I'm not sure about that. The only deck playing Slaughter Games is Jund, and Siege Rhino (plus the death of Pod making Lightning Bolt less important) means that Junk is almost certainly the better BGx build in the new meta.
A large part of what made Shift good was the excellent Pod matchup (and the decent Delver one). So Pod going away hurts the deck, and losing Dig at the same time hurts more. I don't think it's fair to immediately assume that the deck loses its position. I would predict a lot of Junk and Twin, neither of which are super great for us. However it is difficult to say exactly where the dust settles, and if (for instance) RWU somehow got popular again we'd be in excellent shape.
In the short term I expect a lot of Burn and Affinity on MTGO, which is bad for Shift, but that won't necessarily last. (Affinity is pretty easy to beat if the pilot isn't experienced with it, anyway.)
Meh. I played Visions for a while and found myself with one mana to spare when I knew I was shuffling before my next draw step far too often. Having Dig makes skipping playing it on a turn like that even worse than it would otherwise be.
As for Serum Visions/Sleight of Hand, I thought this was an age-old question and Serum Visions comes out on top in most arguments. Do you have anything to sway?
Visions was already rather awkward when you had a Search for Tomorrow with one counter left or a Sakura-Tribe Elder you wanted to block with. Upping the fetchland count for delve compounds that, as does that fact that Dig incentivizes casting cantrips ASAP to fill the yard rather than saving them.
I really like the buddy lands, at least in slower decks where the pain from shocks adds up. Hinterland Harbor was one of my favourite lands in Scapeshift. I ended up cutting them when I upped the number of fetches for Dig Through Time, but a controllish deck with less wonky manabase requirements should strongly consider them.
The enemy ones are more valuable because allied colours have the Scars fastlands (which are the best duals in Modern when basic land types don't matter) and the two cycles don't play nicely together especially in a three-colour deck.
I think the best way to run the Bolt version is likely going to be with 3-4x DTT.
I think with the ramp scapeshift has 4 is a fine number. You can easily EoT it, if nothing more relevant comes up that you need to hit.
I've been running two Digs and finding that as good as they are, they tend to get stuck in hand longer than I'd like. That makes me hesitant about adding more, since you really don't want to draw more than one early.
I've played Vampires in Modern. It was okay. Vampire Nocturnus is still a beating. It just doesn't measure up to the real aggro decks in format.
I think KTK makes it better simply because you can run ten black fetches for Nocturnus, and you get the fetch you actually want in Bloodstained Mire. It's still not going to be better than other things you could be doing, though, especially since Nocturnus doesn't play well with Bolt.
The biggest problem is that it's basically Sensei's Divining Top, which is banned for time issues. It's arguably worse overall, but power level isn't the problem.
Been toying with a rogue deck that's been surprising me during testing, but it feels like it's missing a piece. If they give me this...
Ember-Soul Spawn
Creature - Elemental RR
When Ember-Soul Spawn or another creature dies, Ember-Soul Spawn deals 2 damage to that creature's controller.
Rare
Print that, and I'm really in business.
This looks pretty good. Melira would hate it, of course.
Unless you just target it with the first Redcap trigger...
I think Esper control is interested in some number (quite possibly just one) of Utter End. Instant is pretty huge. I don't think decks without Islands are going to want it at that price.
According to Maro, Khans is a tri-colour set, but it's not actually a tri-colour block. Given that Maro claimed in an article ages ago that they'd always keep five years between multicoloured sets and RTR is much less than that long ago, I think the multicolour stuff won't be super-emphasized. We'll get a bunch of gold cards, but not as much "everyone must play lots of colours!" encouragement as past gold blocks.
In the short term I expect a lot of Burn and Affinity on MTGO, which is bad for Shift, but that won't necessarily last. (Affinity is pretty easy to beat if the pilot isn't experienced with it, anyway.)
The enemy ones are more valuable because allied colours have the Scars fastlands (which are the best duals in Modern when basic land types don't matter) and the two cycles don't play nicely together especially in a three-colour deck.
This makes some sense I suppose. Right now I'm not playing Bolts or Snares. Maybe I should be moving back in that direction.
I think KTK makes it better simply because you can run ten black fetches for Nocturnus, and you get the fetch you actually want in Bloodstained Mire. It's still not going to be better than other things you could be doing, though, especially since Nocturnus doesn't play well with Bolt.