A couple of cards I've found that appear to have some synergy with this deck are Angelic Destiny and Evershrike. Destiny is pretty much just a four mana equipment, and Evershrike is an evasive spirit that pitches to both shoals and resurrects itself with Tallowisp.
Kitchen Finks is awesome in this deck. So is Bloodghast. Bloodghast + Teysa = lotsa lotsa dudes to sacrifice. I think the next card I look into is probably going to be Promise of Bunrei. Timely Reinforcements and Spectral Procession and Windbrisk Heights will also get a look here. I'm starting to doubt the necessity of 4x Sickening Shoal, especially given how overall good Nameless Inversion is (gets Soulshifted back by Thief).
I think once the numbers of Tectonic Edges and Ghost Quarters die down a bit with the banning of Cloudpost Orzhov Basilica is something worth looking at in this deck.
Oh, and I've discovered that Tallowisp won't fetch cards like Spirit Loop online, anyone know if that's a bug or if it's because "enchant creature you control" is outside of Tallowisps range? Thanks.
So, I just realized the other day, the Fruity Pebbles combo is legal in Modern. Enduring Renewal is in the TSB card set. Memnite and Ornithopter are in MIR and SoM. Blasting Station and Grinding Station are in 5DN.
Your total mana cost on this combo is six mana to mill them out, and seven mana to burn them out. Alternatively you could also run the lab assistant card and mill yourself out.
The deck is naturally W/x, as the only colored cc is the 2WW in Enduring Renewal. Blue is the obvious complementary color for combo search cards like Preordain and Ponder. Thirst for Knowledge is also an option given the high number of artifacts in the deck. I'm not sure what the ideal build for this is. You can run Trinket Mages to find your 0cc artifact guys, and all sorts of nifty control elements are available in u/w. You can also go with a somewhat "Solar Flare" style backup plan thanks to Resurrection and the discard effects of TfK and Compulsive Research. Idyllic Tutor is a nice in color way to find Renewal on demand. Renewal also has some nice interactions with stuff like Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, Bloodghast, and Vengevine if you were interested in taking that route as a viable backup plan.
I think Splinter Twin is the most obvious place to look for a comparative list to start from design wise. I don't know that Pebbles is a better combo deck than the Twin variants we currently have, but it can win in different ways, and is immune to different kinds of hate. You can also run Grand Abolisher and just ignore whatever counteracting shenanigans your opponent wants to engage in. So that's a plus.
Anyways, just thought some folks might be interested in seeing that an old and somewhat forgotten favorite was in fact viable (or at least legal) again.
ok, bit 'ol update to the first post/primer, added in most of the stuff koopa brought up in the other thread, and added sao's suggestions except for Battlement, because the deck isn't trying to make more mana, it's trying to get more lands into play. Also, Wall of Roots is a better choice for the blocker/manamaker wall than OB is.
ok, the outlines of the primer are finished, now its time to start filling in the meat on the bones. a couple of specific things I think would be helpful:
1) proven decklists. obviously, finding proven winning modern decklists is a bit hard right now, so lets just try porting winners and then modding them.
2) cards left out. did I miss something useful in my list above? if so, let me know and I can include it.
3) cards included. did I include something that's pointless or not actually good? radically disagree with my assessment? throw up an argument.
4) sideboard section? I'm kind of hesitant on putting in one of these as we really just don't know what the format will look like yet, but I also included some potential sideboard cards in the card types discussion, so.... feedback appreciated.
5) would a discussion/overview of what each color offers be useful? or a waste of time?
6) Anything else you think would improve the thread/primer.
Scapeshift is a card that works in conjunction with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and six or more Mountains to deal between 18 and 36 damage to an opponent simultaneously. If you cast Scapeshift with seven lands in play, you can search for six Mountains and one Valakut, yielding six triggers at 3 damage each. With eight lands you can find two Valakuts for 12 triggers. You can also "slow roll" Valakut, simply by playing out Mountains and Valakuts, getting each trigger individually. However, you will lose out on the triggers for your first five Mountains with this method.
Scapeshift also works particularly well with the card Prismatic Omen. With Prismatic Omen in play, you only need six lands to Scapeshift for the win, as Omen makes Valakut itself into a Mountain. "Slow rolling" works dramatically better with Prismatic Omen because all of your lands, including fetchlands, count as Mountains. This means that with two Valakuts in play, a single fetchland is worth 4 triggers for 12 damage.
There are a lot of different ways to build Scapeshift and Valakut decks with the Modern cardpool. There is some variation on how to build a deck based on how quickly you want to hit your combo, and what ramp/acceleration spells you use, but the biggest single difference between the various Scapeshift decks is what kind of secondary win plan you want to include.
There are four main backup plans.
Plan 1) Jace, the Mind Sculptor. One of the best cards ever printed, he helps assemble your combo and can win the game himself. Weakness: Both Jace and Valakut are foiled by Leyline of Sanctity.
Plan 2) Splinter Twin. Splinter Twin plus a not summoning sick Deciever Exarch or Pestermite will generate an infinite number of hasty tokens to attack for the win.
Weakness: Creature removal is incredibly common, Soul Sisters ignores the combo, and both the Scapeshift and Splinter Twin plans are shut down by Gaddock Teeg.
Plan 3) Creature Beat Down. Green and red are two pretty good creature colors, and there are quite a few that are good in ramp decks. Bloodbraid Elf, Primeval Titan, Obstinate Baloth, Wood Elves, and Grim Lavamancer are just a few of many examples.
Weakness: Pretty much every magic deck ever has a plan for dealing with creature beatdown, so it's not like you're going to catch anyone unprepared, and dedicated beat decks are better at it than you are.
