifacts and enchantments and Eternal Skylord to make all our zombies fly!
I hope you have fun with this build if you're going to try it. I'm open to suggestions to improve the list, I'm sure there is a way to make Scapeshift competitive in standard before it rotates out!
Updates
18/07:
Main deck:
-2 Arboreal Grazer: really good on the draw in the opener, but one of the worst top decks late game
+2 Elvish Reclaimer: good early creature for the beat down plan, and helps set up the lands for Field of the Dead
-1 Neoform: cut in favor of a land
+1 Cryptic Caves: one more land for consistency, it is a bomb with the Crucible of Worlds sideboard plan.
Sideboard:
-2 Samut, Tyrant Smasher: was sided to quickly kill before wrath effects, but felt useless most of the time. Against control decks, it is more efficient to slowly create zombies each turn than to combo kill.
-1 Eternal Skylord: it was cute and fun, but not very effective
+3 Cerulean Drake: the deck had a terrible match-up against mono red, and even worse against Feather decks. This drake is an infinite blocker that will buy a lot of time!
Creature (24) | |||
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$2.13€1.731.04 | |||
$0.20€0.090.03 | |||
$0.51€0.680.03 | |||
$0.25€0.200.03 | |||
$0.50€0.420.02 | |||
$1.97€1.590.02 | |||
$1.34€0.990.02 | |||
$0.35€0.300.03 | |||
$7.31€7.401.38 | |||
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (9) | |||
$20.73€12.310.15 | |||
$0.30€0.210.03 | |||
2
Neoform
|
$0.96€0.460.03 | ||
Land (27) | |||
$31.90€22.080.12 | |||
$0.25€0.100.02 | |||
$0.44€0.270.02 | |||
$0.38€0.170.02 | |||
$16.41€15.350.17 | |||
1
Island
|
$0.50€0.040.04 | ||
5
Forest
|
$0.15€0.070.04 | ||
$1.24€0.940.02 | |||
$0.25€0.110.03 | |||
$0.30€0.190.03 | |||
$0.20€0.060.03 | |||
$0.49€0.360.10 | |||
$0.25€0.121.66 | |||
$0.20€0.060.04 | |||
$0.25€0.110.03 |
$0.33€0.170.03 | |||
$0.25€0.140.03 | |||
$0.25€0.200.03 | |||
$6.99€6.675.34 | |||
$0.70€0.480.02 | |||
$25.89€13.550.02 | |||
$0.30€0.120.02 |
$3.64€4.560.14 | |||
$0.21€0.090.03 | |||
$0.56€0.300.03 | |||
$0.25€0.160.02 | |||
$0.25€0.180.03 | |||
$0.39€0.200.02 | |||
$0.21€0.090.03 | |||
$2.11€1.120.03 | |||
$0.25€0.090.03 |
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