3-4 Scapeshift
2-4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
8-12 Mountains
40+ other stuff
The question of what way to best fill the 40+ "other stuff" category is what the previous discussion of backup plans was about. The next big question is how to get the 8-12 Mountains a Scapeshift deck needs.
There are currently several schools of thought on this. You can run a largely non-red deck (like say, UG) and then rely on Ravnica duals like Stomping Ground and Steam Vents to provide your Mountains, or you can run essentially the same deck except rely on Prismatic Omen to provide your Mountains and use a more traditional UG manabase. A third alternative is to run a RG deck and just pile on the basics. Each strategy has its own drawbacks and advantages.
While those are the basics of the deck, here are some actual examples of decklists that use the various strategies.
Obviously there are a lot of variations you can do around that general line. Cards like Oracle of Mul-Daya, Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, Explore, Mana Leak, Repeal, and Path to Exile are also common in this type of build. A transformative sideboard featuring Wurmcoil Engine, Kitchen Finks, and Baneslayer Angel is also not unknown.
This style of scapeshift deck seeks to delay and control the game while whittling away at its opponents' life total by playing out lands every turn with a Valakut and Omen on the board. Backup win plans include Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Celestial Colonnade.
You can also take a more mountain centric approach, as evinced by this style of Valakut Ramp.
Other cards frequently seen in this style of deck include Genesis Wave and Warp World (well, only rarely on the Warp World really). Speed is the primary goal of this deck.
A newer approach that is gaining in popularity is to run a RUG build with multiple combo wins.
Your plan here is to slow down your opponent with Pestermites, Spellskites, and Exarchs until you can land either your ramp or infinite attackers combos. Gitaxian Probe lets you know when the way is clear to go off. This deck has the advantage of two entirely different four mana instant win spells, but can have a hard time winning if an opponent has outs to both of them.
There is also a fourth type of Scapeshift deck which attempts to combine the advantages of the two previous strategies (being able to cast Scapeshift without Prismatic Omen in play, the versatility of running non-ramp cards, and an variety of routes to victory).
This deck style is more of my own homebrew, but it has been testing well so far.
The deck runs a lot of mini-combos, with Collar/Lavamancer working as a machine gun, and any of the titans with a sword can be a real nightmare. Knight of the Reliquary can get big fast, and finds specific lands for you, like say, Valakut or Emeria. The two Swords were picked for diversity of protection colors, and because Body and Mind give you a way to win outside of damage by milling down your opponent, and Light and Shadow can provide some much needed card advantage. Three of the equipments gain you life because the deck takes a lot of damage in the early turns from all the shocklands before it either stabilizes or wins. If you're worried about the mirror match, Archive Trap is surprisingly strong there because it can mill away all of the opponents' mountains/valakuts, or at least enough to stop them from winning, and decks like this don't really skimp on shuffle effects.
Those are just three of the main variations of Scapeshift decks you can run in the new Modern format.
As a supplement, I'll now briefly discuss some of the more common card choices for this archetype.
Creatures
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Provides a chump block and puts a basic land into play. Also exiles Bridge from Below against Dredge. Strictly superior to Rampant Growth.
Coiling Oracle - can put a nonbasic into play, but it's kind of random, much worse without Sensei's Divining Top or a similar card around.
Wood Elves - Fetches a Forest. It's important to remember that this can be a non-basic forest, like a Stomping Ground, and that the land can enter play tapped.
Solemn Simularcum - Gets a basic when it arrives, gets a card when it leaves. The colorless nature of the card isn't really an advantage for this decktype, and its cmc of 4 is a bit high for accelerating you into something early.
Wall of Omens - a great way to slow down your opponents' ground game. Also a great target for your own Path to Exile if you're playing against someone without creatures.
Knight of the Reliquary - Can tutor up any land you want at instant speed. Also gets big if your opponent is targeting your lands for LD.
Bloodbraid Elf - a bit hit or miss with the cascade mechanic, still, it will often net you a ramp spell, and it is very good at killing opposing planeswalkers.
Primeval Titan - puts any two lands you want into play. Outstanding way to grab Valakut or to activate it. Expensive, but strong for it's cost.
Oracle of Mul-Daya - gets a lot of extra lands out onto the battlefield, and provides some card advantage as well. Fragile body.
Budoka Gardner - a repeatable "Explore" effect for not a lot of mana with some lategame potential.
Obstinate Baloth - good against burn, zoo, and discard, somewhat limited vs. everything else.
Search for Tomorrow - this is the best land ramp spell for Scapeshift since it's the only one that can be cast on turn one. When hardcast instead of suspended, it has the same effective mana cost as Rampant Growth because the land it finds comes into play untapped. Lets you fire off a Khalni Heart Expedition on turn three in conjunction with a fetchland.
Explore - the worst of the two mana ramp spells. I know it has a lot of proponents, but the single biggest problem with this spell is that it doesn't guarantee you an extra land, and you really don't want to get late enough into the game for it's "cycling" effect to matter.
Rampant Growth - the second worst of the two mana ramp spells, it falls behind both Sakura-Tribe Elder (which can block) and Farseek (which can find Rav duals).
Farseek - the best option for two mana acceleration, as it can grab any Rav dual and any non-Forest basic.
Cultivate - makes sure you hit five mana on turn four if you cast it on turn three. Almost as good as Explosive Vegetation at one less mana.
Scapeshift - the instant win. requires six lands with Prismatic Omen in play, seven or eight lands without Omen depending on your opponents' life total.
Rude Awakening - a nice surprise alt-win if you've been ramping out lands for awhile and are somehow prevented from Valakuting them out.
Green Sun's Zenith - can put an extra land (Dryad Arbor) into play for only one mana. However, if that's all you're using it for, it's a pretty poor choice. This card works best in conjunction with manabirds and lots of green critters, which isn't really what this deck is about.
Treasure Hunt - the main problem with this card is that there isn't an effective enough anti-aggro land in Modern to make going in a heavy land build direction profitable.
Banefire - another alt-win condition if your land plan is shut down.
Preordain - for the more combo centric versions featuring Blue, this lets you dig three cards down and can get rid of stuff you don't want, like ramp lategame or bombs early game.
Ponder - similar to Preordain, but somewhat worse here because this deck doesn't need another shuffle effect, and generally has at least one card in the top three you're not thrilled about drawing.
Timely Reinforcements - a great way to get from the midgame to the lategame if you're playing against an aggressive deck. A sideboard card, but a good one. Maindeckable in low creature count builds.
Mwonvuli Acid-Moss - slows down your opponent while accelerating you. A little on the slow side though.
Reap and Sow - can slow down your opponent or find any land you want. Or it can do both. A little on the slow side though.
Journey of Discovery - requires running a lot of basics to get full value out of, but can be useful, sometimes. More versatile than Summer Bloom.
Realms Uncharted - requires Crucible or Loam to get full value from it.
Shard Convergence - has some interesting applications with Ravnica duals, and is four cards for four mana, but generally not good enough.
Tribal Flames - if you run Prismatic Omen, or just a lot of colors, this is a solid if unspectacular burn and removal spell.
Firespout - a cheap sweeper that can turn the tide against aggro.
Wargate - puts any land you want into play, finds any permanent, from Jace, to Crucible, to KotR, to Oblivion Ring, to Prismatic Omen.
Enchantments
Prismatic Omen - makes all your lands (including Valakut itself) Mountains for a Valakut kill. Also turns on Emeria, Vedalken Shackles, Tendrils of Corruption, Tribal Flames, Beacon of Creation and lets Knight of the Reliquary sacrifice any land in play. Useful, but not necessary with the availability of Rav Mountain duals.
Khalni Heart Expedition - great for firing Valakut triggers, but requires a fair amount of setup and forces you to run lots of basics.
Lifegift - a way to gain tons of life, but not enough to really be worth it.
Genjus and Zendikons - you've got better options for land creatures from Tenth Edition, like Treetop Village, and from Worldwake like Raging Ravine. If you're running equipment, then both Vitu-Ghazi and Kher Keep are worth looking into.
Sacred Ground - protects your lands as long as there's no graveyard hate active.
Terra Eternal - one more mana than Sacred Ground, but makes your lands indestructible, which is useful with manlands. Doesn't stop sacrifice effects.
Rites of Flourishing - the symmetry ruins what could otherwise be extremely useful.
Oblivion Ring - handles almost any permanent, including planeswalkers, and can be tutored up with Wargate.
Runed Halo - defends against any specific threat. Cards like Progenitus, Valakut, and Jace.
Artifacts
Engineered Explosives - a very versatile removal spell regardless of the colors you're playing.
Ratchet Bomb - similar to EE, except that you put in an initial mana investment plus time instead of colors plus more mana.
Crucible of Worlds - makes one fetchland infinite land, recurs things destroyed by land destruction. All around useful, but rarely gamebreaking.
Oblivion Stone - resets the board except for lands, which can be very useful to a deck with land based win conditions.
Vedalken Shackles - combines with Miren, the Moaning Well to make a creature soft lock. Very useful for controlling the midgame.
Planeswalkers
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - arguably the best four drop in any format. Provides an alternate, non-damage based win condition, draws cards, controls the board. Pretty much no downsides.
Elspeth Tirel - it's really hard to get through her without some burn to go over the top. Can stop a lot of decks in their tracks.
Ajani Vengeant - lifegain, removal, board control and mana denial. Redjani does a lot of useful things for this deck.
Instants
Condescend - counters things, digs for whatever you need. Best in heavy dig/counter combo oriented shells.
Remand - a temporary counter that doesn't set you back on cards. Best in heavy dig/counter combo oriented shells.
Mental Misstep - a good way to slow down the game to your pace. Unknown if the meta will include enough 1-drops to make this worthwhile.
Spell Snare - an outstanding counter, but it does require you to leave U up on turn one on the draw or turn two on the play, both of which can hurt your ability to quickly ramp up.
Mana Leak - a good counter, but in most situations, Remand and Condescend are likely to be better.
Cryptic Command - a powerhouse, but does require a very heavy commitment to blue.
Venarian Glimmer - a solid, underused method of EOT clearing the way to go off next turn. X=2 nabs the vast majority of counters in the format. X=3 hits Krosan Grip as well.
Repeal - a strong tempo play vs. aggro. Somewhat more limited vs. everything else.
Path to Exile - possibly the best removal in the format, can be used to ramp yourself in a pinch.
Magma Jet - kills Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant, Gaddock Teeg and other hatebears, digs for answers.
Punishing Fire - in combination with Grove of the Burnwillows creates a repeatable machine gun effect. Very strong vs. Elves, Faeries, Goblins, Kithkin and Merfolk.
Lightning Bolt - outside of zoo not a lot of 3 toughness creatures in the format, which generally makes this a worse choice than Jet or Fire.
Harrow - Cultivate is largely superior to this, mostly useful if you're trying to go on a heavy instants build or are using Crucible of Worlds maindeck.
Peer through Depths - a great way to dig for Scapeshift or an answer to whatever problem you see on the board.
Beats Within - this spell is an instant speed solution for any permanent, and it can also provide a surprise blocker or attacker when necessary. A versatile and powerful effect.
Lands
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle - the main kill condition of the deck. Provides massive amounts of colorless burn damage to a multiplicity of targets.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin - I see a lot of decks running Prismatic Omen and not running this, which I've just never understood. It's a very strong effect for an extremely minimal opportunity cost.
Seaside Citadel - the bant shard land. Very useful in ugw decks as a color fixer.
Ghost Quarter - can eliminate a problematic enemy land. Generally not a good card here because it costs you a land drop in a deck that's trying to get to eight lands as fast as possible and just win.
Tectonic Edge - see Ghost Quarter. Except worse because you can't use it on one of your own lands to get another landfall trigger.
This deck seeks to abuse the "of Empires" set of artifacts which power each other up when one of each is on the battlefield. While there are many options for what color(s) to use as a support framework for the combo pieces, I believe Green/Black/Blue offers the most, as Black is good at killing creatures, Blue at drawing cards, while Green offers mana acceleration and removal of non-creature permanents. Those are the main features a deck built around a slow building combo requires - mana, cards, and removal.
I did not include Tezzeret, Slave of Bolas because with only 12 artifacts in the deck his first ability is less likely to actually find a card, and his second and third abilities are reliant on having large numbers of artifacts on the field. Additionally, it is hard to defend planeswalkers for any length of time in a creatureless deck. Which is why Liliana Vess, who is even better at assembling the combo than Tezzeret is not included. Suffer the past is a sideways answer to Pyromancer's Ascension decks as a backup to Naturalize.
This isn't a final version, but does seem to be a decent starting point.
This deck is fundamentally built around the interactions between Chandra, the Firebrand, Chandra's Phoenix, and Zombie Infestation. I fully expect this archetype to dramatically improve upon the release of Innistad, but I think it's still borderline competitive now.
The fetchlands enable the white splash in the sideboard and feed grim lavamancer, the board is mainly designed to give a leg up on artifact decks and more aggressive decks. Sorin Markov fits the deck very well but with only 22 lands he seems a bit high on the curve. Tectonic Edge would also fit nicely here, but I'm unsure how well the manabase will take colorless sources given all of the RR and BB costs in here. To all intents and purposes this is R/B aggro control with minimal disruption but significant amounts of card advantage and recursion/graveyard abuse. The basic gameplan is to control the board with burn/lavamancer/chandra while drawing cards until you can start laying serious zombie and vampire beats with bloodghast and infestation/phoenix.
Hi, new to the thread. Seems like the consensus so far is on toolboxy g/b and g/r/b builds. I'm more of a Legacy player, but in some ways this reminds me a lot of survival decks and what really pushed those over the top into playability was adding blue cantrips. Keeping that in mind, this is the outline of the 4c build I've been testing. It aims to take advantage of having Birthing Pod on the board without being completely dependent on it. This means less of an emphasis on step by step pod boosts and more on great independent creatures.
The idea behind the hammer/SFM in the board is to race other equipment decks to hammer then beat them up with it by forcing bad blocks or just plain killing their equipments. Claim and Roil hit Splinter Twin and other, similar specific permanent reliant decks at a low cost. With 8 mana dorks and a basic heavy manabse having the correct colors of mana has not proven to be a problem so far. Especially as the deck is in practice almost all u/g, and draws/filters a large number of cards.
This seems to have a large amount of potential, at least in initial testing, curious to hear others' thoughts on this particular style of take on the deck. Thanks.
Kitchen Finks is awesome in this deck. So is Bloodghast. Bloodghast + Teysa = lotsa lotsa dudes to sacrifice. I think the next card I look into is probably going to be Promise of Bunrei. Timely Reinforcements and Spectral Procession and Windbrisk Heights will also get a look here. I'm starting to doubt the necessity of 4x Sickening Shoal, especially given how overall good Nameless Inversion is (gets Soulshifted back by Thief).
I think once the numbers of Tectonic Edges and Ghost Quarters die down a bit with the banning of Cloudpost Orzhov Basilica is something worth looking at in this deck.
Oh, and I've discovered that Tallowisp won't fetch cards like Spirit Loop online, anyone know if that's a bug or if it's because "enchant creature you control" is outside of Tallowisps range? Thanks.
For reference:
Enduring Renewal
Idyllic Tutor
Memnite
Ornithopter
Blasting Station
Grinding Station
Your total mana cost on this combo is six mana to mill them out, and seven mana to burn them out. Alternatively you could also run the lab assistant card and mill yourself out.
The deck is naturally W/x, as the only colored cc is the 2WW in Enduring Renewal. Blue is the obvious complementary color for combo search cards like Preordain and Ponder. Thirst for Knowledge is also an option given the high number of artifacts in the deck. I'm not sure what the ideal build for this is. You can run Trinket Mages to find your 0cc artifact guys, and all sorts of nifty control elements are available in u/w. You can also go with a somewhat "Solar Flare" style backup plan thanks to Resurrection and the discard effects of TfK and Compulsive Research. Idyllic Tutor is a nice in color way to find Renewal on demand. Renewal also has some nice interactions with stuff like Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, Bloodghast, and Vengevine if you were interested in taking that route as a viable backup plan.
I think Splinter Twin is the most obvious place to look for a comparative list to start from design wise. I don't know that Pebbles is a better combo deck than the Twin variants we currently have, but it can win in different ways, and is immune to different kinds of hate. You can also run Grand Abolisher and just ignore whatever counteracting shenanigans your opponent wants to engage in. So that's a plus.
Anyways, just thought some folks might be interested in seeing that an old and somewhat forgotten favorite was in fact viable (or at least legal) again.
Also, how do you find your two combo pieces? i.e. Wild Pair and Grinning Ignus/Whitemane Lion?
1) proven decklists. obviously, finding proven winning modern decklists is a bit hard right now, so lets just try porting winners and then modding them.
2) cards left out. did I miss something useful in my list above? if so, let me know and I can include it.
3) cards included. did I include something that's pointless or not actually good? radically disagree with my assessment? throw up an argument.
4) sideboard section? I'm kind of hesitant on putting in one of these as we really just don't know what the format will look like yet, but I also included some potential sideboard cards in the card types discussion, so.... feedback appreciated.
5) would a discussion/overview of what each color offers be useful? or a waste of time?
6) Anything else you think would improve the thread/primer.
thanks to all for participating.
Scapeshift is a card that works in conjunction with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and six or more Mountains to deal between 18 and 36 damage to an opponent simultaneously. If you cast Scapeshift with seven lands in play, you can search for six Mountains and one Valakut, yielding six triggers at 3 damage each. With eight lands you can find two Valakuts for 12 triggers. You can also "slow roll" Valakut, simply by playing out Mountains and Valakuts, getting each trigger individually. However, you will lose out on the triggers for your first five Mountains with this method.
Scapeshift also works particularly well with the card Prismatic Omen. With Prismatic Omen in play, you only need six lands to Scapeshift for the win, as Omen makes Valakut itself into a Mountain. "Slow rolling" works dramatically better with Prismatic Omen because all of your lands, including fetchlands, count as Mountains. This means that with two Valakuts in play, a single fetchland is worth 4 triggers for 12 damage.
There are a lot of different ways to build Scapeshift and Valakut decks with the Modern cardpool. There is some variation on how to build a deck based on how quickly you want to hit your combo, and what ramp/acceleration spells you use, but the biggest single difference between the various Scapeshift decks is what kind of secondary win plan you want to include.
There are four main backup plans.
Plan 1) Jace, the Mind Sculptor. One of the best cards ever printed, he helps assemble your combo and can win the game himself. Weakness: Both Jace and Valakut are foiled by Leyline of Sanctity.
Plan 2) Splinter Twin. Splinter Twin plus a not summoning sick Deciever Exarch or Pestermite will generate an infinite number of hasty tokens to attack for the win.
Weakness: Creature removal is incredibly common, Soul Sisters ignores the combo, and both the Scapeshift and Splinter Twin plans are shut down by Gaddock Teeg.
Plan 3) Creature Beat Down. Green and red are two pretty good creature colors, and there are quite a few that are good in ramp decks. Bloodbraid Elf, Primeval Titan, Obstinate Baloth, Wood Elves, and Grim Lavamancer are just a few of many examples.
Weakness: Pretty much every magic deck ever has a plan for dealing with creature beatdown, so it's not like you're going to catch anyone unprepared, and dedicated beat decks are better at it than you are.
Plan 4) Various. This can be anything from running Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to enable Sorin Markov, Corrupt, and Tendrils of Corruption, to running Beacon of Creation and Rude Awakening, a Stoneforge Mystic/Equipment package and Kher Keep, going the Domain route and running Exploding Borders and Tribal Flames or Academy Ruins, Wurmcoil Engine, and Vedalken Shackles. Point is, there are a lot of options after the first couple choices, because most of the Scapeshift combo is included in the manabase.
The core of a Scapeshift deck is as follows:
3-4 Scapeshift
2-4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
8-12 Mountains
40+ other stuff
The question of what way to best fill the 40+ "other stuff" category is what the previous discussion of backup plans was about. The next big question is how to get the 8-12 Mountains a Scapeshift deck needs.
There are currently several schools of thought on this. You can run a largely non-red deck (like say, UG) and then rely on Ravnica duals like Stomping Ground and Steam Vents to provide your Mountains, or you can run essentially the same deck except rely on Prismatic Omen to provide your Mountains and use a more traditional UG manabase. A third alternative is to run a RG deck and just pile on the basics. Each strategy has its own drawbacks and advantages.
While those are the basics of the deck, here are some actual examples of decklists that use the various strategies.
You can go with Wargate and Prismatic Omen and lots of counters and ramp.
An example of this decktype would be:
4x Wall of Omens
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
Enchantments
4x Prismatic Omen
Sorceries
4x Search for Tomorrow
4x Wargate
3x Scapeshift
Planeswalkers
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Instants
4x Condescend
4x Remand
2x Cryptic Command
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4x Misty Rainforest
3x Flooded Grove
2x Celestial Colonnade
3x Forest
3x Island
1x Plains
2x Temple Garden
2x Hallowed Fountain
4x Qasali Pridemage
2x Oblivion Ring
4x Great Sable Stag
3x Relic of Progenitus
2x Ghostly Prison
Obviously there are a lot of variations you can do around that general line. Cards like Oracle of Mul-Daya, Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, Explore, Mana Leak, Repeal, and Path to Exile are also common in this type of build. A transformative sideboard featuring Wurmcoil Engine, Kitchen Finks, and Baneslayer Angel is also not unknown.
This style of scapeshift deck seeks to delay and control the game while whittling away at its opponents' life total by playing out lands every turn with a Valakut and Omen on the board. Backup win plans include Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Celestial Colonnade.
You can also take a more mountain centric approach, as evinced by this style of Valakut Ramp.
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Wood Elves
3x Solemn Simularcum
4x Primeval Titan
2x Inferno Titan
Sorceries
4x Scapeshift
4x Search for Tomorrow
Enchantments
4x Khalni Heart Expedition
2x Harrow
4x Lightning Bolt
Lands
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4x Stomping Grounds
2x Forest
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Scalding Tarn
9x Mountain
4x Firespout
3x Banefire
4x Krosan Grip
4x Relic of Progenitus
Other cards frequently seen in this style of deck include Genesis Wave and Warp World (well, only rarely on the Warp World really). Speed is the primary goal of this deck.
A newer approach that is gaining in popularity is to run a RUG build with multiple combo wins.
4x Spellskite
3x Pestermite
3x Deceiver Exarch
Enchantments
4x Splinter Twin
Sorceries
4x Search for Tomorrow
4x Farseek
4x Scapeshift
Instants
4x Remand
3x Gitaxian Probe
3x Magma Jet
4x Stomping Ground
4x Steam Vents
1x Breeding Pool
3x Scalding Tarn
3x Misty Rainforest
3x Mountain
1x Island
1x Forest
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4x Firespout
4x Gutteral Response
4x Krosan Grip
3x Relic of Progenitus
Your plan here is to slow down your opponent with Pestermites, Spellskites, and Exarchs until you can land either your ramp or infinite attackers combos. Gitaxian Probe lets you know when the way is clear to go off. This deck has the advantage of two entirely different four mana instant win spells, but can have a hard time winning if an opponent has outs to both of them.
There is also a fourth type of Scapeshift deck which attempts to combine the advantages of the two previous strategies (being able to cast Scapeshift without Prismatic Omen in play, the versatility of running non-ramp cards, and an variety of routes to victory).
This deck style is more of my own homebrew, but it has been testing well so far.
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Bloodbraid Elf
2x Sun Titan
2x Primeval Titan
Equipment
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Body and Mind
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
1x Basilisk Collar
Enchantments
3x Prismatic Omen
Sorceries
4x Search for Tomorrow
2x Farseek
3x Wargate
3x Scapeshift
2x Arid Mesa
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
2x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4x Stomping Ground
4x Sacred Foundry
1x Steam Vents
2x Temple Garden
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
1x Mountain
1x Bojuka Bog
2x Ravenous Trap
1x Crucible of Worlds
3x Qasali Pridemage
2x Oblivion Ring
2x Ratchet Bomb
3x Kitchen Finks
1x Manriki-Gusari
The deck runs a lot of mini-combos, with Collar/Lavamancer working as a machine gun, and any of the titans with a sword can be a real nightmare. Knight of the Reliquary can get big fast, and finds specific lands for you, like say, Valakut or Emeria. The two Swords were picked for diversity of protection colors, and because Body and Mind give you a way to win outside of damage by milling down your opponent, and Light and Shadow can provide some much needed card advantage. Three of the equipments gain you life because the deck takes a lot of damage in the early turns from all the shocklands before it either stabilizes or wins. If you're worried about the mirror match, Archive Trap is surprisingly strong there because it can mill away all of the opponents' mountains/valakuts, or at least enough to stop them from winning, and decks like this don't really skimp on shuffle effects.
Those are just three of the main variations of Scapeshift decks you can run in the new Modern format.
As a supplement, I'll now briefly discuss some of the more common card choices for this archetype.
Creatures
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Provides a chump block and puts a basic land into play. Also exiles Bridge from Below against Dredge. Strictly superior to Rampant Growth.
Coiling Oracle - can put a nonbasic into play, but it's kind of random, much worse without Sensei's Divining Top or a similar card around.
Wood Elves - Fetches a Forest. It's important to remember that this can be a non-basic forest, like a Stomping Ground, and that the land can enter play tapped.
Solemn Simularcum - Gets a basic when it arrives, gets a card when it leaves. The colorless nature of the card isn't really an advantage for this decktype, and its cmc of 4 is a bit high for accelerating you into something early.
Wall of Omens - a great way to slow down your opponents' ground game. Also a great target for your own Path to Exile if you're playing against someone without creatures.
Knight of the Reliquary - Can tutor up any land you want at instant speed. Also gets big if your opponent is targeting your lands for LD.
Bloodbraid Elf - a bit hit or miss with the cascade mechanic, still, it will often net you a ramp spell, and it is very good at killing opposing planeswalkers.
Primeval Titan - puts any two lands you want into play. Outstanding way to grab Valakut or to activate it. Expensive, but strong for it's cost.
Oracle of Mul-Daya - gets a lot of extra lands out onto the battlefield, and provides some card advantage as well. Fragile body.
Budoka Gardner - a repeatable "Explore" effect for not a lot of mana with some lategame potential.
Obstinate Baloth - good against burn, zoo, and discard, somewhat limited vs. everything else.
Kitchen Finks - general anti-aggro critter.
Sorceries
Search for Tomorrow - this is the best land ramp spell for Scapeshift since it's the only one that can be cast on turn one. When hardcast instead of suspended, it has the same effective mana cost as Rampant Growth because the land it finds comes into play untapped. Lets you fire off a Khalni Heart Expedition on turn three in conjunction with a fetchland.
Explore - the worst of the two mana ramp spells. I know it has a lot of proponents, but the single biggest problem with this spell is that it doesn't guarantee you an extra land, and you really don't want to get late enough into the game for it's "cycling" effect to matter.
Rampant Growth - the second worst of the two mana ramp spells, it falls behind both Sakura-Tribe Elder (which can block) and Farseek (which can find Rav duals).
Farseek - the best option for two mana acceleration, as it can grab any Rav dual and any non-Forest basic.
Cultivate - makes sure you hit five mana on turn four if you cast it on turn three. Almost as good as Explosive Vegetation at one less mana.
Scapeshift - the instant win. requires six lands with Prismatic Omen in play, seven or eight lands without Omen depending on your opponents' life total.
Rude Awakening - a nice surprise alt-win if you've been ramping out lands for awhile and are somehow prevented from Valakuting them out.
Green Sun's Zenith - can put an extra land (Dryad Arbor) into play for only one mana. However, if that's all you're using it for, it's a pretty poor choice. This card works best in conjunction with manabirds and lots of green critters, which isn't really what this deck is about.
Treasure Hunt - the main problem with this card is that there isn't an effective enough anti-aggro land in Modern to make going in a heavy land build direction profitable.
Genesis Wave - see Treasure Hunt.
Banefire - another alt-win condition if your land plan is shut down.
Preordain - for the more combo centric versions featuring Blue, this lets you dig three cards down and can get rid of stuff you don't want, like ramp lategame or bombs early game.
Ponder - similar to Preordain, but somewhat worse here because this deck doesn't need another shuffle effect, and generally has at least one card in the top three you're not thrilled about drawing.
Timely Reinforcements - a great way to get from the midgame to the lategame if you're playing against an aggressive deck. A sideboard card, but a good one. Maindeckable in low creature count builds.
Mwonvuli Acid-Moss - slows down your opponent while accelerating you. A little on the slow side though.
Reap and Sow - can slow down your opponent or find any land you want. Or it can do both. A little on the slow side though.
Journey of Discovery - requires running a lot of basics to get full value out of, but can be useful, sometimes. More versatile than Summer Bloom.
Realms Uncharted - requires Crucible or Loam to get full value from it.
Shard Convergence - has some interesting applications with Ravnica duals, and is four cards for four mana, but generally not good enough.
Tribal Flames - if you run Prismatic Omen, or just a lot of colors, this is a solid if unspectacular burn and removal spell.
Firespout - a cheap sweeper that can turn the tide against aggro.
Wargate - puts any land you want into play, finds any permanent, from Jace, to Crucible, to KotR, to Oblivion Ring, to Prismatic Omen.
Enchantments
Prismatic Omen - makes all your lands (including Valakut itself) Mountains for a Valakut kill. Also turns on Emeria, Vedalken Shackles, Tendrils of Corruption, Tribal Flames, Beacon of Creation and lets Knight of the Reliquary sacrifice any land in play. Useful, but not necessary with the availability of Rav Mountain duals.
Khalni Heart Expedition - great for firing Valakut triggers, but requires a fair amount of setup and forces you to run lots of basics.
Lifegift - a way to gain tons of life, but not enough to really be worth it.
Genjus and Zendikons - you've got better options for land creatures from Tenth Edition, like Treetop Village, and from Worldwake like Raging Ravine. If you're running equipment, then both Vitu-Ghazi and Kher Keep are worth looking into.
Sacred Ground - protects your lands as long as there's no graveyard hate active.
Terra Eternal - one more mana than Sacred Ground, but makes your lands indestructible, which is useful with manlands. Doesn't stop sacrifice effects.
Rites of Flourishing - the symmetry ruins what could otherwise be extremely useful.
Oblivion Ring - handles almost any permanent, including planeswalkers, and can be tutored up with Wargate.
Runed Halo - defends against any specific threat. Cards like Progenitus, Valakut, and Jace.
Artifacts
Engineered Explosives - a very versatile removal spell regardless of the colors you're playing.
Ratchet Bomb - similar to EE, except that you put in an initial mana investment plus time instead of colors plus more mana.
Crucible of Worlds - makes one fetchland infinite land, recurs things destroyed by land destruction. All around useful, but rarely gamebreaking.
Oblivion Stone - resets the board except for lands, which can be very useful to a deck with land based win conditions.
Vedalken Shackles - combines with Miren, the Moaning Well to make a creature soft lock. Very useful for controlling the midgame.
Planeswalkers
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - arguably the best four drop in any format. Provides an alternate, non-damage based win condition, draws cards, controls the board. Pretty much no downsides.
Elspeth Tirel - it's really hard to get through her without some burn to go over the top. Can stop a lot of decks in their tracks.
Ajani Vengeant - lifegain, removal, board control and mana denial. Redjani does a lot of useful things for this deck.
Instants
Condescend - counters things, digs for whatever you need. Best in heavy dig/counter combo oriented shells.
Remand - a temporary counter that doesn't set you back on cards. Best in heavy dig/counter combo oriented shells.
Mental Misstep - a good way to slow down the game to your pace. Unknown if the meta will include enough 1-drops to make this worthwhile.
Spell Snare - an outstanding counter, but it does require you to leave U up on turn one on the draw or turn two on the play, both of which can hurt your ability to quickly ramp up.
Mana Leak - a good counter, but in most situations, Remand and Condescend are likely to be better.
Cryptic Command - a powerhouse, but does require a very heavy commitment to blue.
Venarian Glimmer - a solid, underused method of EOT clearing the way to go off next turn. X=2 nabs the vast majority of counters in the format. X=3 hits Krosan Grip as well.
Repeal - a strong tempo play vs. aggro. Somewhat more limited vs. everything else.
Path to Exile - possibly the best removal in the format, can be used to ramp yourself in a pinch.
Magma Jet - kills Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant, Gaddock Teeg and other hatebears, digs for answers.
Punishing Fire - in combination with Grove of the Burnwillows creates a repeatable machine gun effect. Very strong vs. Elves, Faeries, Goblins, Kithkin and Merfolk.
Lightning Bolt - outside of zoo not a lot of 3 toughness creatures in the format, which generally makes this a worse choice than Jet or Fire.
Harrow - Cultivate is largely superior to this, mostly useful if you're trying to go on a heavy instants build or are using Crucible of Worlds maindeck.
Peer through Depths - a great way to dig for Scapeshift or an answer to whatever problem you see on the board.
Beats Within - this spell is an instant speed solution for any permanent, and it can also provide a surprise blocker or attacker when necessary. A versatile and powerful effect.
Lands
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle - the main kill condition of the deck. Provides massive amounts of colorless burn damage to a multiplicity of targets.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin - I see a lot of decks running Prismatic Omen and not running this, which I've just never understood. It's a very strong effect for an extremely minimal opportunity cost.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All - countermagic got you down? Here's your solution.
Miren, the Moaning Well - combines with Vedalken Shackles to be a creature killing machine.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - makes all your lands into swamps. Powers Tendrils of Corruption against damage based decks.
Raging Ravine, Celestial Colonnade, Stirring Wildwood, Treetop Village - the main manlands used in Scapeshift decks based on common colors and abilities.
Academy Ruins - a way to endlessly recur Engineered Explosives, Ratchet Bomb, and Crucible of Worlds.
Kher Keep - a source of cheap chump blockers and equipment carriers.
Stomping Ground, Steam Vents, Sacred Foundry, Blood Crypt - the mountain duals of Ravnica Block. Essential to triggering Valakut in a multi-color deck.
Scalding Tarn, Arid Mesa, Misty Rainforest, Verdant Catacombs - the green and red fetchlands available in Modern.
Flooded Grove, Fire-Lit Thicket, Wooded Bastion, Mystic Gate, Rugged Prairie - filter lands that help cast color intensive spells like Elspeth and Cryptic Command.
Seaside Citadel - the bant shard land. Very useful in ugw decks as a color fixer.
Ghost Quarter - can eliminate a problematic enemy land. Generally not a good card here because it costs you a land drop in a deck that's trying to get to eight lands as fast as possible and just win.
Tectonic Edge - see Ghost Quarter. Except worse because you can't use it on one of your own lands to get another landfall trigger.
A starting point for deck construction:
4x Crown of Empires
4x Scepter of Empires
4x Throne of Empires
Sorceries
4x Rampant Growth
4x Cultivate
4x Black Sun's Zenith
4x See Beyond
4x Tezzeret's Gambit
4x Into the Roil
Lands
3x Verdant Catacombs
3x Misty Rainforest
8x Forest
5x Swamp
3x Island
2x Buried Ruin
4x Naturalize
4x Consuming Vapors
4x Suffer the Past
3x Nature's Spiral
I did not include Tezzeret, Slave of Bolas because with only 12 artifacts in the deck his first ability is less likely to actually find a card, and his second and third abilities are reliant on having large numbers of artifacts on the field. Additionally, it is hard to defend planeswalkers for any length of time in a creatureless deck. Which is why Liliana Vess, who is even better at assembling the combo than Tezzeret is not included. Suffer the past is a sideways answer to Pyromancer's Ascension decks as a backup to Naturalize.
This isn't a final version, but does seem to be a decent starting point.
First, the decklist:
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Bloodghast
4x Chandra's Phoenix
3x Vampire Outcasts
Planeswalkers
4x Chandra, the Firebrand
Enchantments
4x Zombie Infestation
Sorceries
4x Tezzeret's Gambit
4x Sign in Blood
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Volt Charge
Lands
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
3x Dragonskull Summit
3x Marsh Flats
3x Arid Mesa
4x Swamp
4x Mountain
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Divine Offering
2x Plains
3x Timely Reinforcements
2x Manabarbs
The fetchlands enable the white splash in the sideboard and feed grim lavamancer, the board is mainly designed to give a leg up on artifact decks and more aggressive decks. Sorin Markov fits the deck very well but with only 22 lands he seems a bit high on the curve. Tectonic Edge would also fit nicely here, but I'm unsure how well the manabase will take colorless sources given all of the RR and BB costs in here. To all intents and purposes this is R/B aggro control with minimal disruption but significant amounts of card advantage and recursion/graveyard abuse. The basic gameplan is to control the board with burn/lavamancer/chandra while drawing cards until you can start laying serious zombie and vampire beats with bloodghast and infestation/phoenix.
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Enclave Cryptologist
2x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Reassembling Skeleton
3x Sylvan Ranger
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Glissa, the Traitor
1x Pilgrim's Eye
1x Sea Gate Oracle
1x Cadaver Imp
4x Vengevine
1x Exhumer Exarch
2x Baneslayer Angel
1x Strider Harness
1x Mortarpod
Artifacts
4x Birthing Pod
Sorceries
4x Preordain
2x See Beyond
Lands
2x Verdant Catacombs
3x Misty Rainforest
8x Forest
5x Island
2x Swamp
2x Plains
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Hammer of Ruin
1x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Into the Roil
4x Nature's Claim
3x Go for the Throat
The idea behind the hammer/SFM in the board is to race other equipment decks to hammer then beat them up with it by forcing bad blocks or just plain killing their equipments. Claim and Roil hit Splinter Twin and other, similar specific permanent reliant decks at a low cost. With 8 mana dorks and a basic heavy manabse having the correct colors of mana has not proven to be a problem so far. Especially as the deck is in practice almost all u/g, and draws/filters a large number of cards.
This seems to have a large amount of potential, at least in initial testing, curious to hear others' thoughts on this particular style of take on the deck. Thanks.
koth - 2
venser - 2
elspeth - 2
karn - 0